第73章 THE LAST STAGE(2)
The fright had awakened her mind and senses.For the first time she fully realised her condition.Life no longer moved steadily in her body; it flickered and wavered and would soon gutter out....Her eyes marked every detail of the squalor around her--the unwashed dishes, the foul earthen floor, the rotting apple pile, the heap of rags which had been her only clothes.She was leaving the world, and this was all she had won from it.Sheer misery forced a sigh which seemed to rend her frail body, and her eyes filled with tears.She had been a dreamer, an adept at make-believe, but the poor coverings she had wrought for a dingy reality were now too threadbare to hide it.
And once she had been so rich in hope.She would make her husband a great man, and--when that was manifestly impossible without a rebirth of Tom Linkhorn--she would have a son who would wear a black coat like Lawyer Macneil and Colonel Hardin way back in Kentucky, and make fine speeches beginning "Fellow countrymen and gentlemen of this famous State." She had a passion for words, and sonorous phrases haunted her memory.She herself would have a silk gown and a bonnet with roses in it; once long ago she had been to Elizabethtown and seen just such a gown and bonnet....Or Tom would be successful in this wild Indiana country and be, like Daniel Boone, the father of a new State, and have places and towns called for him--a Nancyville perhaps or a Linkhorn County.She knew about Daniel Boone, for her grandfather Hanks had been with him....And there had been other dreams, older dreams, dating far back to the days when she was a little girl with eyes like a brown owl.Someone had told her fairy-tales about princesses and knights, strange beings which she never quite understood, but of which she made marvellous pictures in her head She had learned to read in order to follow up the doings of those queer bright folk, but she had never tracked them down again.But one book she had got called The Pilgrim's Progress, printed by missionaries in a far-away city called Philadelphia, which told of things as marvellous, and had pictures, too--one especially of a young man covered with tin, which she supposed was what they called armour.And there was another called The Arabian Knights, a close-printed thing difficult to read by the winter fire, full of wilder doings than any she could imagine for herself; but beautiful, too, and delicious to muse over, though Tom, when she read a chapter to him, had condemned it as a pack of lies....Clearly there was a world somewhere, perhaps outside America altogether, far more wonderful than even the magnificence of Colonel Hardin.Once she had hoped to find it herself;then that her children should find it.And the end was this shack in the wilderness, a few acres of rotting crops, bitter starving winters, summers of fever, the deeps of poverty, a penniless futureless family, and for herself a coffin of green lumber and a yard or two of stony soil.
She saw everything now with the clear unrelenting eyes of childhood.The films she had woven for selfprotection were blown aside.She was dying--she had often wondered how she should feel when dying--humble and trustful, she had hoped, for she was religious after a fashion, and had dreamed herself into an affection for a kind fatherly God.But now all that had gone.She was bitter, like one defrauded She had been promised something, and had struggled on in the assurance of it.And the result was nothing--nothing.
Tragic tears filled her eyes.She had been so hungry' and there was to be no satisfying that hunger this side the grave or beyond it.She was going the same way as Betsy Sparrow, a death like a cow's, with nothing to show for life, nothing to leave.Betsy had been a poor crushed creature, and had looked for no more.But she was different.She had been promised something, something fine--she couldn't remember what, or who had promised it, but it had never been out of her mind.
There was the ring, too.No woman in Indiana had the like of that.An ugly thing, but very ancient and of pure gold.Once Tom had wanted to sell it when he was hard-pressed back at Nolin Creek, but she had fought for it like a tigress and scared the life out of Tom.Her grandfather had left it her because she was his favourite and it had been her grandmothers, and long ago had come from Europe.It was lucky, and could cure rheumatism if worn next the heart in a skin bag....All her thoughts were suddenly set on the ring, her one poor shred of fortune.She wanted to feel it on her finger, and press its cool gold with the queer markings on her eyelids.
But Tom had gone away and she couldn't reach the trunk in the corner.Tears trickled down her cheeks and through the mist of them she saw that the boy Abe stood at the foot of the bed.
"Feelin' comfortabler?" he asked.He had a harsh untunable voice, his father's, but harsher, and he spoke the drawling dialect of the backwoods.
His figure stood in the light, so that the dying mother saw only its outline.He was a boy about nine years old, but growing too fast, so that he had lost the grace of childhood and was already lanky and ungainly.As he turned his face crosswise to the light he revealed a curiously rugged profile--a big nose springing sharply from the brow, a thick underhung lower lip, and the beginning of a promising Adam's apple.His stiff black hair fell round his great ears, which stood out like the handles of a pitcher.He was barefoot, and wore a pair of leather breeches and a ragged homespun shirt.Beyond doubt he was ugly.
He moved round to the right side of the bed where he was wholly in shadow.
"My lines is settin' nicely," he said."I'll have a fish for your supper.