It was hard again to breathe,—the icy pain—in her chest—
Oh . . .
Immediately the children were quiet. The robin had stopped singing. Whoever had been frying meat had removed it from the stove, and some one must have pulled down all the shades. It was strange to have all those things happen at once,—the robin cease singing, the children stop playing, the meat taken from the stove, and the shades pulled down. For a moment it was as though one could neither see nor hear nor smell. At any rate she felt much better. The pressure in her chest and in the back of her head was gone. That was nice. It seemed good to be relieved of that. She breathed easily,—so very easily that she seemed not to be breathing at all. She sat up on the edge of the bed. She felt light, buoyant. “I’ll wind the clock and finish supper now and call them in.”
Through the semi-darkness of the house there was no sight or sound. But as she looked up, she saw Will standing in the doorway. For a moment she thought he was standing under honey-locust branches in a lane, but saw at once that it was only shadows.
“Well, Will!” She stood up. “I’m so glad you’re home. You’ve been away all day, haven’t you? Where were you, Will? Isn’t that stupid of me not to remember?” She moved lightly toward him, but suddenly stopped, sensing that for some reason there was a strangeness about his presence. She stood looking at him questioningly, a little confused.
Will was looking intently at her, half-smiling. She would have thought he was joking her—teasing her a little—if his expression had not been too tender for that.
“I don’t quite understand, Will. Did you want something of me? . . .” That was a way of Will’s,—always so quiet that you almost had to read his mind. There was no answer, but at once she seemed to know that Will was waiting for her.
“Oh, I must tell the children first. They never want me to go.” She turned to the window. “Listen, children,” she called, “I’m going away with Father. If some one would pull up the shades I could see you, but it doesn’t really matter. Listen closely . . . I’m only going to be gone a little while. Be good children . . . You’ll get along just fine.”
She turned to the doorway. “It seems a little dark. You know, Will, I think we will need the lantern. I’ve always kept the lantern . . .” Her voice trailed off into nothing. For Will was still smiling at her, questioningly, quizzically,—but with something infinitely more tender,—something protecting, enveloping. Slowly it came to her. Hesitatingly she put her hand up to her throat. “Will . . . you don’t mean it! . . . Not that . . . not Death . . . so easy? That it’s nothing more than this . . . ? Why . . . Will!”
Abbie Deal moved lightly, quickly, over to her husband, slipped her hand into his and went with him out of the old house, past the Lombardy poplars, through the deepening prairie twilight,—into the shadows.
* * *
It was old Christine Reinmueller, who came in and found her.
“Ach . . . Gott!” She wrung her hard old hands. “Mine friend . . . de best voman dat efer on de eart’ valked.”
The children all came hastily in response to the messages. In the old parlor with the what-not and the marble-topped stand and the blue plush album, they said the same things over and over to each other.
“Didn’t she seem as well to you last week as ever?”
“Do you suppose she suffered much?”
“Or called for us?”
“Isn’t it dreadful. Poor mother . . . all alone . . . not one of us here . . . as though we had all forsaken her just when she needed us most . . . and after all she’s done for us . . .”
It was then that little twelve-year-old Laura Deal turned away from the window where she had been looking down the long double row of cedars and said in a voice so certain that it was almost exalted:
“I don’t think it’s so dreadful. I think it was kind-of nice. Maybe she didn’t miss you. Maybe she didn’t miss you at all. One time grandma told me she was the very happiest when she was living over all her memories. Maybe . . .” She looked around the circle of her relatives,—and there was a little about her of another twelve-year-old Child who stood in the midst of his elders in a Temple,—“maybe she was doing that . . . then.”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been fixed.
Inconsistency in hyphenation has been retained.
A Lantern in Her Hand Page 27
