"Yes," she says, with her eyes wide, "didn't you know he died?" And then she turns quick toward Colonel Tom. "Didn't you tell him--" she begins. But the doctor cuts in.
"Lucy," he says, his voice shaking and croaking in his throat, "I never knew there was a child!"I hears Colonel Tom hawk in HIS throat like a man who is either going to spit or else say something.
But he don't do either one. No one says anything fur a minute. And then Miss Lucy says agin:
"Yes--he died."
And then she fell into a kind of a muse. I have been myself in the fix she looked to be in then--so you forget fur a while where you are, or who is there, whilst you think about something that has been in the back part of your mind fur a long, long time.
What she was musing about was that child that hadn't lived. I could tell that by her face. Icould tell how she must have thought of it, often and often, fur years and years, and longed fur it, so that it seemed to her at times she could almost touch it. And how good a mother she would of been to it. Some women has jest natcherally GOT to mother something or other. Miss Lucy was one of that kind. I knowed all in a flash, whilst Ilooked at her there, why she had adopted Martha fur her child.
It was a wonderful look that was onto her face.
And it was a wonderful face that look was onto. Ifelt like I had knowed her forever when I seen her there. Like the thoughts of her the doctor had been carrying around with him fur years and years, and that I had caught him thinking oncet or twicet, had been my thoughts too, all my life.
Miss Lucy, she was one of the kind there's no use trying to describe. The feller that could see her that-a-way and not feel made good by it orter have a whaling. Not the kind of sticky, good feeling that makes you uncomfortable, like being pestered by your conscience to jine a church or quit cussing.
But the kind of good that makes you forget they is anything on earth but jest braveness of heart and being willing to bear things you can't help. You knowed the world had hurt her a lot when you seen her standing there; but you didn't have the nerve to pity her none, either. Fur you could see she had got over pitying herself. Even when she was in that muse, longing with all her soul fur that child she had never knowed, you didn't have the nerve to pity her none.
"He died," she says agin, purty soon, with that gentle kind of smile.
Colonel Tom, he clears his throat agin. Like when you are awful dry.
"The truth is--" he begins.
And then he breaks off agin. Miss Lucy turns toward him when he speaks. By the strange look that come onto her face there must of been some-thing right curious in HIS manner too. I was jest simply laying onto my forehead mashing one of my dern eyeballs through a little hole in the grating.
But I couldn't, even that way, see fur enough to one side to see how HE looked.
"The truth is," says Colonel Tom, trying it agin, "that I--well, Lucy, the child may be dead, but he didn't die when you thought he did."There was a flash of hope flared into her face that I hated to see come there. Because when it died out in a minute, as I expected it would have to, it looked to me like it might take all her life out with it. Her lips parted like she was going to say something with them. But she didn't. She jest looked it.
"Why did you never tell me this--that there was a child?" says the doctor, very eager.
"Wait," says Colonel Tom, "let me tell the story in my own way."Which he done it. It seems when he had went to Galesburg this here child had only been born a few days. And Miss Lucy was still sick. And the kid itself was sick, and liable to die any minute, by the looks of things.
Which Colonel Tom wishes that it would die, in his heart. He thinks that it is an illegitimate child, and he hates the idea of it and he hates the sight of it. The second night he is there he is setting in his sister's room, and the woman that has been nursing the kid and Miss Lucy too is in the next room with the kid.
She comes to the door and beckons to him, the nurse does. He tiptoes toward her, and she says to him, very low-voiced, that "it is all over."Meaning the kid has quit struggling fur to live, and jest natcherally floated away. The nurse had thought Miss Lucy asleep, but as both her and Colonel Tom turn quick toward her bed they see that she has heard and seen, and she turns her face toward the wall. Which he tries fur to comfort her, Colonel Tom does, telling her as how it is an illegitimate child, and fur its own sake it was better it was dead before it ever lived any. Which she don't answer of him back, but only stares in a wild-eyed way at him, and lays there and looks desperate, and says nothing.
In his heart Colonel Tom is awful glad that it is dead. He can't help feeling that way. And he quits trying to talk to his sister, fur he suspicions that she will ketch onto the fact that he is glad that it is dead. He goes on into the next room.
He finds the nurse looking awful funny, and bending over the dead kid. She is putting a look-ing-glass to its lips. He asts her why.
She says she thought she might be mistaken after all. She couldn't say jest WHEN it died. It was alive and feeble, and then purty soon it showed no signs of life. It was like it hadn't had enough strength to stay and had jest went. I didn't show any pulse, and it didn't appear to be breathing.
And she had watched it and done everything be-fore she beckoned to Colonel Tom and told him that it was dead. But as she come back into the room where it was she thought she noticed something that was too light to be called a real flutter move its eyelids, which she had closed down over its eyes.
It was the ghost of a move, like it had tried to raise the lids, or they had tried to raise theirselves, and had been too weak. So she has got busy and wrapped a hot cloth around it, and got a drop of brandy or two between its lips, and was fighting to bring it back to life. And thought she was doing it. Thought she had felt a little flutter in its chest, and was trying if it had breath at all.
