She pointed out to Mrs. Mark the lovely perfection of his body, the shape of his head, the set on his shoulders, the sweetness of his flickering smile.
“I suppose it all makes no difference really,” she said sadly.
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Mark. “It makes a difference to you, doesn’t it? He’s a handsome child, and be thankful he is. You get more fun out of tending him anyway than if he was homely. In the smallest drawer under my bed there’s a little black money box, locked. Here’s the key.” She dragged up a string from her bosom. “I want you to buy a bed. You could have this one almost any day — I’ll be done with it and soon. Still, I don’t want to feel people are waiting for the bed I die in.”
“Oh, no!” cried Joan. “I don’t want you to give me anything.”
“I’m not giving you anything,” said Mrs. Mark irritably. “I’m making it so you can stay and take care of me while I finish dying. Don’t be an interruption. I didn’t pray God to have you come. I wouldn’t demean myself to pray after what’s happened to me. The politest thing I can do about God now is to say there isn’t any under the circumstances. But I’m mortal glad not to die alone.”
“There’s Rose’s children to come,” said Joan.
“Pack them in if that Winters woman won’t have them,” said Mrs. Mark, closing her eyes, “There’s a room finished off in the garret. I was going to fix my girl a room there and Mr. Mark died that winter and she stayed with me. That Winters woman — well, she’s a Christian, isn’t she? Get along, Joan, I’m tired.” She opened her eyes as Joan tiptoed away. “If that Bart Pounder comes around don’t pay any attention to him. Fire and clay don’t mix, and all the stirring in the world won’t mix them. Get along now, for mercy’s sake! I’m worn out.”
In Bart’s house where she had never belonged, everything had been a burden. To be free had seemed impossible, to write to Roger Bair would have been a task beyond her power to do. She lived submerged and overcome. Now by the simple processes of this small house wherein she was free, by the approval of this one old dying woman, by the desperate simplicity of crude sorrow, she thought easily, Why should I not write to Roger Bair? While Mrs. Mark slept and when she had made the house neat, she took Paul out into a sunny corner behind the house and set him in a nest of dried leaves and stretched herself beside him and planned the letter. It need only be very short. She could speak directly to him if ever they came to speech. She could write directly. She would begin, “Dear Roger Bair. …”
She lay in the warm sun, dreaming. It was so easy to think of him here. When she had thought of him in that house it was a hopeless thought. So might a mole think of a bird, so might a bird think of a star. When she remembered him, the thought of him fell back, like an arrow blunted and stopped too soon of its aim. But today, in the free loneliness, in this joyful loneliness, she saw him very clearly. Of course he was the one who could help her. She felt him instant and warm to help her. They had known each other that day without waiting. She would write and he would answer.
The day was full of the certainty. She lay with her face turned to the sun, her eyes closed that she might see inward the more clearly and remember him. Soon she would get up and write the letter. She put off the writing, planning. It would be sweet to take the pen and make the words, “Dear Roger Bair.” Then she would write, “You have helped Francis so much, and now I need help too. I remember you.” Or she might write … She paused, dreaming, and without knowing it, was swept on into warm dreaming sleep.
When she woke it was cold with sundown. A wind had risen out of the nearby wood. Paul was fretting among the leaves, struggling to get up. He certainly tried to get up alone now sometimes. She jumped to her feet and brushed the leaves from her skirt and out of her hair and picked him up and ran into the house with him.
“How I slept!” she called to Mrs. Mark in the other room while she tended him. But Mrs. Mark did not answer. She went to the door and cried merrily, “Still sleeping?” But Mrs. Mark did not answer. She found the matches and lit the candle quickly. The room felt strangely empty. When the candle was lit she saw Mrs. Mark lying in the dusk, her hands neatly folded upon her breast. She was dead.
She laid Paul safely in quilts upon the floor and locking the door upon the two of them, ran through the deepening twilight to find Dr. Crabbe. He was eating his supper of bread and milk and he leaped up when he saw her. But when she cried out her message he sat down again.
“I’ll finish my supper,” he said. “I learned a long time ago not to run if the patient was already dead. Run for the dying — but if it’s too late, finish your supper — that’s sense for the doctor.” He dipped up the last mouthful. “Poor soul,” he said heartily, “I’ve been expecting her to go off suddenly like this any time for months. I’ve been trying to get her to have somebody in, but she always said she hadn’t had much of her own way in life, and she was going to die as she liked. How come you were there, Joan?”
Joan hesitated. Dr. Crabbe had taken her when she was born. She had begun her life naked in his hands. “I’ve left my husband,” she said.
“You have!” said Dr. Crabbe. “You and your upbringing!” He put down his spoon and bellowed, “Nellie!” The housekeeper put her head in the door. “I’m going! Mrs. Mark has died at last.”
“You’ve got rice pudding yet to eat,” cried Nellie belligerently.
“I won’t eat it,” he shouted, struggling into a threadbare brown coat. She disappeared, muttering. “Come on,” he said to Joan. He tramped ahead of her to his small rackety old car and started the engine with a roar. “Left Bart Pounder, eh?” he shouted. She nodded. The engine calmed and the car jumped down the road like a jackrabbit. “I never told you,” he said, “I was married once.”
“No!” she whispered, unbelieving.
“She ran away from me,” he said abruptly, “ran away with a fellow — friend of mine — a fellow I knew in college. He came to visit us — decent chap, too. We’d talked some of being partners. I couldn’t blame her. Smooth-skinned fellow — I’ve always been kind of hairy.”
“She didn’t run away for that,” said Joan.
“How do I know what for? She ran away when we’d been married less than a year. Some women run and some stick it out, I reckon. Your mother stuck it.”
“I couldn’t,” said Joan quickly.
“No. Well,” said Dr. Crabbe, “some women do. It doesn’t matter in the end. Lucille — that was her name — she’s been happy. Every now and then she writes me, wants me to get married again. I say who to, for God’s sake? There isn’t anybody else. Get out that side, Joan. Not that I can do anything, if she’s dead.”
But he went in and washed Mrs. Mark’s dead body carefully while Joan waited outside. He called Joan at last. There was a slip of paper in his hand. “She had this under the pillow — wrote it today, I reckon.”
There were four lines scrawled upon the paper.
Joan Richards, married Pounder, is to have my house and everything in it. In the money box is one hundred and thirty-seven dollars. I write this in full and right mind.
ABBY MARK
“Has she anybody?” asked Joan in a whisper. Mrs. Mark lay stiff and still on the bed.
“Never heard of it,” said Dr. Crabbe, washing his hands.
“It’s not legal,” she argued.
“No, but if anybody shows up and says it isn’t, tell him to come and see me, and I’ll sic Martin Bradley on him. Martin’s beholden to me. I’ve kept him out of trouble for years, and there’s never been anything to have him do back for me.” He dried his hands, and glanced at Mrs. Mark. “Are you scared to stay here till tomorrow with her?” he asked.