American Gothic, page 68
“Well, we can’t help that,” said the lawyer, as he went back to his office.
Old Woman Magoun and Lily returned, going slowly along the road to Barry’s Ford. When they came to the stone wall where the blackberry-vines and the deadly nightshade grew, Lily said she was tired, and asked if she could not sit down for a few minutes. The strange look on her grandmother’s face had deepened. Now and then Lily glanced at her and had a feeling as if she were looking at a stranger.
“Yes, you can set down if you want to,” said Old Woman Magoun, deeply and harshly.
Lily started and looked at her, as if to make sure that it was her grandmother who spoke. Then she sat down on a stone which was comparatively free of the vines.
“Ain’t you goin’ to set down, grandma?” Lily asked, timidly.
“No; I don’t want to get into that mess,” replied her grandmother. “I ain’t tired. I’ll stand here.”
Lily sat still; her delicate little face was flushed with heat. She extended her tiny feet in her best shoes and gazed at them. “My shoes are all over dust,” said she.
“It will brush off,” said her grandmother, still in that strange voice.
Lily looked around. An elm-tree in the field behind her cast a spray of branches over her head; a little cool puff of wind came on her face. She gazed at the low mountains on the horizon, in the midst of which she lived, and she sighed, for no reason that she knew. She began idly picking at the blackberry-vines; there were no berries on them; then she put her little fingers on the berries of the deadly nightshade. “These look like nice berries,” she said.
Old Woman Magoun, standing stiff and straight in the road, said nothing.
“They look good to eat,” said Lily.
Old Woman Magoun still said nothing, but she looked up into the ineffable blue of the sky, over which spread at intervals great white clouds shaped like wings.
Lily picked some of the deadly nightshade berries and ate them. “Why, they are real sweet,” said she. “They are nice.” She picked some more and ate them.
Presently her grandmother spoke. “Come,” she said, “it is time we were going. I guess you have set long enough.”
Lily was still eating the berries when she slipped down from the wall and followed her grandmother obediently up the road.
Before they reached home, Lily complained of being very thirsty. She stopped and made a little cup of a leaf and drank long at a mountain brook. “I am dreadful dry, but it hurts me to swallow,” she said to her grandmother when she stopped drinking and joined the old woman waiting for her in the road. Her grandmother’s face seemed strangely dim to her. She took hold of Lily’s hand as they went on. “My stomach burns,” said Lily, presently. “I want some more water.”
“There is another brook a little farther on,” said Old Woman Magoun, in a dull voice.
When they reached that brook, Lily stopped and drank again, but she whimpered a little over her difficulty in swallowing. “My stomach burns, too,” she said, walking on, “and my throat is so dry, grandma.” Old Woman Magoun held Lily’s hand more tightly. “You hurt me holding my hand so tight, grandma,” said Lily, looking up at her grandmother, whose face she seemed to see through a mist, and the old woman loosened her grasp.
When at last they reached home, Lily was very ill. Old Woman Magoun put her on her own bed in the little bedroom out of the kitchen. Lily lay there and moaned, and Sally Jinks came in.
“Why, what ails her?” she asked. “She looks feverish.”
Lily unexpectedly answered for herself. “I ate some sour apples and drank some milk,” she moaned.
“Sour apples and milk are dreadful apt to hurt anybody,” said Sally Jinks. She told several people on her way home that Old Woman Magoun was dreadful careless to let Lily eat such things.
Meanwhile Lily grew worse. She suffered cruelly from the burning in her stomach, the vertigo, and the deadly nausea. “I am so sick, I am so sick, grandma,” she kept moaning. She could no longer see her grandmother as she bent over her, but she could hear her talk.
Old Woman Magoun talked as Lily had never heard her talk before, as nobody had ever heard her talk before. She spoke from the depths of her soul; her voice was as tender as the coo of a dove, and it was grand and exalted. “You’ll feel better very soon, little Lily,” said she.
“I am so sick, grandma.”
“You will feel better very soon, and then – ”
“I am sick.”
“You shall go to a beautiful place.”
Lily moaned.
“You shall go to a beautiful place,” the old woman went on.
“Where?” asked Lily, groping feebly with her cold little hands. Then she moaned again.
“A beautiful place, where the flowers grow tall.”
“What color? Oh, grandma, I am so sick.”
“A blue color,” replied the old woman. Blue was Lily’s favorite color. “A beautiful blue color, and as tall as your knees, and the flowers always stay there, and they never fade.”
“Not if you pick them, grandma? Oh!”
“No, not if you pick them; they never fade, and they are so sweet you can smell them a mile off; and there are birds that sing, and all the roads have gold stones in them, and the stone walls are made of gold.”
“Like the ring grandpa gave you? I am so sick, grandma.”
“Yes, gold like that. And all the houses are built of silver and gold, and the people all have wings, so when they get tired walking they can fly, and – ”
“I am so sick, grandma.”
“And all the dolls are alive,” said Old Woman Magoun. “Dolls like yours can run, and talk, and love you back again.”
Lily had her poor old rag doll in bed with her, clasped close to her agonized little heart. She tried very hard with her eyes, whose pupils were so dilated that they looked black, to see her grandmother’s face when she said that, but she could not. “It is dark,” she moaned, feebly.
“There where you are going it is always light,” said the grandmother, “and the commonest things shine like that breastpin Mrs. Lawyer Mason had on to-day.”
Lily moaned pitifully, and said something incoherent. Delirium was commencing. Presently she sat straight up in bed and raved; but even then her grandmother’s wonderful compelling voice had an influence over her.
“You will come to a gate with all the colors of the rainbow,” said her grandmother; “and it will open, and you will go right in and walk up the gold street, and cross the field where the blue flowers come up to your knees, until you find your mother, and she will take you home where you are going to live. She has a little white room all ready for you, white curtains at the windows, and a little white looking-glass, and when you look in it you will see – ”
“What will I see? I am so sick, grandma.”
“You will see a face like yours, only it’s an angel’s; and there will be a little white bed, and you can lay down an’ rest.”
“Won’t I be sick, grandma?” asked Lily. Then she moaned and babbled wildly, although she seemed to understand through it all what her grandmother said.
“No, you will never be sick anymore. Talkin’ about sickness won’t mean anything to you.”
It continued. Lily talked on wildly, and her grandmother’s great voice of soothing never ceased, until the child fell into a deep sleep, or what resembled sleep; but she lay stiffly in that sleep, and a candle flashed before her eyes made no impression on them.
Then it was that Nelson Barry came. Jim Willis waited outside the door. When Nelson entered he found Old Woman Magoun on her knees beside the bed, weeping with dry eyes and a might of agony which fairly shook Nelson Barry, the degenerate of a fine old race.
“Is she sick?” he asked, in a hushed voice.
Old Woman Magoun gave another terrible sob, which sounded like the gasp of one dying.
“Sally Jinks said that Lily was sick from eating milk and sour apples,” said Barry, in a tremulous voice. “I remember that her mother was very sick once from eating them.”
Lily lay still, and her grandmother on her knees shook with her terrible sobs.
Suddenly Nelson Barry started. “I guess I had better go to Greenham for a doctor if she’s as bad as that,” he said. He went close to the bed and looked at the sick child. He gave a great start. Then he felt of her hands and reached down under the bedclothes for her little feet. “Her hands and feet are like ice,” he cried out. “Good God! why didn’t you send for some one – for me – before? Why, she’s dying; she’s almost gone!”
Barry rushed out and spoke to Jim Willis, who turned pale and came in and stood by the bedside.
“She’s almost gone,” he said, in a hushed whisper.
“There’s no use going for the doctor; she’d be dead before he got here,” said Nelson, and he stood regarding the passing child with a strange, sad face unutterably sad, because of his incapability of the truest sadness.
“Poor little thing, she’s past suffering, anyhow,” said the other man, and his own face also was sad with a puzzled, mystified sadness.
Lily died that night. There was quite a commotion in Barry’s Ford until after the funeral, it was all so sudden, and then everything went on as usual. Old Woman Magoun continued to live as she had done before. She supported herself by the produce of her tiny farm; she was very industrious, but people said that she was a trifle touched, since every time she went over the log bridge with her eggs or her garden vegetables to sell in Greenham, she carried with her, as one might have carried an infant, Lily’s old rag doll.
Luella Miller
Close to the village street stood the one-story house in which Luella Miller, who had an evil name in the village, had dwelt. She had been dead for years, yet there were those in the village who, in spite of the clearer light which comes on a vantage-point from a long-past danger, half believed in the tale which they had heard from their childhood. In their hearts, although they scarcely would have owned it, was a survival of the wild horror and frenzied fear of their ancestors who had dwelt in the same age with Luella Miller. Young people even would stare with a shudder at the old house as they passed, and children never played around it as was their wont around an untenanted building. Not a window in the old Miller house was broken: the panes reflected the morning sunlight in patches of emerald and blue, and the latch of the sagging front door was never lifted, although no bolt secured it. Since Luella Miller had been carried out of it, the house had had no tenant except one friendless old soul who had no choice between that and the far-off shelter of the open sky. This old woman, who had survived her kindred and friends, lived in the house one week, then one morning no smoke came out of the chimney, and a body of neighbours, a score strong, entered and found her dead in her bed. There were dark whispers as to the cause of her death, and there were those who testified to an expression of fear so exalted that it showed forth the state of the departing soul upon the dead face. The old woman had been hale and hearty when she entered the house, and in seven days she was dead; it seemed that she had fallen a victim to some uncanny power. The minister talked in the pulpit with covert severity against the sin of superstition; still the belief prevailed. Not a soul in the village but would have chosen the almshouse rather than that dwelling. No vagrant, if he heard the tale, would seek shelter beneath that old roof, unhallowed by nearly half a century of superstitious fear.
There was only one person in the village who had actually known Luella Miller. That person was a woman well over eighty but a marvel of vitality and unextinct youth. Straight as an arrow, with the spring of one recently let loose from the bow of life, she moved about the streets, and she always went to church, rain or shine. She had never married, and had lived alone for years in a house across the road from Luella Miller’s.
This woman had none of the garrulousness of age, but never in all her life had she ever held her tongue for any will save her own, and she never spared the truth when she essayed to present it. She it was who bore testimony to the life, evil, though possibly wittingly or designedly so,1 of Luella Miller, and to her personal appearance. When this old woman spoke – and she had the gift of description, although her thoughts were clothed in the rude vernacular of her native village – one could seem to see Luella Miller as she had really looked. According to this woman, Lydia Anderson by name, Luella Miller had been a beauty of a type rather unusual in New England. She had been a slight, pliant sort of creature, as ready with a strong yielding to fate and as unbreakable as a willow. She had glimmering lengths of straight, fair hair, which she wore softly looped round a long, lovely face. She had blue eyes full of soft pleading, little slender, clinging hands, and a wonderful grace of motion and attitude.
“Luella Miller used to sit in a way nobody else could if they sat up and studied a week of Sundays,” said Lydia Anderson, “and it was a sight to see her walk. If one of them willows over there on the edge of the brook could start up and get its roots free of the ground, and move off, it would go just the way Luella Miller used to. She had a green shot silk she used to wear, too, and a hat with green ribbon streamers, and a lace veil blowing across her face and out sideways, and a green ribbon flyin’ from her waist. That was what she came out bride in when she married Erastus Miller. Her name before she was married was Hill. There was always a sight of ‘l’s’ in her name, married or single. Erastus Miller was good lookin’, too, better lookin’ than Luella. Sometimes I used to think that Luella wa’n’t so handsome after all. Erastus just about worshiped her. I used to know him pretty well. He lived next door to me, and we went to school together. Folks used to say he was waitin’ on me,2 but he wa’n’t. I never thought he was except once or twice when he said things that some girls might have suspected meant somethin’. That was before Luella came here to teach the district school. It was funny how she came to get it, for folks said she hadn’t any education, and that one of the big girls, Lottie Henderson, used to do all the teachin’ for her, while she sat back and did embroidery work on a cambric pocket-handkerchief. Lottie Henderson was a real smart girl, a splendid scholar, and she just set her eyes by Luella, as all the girls did. Lottie would have made a real smart woman, but she died when Luella had been here about a year – just faded away and died: nobody knew what ailed her. She dragged herself to that schoolhouse and helped Luella teach till the very last minute. The committee all knew how Luella didn’t do much of the work herself, but they winked at it. It wasn’t long after Lottie died that Erastus married her. I always thought he hurried it up because she wa’n’t fit to teach. One of the big boys used to help her after Lottie died, but he hadn’t much government, and the school didn’t do very well, and Luella might have had to give it up, for the committee couldn’t have shut their eyes to things much longer. The boy that helped her was a real honest, innocent sort of fellow, and he was a good scholar, too. Folks said he overstudied, and that was the reason he was took crazy the year after Luella married, but I don’t know. And I don’t know what made Erastus Miller go into consumption of the blood the year after he was married: consumption wa’n’t in his family. He just grew weaker and weaker, and went almost bent double when he tried to wait on Luella, and he spoke feeble, like an old man. He worked terrible hard till the last trying to save up a little to leave Luella. I’ve seen him out in the worst storms on a wood-sled – he used to cut and sell wood – and he was hunched up on top lookin’ more dead than alive. Once I couldn’t stand it: I went over and helped him pitch some wood on the cart – I was always strong in my arms. I wouldn’t stop for all he told me to, and I guess he was glad enough for the help. That was only a week before he died. He fell on the kitchen floor while he was gettin’ breakfast. He always got the breakfast and let Luella lay abed. He did all the sweepin’ and the washin’ and the ironin’ and most of the cookin’. He couldn’t bear to have Luella lift her finger, and she let him do for her. She lived like a queen for all the work she did. She didn’t even do her sewin’. She said it made her shoulder ache to sew, and poor Erastus’s sister Lily used to do all her sewin’. She wa’n’t able to, either; she was never strong in her back, but she did it beautifully. She had to, to suit Luella, she was so dreadful particular. I never saw anythin’ like the fagottin’ and hemstitchin’ that Lily Miller did for Luella. She made all Luella’s weddin’ outfit, and that green silk dress, after Maria Babbit cut it. Maria she cut it for nothin’, and she did a lot more cuttin’ and fittin’ for nothin’ for Luella, too. Lily Miller went to live with Luella after Erastus died. She gave up her home, though she was real attached to it and wa’n’t a mite afraid to stay alone. She rented it and she went to live with Luella right away after the funeral.”
Then this old woman, Lydia Anderson, who remembered Luella Miller, would go on to relate the story of Lily Miller. It seemed that on the removal of Lily Miller to the house of her dead brother, to live with his widow, the village people first began to talk. This Lily Miller had been hardly past her first youth, and a most robust and blooming woman, rosy-cheeked, with curls of strong, black hair overshadowing round, candid temples and bright dark eyes. It was not six months after she had taken up her residence with her sister-in-law that her rosy colour faded and her pretty curves become wan hollows. White shadows began to show in the black rings of her hair, and the light died out of her eyes, her features sharpened, and there were pathetic lines at her mouth, which yet wore always an expression of utter sweetness and even happiness. She was devoted to her sister; there was no doubt that she loved her with her whole heart, and was perfectly content in her service. It was her sole anxiety lest she should die and leave her alone.
“The way Lily Miller used to talk about Luella was enough to make you mad and enough to make you cry,” said Lydia Anderson. “I’ve been in there sometimes toward the last when she was too feeble to cook and carried her some blanc-mange or custard – somethin’ I thought she might relish, and she’d thank me, and when I asked her how she was, say she felt better than she did yesterday, and asked me if I didn’t think she looked better, dreadful pitiful, and say poor Luella had an awful time takin’ care of her and doin’ the work – she wa’n’t strong enough to do anythin’ – when all the time Luella wasn’t liftin’ her finger and poor Lily didn’t get any care except what the neighbours gave her, and Luella eat up everythin’ that was carried in for Lily. I had it real straight that she did. Luella used to just sit and cry and do nothin’. She did act real fond of Lily, and she pined away considerable, too. There was those that thought she’d go into a decline herself. But after Lily died, her Aunt Abby Mixter came, and then Luella picked up and grew as fat and rosy as ever. But poor Aunt Abby begun to droop just the way Lily had, and I guess somebody wrote to her married daughter, Mrs. Sam Abbot, who lived in Barre, for she wrote her mother that she must leave right away and come and make her a visit, but Aunt Abby wouldn’t go. I can see her now. She was a real good-lookin’ woman, tall and large, with a big, square face and a high forehead that looked of itself kind of benevolent and good. She just tended out on Luella as if she had been a baby, and when her married daughter sent for her she wouldn’t stir one inch. She’d always thought a lot of her daughter, too, but she said Luella needed her and her married daughter didn’t. Her daughter kept writin’ and writin’, but it didn’t do any good. Finally she came, and when she saw how bad her mother looked, she broke down and cried and all but went on her knees to have her come away. She spoke her mind out to Luella, too. She told her that she’d killed her husband and everybody that had anythin’ to do with her, and she’d thank her to leave her mother alone. Luella went into hysterics, and Aunt Abby was so frightened that she called me after her daughter went. Mrs. Sam Abbot she went away fairly cryin’ out loud in the buggy, the neighbours heard her, and well she might, for she never saw her mother again alive. I went in that night when Aunt Abby called for me, standin’ in the door with her little green-checked shawl over her head. I can see her now. ‘Do come over here, Miss Anderson,’ she sung out, kind of gasping for breath. I didn’t stop for anythin’. I put over as fast as I could, and when I got there, there was Luella laughin’ and cryin’ all together, and Aunt Abby trying to hush her, and all the time she herself was white as a sheet and shakin’ so she could hardly stand. ‘For the land sakes, Mrs. Mixter,’ says I, ‘you look worse than she does. You ain’t fit to be up out of your bed.’
