Danny's Own Story Part 34

One of the screws was loose, and I picked her out easy enough. The second one I broke the point off of my knife blade on. Like you nearly always do on a screw. When it snapped Colonel Tom he says:

"What's that?" He was powerful quick of hearing, Colonel Tom was. I laid low till they went on talking agin. Then Martha slides out on tiptoe and comes back in three seconds with one of these here little screw-drivers they use around sewing-machines and the little oil can that goes with it. I oils them screws and has them out in a holy minute, and lifts the grating from the floor careful and lays it careful on the rug.

By doing all of which I could get my head and shoulders down into that there hole. And by twisting my neck a good deal, see a little ways to each side into the room, instead of jest underneath the grating. The doctor I couldn't see yet, and only a little of Colonel Tom, but Miss Lucy quite plain.

"You mean thing," Martha whispers, "you are blocking it up so I can't hear."

"Keep still," I whispers, pulling my head out of the hole so the sound wouldn't float downward into the room below. "You are jest like all other women--you got too much curiosity."

"How about yourself?" says she.

"Who was it thought of taking the grating off?" I whispers back to her.

Which settles her temporary, but she says if I don't give her a chancet at it purty soon she will tickle my ribs.

When I listens agin they are burying that there Prent McMakin. But without any flowers.

Miss Lucy, she was half setting on, half leaning against, the arm of a chair. Which her head was jest a bit bowed down so that I couldn't see her eyes. But they was the beginnings of a smile onto her face. It was both soft and sad.

"Well," says Colonel Tom, "you two have wasted almost twenty years of life."

"There is one good thing," says the doctor. "It is a good thing that there was no child to suffer by our mistakes."

She raised her face when he said that, Miss Lucy did, and looked in his direction.

"You call that a good thing?" she says, in a kind of wonder. And after a minute she sighs. "Perhaps," she says, "you are right. Heaven only knows. Perhaps it WAS better that he died."

"DIED!" sings out the doctor.

And I hearn his chair sc.r.a.pe back, like he had riz to his feet sudden.

I nearly busted my neck trying fur to see him, but I couldn't. I was all twisted up, head down, and the blood getting into my head from it so I had to pull it out every little while.

"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. I could 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 I looked 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. I felt 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 something right curious in HIS manner too. I was jest simply laying onto my forehead mas.h.i.+ng one of my dern eyeb.a.l.l.s 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 looking-gla.s.s 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 before 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.

Colonel Tom thinks of what big folks the Buckner fambly has always been at home. And how high they had always held their heads. And how none of the women has ever been like this before. Nor no disgrace of any kind.

And that there kid, if it is alive, is a sign of disgrace. And he hoped to G.o.d, he said, it wasn't alive.

But he don't say so. He stands there and watches that nurse fight fur to hold onto the little mist of life she thinks now is still into it. She unb.u.t.tons her dress and lays the kid against the heat of her own breast.

And wills fur it to live, and fights fur it to, and determines that it must, and jest natcherally tries fur to bullyrag death into going away.

And Colonel Tom watching, and wis.h.i.+ng that it wouldn't. But he gets interested in that there fight, and so purty soon he is hoping both ways by spells. And the fight all going on without a word spoken.

But finally the nurse begins fur to cry. Not because she is sure it is dead. But because she is sure it is coming back. Which it does, slow.

"'But I have told HER that it is dead,'" says Colonel Tom, jerking his head toward the other room where Miss Lucy is lying. He speaks in a low voice and closes the door when he speaks. Fur it looks now like it was getting strong enough so it might even squall a little.

"I don't know what kind of a look there was on my face," says Colonel Tom, telling of the story to his sister and the doctor, "but she must have seen that I was--and heaven help me, but I WAS!--sorry that the baby was alive. It would have been such an easy way out of it had it been really dead!

"'She mustn't know that it is living,' I said to the nurse, finally,"

says Colonel Tom, going on with his story. I had been watching Miss Lucy's face as Colonel Tom talked and she was so worked up by that fight fur the kid's life she was breathless. But her eyes was cast down, I guess so her brother couldn't see them. Colonel Tom goes on with his story:

"'You don't mean--' said the nurse, startled.

"'No! No!' I said, 'of course--not that! But--why should she ever know that it didn't die?'"