CHAPTER II

THE WAITING OF WOMEN

Lavina Beckett lay in the front room of the old house, and people passing glanced askance at the closed blinds. Recent death inhabits a place more completely than life, and Lavina's personality seemed to lurk in the panels of the grey door, in the branches of the lilac bush, and even extended to the road.

All through the day neighbours came to offer condolences. Then, shrewd-faced, with the marks of child-bearing, hard work and a harsh climate in every line, these respectable wives of lobstermen took their way home in little groups. In the house they had borne themselves somewhat awkwardly, and once outside, their pity for the dead woman appeared tinged with resentment. Little was known about her at the Point.

It was after nightfall when a woman wearing a shawl over her head, knocked timidly at old David's door. A boy of six years clung to her skirts. When she was admitted, she slipped furtively into the room of death, and the boy, with difficulty restraining his tears, waited for her in the kitchen. He was afraid of the fat woman with her face bound round with a handkerchief, who was washing dishes at the sink. She made a great clatter. When she stepped to a cupboard, the candle threw an exaggerated portrait of her on the opposite wall. The ends of the cloth around her face stood up in two points, like horns; from between her flabby cheeks, projected a nose like a beak. A fork in her hand became, to his gaze, the size of a pitchfork. Once, when she passed near him, she held back her skirts, muttering under her breath; and he saw the same aversion in her eyes that he knew to be in his own, save that in her look there was a mingling of scorn and in his, a mingling of fright. It was a strange look to be directed toward a child, but it was one with which the boy was familiar. Presently his mother reappeared and they went out again. She walked very rapidly and now and then she wiped her eyes with a corner of her apron. The boy had to run to keep up with her. When they struck into a rugged path leading to the lighthouse, he paused and looked back.

Under the light of a full moon the Beckett house shone with a quite peculiar radiance. And yes, there it was! as they had said. It stood near the tumble-down cow-shed. The funeral was to take place in a village some miles distant, and an early start in the morning was necessary. The undertaker had gone, but the driver, with the hearse, would remain the night. He was eating his supper now, waited upon by the ugly woman. Meanwhile it stood out in the yard and the moonlight glinted on the four sable urns that decorated its corners, and sparkled on its glass sides and peeped between the black hangings without hindrance. The moon, indeed, to the child's thought, seemed to be as curious as he. Beads of perspiration started to his forehead, and, grasping his mother's skirt, he stumbled on at her side.

As the boy had pictured, in the Beckett kitchen the driver of the hearse was eating his supper, washing it down with a drink of whiskey. Then he disposed himself as best he could on two chairs, and fell asleep. Nora Gage finished the preserves the man had left on his plate, ate a quarter of a pie and went to bed in a room conveniently near the pantry. By eleven o'clock old David was alone.

He entered the front room, and very softly approached the coffin. The light from a candle wavered over the dead face. Leaning his elbow on the coffin lid and his chin in his hand, old David inspected the face. The first shock past, he wondered that he did not feel more poignant sorrow, but there was something almost impersonal in Lavina's expression. There were violet shadows under the eyes, and the lashes, as they rested on the cheek, were somewhat separated. The small mouth was closed rigidly, the cheeks showed hollows. Young as she was, her delicate feminine countenance already bore upon it the world-old legend--_The waiting of women_. The look did not belong to her individually--twenty years of life could not have branded it there. It was inherited from the first woman who had loved,--the first mother. It was the woman-look, and David recognized it. But he was almost seventy years old, and he sank into a chair and was soon nodding.

The candle spluttered, and the faint significance of the woman's days on earth for the last time blended confusedly with the silence, the night, the wind blowing in the moonlit sedge-grass. When we bury the body we cut off the last light of a jewel already dimmed by death.

In life Lavina had borne about her a faint suggestion of learning; it was said that on arriving at the Point she had brought with her a box of books. Some of the neighbours believed that she had been a schoolteacher; others that she had been reared by a relative who dealt in books, since the volumes she brought were all new. But Lavina never told them anything, and nothing was known about her, save that she came from a village thirty miles distant, which was on no railroad.

A gust of wind flickered the flame of the candle and a drop of tallow fell on the coffin.

Was it this supposed learning that had attracted Thomas Beckett, or the coiled braids of hair, or the nose, the nostrils of which used to expand slightly, as is the way with people who feel things keenly; or was it, perhaps, the sensitive hands, crossed now so patiently? In any case, whatever the attraction, it had ceased to hold Thomas after the third month; and once more in the grip of his black mood, he had been seen striding over the rocks, with the hair clinging to his forehead and his eye glowing as if from drink; and finally came the night when the old man and the young woman, both sleeping now so quietly, knew that they were deserted.

Again the draught from the window reduced the light of the candle to a mere blue tongue, and a shadow fell across the woman's face. It blotted out the lips which had been on the point of revealing their tender secret when the blow fell; it still further shrouded the eyes, which through the succeeding weary months gazing from the windows of the alien house, had noted the rags of mist that went floating by and vanished--like human hopes. It blotted out the hands, eloquent of agony, heavy with ungiven caresses. For an instant the shadows obliterated the whole slight frame that until recently had carried beneath its heart another life. Suddenly the candle flame brightened, and simultaneously a cry, small, sharp, almost impudent, broke the silence.

The old man started from his sleep. The cry was repeated. A smile so triumphant that it was sly, spread itself across his wrinkled visage. Seizing the candle which lit the room of death, he trotted into the room of the creature just born.

Outside, the hearse stood in the moonlight. And over yonder at the lighthouse a boy tossed restlessly on the bed beside his mother. In his imagination he still saw the hearse and it filled him with dull questioning. Lifting himself, he laid a hand on the shoulder of his drowsing parent.

'Why were they going to take the woman away?' he asked.

'Because--why because it was necessary.'

'Were they going to put her in the ground?

'Yes, that also was necessary.'

'But wasn't it dark under the ground, and wouldn't she be afraid?'

The mother sighed in her sleep.

The boy regarded her for an instant. Then propping his head on his hand, he fell to listening to the beat of the surf. Gradually his fears ceased, for each silver-lipped wave seemed to be speaking not alone to him, but to the dead woman.

"_Rest, rest,_" they seemed to say, "_rest, rest._"