But if he would not tell her, she must know otherwise how to take care of him. She went to Mr. Weeks, who was the church treasurer. She remembered Netta’s father as a poor man, a mechanic who had moved to the village from elsewhere and opened a small grocery store. Soon he was unaccountably prosperous, enough so to buy the shirt factory at South End, though he had not opened it yet. But they had never bought of him because her mother said they were used to Mr. Winters’ general store. She did not like Peter Weeks because he asked outright what Winters was selling for, and twisted his tight small mouth to say, “I’ll let you have it two cents under his price—anything you want.”
“No, thank you,” she replied coldly. When Mr. Weeks had joined the church and Hannah said, “Reckon we’d oughta buy a little of him now and then,” her mother had replied proudly, “We don’t do that sort of thing.”
She entered the grocery shop, her head high and her heart water within her.
Netta’s father hastened toward her. “Well, well,” he cried, but she would not answer his meager joviality. “Mr. Weeks,” she said directly over the counter, “I’ve come to ask one thing—when does my father have to go?”
“Well, now,” he considered, taken aback. His angular wizened colorless face fell into his conventional shopman’s smile. “You and Netta are old friends—I want to do all I can.”
“It’s not necessary,” she said steadily. “I’ll take care of my father.”
“The fact is,” Mr. Weeks said, moving a cud of tobacco in his cheek, “the old man’s kind of stubborn. Won’t give his resignation.”
“I see,” said Joan.
“We’re waiting for that. Can’t technically close him out before then. The fact is, we’d want to get a new man started as soon as we can, but I’m treasurer and I know we can’t afford any overlapping. Finances in bad shape, but I’m getting things in order—”
“I see,” said Joan. “Then the sooner we go the better.”
“He’d better hand in his resignation, you see, Joan.” He moved his quid. “I don’t want to be hard on him—you and Netta—Say, hear Netta’s going to splice up with Ned Parsons? She was a long time going off, Netta was, but she did well in the end. Ned takes after his pa, I’m glad to say, instead of his ma. He works steady. I’m thinking some of starting up the factory, and if I do I’m going to put Ned in charge—that is, if he goes ahead with Netta.”
“I’m very glad for Netta. Will you tell her? Good-bye.” She forgot Ned and Netta at once.
Across the table at supper when Hannah was gone she said, “Father, let’s do proudly what has to be done. We’ll go to the city—I’ll find a job. And Francis can help. We’ll start again.”
He had been eating rapidly and hungrily. Of late, with all the worry, he had let himself eat more. He often felt faint and he needed strength. Tonight the stew had been unusually good, and the steamed pudding. But Joan was so quick. He stared at her and put his hand to his mouth, and she saw he was sick. She ran to him, but he fended her off with his arm and rose and went out. When after a long time he did not call her, she went to find him. He was in his room and when she called he cried feebly that he was undressing and she could not come. She sat down on a little stool by the door and waited. But the door did not open, and at last she opened it softly. He lay on his back, his folded hands on his breast. His eyes were closed and he was drawing deep breaths, snoring now and then. He had crept into bed without calling her and gone to sleep. She closed the door and went to her own room. He did not want her.
For her there was no sleep. She could not sleep in such uncertainty, in such loneliness. Rose was far away and Francis had written only once. But she remembered Francis, how he had leaped from his bed and dashed for Dr. Crabbe that day. She went to her desk and began to write to Francis. “We must go. You see how it is,” she ended. “We had better come to New York and I could get a job. At any rate, we must get out of this house.”
She sat a while and added, “I have no one to count on but you. And he is your father, too.”
She sealed and stamped the letter and lay down in her bed, listening, to fall at last into sleep.
She woke with the feeling of a strange sound just heard. She had heard it in deep sleep and waked instantly from old habit with her mother. She lay awake, taut, listening. What was it? The house was very silent. The night was still. Then it came again, a loud choke, a snore, a voice struggling and stifled. She leaped out of bed and ran to the door between his room and hers. But he had locked it. Sometime, without her knowing it, he had locked it so that he might be quite alone. She cried through the panel, “Father—I’m coming—” But he did not answer. There was the door from the hall. She ran down the hall, calling upward to the attic for Hannah as she ran. This door was not locked, thank God! She pushed it open. The room was dark. There was no moon and even through the open window only darkness streamed.
But out of that darkness she heard his strange breathing. She fumbled for the light and heard on the stair Hannah’s stumbling and muttering against the darkness.
“Hannah!” she cried. “Go and get Dr. Crabbe. Something’s wrong with Father!”
Hannah’s voice grated through the darkness. “He’s overeaten. He’s always held back, but last night he kind of let go and ate. I noticed him on the pudding.” She reached the door as Joan found the switch. The light flashed down upon the bed, upon him. They stared at him in the instant together. He lay stiffly, his arms flung into a shape of agony. His mouth was twisted, across his jaws and pinned there; held by invisibly crooked muscles. His eyes were dim, half-open. His usually snow-pale face was strained with purple—
“My soul and body!” whispered Hannah. “It’s a stroke!” She turned and padded away …
This figure on the bed did not stir. She was afraid of him—so strange, so twisted. She lifted his hand to place it nearer his body in a more easy pose and the arm was stiff. She could not move it. A dribble of saliva ran from the loose corner of his mouth and she lifted the sheet and wiped it away, sickened. “Father, Father!” she cried. But he neither saw nor heard. He was absorbed in the heavy breath he drew.
And then, as she stood there alone with him, the breathing stopped. At one instant the breath came, deep and thick, roughened, grating, like something dragging harshly over a rocky road. Then it stopped. Even as she stood, crying to him, it stopped. She waited, in terror, for it to begin again. But the strange purple faded out of his face, gravity fell upon his crooked mouth, and the twisting left his flung limbs. The body seemed to relax, to curl, to shrink. The breath was finished. She turned away and ran—ran down the stairs, calling, “Hannah, Hannah!”
The front door opened and Dr. Crabbe was there, his overcoat over his striped pajamas, his hair a fringe of tangle about his baldness. “Father’s gone—he’s gone!” She shrieked at him as though she were a little girl. “Oh, Dr. Crabbe—oh, what shall I do!” She began suddenly to cry aloud.
He lumbered up the stairs, and she followed behind him, and Hannah behind her, a frenzied procession. She could not keep from sobbing, every breath arose a sob. She felt weak with sobbing. They were by him but he had not moved. There he lay, just as she had left him, Dr. Crabbe lifted his arm. It lay limp in his grasp and he put it down gently. Hannah began to sniffle. “It was a stroke, wasn’t it, Doctor? He always kept himself starved and last night he took three helpings of my dried fig pudding and the hard sauce. I was that surprised, beside all else he’d eaten—”
Dr. Crabbe did not answer her. He did not say to Joan, “Stop sobbing, child.” He looked down into the proud dead face, seeming not to hear her. It was a proud high face, even though dead. “The old son of God,” he murmured, smiling. “He stood up in the vestry last Sunday and told them God called him, not man, and that he would die before he resigned. He was lucky—not everybody can die when life is ended.” He bent and with gentleness he touched the eyelids and closed them and laid the hands upon the breast.
But she kept on sobbing
. She could not stop her sobbing.
They were all very kind, of course. They sent a great many flowers. The house was full of flowers, and on the floral pieces were little notes speaking of his “wonderful service.” “So many years,” they all chorused. Now that he had, in a manner, resigned, they were eager to praise, to appreciate. Mr. Weeks came to see her and to say uncomfortably, “I didn’t mean any harm, you know. It was just business—things getting sorta rundown—if I’d had any idea—”
She heard him listlessly, hating him. She had to watch herself all the time or she began that foolish sobbing. She wept the instant she was alone—not for him—not for him—“It doesn’t matter, Mr. Weeks—”
Dr. Crabbe telegraphed for her to Francis. He said, looking at her sharply, “You need to have someone here with you—there’s no one else.” She said, “Maybe he can’t come—he’s just new at a job—I don’t know—” She desperately wanted him to come. She needed the sense of her own beside her. But he did not come. There was no answer even to the telegram. They wouldn’t let him off, she thought dully when it was the hour for the funeral and he had not come.
She went with Hannah to the church quietly. Mrs. Winters was there first, just to see everything was right. “Wait a little, dearie,” she said. “Wait till they’re all seated.” She was so kind. But even she had said when they stood looking at him in his coffin, “If he hadn’t been so set on that South End—”
Yes, they were all kind now, when it was too late. She sat in the pew quite alone, and the preacher from Lawtonville mounted the pulpit, and before him lay the casket. He mounted eagerly and then remembered and slowed himself. But it was difficult to walk slowly today. The eagerness crept out of him, his eyes, his voice, the nervous quickness of his hands. Would he please the people, his eagerness was asking? And across the dead the people were looking at him closely, intensely. Would he please them? He began praising the dead man eagerly, fully, remembering to round his sentences, to use the metaphors he had planned. When he prayed he had a small sheet of notes before him upon the pulpit and he opened his eyes now and then to glance at them. He must make a good prayer. It was so necessary for Minnie to—
“And may we so live, O God,” he prayed fluently, glancing secretly at the bit of paper, “that at the end—”
After it was over, Netta wanted to come home with her, and Mrs. Winters said, “Now don’t stay there alone—come over to us.” They all said, “Let us know if we can do anything.” She smiled and thanked them, knowing there was nothing.
She was alone, wherever she was. It did not matter. She wanted to go away from them because underneath all their kindness she could feel their relief. Before her they were decent and grave. But they would go to their homes and look at each other and murmur, “After all, it was best—for everybody concerned.” So she went back to the house quite alone. She must not begin that sobbing again. She had begun to be sick with sobbing.
They were all very kind. Dr. Crabbe came to see her and worried her with his insistent kindness. “What are you going to do, Joan? You’ve got to do something, child!”
She had answered at first quite eagerly. “Yes, of course, Dr. Crabbe, I thought I’d go to New York and be with Frank. He has a job, and I could find something, I know.”
“Hm,” said Dr. Crabbe, staring at her with dissatisfaction. “Looks to me like you better take a good dose of castor oil. Stomach’s probably stopped working with all this—only natural. You look yellow. Have you any money?”
“Oh, yes, Dr. Crabbe,” she said hastily. She wouldn’t take money. She was proud with all her mother’s pride … “Just because my husband’s a minister is no reason why my children should wear other people’s old clothes. Never take gifts, Joan!” … Besides, she had a few dollars again in the sandalwood box, and in her father’s old purse she had found a dollar. His salary had been due next week, but of course now—“Plenty, Dr. Crabbe,” she said brightly. “Honest!” He glanced at her. “How much?” “Oh, lots! Besides, Francis is earning.” “Hm,” he said grudgingly and went away.
They had not ceased to be kind. They said, “Take your time, Joan.” But the third day the new minister and his wife came to see the parsonage. “Not to hurry you at all, Miss Richards,” he said. He was very happy in this new call. His salary would be nearly two hundred a year more. With two hundred—then his red-haired young wife called to him sharply, “George! We’ll have to ask them to repaper the dining room anyway—and do over the floors.” Joan followed them about. “Yes, there is the pantry—that door is the cellar steps—it opens the other way.” All the familiar corners of the house she had always known as instinctively as her own body she was revealing to strangers.
“Don’t know if I’ll like her,” said Hannah, grumbling when they were gone. “She looks the kind that would skimp on butter and count the eggs.” She clattered the pans in the kitchen. “Said she didn’t know if she wanted help at all except this place is bigger’n she’s used to—I’ll lay it is—she don’t look used to much in my opinion.”
“Don’t hurry,” they all said, but she was in a fever of hurry. Pack up his few things—send the clothes to the mission. She had said to the new minister when they were looking at the bedroom, “Would you take a few clothes of his to the mission? He’d want the—”
The young man pursed his full lips. “I’m not sure just when I’ll be going—I’ve not decided about going on with that work—the people in the church—”
“Never mind,” she said quickly. “I’ll take them myself.”
She was going away, just as soon as she could get things packed. She was glad there was so little—glad nearly everything had to be left because it belonged to the people. Even the dishes from which she had eaten bread and milk and the cakes her mother had made and meat and vegetables and deep pies—old familiar precious dishes—“Run and get me the tall cake dish, darling!” “Where’s the bowl we put fruit in, Hannah!”—even the dishes were not theirs. Nothing had been really theirs. She would take the round-topped trunk—her clothes, the books of course, her mother’s own linen and silver. Perhaps she’d better not take anything at first, just pack and store them somewhere and find Francis. Strange of Frank not even to write!
Then nearly a week after the death, there was Francis’ letter. She came from the study where she had been sorting her father’s books and there was the letter in the hall. “Looks like Frank’s writing, but the postmark isn’t New York. I can’t make it out,” Hannah had called.
She went at once and opened the letter quickly. No, it was not from New York. It was from a place in Michigan, but it was Frank’s letter.
DEAR JOAN—
I lost my job and here I am with a couple of fellows. I’m looking for work here. They say there is a lot of work at General Motors. I expect I’ll get a job. As I am a little short, please send me anything you can.
He did not even know. He had not heard. She tore the letter into small pieces and left the heap upon the table.
… So what could she do? The house stretched about her, empty, inexorable, waiting for her to go, waiting to begin another life. It was through with her. She was terrified of this house. She ran out into the garden. It was nearly Thanksgiving. She had not thought how nearly Thanksgiving it was. But now a load of cornstalks was being drawn to the church door, the cornstalks they always used as a background for pumpkins and fruits. There was a loud shout from the wagon as it drew near, and the horses stopped in front of her, breathing out steam. A strong bulky figure leaped down from the wagon and came near her. It was Bart. She smelled the odor of the dry stalks upon him, clean and earthy. Suddenly she began sobbing again, the sobs that jerked at her very entrails. “Oh, Bart,” she sobbed. “Oh, Bart, Bart!”
He came toward her, smiling, steady, sure, safe. He had his arm about her and she clung to him and he led her into the empty house. There in the empty sitting room she felt his lips upon hers at last. She was still for a moment, feeling. His lips were stiff an
d hard upon her mouth. Deep within her body her heart drew back in strange dismay. But she clung to him, sobbing. He was strong as a rock, his arms about her were like the walls of a house.
III
THIS RING UPON HER finger was new and stiff. She had never worn a ring before, because it soon irked her. Someone had given her a ring once when she was a little girl and she wanted to wear it because it was so pretty, a red bit of glass set in a loop of silver-washed metal, but she could not. In a little while it made her restless and she took it off. But this ring she must not take off. She must learn to wear it. She had set it herself upon her hand, a wide band of gold, old-fashioned and heavy. Bart had searched among the rings upon the counter in the little jeweler’s shop in Clarktown while she stood waiting until he had found a ring like his mother’s. “It’s got to last a long time,” he said. When the clerk had fitted it to her finger and given it to them, Bart had tried it on his own hand. But it would go over no finger except the little one, and there it stuck upon the crooked joint.
There was no need to wait. There was no one to consider. Why should she consider those who had not considered her? She would slip out of that old life. It could be nothing to any of them what she did. She did not want to tell anybody she was going to marry Bart Pounder. She did not want to see that surprised look—“Bart Pounder?” She silenced her own heart savagely. “Yes—Bart Pounder—who else is there?”
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