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The Portion of Labor, a novel by Mary E Wilkins Freeman |
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Chapter 43 |
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_ Chapter XLIII When Mrs. Lloyd entered the room, the attention of every one was taken from the dead man on the bed and concentrated upon the woman. Dr. Story, a nervous, intense, elderly man with a settled frown of perplexity over keen eyes, which he had gotten from a struggle of forty years with unanswerable problems of life and death, stepped towards her hastily. Robert pressed close to her side. Ellen came behind her, holding in a curious, instinctive fashion to a fold of the older woman's gown, as if she had been a mother holding back a child from a sudden topple to its hurt. Everybody expected her to make some heart-breaking manifestation. She did nothing. At that moment the sublime unselfishness of the woman, which was her one strength of character, seemed actually to spread itself, as with wings, before them all. She moved steadily, close to her husband on the bed. She gazed at that profile of rigid calmness and enforced peace, which, although the head lay low, seemed to have an effect of upward motion, as if it were cleaving the mystery of space. Mrs. Lloyd laid her hand upon her husband's forehead; she felt a slight incredulousness of death, because it was still warm. She took his hands, drew them softly together, and folded them upon his breast. Then she turned and faced them all with an angelic expression. "He did not realize it to suffer much?" she said. "No, Mrs. Lloyd," replied Dr. Story, quickly. "No, I assure you that he suffered very little." "He seemed very happy when he died, Aunt Lizzie," said Robert, huskily. Mrs. Lloyd looked away from them all around the room. It was a magnificent apartment. Norman Lloyd had had an artistic taste as well as wealth. The furnishings had always been rather beyond Mrs. Lloyd's appreciation, but she admired them kindly. She took in every detail; the foam of rich curtains at the great windows, the cut-glass and silver on the dressing-table, the pale softness of a polar-bear skin beside the bed, the lifelike insistence of the costly pictures on the walls. "He's gone where it is a great deal more beautiful," she said to them, like a child. "He's gone where there's better treasures than these which he had here." They all looked at her in amazement. It actually seemed as if, for the moment, the woman's sole grief was over the loss to her husband of those things which he had on earth--the treasures of his mortal state. Robert took hold of his aunt's arm and led her, quite unresisting, from the room, and as she went she felt for Ellen's hand. "It is time she was home," she said to Robert. "Her folks will be worried about her. She's been a real comfort to me." It was the first time that Ellen had ever seen death, that she had ever seen the living confronted with it. She felt as if a wave were breaking over her own head as she clung fast to Mrs. Lloyd's hand. "Sha'n't I stay?" she whispered, pitifully, to her. "If I can send word to my mother--" "No, you dear child," replied Mrs. Lloyd, "you've done enough, and you will have to be up early in the morning." Then she checked herself. "I forgot," said she to Robert; "the factory will be closed till after the funeral, won't it?" "Of course it will, Aunt Lizzie." "And the workmen will be paid just the same, of course," said Mrs. Lloyd. "Now, can't you take her home, Robert?" "Oh, don't mind about me," cried Ellen. "You can have a horse put into the buggy," said Mrs. Lloyd. "Oh, you mustn't leave her now," Ellen whispered to Robert. "Let somebody else take me--Dr. James--" "I would rather you took her," said Mrs. Lloyd. "And you needn't worry about his leaving me, dear child; the doctor will stay until he comes back." As Robert was finally going out his aunt caught his arm and looked at him with a radiant expression. "He will never know about _me_ now," said she, "and it won't be long before I-- Oh, I feel as if I had gotten rid of my own death." She was filled with inexpressible thankfulness that she had herself to bear what she had dreaded for her husband. "Only think how hard it would have been for Norman," she said to Cynthia, the next day. Cynthia looked at her wonderingly. She could have understood this feeling over a dearly beloved child. "You are a good woman, Lizzie," she said, in a tone of pitiful respect. "Not half as good a woman as he was a man," returned Mrs. Lloyd, jealously. "Norman wasn't a professor, I know, but he was a believer. You don't think it is necessary to be a professor in order to be saved, do you, Cynthia?" "I certainly do not," Cynthia replied. "I wish you would go and lie down, Lizzie." "Oh, I can't. I wouldn't let anybody do these things but me, for the whole world." Mrs. Lloyd was arranging flowers, tuberoses and white carnations, in vases, and the whole house was scented with them. She looked ghastly, yet still unconquerably happy. She had now no reason to conceal the ravages of disease, and her color was something frightful. Still, she did not suffer as much, for her mind had overborne her body to such an extent that she had the mastery for the time, to a certain extent, of those excruciating stabs of pain. People looked at her incredulously. They could not believe that she felt as she talked, that she was as happy and resigned as she looked, but it was all true. It was either an abnormal state into which her husband's death had thrown her, or one too normal to be credited. She looked at it all with a supreme childishness and simplicity. She simply believed that her husband was in heaven, where she should join him; that he was beyond all suffering which might have come to him through her, and all that troubled her was the one consideration of his having been forced to leave his treasures of earth. She looked at various things which had been prized by the dead man, and found her chief comfort in saying to the minister or Cynthia or Robert that Norman had loved these, but he would have that which was infinitely more precious. She even gazed out of the window, that Tuesday night, and saw her nephew driving away with Ellen, and reflected, with pain, that her husband had been fond and proud of that bay. She was a little at a loss to conceive what could make up to her husband for that in another world, but she succeeded, and evolved from her own loving fancy, and her recollection of the Old Testament, a conception of some wonderful creature, shod with thunder and maned with a whirlwind. Her disease, and a drug she had been taking of late, stimulated her imagination to results of grotesque pathos, but she was comforted. That night when they were alone, Robert turned to the girl at his side with a sudden motion. It was no time for love-making, for that was in the mind of neither of them, but the bereavement of this other woman, and the tragedy of her state, filled him with a sort of protective pain towards the girl who might some time have to suffer through him the same loss. "Are you all tired out, dear?" he said, and passed his free arm around her waist. "No," replied Ellen. Then, since she was only a girl, and overwrought, having been through a severe strain, she broke down, and began to cry. Robert drew her closer, and she hid her face on his shoulder. "Poor little girl, it has been very hard for you," he whispered. "Oh, don't think of me," sobbed Ellen. "But I can't bear it, the way she acts and looks. It is sadder than grief." "She is not going to live long herself, dear," said Robert, in a stifled voice. "And he--did not know?" "Hush! yes; but you must never tell any one. She tried to keep it from him. That is her comfort." "Oh," said Ellen. She looked up at the white face of the young man bending over her, and suddenly the realization of a love that was mightier than all the creatures who came of it and all who followed it was over her. _ |
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