In a Little Town

by Rupert Hughes

He heard her sobbing over his coffin and heard her recall her ferocious words with shame. His white, set face seemed to try to console her. He heard what he was trying to tell her in all the gentle understanding of the tomb:

"I said worse things, honey. I don't know how I could have used such words to you, my sweetheart. A longshoreman wouldn't have called a fishwife what I called you, you blessed child. But it was my love that tormented me. If a man had quarreled with me, we'd have had a knock-down and drag-out and nothing more thought of it. If any woman but you had denounced me as you did I'd have shrugged my shoulders and not cared a—at all.

"It was because I loved you, honey, that your least frown hurt me so. But I didn't really mean what I said. It wasn't true. You're the best, the faithfulest, the prettiest, dearest woman in all the world, and you were a precious wife to me—so much more beautiful, more tender, more devoted than the wives of the other men I knew. I will pray God to bring you to me in the place I'm going to. I could not live without you anywhere."

This was what he was trying to tell her, and could not utter a word of it. He seemed to be lying in his coffin, staring up at her through sealed eyelids. He could not purse his cold lips to kiss her warm mouth. He could not lift an icy hand to bless her brow. They would come soon to lay the last board over his face and screw down the lid. She would scream and fight, but they would drag her away. And he could not answer her wild cries. He could not go to her rescue. He would be lifted in the box from the trestles and carried out on the shoulders of other men, and slid into the waiting hearse; and the horses would trot away with him, leaving her to penury, with her children and his at the mercy of the merciless world, while he was lowered into a ditch and hidden under shovelfuls of dirt, to lie there motionless, useless, hideously idle forever.

This vision of himself dead was so vivid that his heart jumped in his breast and raced like a propeller out of water. The very pain and the terror were joyful, for they meant that he still lived.

Whatever other disasters overhung him, he was at least not dead. Better a beggar slinking along the dingiest street than the wealthiest Rothschild under the stateliest tomb. Better the sneers and pity of the world in whispers about his path than all the empty praise of the most resounding obituary.

The main thing was to be alive. Before that great good fortune all misfortunes were minor, unimportant details. And, after all, he was not so pitiable. His name was still respected. His factory was still running. Whatever his liabilities, he still had some assets, not least of them health and experience and courage.

But where had his courage been hiding that it left him whimpering alone? Was he a little girl afraid of the dark, or was he a man?

There were still men who would lend him money or time. What if he was in trouble? Were not the merchant princes of the earth sweating blood? There had been a rich men's panic before the poor were reached. Now everybody was involved.

After all, what if he failed? Who had not failed? What if he fell bankrupt?—that was only a tumble down-stairs. Could he not pick himself up and climb again? Some of the biggest industries in the world had passed through temporary strain. The sun himself went into eclipse.