(Nurse) AGNES HUNT.

"By Jinks."

Sam Motherwell took the letter from his wife's hand and excitedly read it over to himself, going over each word with his blunt forefinger. He turned it over and examined the seal, he looked at the stamp and inside of the envelope, and failing to find any clue to the mystery he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed again:

"By Jinks! What the deuce is this about poppies. Is that them things she sowed out there?"

His wife nodded.

"Well, who do you suppose sent them? Who would ever think of sending them?"

Mrs. Motherwell made no reply.

"It's a blamed nice letter anyway," he said, looking it over again, "I guess Polly didn't give us a hard name to them up there in the 'ospital, or we wouldn't ha' got a letter like this; and poor Polly's dead. Well, she was a kind of a good-natured, willin' thing too, and not too slow either."

Mrs. Motherwell was still silent. She had not thought that Polly would die, she had always had great faith in the vitality of English people.

"You can't kill them," she had often said; but now Polly was dead. She was sick, then, when she went around the house so strangely silent and flushed. Mrs. Motherwell's memory went back with cruel distinctness--she had said things to Polly then that stung her now with a remorse that was new and terrible, and Polly had looked at her dazed and wondering, her big eyes flushed and pleading. Mrs. Motherwell remembered now that she had seen that look once before. She had helped Sam to kill a lamb once, and it came back to her now, how through it all, until the blow fell, the lamb had stood wondering, pleading, yet unflinching, and she had run sobbing away--and now Polly was dead--and those big eyes she had so often seen tearful, yet smiling, were closed and their tears forever wiped away.

That night she dreamed of Polly, confused, troubled dreams; now it was Polly's mother who was dead, then it was her own mother, dead thirty years ago. Once she started violently and sat up. Someone had been singing--the echo of it was still in the room:

Over my grave keep the green willers growing.

The yellow harvest moon flooded the room with its soft light. She could see through the window how it lay like a mantle on the silent fields.

It was one of those glorious, cloudless nights, with a hint of frost in the air that come just as the grain is ripening. From some place down the creek a dog barked; once in a while a cow-bell tinkled: a horse stamped in the stable and then all was still. Numberless stars shone through the window. The mystery of life and death and growing things was around her. As for man his days are as gra.s.s; as a flower of the field so he flourisheth--for it is soon cut off and we fly away--fly away where?--where?--her head throbbed with the question.

The eastern sky flushed red with morning; a little ripple came over the grain. She watched it listlessly. Polly had died at daybreak--didn't the letter say? Just like that, the light rising redder and redder, the stars disappearing, she wondered dully to herself how often she would see the light coming, like this, and yet, and yet, some time would be the last, and then what?

We shall be where suns are not, A far serener clime.

came to her memory she knew not from whence. But she shuddered at it.

Polly's eyes, dazed, pleading like the lamb's, rose before her; or was it that Other Face, tender, thorn-crowned, that had been looking upon her in love all these long years!

She spoke so kindly to Pearl when she went into the kitchen that the little girl looked up apprehensively.

"Are ye not well, ma'am?" she asked quickly.

Mrs. Motherwell hesitated.

"I did not sleep very well," she said, at last.

"That's the mortgage," Pearl thought to herself.

"And when I did sleep, I had such dreadful dreams," Mrs. Motherwell went on, strangely communicative.

"That looks more like the cancer," Pearl thought as she stirred the porridge.

"We got bad news," Mrs. Motherwell said. "Polly is dead."

Pearl stopped stirring the porridge.

"When did she die," she asked eagerly.

"The morning before yesterday morning, about daylight."

Pearl made a rapid calculation. "Oh good!" she cried, "goody--goody--goody! They were in time."

She saw her mistake in a moment, and hastily put her hand over her mouth as if to prevent the unruly member from further indiscretions.

She stirred the porridge vigorously, while her cheeks burned.

"Yes, they were," Mrs. Motherwell said quietly.

Pearl set the porridge on the back of the stove and ran out to where the poppies nodded gaily. Never before had they seemed so beautiful.

Mrs. Motherwell watched her through the window bending over them.

Something about the poppies appealed to her now. She had once wanted Tom to cut them down, and she thought of it now.

She tapped on the window. Pearl looked up, startled.

"Bring in some," she called.

When the work was done for the morning, Mrs. Motherwell went up the narrow stair way to the little room over the kitchen to gather together Polly's things.

She sat on Polly's little straw bed and looked at the dismal little room. Pearl had done what she could to brighten it. The old bags and baskets had been neatly piled in one corner, and quilts had been spread over them to hide their ugliness from view. The wind blew gently in the window that the hail had broken. The floor had been scrubbed clean and white--the window, what was left of it--was shining.

She was reminded of Polly everywhere she looked. The mat under her feet was one that Polly had braided. A corduroy blouse hung at the foot of the bed. She remembered now that Polly had worn it the day she came.

In a little yellow tin box she found Polly's letters--the letters that had given her such extravagant joy. She could see her yet, how eagerly she would seize them and rush up to this little room with them, transfigured.

Mrs. Motherwell would have to look at them to find out Polly's mother's address. She took out the first letter slowly, then hurriedly put it back again in the envelope and looked guiltily around the room. But it had to be done. She took it out again resolutely, and read it with some difficulty.

It was written in a straggling hand that wandered uncertainly over the lines. It was a pitiful letter telling of poverty bitter and grinding, but redeemed from utter misery by a love and faith that shone from every line:

My dearest polly i am glad you like your plice and your misses is so kind as wot you si, yur letters are my k.u.mfit di an nit. bill is a ard man and says hif the money don't c.u.m i will ave to go to the workus.

but i no you will send it der polly so hi can old my little plice hi got a start todi a hoffcer past hi that it wos the workhus hoffcer. bill ses he told im to c.u.m hif hi cant pi by septmbr but hi am trustin G.o.d der polly e asn't forgot us. hi 'm glad the poppies grew. ere's a disy hi am sendin yu hi can mike the butonoles yet. hi do sum hevry di mrs purdy gave me fourpence one di for sum i mide for her hi ad a cup of tee that di. hi am appy thinkin of yu der polly.

"And Polly is dead!" burst from Mrs. Motherwell as something gathered in her throat. She laid the letter down and looked straight ahead of her.

The sloping walls of the little kitchen loft, with its cobwebbed beams faded away, and she was looking into a squalid little room where an old woman, bent and feeble, sat working b.u.t.tonholes with trembling fingers.

Her eyes were restless and expectant; she listened eagerly to every sound. A step is at the door, a hand is on the latch. The old woman rises uncertainly, a great hope in her eyes--it is the letter--the letter at last. The door opens, and the old woman falls cowering and moaning, and wringing her hands before the man who enters. It is the officer!

Mrs. Motherwell buried her face in her hands.

"Oh G.o.d be merciful, be merciful," she sobbed.

Sam Motherwell, knowing nothing of the storm that was pa.s.sing through his wife's mind, was out in the machine house tightening up the screws and bolts in the binders, getting ready for the harvest. The barley was whitening already.

The nurse's letter had disturbed him. He tried to laugh at himself--the idea of his boxing up those weeds to send to anybody. Still the nurse had said how pleased Polly was. By George, it is strange what will please people. He remembered when he went down to Indiana buying horses, how tired he got of the look of corn-fields, and how the sight of the first decent sized wheat field just went to his heart, when he was coming back. Someway he could not laugh at anything that morning, for Polly was dead. And Polly was a willing thing for sure; he seemed to see her yet, how she ran after the colt the day it broke out of the pasture, and when the men were away she would hitch up a horse for him as quick as anybody.

"I kind o' wish now that I had given her something--it would have pleased her so--some little thing," he added hastily.