by R. A. Dick
“Thank you, Martha, you are very good to me,” said Lucy, and obediently sipped a little of the milk. “I’m a nasty, cross old woman, but I am very tired and I have a pain in my arm.”
“Strained it I shouldn’t wonder with all that there gardenin’,” scolded Martha. “You should leave all that tyin’ up and weedin’ out ter ’Uggins, which is wot you pay ’im good money for. Shall I give yer arm a rub?”
“No, thank you,” said Lucy. “I will be better in the morning. Good night, Martha—and thank you very much for looking after me so well.”
“Now don’t you start that thank-youin’,” said Martha, “for abide it I cannot. Good night, mum, sleep well and pleasant dreams.”
“Good night, Martha, and God bless you,” said Lucy.
“I was cross, I admit it,” she said as the door closed behind Martha, “but I am so tired,” and suddenly she fell back in her chair, her head lolling back and a little sideways, her hand holding the hairbrush swinging at her side.
“And now you will never be tired again,” said the captain’s voice. “Come, Lucia, come, me dear.”
She rose to meet him, and miraculously her pain and weariness fell from her. She went to him gaily, lightly, as a young girl.
But who was that, lying back in the chair that she had just left?
“Who is she? How did she get here?” asked Lucy in surprise. “The little old woman?”
“Look again, Lucia,” said the captain very gently.
And Lucy, looking more closely, saw her rings on the woman’s fingers, her locket on the gold chain about the other’s neck.
“That—that isn’t me?” she whispered.
“It was you, Lucia,” said Captain Gregg.
“But I don’t feel like that,” said Lucy, “so little and wan and frail.”
“It is only your earthly covering,” said the captain, “and you have sloughed it as a snake sloughs the old skin for which it has no more use. Ah, Lucia, now we are together, as we were meant to be.”
“I feel so strange, so happy,” said Lucy.
It was quiet in the room. Only the clock ticked on in the remorseless, mechanical minutes that men have made for themselves to measure away the joy and sadness of their earthly lives.
The body of little Mrs. Muir sat very still in the chair, the face tilted sideways, looking without seeing into the painted eyes of Captain Gregg’s portrait on the wall.
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