The end of all living ( part 4)

And Monday morning, spite of his loyal dissuasions, she packed her "blue

chist," and drove off to a far-away cousin, who got her "nussin'" to do.

Another lesson from the warning finger of Death: let what was life not

dream that it can sway the life that is, after the two part company.

Not always were mothers-in-law such breakers of the peace. There is a

story in Tiverton of one man who went remorsefully mad after his wife's

death, and whose mind dwelt unceasingly on the things he had denied

her. These were not many, yet the sum seemed to him colossal. It piled

the Ossa of his grief. Especially did he writhe under the remembrance of

certain blue dishes she had desired the week before her sudden death;

and one night, driven by an insane impulse to expiate his blindness, he

walked to town, bought them, and placed them in a foolish order about

her grave. It was a puerile, crazy deed, but no one smiled, not even the

little children who heard of it next day, on the way home from school, and

went trudging up there to see. To their stirring minds it seemed a strange

departure from the comfortable order of things, chiefly because their

elders stood about with furtive glances at one another and murmurs of

"Poor creatur'!" But one man, wiser than the rest, "harnessed up," and

went to tell the dead woman's mother, a mile away. Jonas was

"shackled;" he might "do himself a mischief." In the late afternoon, the

guest so summoned walked quietly into the silent house, where Jonas sat

by the window, beating one hand incessantly upon the sill, and staring at

the air. His sister, also, had come; she was frightened, however, and had

betaken herself to the bedroom, to sob. But in walked this little plump,

soft-footed woman, with her banded hair, her benevolent spectacles, and

her atmosphere of calm.

"I guess I'll blaze a fire, Jonas," said she. "You step out an' git me a mite

o' kindlin'."

The air of homely living enwrapped him once again, and mechanically,

with the inertia of old habit, he obeyed. They had a "cup o' tea" together;

and then, when the dishes were washed, and the peaceful twilight began

to settle down upon them like a sifting mist, she drew a little rocking chair

to the window where he sat opposite, and spoke."Jonas," said she, in that still voice which had been harmonized by the

experiences of life, "arter dark, you jest go up an' bring home them blue

dishes. Mary's got an awful lot o' fun in her, an' if she ain't laughin' over

that, I'm beat. Now, Jonas, you do it! Do you s'pose she wants them nice

blue pieces out there through wind an' weather? She'd ruther by half see

'em on the parlor cluzzet shelves; an' if you'll fetch 'em home, I'll scallop

some white paper, jest as she liked, an' we'll set 'em up there."

Jonas wakened a little from his mental swoon. Life seemed warmer, more

tangible, again.

"Law, do go," said the mother soothingly. "She don't want the whole

township tramplin' up there to eye over her chiny. Make her as nervous

as a witch. Here's the ha'-bushel basket, an' some paper to put between

'em. You go, Jonas, an' I'll clear off the shelves."

So Jonas, whether he was tired of guiding the impulses of his own unquiet

mind, or whether he had become a child again, glad to yield to the

maternal, as we all do in our grief, took the basket and went. He stood

by, still like a child, while this comfortable woman put the china on the

shelves, speaking warmly, as she worked, of the pretty curving of the

cups, and her belief that the pitcher was "one you could pour out of." She

stayed on at the house, and Jonas, through his sickness of the mind, lay

back upon her soothing will as a baby lies in its mother's arms. But the

china was never used, even when he had come to his normal estate, and

bought and sold as before. The mother's prescience was too keen for that.

Here in this ground are the ambiguities of life carried over into that other

state, its pathos and its small misunderstandings. This was a much-

married man whose last spouse had been a triple widow. Even to him the

situation proved mathematically complex, and the sumptuous stone to

her memory bears the dizzying legend that "Enoch Nudd who erects this

stone is her fourth husband and his fifth wife." Perhaps it was the

exigencies of space which brought about this amazing elision; but surely,

in its very apparent intention, there is only a modest pride. For

indubitably the much-married may plume themselves upon being also the

widely sought. If it is the crown of magic to be desired, here you have it,

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