Over the border

by Morgan Robertson

Then came his turn; two weeks in bed, fevered and delirious at times, thinking of her in lucid moments, talking of her to a puzzled mother when the delirium gripped him, and surviving at last through careful nursing, to return to his seat in school as pale and thin as was the girl. One glance he took, and his content came back. She paid him no attention, not even joining the others in the friendly looks of welcome he received, and he took up his studies at the foot of all the classes—with his divinity just above him.

"It is rather funny," commented one class teacher, with a smile, "that the two best scholars are at the foot. Johnny Bridge went behind when Zenie Malcolm was sick, and Zenie Malcolm went behind when Johnny Bridge was sick. You two must study and catch up."

He felt a curious elation, but did not look at her; so he did not notice that her cheeks were flaming red.

And now there came to him a real, or at least a tangible, sense of loss. A small sister, his pet, whose dolls he had mended and whose tears he had dried, fell heir to the sickness that he had survived, and he followed her little body to the grave. His grief was normal, untortured by boyish remorse, and lasted long enough to serve as buffer to a deeper grief that followed. The mother who had nursed him so lovingly followed the sister. He shed no tears now, only his strained look of dumb and helpless pain indicated that he suffered. He could not analyze his emotions—could not think, much less question the decree of Fate that had robbed him of something he was accustomed to, something he needed. But, as he took his seat at school on the day following the funeral, he found an immediate cessation of pain that he ascribed to her silent sympathy. He knew she sympathized—he had seen her at the crowded doorway of the house when they were taking his mother out—and the cheer and the charm of his daily proximity to her soon wore out the grief, and in another year he was again a lively boy, light-hearted, studious, and combative, following his divinity home each day, and still worshiping at a distance.

But the Fates had not yet presented the whole of his problem. She was not in her seat one morning, and he spent a futile day, wondering and longing, then went near her house after school hours. A boy passed, and said:

"Zenie Malcolm's dead. Come on up to the ball ground!"

He did not go. The sky had grown suddenly darker, and the summer air was cold. He walked nearer her home than he had ever gone before, and there on the doorknob was a black and white drapery, such as they had hung out for his sister.

"Dead!" he said to himself, and repeated the word again and again; but he could not understand. He wandered the streets alone, trying to realize, to accept; but he could not adjust himself to this. Why should she be dead? He knew his mother was dead, and his sister; but this could not be! His consciousness refused it. His mental horizon was close to him, and crowded. This thing could not find entrance.

He did not go home to supper—only when bodily fatigue overcame him did he creep into the house and up to his bed. He went to sleep easily, with the word "dead" on his lips, but the realization hammering vainly at his brain. In the morning, still unawake from the shock, he ate what breakfast he could force down his throat, and went to school. Her place was still vacant, and at recess he left the playground, going near to her home again. The crepe was still on the door, and he walked the streets as before, muttering, "Dead, dead!" He was absent from the midday meal; but arrived before supper time, still in a daze. An angry stepfather read him a note from the principal, reporting the truancy, and took him out to the woodshed.

"I've had enough of this!" said the man, as he doubled a clothes line. "You were not home to supper last night; but I said nothing at breakfast, because I wanted to think it out. I'm going to give you what you need. Your mother spoiled you, and I always knew it."