“Can’t I see him?” asked Mrs. Hedding, climbing over the back doorstone like a suddenly exhausted pilgrim, her face quivering under streams of tears.
Through open doors she recognized in the parlor and sitting-room groups of old neighbors, waiting in that hush with which they always accompanied one another to the brink of death. A woman came from among them, whispering,—
“Who’s this, Lindy?” and immediately informing herself: “Why, Sereny Jeffr’s! Have you got here? Come right in to your pap. He’s pretty nigh gone.”
“It won’t do no good, Sister McGafferty,” said Aunt Lindy. “He won’t know her, and ’twill disturb him. She was postin’ in at the front door when I caught her,” declared Aunt Lindy, as if speaking of a thief.
Sister McGafferty, a comfortable, large woman in blue spectacles, the presiding elder’s wife, and therefore a person of authority, still beckoned Serena in, and she passed Aunt Lindy, followed by her barefooted boy. The round-posted bedstead was drawn out from the wall, and under its sheet and many colored quilt lay the old farmer, his mouth open, his eyes glazed, his narrow brows and knotty features wearing a ghastly pallor. But behind the solemn terror of that face was her father.
Aunt Lindy followed, and twitched her elbow, thereby creating a faction in Serena Hedding’s favor among the spectators. They were all well-to-do people, who noticed her dejected attitude toward the world, and had always disapproved of her thriftless match. But they said within themselves that Lindy Miller was going too far when she tried to pull a daughter away from her dying father.
“Ain’t you ’shamed to disturb his last peaceful minutes!” Aunt Lindy hissed with force.
But the returned culprit fastened such desperate interest on the unseeing eyes of her father that Aunt Lindy’s interruption was as remote to her as the gambols of loose horses in the pasture.
If there had now been time and opportunity, Serena could not argue her case with him. He never had allowed that. She could not tell how true and happy her marriage was, in spite of his disapproval and its accompanying poverty. She had suffered, but her heart had ripened so that she could discern and love the good in human nature across its narrow bounds. Words or expressions did not occur to her; but a thousand living thoughts swarmed in her mind. If he would look at her again with reconciliation in his eyes, she could be satisfied, and bear all her future trials like benedictions. Never a loving father, he was, until her disobedience, a fairly kind one. He was a very religious man of the old sort, believing seriousness to be the primary principle of godliness, and levity a fermentation of the inward Satan. He always paid his quarterage and contributed to foreign missions, while every successive preacher on the circuit used his house as home. The deep grooves making a triangle of his upper lip showed how constant and sad his meditations had been. Yet this old farmer was in some matters timid and self-distrustful, and so fond of peace and quiet as to yield his rights for them.
“Father,” pleaded Serena Hedding, bending closer to him. “Father!” Unconsciously she repeated the name like a cry. The hum of the bee-hives against the garden palings could be heard. Did a ray dart across his leaden brain from the afternoon his only child, in short coats, poked a stick in the bee-hives, and, feeling the results of her folly, wailed thus to him? Did he imagine himself again dropping the rake and leaping the fence to run with her from her tormentors? A flicker grew through the glazing of his eyes, and became a steady light, a look, a tender gaze, a blessing. She clasped her hands, and rocked before him in ecstasy. He knew her, and revealed, midway over the silent chasm of death, how unalterably close and dear she was to him. In that small eternity of time they were knitted together as never before. His eyes began to glaze again, and she remembered Milty. Pushing the child forward, she cried again, “My boy, father! See my boy!”