A Man and a Woman - Stanley Waterloo (children's ebooks free online txt) 📗

seemed some other person. I talked to her of what was to be done. What a task that was, for I could scarcely utter words myself. She suddenly brightened when I spoke of the crematory and what Grant's wishes were.

"It must be as he wished," she said--"as he wished, in each small detail." Then she said no more, and all the rest was left to me.

She was quiet and grave at the funeral of her husband and my friend. She shed no tears; she uttered not a word. She listened quietly while I told her how I had arranged to carry out all his wishes about himself, or, rather, about his tenement. She did not accompany me. There came with me on that journey only the Ape, who was red of eye and vainly trying to conceal it all. How the youth was suffering!

I came to the home one day with an urn of bronze. There were only ashes in it, clean and white. Jean looked at them and asked me to go away. The urn was put, at her request, in her own apartments. It was sealed and stood upon a mantel of the room in which she slept. I do not believe she thought much of the ashes as representing the man who had gone away from her. She may have thought of them as precious, just as she did of a pair of gloves she had mended for him just before his illness, and which she kept always with her, but I believe that of the ashes, as of the gloves, she thought only of what her love had used in life and left behind. That was the total of it. It was the heart, the soul, the knowing of her that was gone.

How the Ape, how all the children cared for the small mother now! Never was woman more watched, and guarded and waited upon. She recognized it all, too, but said very little. Her soft hands would stroke the forehead of her first-born, or of her eldest daughter, or of any of the offspring of the two, the product of their love, and she would tell them that she was glad they were so good, but, gentle and thoughtful as she was, there was something lacking. She seemed in another world.

I talked to Jean. I tried to be a philosopher, to tell her of the children and of the broadness of life, and that she must drift into it again. She was kind and courteous as of old with me, but it was somehow not the same. And she grew weaker day by day, and would lie for hours, the children told me, in the room where Grant and she had been together all those years.

How can I tell of it! Jean, who had become my sister, who was part of Grant Harlson, drifted away before my eyes! It was harder, almost, for us than the fierce fight with death of the one who had been the mainstay of us all. Somehow, we knew she was going to leave us, and the grief of the children was something terrible. She listened to them and was kind to them, wildly affectionate at times, but she lapsed ever into the same strange apathy. We had the best physicians again. I talked with one of them. "What shall we do?" I asked.

He was a great man, a successful one, a man above the rut, and he answered simply:

"I cannot advise. The mind governs the body beyond us sometimes,--very often, I imagine. She does not want to live. That is all I can say. Drugs are not in the treatment of the case."

She grew thinner and thinner and more listless, and finally, one day, the Ape came to my office and said his mother had not left her room for a day or two. I went with him to the home which had been almost as my own.

I was admitted to Jean's room as a matter of course. I was one of the household. She was lying upon a great sofa, one Grant had liked. I asked her to tell me what to do.

She was calm and quiet as she answered. "There is nothing," she said. Then suddenly she seemed to be the Jean I had known one time. She raised herself up: "Alf, you were very close to us. Cannot you see?" She began another sentence, then stopped suddenly, and only smiled at me and said I was the nest friend ever two people had in all this world. She still spoke of two people. As if Grant were with us still!

How can one tell of the fading of a lily. No one ever told of it all. One day they sent for me, and when I came the sweetest woman lay upon her couch! She had talked with her children much that day, and told them many things--of plannings for their futures. She had, for the first time, told them of all their father had designed, or hoped, or guessed for each of them. And they had been very happy, and thought she would recover. And she had slept peacefully, and had not awakened.

I looked upon her face, and the smile upon it was something wonderful. It was one of the things which makes me believe there is some great story to it. There was none with her but her youngest daughter when she left us, and the child could not tell when worlds were touching. But upon that face was the expression which tells of what is all beyond. I do believe that, even before she quitted her earthly frame, dear Jean knew that she had found Grant again.

Why have I told this story of two people, which is no story at all, but only what I know of what has happened to those closest to me? There is no more of it. It ends with the deaths of them, and yet I do not know that it is sad. They lived and loved and died. They had more happiness than comes to one-half humanity. Their life was of the gold of what is the inner life of the better ones of this great new nation of a new continent. They lived and loved, and their children live, and will be good men and women.

* * * * * *

I cannot understand the problem. No learning clears it. I only know that there were Grant and I, that there were bees and perfumes, and wild, boyish delights, and the older life, and the feverish life of a city, and the rare, great love I looked upon.


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Publication Date: 09-08-2009

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