Grandmother

He rose and staggered toward her. She recoiled, her arms stretched out, her face alight with anguish. “Don’t come a step nearer!” she cried. “Manuel – not a step!”

He stopped and stared at her stupidly. Suddenly, swiftly, her face changed, softened into pity and tenderness “Poor Manuel!” she said. “Poor boy! come out into the air; come with me!” Again the quiet hand rested on his arm, compelling him, again he stumbled out into the good clear blessed sunshine. Poor Manuel!

Grandmother brought water and bathed his aching head, and made him lie down under the great russet-apple tree where the shade was thick and cool, and bade him sleep till the headache was over. Then she came back to Rachel, who watched half-jealous, half-terrified, from the hall window.

What need to dwell on the time that followed? Manuel had found the thing that – for the moment – deadened the pain at his heart and dulled his ears to Rachel’s reproaches and complaints.

Some latent poison in the blood – who can read these mysteries? – made the drink a fire that consumed him. He wasted away, and hugged his destroyer ever closer to him. Grandmother battled for his life, as she had for that other sweet life which was the light of her own; Rachel looked on terrified and helpless.

Then came the winter night when he fell down senseless by the garden gate and lay there all night, while the women watched and waited in the house. It was Grandmother who found him. She had persuaded Rachel to lie down, and then thrown a cloak over her wrapper and crept out in the gray iron-bound dawn to look down the road for one who might be coming stumbling along, and might need help to gain the house; and she saw the frozen face glimmering up from the snow-bank where he lay.

There was one cry; a long low cry that shivered through the still frosty air; but no one heard.

How could she carry him in? We never knew; she never spoke of it; but no one else saw him till he was laid decently in his bed and the staring eyes closed. Then she called his wife.

The doctor came again, and good Mrs. Peace, and all was done that might be; but it was a bitter night, and all was over, as Grandmother knew at the first sight of that glimmering face. Poor Manuel! A fire of straw, as Mother Peace said.

It was after this that Grandmother had the long illness; when she lay for weeks speechless and motionless, with barely strength enough to move her little finger for “Yes” or “No” when we asked her a question. I helped Mrs. Peace and Anne with the nursing. Rachel had gone away to her mother’s people. Sometimes, indeed many times, we thought she was gone; she lay so still; and we could not catch even the slightest flutter of breath. I remember those nights so well; one moonlight night in particular. We knew how she loved the moonlight, and opened the shutters wide. It was a cold still night, the snow silver white under the moon. The light poured in full and strong on the bed where she lay like an ivory statue, and turned the ivory to silver. I thought she was dying then, and thought what a beautiful way to die, the heavenly spirit mounting along the moon-path, leaving that perfect image there at rest.

That was in February. April found her still lying there, just breathing, no more. The doctor gave a little hope, now; she might slip away any time, he said, but still it had lasted so long, there must be a reserve of strength; it was possible that she might come through it.

One bright warm April day we had opened the windows, and the air came in sweet and fresh, and the robins were singing loud and merry in the budding apple-trees.

Suddenly from the road outside came a child’s laugh; sweet and clear it rang out like a silver bell, and at the sound the ivory figure in the bed moved. A slight shiver rippled through it from head to foot. The eyes opened and looked at us, clear and calm.

Dear Anne Peace knelt down beside the bed and took the slender transparent hands in hers, the tears running down her face. “Grandmother,” she said, “you are going to get well now – for the children! Spring has come, Grandmother dear, and the children need you!”

She did get well. Slowly but surely life and strength returned; by June she was in the garden again with the children around her. Not the same, not the light-foot girl who frolicked and ran with the other children, but as you all remember her; serene, clear-eyed, cheerful, full of wisdom, grace, tenderness. Grandmother! who in this village does not remember her? To you young people she seemed an old woman, with her snow-white hair and ivory face, drawn into deep patient lines. She was not fifty when she died.

During the twenty years she had yet to live, what a benediction her days were to old and young!

People came to her with their joys and their sorrows. Strangers came, from outlying places, and brought their troubles to her; they had heard, no one knows how, that she had power and wisdom beyond that of other women. I met one of these strangers once. I was going in to see Grandmother, and I met a lady coming away; a handsome lady, richly dressed. She had been weeping, but her face was full of light.

She looked at me. “Young woman,” she said, “do you live near here?”

“Yes, madam,” I said; “close by, in that brown cottage.”

“Yours is a high privilege,” she said, “to dwell so near to heaven.”

She looked back to the house and kissed her hand to it; then beckoned, and a fine carriage came up and she drove away. I never knew who she was.

I found Grandmother sitting quietly with her knitting, by the empty cradle.

“What did you say to that lady, Grandmother?” I asked, though I knew next moment I should not have done it.

“I told her an old lesson, my dear,” said Grandmother; “a lesson I learned long ago.”

Once it was Saturday Nelly who came; Nelly, now grown a woman – if it could be called growing.

“Grandmother,” she said, “look at me, and tell me what you see.”

Grandmother looked into the pale drawn face with its strange eyes.

“Nelly dear,” she said, “I see a face that I love, a face full of truth and goodness.”

“You see a monster!” said the poor girl. She made a passionate gesture toward a mirror that hung opposite them; indeed, the glass showed a strange contrast.

“Look!” she said. “Look, Grandmother, and tell me! When one is shut up in a prison like that, full of pain and horror – hasn’t one a right to get out if one can?”

Seeing the wonder in Grandmother’s face she hurried on. “Father’s dead; poor father! I would not let myself think of it while he was living. He is dead, and there is no one else – except you, Angel, and you would understand, wouldn’t you? If I put this thing to sleep” – she struck her heart fiercely – “and slipped out of prison – Grandmother, what harm would it do? what harm could it do?”

“Nelly! Nelly dear,” said Grandmother, “you couldn’t – could you – go with your lesson half-learned? Such a strange, wonderful lesson, Nelly, and you have been learning so well. To go there, and when they asked you, have to say ‘I didn’t finish, I left it half-done, because I didn’t like it;’ could you do that, do you think, Nelly dear? because – it wouldn’t be ready at the other end either, don’t you see, darling? It wouldn’t fit in. You haven’t thought of that, have you, Nelly?”

Nelly hid her face in her hands, and there was a long silence. Presently she spoke, low and trembling.

“Grandmother – suppose there wasn’t any other end! Suppose I couldn’t see – suppose I didn’t believe there was – anything more – when this hateful thing” – she plucked at her poor twisted body as if she would have torn it – “is buried out of sight with the other worms! what then?”

“Oh, Nelly!” said Grandmother softly. “Nelly dear! if it were so; if this were the only lesson, mustn’t we try all the harder to learn it well? if this should be our only chance to help and love and tend and cheer, would we give up one minute of the time? Oh, no! Nelly, no! Think a little, my dear! think a little!”

We all remember Saturday Nelly, in the little shop that Grandmother set up for her, selling sweeties to the children, selling thread and needles and tape, tending her birds and flowers, the cheeriest, gayest little soul in the village. Her shop was a kind of centre of merry innocent chatter for young and old; it was full from morning to night. We never thought much about Nelly’s looks except when we spoke of Grandmother; then her face grew beautiful.

I think the children loved Grandmother better even than in her girl-days.

The Saturday feasts were quieter, but still full of light and joy, and the stories – well, they were like no other stories that ever were told.

“And oh! the words that fell from her mouth,
Were words of wisdom and of truth.”

So she lived, blessing and blessed, twenty more heavenly years; and so, when God called her, she died. We found her one morning sitting by the little cradle, her head resting on it, and a white rose in her quiet hand. When we raised her face and looked at it, there was no need to ask whither the spirit had gone.

And Rachel? A year after Manuel died, she married a man from a neighboring village, a masterful man who broke her over his knee like a willow switch, and whom she adored for the rest of her life. She bore him sons and daughters, and grew – comparatively – cheerful and placid.

She came to see Grandmother now and then, and marvelled at her.

“How you do age, Grandmother!” she would say. “And you without a care in the world. I wonder what would have happened if you had really lived, as I have!”

THE END