Straight she went to her house and she crept across the threshold and none noticed her, for everyone lay sleeping. The heat of the day had grown heavier as the afternoon wore on. Across the way the cousin’s wife sat sleeping, her mouth ajar, and the last babe sleeping at her breast. Here the old grandmother slept too, her head drooped and her nose upon her chin, and her clothes slipped to her waist still as she had sat in the sun. The girl had come out of the close room and lay curled against a cool stone for a pillow and she slept, and the younger lad lay naked and stretched to his full length beneath the willow tree, asleep.
The very day had changed. It was grown darker and more still and full of deeper and more burning heat. Great clouds loomed swollen, black and monstrous, up from the hills. But they shone silver-edged, luminous from some strange inner light. Even the sound of any insect, the call of any bird, was stilled in the vast hot silence of that day.
But the mother was far from sleep. She went softly into the darkened, silent room, and she sat herself upon the bed and the blood thundered in her ears, the blood of her strong hungry body. Now she knew what was amiss with her. She pretended nothing to herself now, as a townswoman might pretend, that there was some illness she had. No, she was too simple to pretend when well she knew how it was with her, and she was more frightened than she had ever been in her whole life, for she knew that such hunger as was in her now grew raving if it were not fed. … She did not even dream she could repulse him, now she knew her own hunger was the same as his, and she groaned aloud and cried to her heart, “It would be better if he would not have me — Oh, I wish he would not have me, and that I might be saved!”
But even while she groaned she rose driven from off that bed and went from the sleeping hamlet and to the fields along the way that she had come. She walked along under the great, black, bright-edged clouds and about her were the hills, livid green and clean against the blackness. She went under such a sky, along the little winding turn the path took where it turned past a small and ruined shrine, and there in the door of the shrine the man stood, waiting.
And she could not pass him. No, when he went inside and waited she followed to the door and looked and there he stood inside the twilight of the windowless shrine, waiting, and his eyes gleamed out of that twilight, shining as a beast’s eyes, waiting, and she went in.
They looked at each other in the dim light, two people in a dream, desperate, beyond any power now to stay, and they made ready for what they must do.
Yet did the woman stop once, too. She looked up from her dream and she saw the three gods in the shrine, the chief a staid old man staring straight ahead of him, and by his side two small attendants, little, decent gods of the wayside for those who paused in their journey for worship or for shelter. She took the garment she had laid aside and went and threw it on their heads and covered up their staring eyes.
XI
IN THE NIGHT OF that same day the wind rose suddenly as a tiger’s roar out of the distant hills, and it blew the clouds down out of the sky where they had hung heavy and full of rain, their light long gone. And the sudden rains poured and washed the heats out of that day. When at last the mist was gone, the dawn, pure and cool, grew quiet and fell from a gray and tranquil sky.
Now out of that storm and chill came down from heaven suddenly, at last, the old woman’s death. She had sat asleep too long, her old body naked for the wind to blow upon when the sun went down, and when the mother came home at twilight, silent, and as if she came from the field and honest labor, she found the old woman in her bed and cold with sudden chills and aches and she cried out, “Some wicked spirit has caught me, daughter! Some ill wind fell on me!” And she moaned and put out her little shriveled hand and the mother took it and it was dry and burning hot.
Almost was the mother glad to have it so. Almost did she rejoice there was this thing to take her mind from her own heart and from the sweet and evil thing that she had done that day. She murmured, “It was an ill black sky — very nearly I came home to see if you sat under such a sullen sky, but I thought you would see its hue and come in from under it.”
“I slept, though,” the old woman wailed, “I slept, and I slept on and we all slept, and when I woke the sun was gone and I was cold as death.”
Then the mother hastened and made hot water for the old woman and put some ginger in it and hot herbs, and the old woman drank it. Yet in the night her dry fever grew and she complained she could not breathe because some imp sat on her chest and drove his knife into her lungs, and after a while she ceased talking and lay breathing roughly from her pressed lungs.
And the mother was glad she must not sleep. Through the night she was glad she must sit beside the old woman’s bed and watch her and give her water when she moaned for it and put the quilt about her when she pushed it off and cried that she burned and yet shivered too. Outside the night had grown black and mighty rains poured down upon the thatched roof and here and there it broke through and leaked, so that the mother must drag the old woman’s bed out from its corner where the rain seeped in, and over the bed where the children slept she laid a reed mat to hold the leaks off. Yet all these things she was glad to have to do and glad to be so busy all night long.
When the morning came the old soul was worse. Yes, any eye could see it, and the mother sent the lad for the cousin and he came and the cousin’s wife came and this neighbor and that and they all looked at the old woman who lay now only partly knowing what was about her, and partly dazed with her fever and the pain she had when she breathed. Each one cried out what must be done and what remedy could be tried, and the mother hastened here and there to try them all in turn. Once the old woman came to herself and seeing the crowd gathered there, she panted from her laden breast, “There is an imp sits here on me and holds me down. … My hour — my hour—”
Then the mother hastened to her and she saw there was a thing the old soul had to say and could not get it out, but she plucked trembling at the shroud she wore that was full of patches now, and she had laughed when every patch was set in place and cried she would outlive the garment yet. But now she plucked at it and the mother bent her head low and the old woman gasped, “This shroud — all patched — my son—”
The crowd stared to hear these words and looked wondering at each other, but the elder lad said quickly, “I know what she wants, mother. She wants her third shroud new to lie in, the one my father said he would send, and she ever said she would outlive this one she has now.”
The old woman’s face lit faintly then and they all cried out who heard it, “How stout an old soul is this!” and they said, “Well, here is a very curious brave old woman, and she will have her third shroud as she ever said she would!”