You know that, don’t you?”
“You’re the one who always has to be the goat,” said Hugh Barton sourly.
“I’m getting tired of it.
That’s what has worn you out.
If they don’t leave you alone, I’m going to take you away from here.”
Then he went back to his charts and pamphlets, frowning importantly over a cigar, and scrawling figures on an old envelope with a stub of pencil gripped between his fingers.
She has him trained, too, Eugene thought.
Then, hearing the sharp whine of the wind, she wept again.
“Poor old Ben,” she said.
“I can’t bear to think of him out there to-night.”
She was silent for a moment, staring at the fire.
“After this, I’m through,” she said.
“They can get along for themselves.
Hugh and I have a right to our own lives.
Don’t you think so?”
“Yes,” said Eugene.
I’m merely the chorus, he thought.
“Papa’s not going to die,” she went on. “I’ve nursed him like a slave for six years, and he’ll be here when I’m gone.
Every one was expecting papa to die, but it was Ben who went.
You never can tell.
After this, I’m through.”
Her voice had a note of exasperation in it.
They all felt the grim trickery of Death, which had come in by the cellar while they waited at the window.
“Papa has no right to expect it of me!” she burst out resentfully.
“He’s had his life.
He’s an old man.
We have a right to ours as well as any one.
Good heavens!
Can’t they realize that!
I’m married to Hugh Barton!
I’m HIS wife!”
Are you? thought Eugene.
Are you?
But Eliza sat before the fire at Dixieland with hands folded, reliving a past of tenderness and love that never had been.
And as the wind howled in the bleak street, and Eliza wove a thousand fables of that lost and bitter spirit, the bright and stricken thing in the boy twisted about in horror, looking for escape from the house of death.
No more!
No more! (it said).
You are alone now.
You are lost.
Go find yourself, lost boy, beyond the hills.
This little bright and stricken thing stood up on Eugene’s heart and talked into his mouth.
O but I can’t go now, said Eugene to it. (Why not? it whispered.) Because her face is so white, and her forehead is so broad and high, with the black hair drawn back from it, and when she sat there at the bed she looked like a little child.
I can’t go now and leave her here alone. (She is alone, it said, and so are you.) And when she purses up her mouth and stares, so grave and thoughtful, she is like a little child. (You are alone now, it said.
You must escape, or you will die.) It is all like death: she fed me at her breast, I slept in the same bed with her, she took me on her trips.
All of that is over now, and each time it was like a death. (And like a life, it said to him.
Each time that you die, you will be born again.
And you will die a hundred times before you become a man.) I can’t!
I can’t!
Not now — later, more slowly. (No.
Now, it said.) I am afraid.