Gretchen: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

"I can't think what she did say, only a lot about him. There was a him somewhere, and I guess he was naughty, so pray for him, and the baby—that's me—and tell Manny she must take me to Mecky."

"To whom?" Arthur asked, and she replied:

"To Mecky, where he was, don't you know?"

Arthur did not know, but he prayed for him, saying what she bade him say—a mixture half English, half German.

"There, now, you are dead," she said, at last, as she closed his eyes and folded his hands upon his chest. "You are dead, and musn't stir nor breathe, no matter how awful we cry, Manny and I."

Kneeling down beside him, she began a cry so like that of two persons that if Arthur had not known to the contrary, he would have sworn there were two beside him, a woman and a child, the voice of one shrill, and clear, and young, and frightened, the other older, and harsher, and stronger, and both blending together in a most astonishing manner.

"With a little practice she would make a wonderful ventriloquist," Arthur thought, as he watched her flitting about the room, talking to unseen people and giving orders with regard to himself.

Once Frank had witnessed a pantomime very similar to this, only then the play had ended with the death, while now there was the burial, and when Arthur moved a little and asked if he might get up, she laid her hand quickly on his mouth, with a peremptory, "Hush! you are dead, and we must bury you."

But here Jerry's memory failed her, and the funeral which followed was an imitation of the one which had left the Park House three years before, and which Arthur had watched from his window. Frank was there, and his wife, and Peterkin, and Jerry imitated the voices of them all, and when some one bade her kiss her mother she stooped and kissed Arthur's forehead, and said:

"Good-by, mamma;" then, throwing a thin tidy over his face, she continued, "Now I am going to shut the coffin;" and as she worked at the corners, as if driving down the screws, Arthur felt as if he were actually being shut out from life, and light, and the world.