VII.

That night was one of anguish and horror. As soon as enough strength had

come to her with the return of consciousness, Claire insisted upon being

taken to where her father lay. Not a tear left her eyes as she knelt

beside his body. She was very white, and seemed perfectly calm. She

kissed the dead man, now and then, on forehead and cheek. Once she rose,

went to the window, and set both arms lengthwise upon its sash, propping

her chin against her clasped hands. In this attitude she stared forth at

the heaven, still full of moony light and still alive with its black

pageantry of hurrying clouds. But their motion was more quick, now; the

wind had grown stronger and colder; all touch of mildness was rapidly

vanishing from the atmosphere. Claire felt the panes shake, and heard

them rattle, as she leaned thus. There seemed an awful sympathy between

this wild phase of nature and her own tumultuous, distraught sensations.

Grief and alarm clashed within her soul. She could not simply and

passionately regret her father's loss, for the thought of her own

friendless and penurious state would thrust itself into her

consciousness. Her feelings of pure bereavement, of standing face to

face with a vast and stern solitude, of having had something torn from

her heart by the roots, were terrible enough. But none the less, on

this account, could she fail to think with inward thrills of fright on

the subject of her merely material future. In an hour or two something

solidly defensive had been shattered and swept away. Her father's

protection had kept aloof, so to speak, the huge, merciless forces of

society. Now these forces were rushing upon her like yonder stream of

antic-shaped clouds.

"What is to become of me?" she murmured aloud, not knowing that she

spoke at all. "Who will help me? Where shall I turn? I am so alone--so

fearfully alone!"

Mrs. Twining had come into the room, as it chanced, a moment before the

utterance of Claire's first words. It was now a little before midnight;

she had entered this chamber of death twice before, and had looked at

her daughter's kneeling figure, there beside the corpse, but had retired

again in silence. Now she spoke, as Claire finished speaking. The girl

turned instantly as she began.

"Yes," she said, in her most hard and curt way. "I s'pose you _are_

alone, now _he's_ gone! You ain't got any mother, of course not! She's a

cipher; she always was. You're going to quit her, I dare say; you're

going to leave her in the lurch. P'raps you'll find some of those you

was with to-night that'll see you don't come to grief. Well, 't ain't

for me to complain at this late day. I've had chance enough to take your

measure, Miss, long ago!"

There was a look of dreary fatigue on Claire's white face as she slowly

answered: "Mother, I will not leave you. I don't wish to leave you."

"Oh, you don't, eh? Then why did you say you was _alone_?"

"Did I say it?" returned Claire. She put one hand to her forehead. "I--I

must have spoken aloud without knowing it." ... Immediately afterward

she crossed the room, going very close to her mother's side, and looking

with eager meaning into the cold, austere, aquiline face.

"Don't be unkind to-night," she went on. "Remember this dreadful thing

that has happened. It--it ought to--to soften you, Mother. It has nearly

crazed _me_. I cannot reason; I can scarcely think. I--I can only

suffer!"

Mrs. Twining curled her mouth in bitter dissent. "Oh, you didn't know

the poor man was sick when you ran off and staid for hours. No, indeed!

If you had, you wouldn't 'a' worried him as you did when he come home to

tea and found you gone. He fell like a log, just as he got up from the

table. But he hadn't eaten hardly a thing, and I guess you know why he

didn't."

Claire uttered a quick, flurried cry. She grasped her mother's arm.

"You--you don't mean," she exclaimed, in a piteously fierce way, "that

_I_ killed Father--or--or hastened his death by--by not being home? Oh,

say, Mother, that you don't mean this! It would drive me mad if I

believed so! Please say it isn't true!"

Claire's aspect breathed such desperation that it wrought havoc even

with so stolid a perversity as that of the harsh, unpropitiable being

whom she confronted.

"Well, no, I don't say _that_," murmured Mrs. Twining, with sullen

alteration of mien and tone. "But I _do_ say, Claire, that you was off

somewhere, and _he_ was fretted and pestered because you was, and" ...

Here the peculiar nature of this most tormenting woman suddenly revealed

a change. Her grim mouth twitched; her nostrils produced a kind of

catarrhal sniff; her cold black eyes winked, as if tears were lurking to

assail them. The next words that she spoke were in a high, querulous

key.

"Oh! so you're the only one that's fit to mourn for that poor dead one,

hey? I, his lawful wedded wife, and your own mother, ain't got any right

to grieve! Oh, very well! I'm nobody at all, here. I'd better get away.

You're chief mourner. There's nobody but you. I s'pose you'll pay all

the expenses of the funeral, since you're so dreadful stuck-up about

it!"

Claire shook her head, in a pathetic, conciliating way. She lifted one

finger, at the same time. Her face was still white, and her dark-blue

eyes were burning feverishly.

"No, no, Mother!" she said. "This is all wrong. You mustn't speak like

that, here. If you didn't love him, I did. There's a little money yet.

It's yours, but you'll give it; you've told me of it; it will be enough

to bury Father decently. I promise you that if you _do_ give it I will

try very hard to get some work that will support us both."

Mrs. Twining put a hand on either hip. She stared at Claire for a

moment. Then she answered her.

"No," she said. "I won't give a cent of it. It's only about a hundred

dollars. He ain't led me such a nice life that I should be so awful

grateful to him now he's gone. There's ways of burying that don't cost

money. Yes, there's ways.... Let 'em come and take him. I ain't going to

beggar myself because he wants a rosewood coffin, and"--

"Mother!" cried Claire, pointing toward the dead, "he is _here_!"

"Oh, well!" said Mrs. Twining. She spoke the two brief words in a sort

of abrupt whimper, taking a step or two toward the calm sheeted form of

her dead husband. "S'pose he _is_ here. I can't use that money, and I

won't!"

Claire felt the hideous taste of those words. They who have thus far

read this chronicle must have read it ill if they are not sure that no

love for a mother so ceaselessly froward and hostile could now survive

in her daughter's heart. But though she knew her mother capable of dread

acts if occasion favored, Claire was thunderstruck by this last

announcement.

It appeared to her monstrous and barbarous, as it indeed was. She

clenched both hands, for an instant, and her eyes flashed.

"Say what you mean!" she retorted, not raising her voice, because of

that piteous reverence which the still, prone shape inspired. "_Can_ you

mean that you will let charity bury our dead for us? _Can_ you mean

that?"

Mrs. Twining gave a quick, grim nod. "Yes, I do mean it," she returned.

"And if you wasn't a fool you'd see why."

Claire folded her arms. Her next words came with grave, measured

composure from white, set lips. "I may be a fool," she said, "but thank

God I haven't your kind of wisdom! Keep your money, Mother. Do as you

threaten. But when Potter's Field takes poor Father's body, that will be

the end of everything between you and me. Remember that I said this. I

will never speak to you, never notice you again, if you do so shameful a

thing. If you spend that money as duty and as decency should both

prompt, I will work for you, slave for you, cling to you always. But if

not, we are no longer mother and daughter. You see, I don't speak with

heat or with haste. I am perfectly calm. Now choose which course you

will take. But never say that I did not fully warn you, when it will be

too late for retraction!"

There was a splendidly quiet impressiveness in this speech of Claire's.

She went and knelt once more beside her father's body after she had

finished it. She had resolved upon no further entreaty or argument. The

very atrocity of her mother's proposed design seemed to place continued

discussion of it beyond the pale of all womanly dignity.

Mrs. Twining was too coarse a soul to see the matter as Claire saw it.

She preferred to take the chances that her daughter would relent when

the ignoble interment was over.

To-morrow came, and she gave no sign of altering her purpose. Claire

scarcely addressed a word to her during this day. A few of the

Greenpoint folk called at the house. Among these was Josie Morley,

distressed at the tidings of death, and prepared to utter voluble

regrets for having lost Claire in the crowd during the previous night.

But Claire would see no one. She remained with her father's body in the

little room upstairs, locking its door when she thought there was any

chance of a visitor being brought thither.

Now and then she wondered, with a dumb misery, whether her mother had

made any attempt to bring about the loathed burial. She herself had a

few dollars in her possession. This sum she meant to use in seeking

employment after the earth had closed over her father's corpse. Once or

twice a passionate impulse had seized her to go and seek help from those

under whom her father had lately served in his drudging clerkship. But

she repressed this feeling--or rather shame at the thought of possible

refusal, mixed with a natural proud reluctance to own the sad need in

which she stood, repressed it for her.

The next day she learned the full, torturing truth. Mrs. Twining had

carried out her threat. Two shabby men came with a pine box. They placed

the corpse herein. Claire had already paid it all the final reverential

rites which her sex and her grief would allow. It was dressed in the

same rusty outward garments which it had worn when death came. The men

held a little discussion below stairs with Mrs. Twining. They afterward

departed and remained away two good hours. When they returned they

brought a dark wagon with an arched top. In the interval Claire still

watched. She was quite silent. Perhaps if she had deigned now to plead

with her mother, the latter, already a little frightened at the girl's

stony, unvaried calmness, might have relented and agreed to more seemly

obsequies. But except one glance of immeasurable reproach, during a

brief visit which Mrs. Twining paid to the chamber, Claire gave no

further sign of revolt.

When the men returned, she chanced to be looking from the window. She

saw the wagon. She shuddered, and went back to her father. No one saw

her bid him the last farewells. She showed no trace of tears when the

men presently reentered the room, but her dark-blue eyes shone from her

hueless face with a dry, glassy glitter. Her mother now appeared. She

looked at Claire in a covert, uneasy way, though there was much dogged

obstinacy about the lines of her mouth. A moment later she spoke to the

men. It seemed to Claire like the refinement of hypocrisy that she

should set her voice in a mournful key.

"I s'pose you want to get it through right away," she said.

"Yes, ma'am," replied one of the men. "Those is always the orders."

Claire went to the window again. It was a raw, misty, drizzling day. She

stared out into the dreary street. She did not want to see that pitiful

box closed and sealed. She presently heard a grating sound which told

her just what the men were doing.

And then she heard another sound that was quite as harsh. It was her

mother's voice, lowered, and with a sort of whine in it.

"It's true enough that the dead ought to be buried properly, Claire, but

that ain't any reason why the living shouldn't live--the best way they

can. You take it hard now, but after a while you'll see you ain't got

any real right to blame me. You'll see"--

"Don't touch me, please," interrupted Claire. Her mother had laid a hand

on her arm, and she had receded instantly. Then she said, while

steadying her voice, though not caring whether the men heard or no: "Did

you intend going to--to the grave with him?"

Mrs. Twining gave a great elegiac sigh. "Oh, no, I couldn't stand it. I

should break right down long before I got there."

"Very well," said Claire, "I am going."

One of the men looked up at her. He had a small, round face, an odd

blond tuft of beard, and a pair of mild blue eyes. He held his

screw-driver thrust into a screw while he spoke. His voice was very

respectful. He had noticed Claire's look and mien before; he had a wife

and children at home. Scarcely ever, in his experience, had he known a

burial of this sort to take place from a dwelling as apparently thrifty

as the present one.

"Excuse me, Miss," the man said, "but you couldn't ride in the wagon.

There's just room for him and me." He indicated his companion by a

little motion of the head. "And there's three other bodies. We're takin'

'em to the almshouse."

"Where is the almshouse?" asked Claire. She could not help giving her

mother one shocked sidelong glance while this question left her lips.

"It's over in Flatbush," the man said.

Claire went close up to his side. If he had not seen the white distress

in her face before, he must plainly have seen it now. "I know where that

is," she said. "I could go there. The cars would take me." She put her

hand on the rough wood of the box. The touch was so light that it

resembled a caress. "Would they let me go to--to the almshouse and wait

... near _him_ ... till he is buried?"

Mrs. Twining at once began to weep. Or rather, she spoke in a wailing

tone that indicated tears, even if no tears really either gathered or

fell.

"Claire, you mustn't think of going! No, you mustn't! Things are bad

enough, as it is. Now, promise me that you won't take any such notion!

_Do_ promise!"

Claire paid no heed to this outburst. She was looking with eager fixity

at the man. She had already roused his sympathy; she felt certain of

it; his big, mild eye seemed to tell her so. "They won't all be buried

till about two o'clock," he said. "There'll be five or six bodies

to-day, I guess. If you start from here in about an hour, Miss, you can

get to the buryin'-ground by just the right time. I'll see to it you

do." The speaker here turned and winked one mild eye at his companion.

The latter was staring rather lifelessly at Claire. He had a long, pale,

tired-looking face.

"All right," he muttered, apathetically, as if he had not at all

comprehended, but was willing to take matters on trust.

"I'll see to it that he ain't got in till you come," pursued Claire's

new friend. "The Potter's Field ain't far from the County Buildings, as

they call 'em. I s'pose you know how to get to Flatbush?" He scratched

his sandy shock of hair for an instant, and told her just what cars to

take.

Claire put faith in him. Something made her do so. When the pine box had

been carried down stairs, placed inside the dark wagon, and driven away,

she went to her own room and made a small, neat brown-paper parcel. Her

clothes were few enough, and she left all of these except what seemed to

her of vital necessity. "I don't want to look like a tramp," she told

herself, with a darksome pleasantry. "I shall not, either. I shall only

be a poor, shabby girl with a bundle."

When she emerged from her room her mother met her in the hall. Claire

wore her bonnet. Mrs. Twining gave a frightened whimper as she saw this

and the parcel.

"Oh, Claire," she said, "you ain't really going _to_ the--the grave?"

"Yes, I am," she said. Her tones were so frigid and so melancholy that

they caused a palpable start in her who heard them.

"Oh, Claire," moaned her mother, "if you go, _I_ can't! I can't see him

buried that way! Of course _you_ can, if you want!"

"I do want," said Claire.

"But you'll come back! you'll come home again!"

As she was passing her mother, there in the hall, Claire turned and

faced her. "I shall never come home again," she said, scarcely raising

her voice above a whisper. "You remember what I told you."

Mrs. Twining was no longer merely frightened; she was terrified.

"Claire!" she burst forth, "I ain't done right, perhaps. But don't be

headstrong--now, don't! if you'd spoke to me yesterday--if you'd even

spoke to me this morning, I might, ... well, I might, after all, have

given the money. But it's too late now, and" ...

"Yes, it is too late now," Claire interrupted, and somehow with the

effect of a shaft, shot noiselessly, and tellingly aimed.

After that she hurried straight down stairs, passed along the lower

hall, and made rapid exit from the house.

A number of heads had been thrust from neighboring windows while the

body was being borne away. Claire, who endured what was thus far the

supreme humiliation of her life, wondered whether any one was watching

now, but she kept her eyes drooped toward the pavement as she moved

along, and never once looked to left or right. She despised these

possible watchers, and yet she remembered what her dead had been--how

kindly, how pure, how noble; and it was to her sense an infamy that his

ignominious burial should be made a theme of vulgar gossip.

"He is to be put in Potter's Field," she told her own aching, bursting

heart, while she still hurried along. "Yes, _he_! And he was so good, so

fine, so much a gentleman! He is to be put in Potter's Field!... But I

will see the last sod placed over him.... That man _will_ keep his

word.... I shall stand by poor Father, his only mourner. He will be glad

if he knows. What a slight thing it is to do for him, after all the love

he gave me! But it is all I _can_ do. All, and yet so little!"

A dreary ride in the cars at last brought her to Flatbush. After

alighting she had quite a long walk through the gray, foggy atmosphere

of a region which the sweetest mood of spring or summer finds no spell

to beautify. It was now as hideous and lonesome as that hateful tract

just beyond Greenpoint. The immense gloomy structures of the almshouses

loomed beside the path she took. The conductor on the car had told her

just how to reach the pauper graveyard. It lay at some distance from the

grim buildings that she was obliged to pass, and within whose walls were

prisoned the sin, the sickness and the madness of a great city.

Nothing could be more common, more neglectful, more wretchedly

melancholy, than the place she at length gained. It was scarcely an acre

in extent; it did not contain a single tree or shrub; it was enclosed by

a fence of coarse, careless boarding. Its graves were so thick that you

could scarcely pass between them. In each grave had been laid four

bodies, and excepting a pathetic half-dozen or so of simple wooden

crosses, there were no signs to tell who slept here, except rough, low

stakes, each bearing four numbers. Never was the oblivion of death more

sternly typified; never was its dark mockery more dolefully accentuated!

A little group of men stood near an open grave as Claire reached the

gate. She saw them, and recognized one of them, who advanced toward her.

She felt herself grow slightly faint as she perceived a box placed just

at the rim of the earthy cavity.

"Was I in time?" she asked of the man, as they walked together inside

the enclosure.

"Yes," he said, with a very kind voice. "You was just in time, Miss. All

the others is turned in except him. I saved him on purpose."