Over the River

“Betty! Does Mother know?”

“Yes, miss, she’s going over.”

“No! I’ll go. Stop her, A

“Yes, miss. It’s a seizure—nurse sent over to say they can’t do nothing. Will you have the light on, miss?”

“Yes, turn it up.”

Thank God they had managed to put the electric light in, at last!

“Get me this little flask filled with brandy, and put my rubber boots in the hall. I shan’t be two minutes coming down.”

“Yes, miss.”

Slipping on a jersey and cap, and catching up her mole-skin fur coat, she ran downstairs, stopping for a second at her mother’s door to say she was going. Putting on her rubber boots in the hall, and taking the filled flask, she went out. It was groping dark, but not cold for January. The lane was slithery under foot, and, since she had no torch, the half mile took her nearly a quarter of an hour. The doctor’s car, with its lights on, stood outside the cottage. Unlatching the door, Di

The doctor crossed to the door.

“Opiate,” he said. “I don’t think she’ll recover consciousness. Just as well for the poor old soul! If she does, nurse has another to give her at once. There’s nothing to be done but ease the end.”

“I shall stay,” said Di

The doctor took her hand.

“Happy release. Don’t fret, my dear.”

“Poor old Benjy!” whispered Di

The doctor pressed her hand, and went down the stairs.

Di

“I’ll watch, nurse, if you want to get anything.”

The nurse nodded. In her neat dark blue dress and bo

“Not many like her,” whispered the nurse suddenly. “I’m going to get some things I’ll want—back under the half-hour. Sit down, Miss Cherrell, don’t tire yourself.”

When she had gone Di

“Benjy.”

He wobbled his pippin head, rubbing his hands on his knees. Words of comfort refused to come to Di

‘How I wish I had money!’ she thought. He would not want the goldfinch, anyway. She would take that, and free and feed it in the old greenhouse till it got used to its wings, and then let it go.

The old man cleared his throat in his dim corner. Di

Gone? As if in answer the eyelids flickered; the faintest imaginable smile appeared on the lips, and then, suddenly as a blown-out flame is dark, all was lifeless. Di

Death! At its quietest and least harrowing, but yet—death! The old, the universal anodyne; the common lot! In this bed where she had lain nightly for over fifty years under the low, sagged ceiling, a great little old lady had passed. Of what was called ‘birth,’ of position, wealth, and power, she had none. No plumbing had come her way, no learning, and no fashion. She had borne children, nursed, fed, and washed them, sewn, cooked, and swept, eaten little, travelled not at all in all her years, suffered much pain, never known the ease of superfluity; but her back had been straight, her ways straight, her eyes quiet, and her ma

Di

“Go and look at her, Benjy; she’s asleep.”

She put her hand under his elbow to help the action of his stiffened knees. At his full height he was only up to her shoulder, a little dried-up pippin of a man. She kept at his side, moving across the room.

Together they looked down at the forehead and cheeks, slowly uncreasing in the queer beauty of death. The little old husband’s face went crimson and puffy, like that of a child who had lost its doll; he said in a sort of angered squeak:

“Eh! She’m not asleep. She’m gone. She won’t never speak agen. Look! She an’t Mother no more! Where’s that nurse? She didn’ ought to ‘ave left ‘er—”

“H’ssh! Benjy!”

“But she’m dead. What’ll I do?”

He turned his withered apple face up to Di

“Can’t stop ’ere,” he said, “with Mother like that. ‘Tain’t nateral.”

“No; go downstairs and smoke your pipe, and tell nurse when she comes.”

“Tell ‘er; I’ll tell ‘er—shoulden never ‘ave left ‘er. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”

Putting her hand on his shoulders, Di