“ ‘I never made the coffee in all my life,’ says she,
dreadful astonished. ‘Erastus always made the coffee as
long as he lived, and then Lily she made it, and then Aunt
Abby made it. I don’t believe I can make the coffee, Miss
Anderson.’
“ ‘You can make it or go without, jest as you please,’
says I.
“ ‘Ain’t Aunt Abby goin’ to get up?’ says she.
“ ‘I guess she won’t get up,’ says I, ‘sick as she is.’ I was
gettin’ madder and madder. There was somethin’ about
that little pink-and-white thing standin’ there and talkin’
about coffee, when she had killed so many better folks
than she was, and had jest killed another, that made me
feel ’most as if I wished somebody would up and kill her
before she had a chance to do any more harm.
“ ‘Is Aunt Abby sick?’ says Luella, as if she was sort of
aggrieved and injured.
“ ‘Yes,’ says I, ‘she’s sick, and she’s goin’ to die, and
then you’ll be left alone, and you’ll have to do for
yourself and wait on yourself, or do without things.’ I
280
Mary W ilkins Freeman
don’t know but I was sort of hard, but it was the truth,
and if I was any harder than Luella Miller had been I’ll
give up. I ain’t never been sorry that I said it. Well,
Luella, she up and had hysterics again at that, and I jest
let her have ’em. All I did was to bundle her into the
room on the other side of the entry where Aunt Abby
couldn’t hear her, if she wa’n’t past it— I don’t know but
she was— and set her down hard in a chair and told her
not to come back into the other room, and she minded.
She had her hysterics in there till she got tired. When she
found out that nobody was cornin’ to coddle her and do
for her she stopped. At least I supposed she did. I had all
I could do with poor Aunt Abby tryin’ to keep the breath
of life in her. The doctor had told me that she was
dreadful low, and give me some very strong medicine to
give to her in drops real often, and told me real particular
about the nourishment. Well, I did as he told me real
faithful till she wa’n’t able to swaller any longer. Then I
had her daughter sent for. I had begun to realize that she
wouldn’t last any time at all. I hadn’t realized it before,
though I spoke to Luella the way I did. The doctor he
came, and Mrs. Sam Abbot, but when she got there it was
too late; her mother was dead. Aunt Abby’s daughter just
give one look at her mother layin’ there, then she turned
sort of sharp and sudden and looked at me.
‘“ Where is she?’ says she, and I knew she meant
Luella.
“ ‘She’s out in the kitchen,’ says I. ‘She’s too nervous to
see folks die. She’s afraid it will make her sick.’
“The Doctor he speaks up then. He was a young man.
Old Doctor Park had died the year before, and this was a
young fellow just out of college. ‘Mrs. Miller is not
strong,’ says he, kind of severe, ‘and she is quite right in
not agitating herself.’
“ ‘You are another, young man; she’s got her pretty
claw on you,’ think I, but I didn’t say anythin’ to him. I
just said over to Mrs. Sam Abbot that Luella was in the
kitchen, and Mrs. Sam Abbot she went out there, and I
Luella M iller
281
went, too, and I never heard anythin’ like the way she
talked to Luella Miller. I felt pretty hard to Luella
myself, but this was more than I ever would have dared
to say. Luella she was too scared to go into hysterics. She
jest flopped. She seemed to jest shrink away to nothin’ in
that kitchen chair, with Mrs. Sam Abbot standin’ over
her and talkin’ and tellin’ her the truth. I guess the truth
was most too much for her and no mistake, because
Luella presently actually did faint away, and there wa’n’t
any sham about it, the way I always suspected there was
about them hysterics. She fainted dead away and we had
to lay her flat on the floor, and the Doctor he came
runnin’ out and he said somethin’ about a weak heart
dreadful fierce to Mrs. Sam Abbot, but she. wa’n’t a mite
scared. She faced him jest as white as even Luella was
layin’ there lookin’ like death and the Doctor feelin’ of
her pulse.
“ ‘Weak heart,’ says she, ‘weak heart; weak fiddlesticks!
There ain’t nothin’ weak about that woman. She’s got
strength enough to hang onto other folks till she kills
’em. Weak? It was my poor mother that was weak: this
woman killed her as sure as if she had taken a knife to
her.’
“But the Doctor he didn’t pay much attention. He was
bendin’ over Luella layin’ there with her yellow hair all
streamin’ and her pretty pink-and-white face all pale,
and her blue eyes like stars gone out, and he was holdin’
onto her hand and smoothin’ her forehead, and tellin’
me to get the brandy in Aunt Abby’s room, and I was
sure as I wanted to be that Luella had got somebody else
to hang onto, now Aunt Abby was gone, and I thought of
poor Erastus Miller, and I sort of pitied the poor young
Doctor, led away by a pretty face, and I made up my
mind I’d see what I could do.
“ I waited till Aunt Abby had been dead and buried
about a month, and the Doctor was goin’ to see Luella
steady and folks were beginnin’ to talk; then one evenin’,
when I knew the Doctor had been called out of town and
282
Mary W ilkins Freeman
wouldn’t be round, I went over to Luella’s. I found her
all dressed up in a blue muslin with white polka dots on
it, and her hair curled jest as pretty, and there wa’n’t a
young girl in the place could compare with her. There
was somethin’ about Luella Miller seemed to draw the
heart right out of you, but she didn’t draw it out of me.
She was settin’ rocking in the chair by her sittin’-room
window, and Maria Brown had gone home. Maria
Brown had been in to help her, or rather to do the work,
for Luella wa’n ’t helped when she didn’t do anythin’.
Maria Brown was real capable and she didn’t have any
ties; she wa’n’t married, and lived alone, so she’d offered.
I couldn’t see why she should do the work any more than
Luella; she wa’n’t any too strong; but she seemed to think
she could and Luella seemed to think so, too, so she went
over and did all the work— washed, and ironed, and
baked, while Luella sat and rocked. Maria didn’t live
long afterward. She began to fade away just the same
fashion the others had. Well, she was warned, but she
acted real mad when folks said anythin’: said Luella was
a poor, abused woman, too delicate to help herself, and
they’d ought to be ashamed, and if she died helpin’ them
that couldn’t help themselves she would
— and she did.
“ ‘I s’pose Maria has gone home,’ says I to Luella,
when I had gone in and sat down opposite her.
“ ‘Yes, Maria went half an hour ago, after she had got
supper and washed the dishes,’ says Luella, in her pretty
way.
“ ‘I suppose she has got a lot of work to do in her own
house tonight,’ says I, kind of bitter, but that was all
thrown away on Luella Miller. It seemed to her right that
other folks that wa’n’t any better able than she was
herself should wait on her, and she couldn’t get it
through her head that anybody should think it wa’n ’t
right.
“ ‘Yes,’ says Luella, real sweet and pretty, ‘yes, she said
she had to do her washin’ tonight. She has let it go for a
fortnight along of cornin’ over here.’
Luella M iller
283
‘“ Why don’t she stay home and do her washin’ instead
of cornin’ over here and doin’ your work, when you are
just as well able, and enough sight more so, than she is to
do it?’ says I.
“Then Luella she looked at me like a baby who has a
rattle shook at it. She sort of laughed as innocent as you
please. ‘Oh, I can’t do the work myself, Miss Anderson,’
says she. ‘I never did. Maria has to do it.’
“Then I spoke out: ‘Has to do it!’ says I. ‘Has to do it!
She don’t have to do it, either. Maria Brown has her own
house and enough to live on. She ain’t beholden to you to
come over here and slave for you and kill herself.’
“Luella she jest set and stared at me for all the world
like a doll-baby that was so abused that it was cornin’ to
life.
“ ‘Yes,’ says I, ‘she’s killin’ herself. She’s goin’ to die
just the way Erastus did, and Lily, and your Aunt Abby.
You’re killin’ her jest as you did them. I don’t know what
there is about you, but you seem to bring a curse,’ says I.
‘You kill everybody that is fool enough to care anythin’
about you and do for you.’
“She stared at me and she was pretty pale.
“ ‘And Maria ain’t the only one you’re goin’ to kill,’
says I. ‘You’re goin’ to kill Doctor Malcom before you’re
done with him.’
“Then a red colour came flamin’ all over her face. ‘I
ain’t goin’ to kill him, either,’ says she, and she begun to
cry.
“ ‘Yes, you beV says I. Then I spoke as I had never
spoke before. You see, I felt it on account of Erastus. I
told her that she hadn’t any business to think of another
man after she’d been married to one that had died for
her: that she was a dreadful woman; and she was, that’s
true enough, but sometimes I have wondered lately if she
knew it-—if she wa’n’t like a baby with scissors in its
hand cuttin’ everybody without knowin’ what it was
doin’.
“Luella she kept gettin’ paler and paler, and she never
284
Mary W ilkins Freeman
took her eyes off my face. There was somethin’ awful
about the way she looked at me and never spoke one
word. After awhile I quit talkin’ and I went home. I
watched that night, but her lamp went out before nine
o’clock, and when Doctor Malcom came drivin’ past and
sort of slowed up he see there wa’n’t any light and he
drove along. I saw her sort of shy out of meetin’ the next
Sunday, too, so he shouldn’t go home with her, and I
begun to think mebbe she did have some conscience
after all. It was only a week after that that Maria Brown
died—sort of sudden at the last, though everybody had
seen it was cornin’. Well, then there was a good deal of
feelin’ and pretty dark whispers. Folks said the days
of witchcraft had come again, and they were pretty shy of
Luella. She acted sort of offish to the Doctor and he
didn’t go there, and there wa’n’t anybody to do anythin’
for her. I don’t know how she did get along. I wouldn’t go
in there and offer to help her— not because I was afraid
of dyin’ like the rest, but I thought she was just as well
able to do her own work as I was to do it for her, and I
thought it was about time that she did it and stopped
killin’ other folks. But it wa’n ’t very long before folks
began to say that Luella herself was goin’ into a decline
jest the way her husband, and Lily, and Aunt Abby and
the others had, and I saw myself that she looked pretty
bad. I used to see her goin’ past from the store with a
bundle as if she could hardly crawl, but I remembered
how Erastus used to wait and ’tend when he couldn’t
hardly put one foot before the other, and I didn’t go out
to help her.
“But at last one afternoon I saw the Doctor come
drivin’ up like mad with his medicine chest, and Mrs.
Babbit came in after supper and said that Luella was real
sick.
‘“ I’d offer to go in and nurse her,’ says she, ‘but I’ve
got my children to consider, and mebbe it ain’t true what
they say, but it’s queer how many folks that have done
for her have died.’
Luella M iller
285
“I didn’t say anythin’, but I considered how she had
been Erastus’s wife and how he had set his eyes by her,
and I made up my mind to go in the next momin’, unless
she was better, and see what I could do; but the next
momin’ I see her at the window, and pretty soon she
came steppin’ out as spry as you please, and a little while
afterward Mrs. Babbit came in and told me that the
Doctor had got a girl from out of town, a Sarah Jones, to
come there, and she said she was pretty sure that the
Doctor was goin’ to marry Luella.
“I saw him kiss her in the door that night myself, and I
knew it was true. The woman came that afternoon, and
the way she flew around was a caution. I don’t believe
Luella had swept since Maria died. She swept and
dusted, and washed and ironed; wet clothes and dusters
and carpets were flyin’ over there all day, and every time
Luella set her foot out when the Doctor wa’n’t there
there was that Sarah Jones helpin’ of her up and down
the steps, as if she hadn’t learned to walk.
“Well, everybody knew that Luella and the Doctor
were goin’ to be married, but it wa’n’t long before they
began to talk about his lookin’ so poorly, jest as they had
about the others; and they talked about Sarah Jones, too.
“Well, the Doctor did die, and he wanted to be
married first, so as to leave what little he had to Luella,
but he died before the minister could get there, and
Sarah Jones died a week afterward.
“Well, that wound up everything for Luella Miller.
Not another soul in the whole town would lift a finger for
her. There got to be a sort of panic. Then she began to
droop in good earnest. She used to have to go
to the store
herself, for Mrs. Babbit was afraid to let Tommy go for
her, and I’ve seen her goin’ past and stoppin’ every two
or three steps to rest. Well, I stood it as long as I could,
but one day I see her cornin’ with her arms full and
stoppin’ to lean against the Babbit fence, and I run out
and took her bundles and carried them to her house.
Then I went home and never spoke one word to her
286
Mary W ilkins Freeman
though she called after me dreadful kind of pitiful. Well,
that night I was taken sick with a chill, and I was sick as I
wanted to be for two weeks. Mrs. Babbit had seen me run
out to help Luella and she come in and told me I was
goin’ to die on account of it. I didn’t know whether I was
or not, but I considered I had done right by Erastus’s
wife.
“That last two weeks Luella she had a dreadful hard
time, I guess. She was pretty sick, and as near as I could
make out nobody dared go near her. I don’t know as she
was really needin’ anythin’ very much, for there was
enough to eat in her house and it was warm weather, and
she made out to cook a little flour gruel every day, I
know, but I guess she had a hard time, she that had been
so petted and done for all her life.
“When I got so I could go out, I went over there one
morning. Mrs. Babbit had just come in to say she hadn’t
seen any smoke and she didn’t know but it was
somebody’s duty to go in, but she couldn’t help thinkin’
of her children, and I got right up, though I hadn’t been
out of the house for two weeks, and I went in there, and
Luella she was layin’ on the bed, and she was dyin’.
“She lasted all that day and into the night. But I sat
there after the new doctor had gone away. Nobody else
dared to go there. It was about midnight that I left her for
a minute to run home and get some medicine I had been
takin’, for I begun to feel rather bad.
“It was a full moon that night, and just as I started out
of my door to cross the street back to Luella’s, I stopped
short, for I saw something.”
Lydia Anderson at this juncture always said with a
certain defiance that she did not expect to be believed,
and then proceeded in a hushed voice:
“1 saw what I saw, and I know I saw it, and I will swear
Visions of Fear - Foundations of Fear III (1992) Page 35
