| |
|
NOTHING to
say to all those marriages!
She had made three
herself to three of his.
The score was even for them,
three to three.
But come to die she found she cared
so much:
She thought of children in a burial row;
Three children in a burial row were sad.
One man’s
three women in a burial row
Somehow made her
impatient with the man.
And so she said to Laban,
“You have done
A good deal right; don’t do the last
thing wrong.
Don’t make me lie with those two other
women.
”Laban said, No, he would not make her lie
With anyone but that she had a mind to,
If that was
how she felt, of course, he said.
She went her way.
But Laban having caught
This glimpse of lingering
person in Eliza,
And anxious to make all he could of
it
With something he remembered in himself,
Tried
to think how he could exceed his promise,
And give
good measure to the dead, though thankless.
If that
was how she felt, he kept repeating.
His first
thought under pressure was a grave
In a new boughten
grave plot by herself,
Under he didn’t care how great
a stone:
He’d sell a yoke of steers to pay for it.
And weren’t there special cemetery flowers,
That,
once grief sets to growing, grief may rest;
The
flowers will go on with grief awhile,
And no one seem
neglecting or neglected?
A prudent grief will not
despise such aids.
He thought of evergreen and
everlasting.
And then he had a thought worth many of
these.
Somewhere must be the grave of the young boy
Who married her for playmate more than helpmate,
And
sometimes laughed at what it was between them.
How
would she like to sleep her last with him?
Where was
his grave? Did Laban know his name?
He found the
grave a town or two away,
The headstone cut with
John, Beloved Husband,
Beside it room reserved; the
say a sister’s;
A never-married sister’s of that
husband,
Whether Eliza would be welcome there.
The
dead was bound to silence: ask the sister.
So Laban
saw the sister, and, saying nothing
Of where Eliza
wanted not to lie,
And who had thought to lay her
with her first love,
Begged simply for the grave. The
sister’s face
Fell all in wrinkles of responsibility.
She wanted to do right. She’d have to think.
Laban
was old and poor, yet seemed to care;
And she was old
and poor—but she cared, too.
They sat. She cast one
dull, old look at him,
Then turned him out to go on
other errands
She said he might attend to in the
village,
While she made up her mind how much she
cared—
And how much Laban cared—and why he cared,
(She made shrewd eyes to see where he came in.)
She’d looked Eliza up her second time,
A widow at her
second husband’s grave,
And offered her a home to
rest awhile
Before she went the poor man’s widow’s
way,
Housekeeping for the next man out of wedlock.
She and Eliza had been friends through all.
Who was
she to judge marriage in a world
Whose Bible’s so
confused up in marriage counsel?
The sister had not
come across this Laban;
A decent product of life’s
ironing-out;
She must not keep him waiting. Time
would press
Between the death day and the funeral
day.
So when she saw him coming in the street
She
hurried her decision to be ready
To meet him with his
answer at the door.
Laban had known about what it
would be
From the way she had set her poor old mouth,
To do, as she had put it, what was right.
She
gave it through the screen door closed between them:
“No, not with John. There wouldn’t be no sense.
Eliza’s had too many other men.”
Laban was forced
to fall back on his plan
To buy Eliza a plot to lie
alone in:
Which gives him for himself a choice of
lots
When his time comes to die and settle down.
|
|
|
