A CRACK IN THE GRANITE
While Pearl was writing her experiences in her little red book, Mr. and
Mrs. Motherwell were in the kitchen below reading a letter which Mr.
Motherwell had just brought from the post office. It read as follows:
BRANDON HOSPITAL, August 10th.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Motherwell: I know it will be at least some slight
comfort for you to know that the poppies you sent Polly reached her in
time to be the very greatest comfort to her. Her joy at seeing them and
holding them in her hands would have been your reward if you could have
seen it, and although she had been delirious up to that time for
several days, the sight of the poppies seemed to call her mind back.
She died very peacefully and happily at daybreak this morning. She was
a sweet and lovable girl and we had all grown very fond of her, as I am
sure you did, too.
May God abundantly bless you, dear Mr. and Mrs. Motherwell, for your
kind thoughtfulness to this poor lonely girl. "Inasmuch as ye have done
it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto Me."
Yours cordially,
(Nurse) AGNES HUNT.
"By Jinks."
Sam Motherwell took the letter from his wife's hand and excitedly read
it over to himself, going over each word with his blunt forefinger. He
turned it over and examined the seal, he looked at the stamp and inside
of the envelope, and failing to find any clue to the mystery he
ejaculated again:
"By Jinks! What the deuce is this about poppies. Is that them things
she sowed out there?"
His wife nodded.
"Well, who do you suppose sent them? Who would ever think of sending
them?"
Mrs. Motherwell made no reply.
"It's a blamed nice letter anyway," he said, looking it over again, "I
guess Polly didn't give us a hard name to them up there in the
'ospital, or we wouldn't ha' got a letter like this; and poor Polly's
dead. Well, she was a kind of a good-natured, willin' thing too, and
not too slow either."
Mrs. Motherwell was still silent. She had not thought that Polly would
die, she had always had great faith in the vitality of English people.
"You can't kill them," she had often said; but now Polly was dead. She
was sick, then, when she went around the house so strangely silent and
flushed. Mrs. Motherwell's memory went back with cruel
distinctness--she had said things to Polly then that stung her now with
a remorse that was new and terrible, and Polly had looked at her dazed
and wondering, her big eyes flushed and pleading. Mrs. Motherwell
remembered now that she had seen that look once before. She had helped
Sam to kill a lamb once, and it came back to her now, how through it
all, until the blow fell, the lamb had stood wondering, pleading, yet
unflinching, and she had run sobbing away--and now Polly was dead--and
those big eyes she had so often seen tearful, yet smiling, were closed
and their tears forever wiped away.
That night she dreamed of Polly, confused, troubled dreams; now it was
Polly's mother who was dead, then it was her own mother, dead thirty
years ago. Once she started violently and sat up. Someone had been
singing--the echo of it was still in the room:
Over my grave keep the green willers growing.
The yellow harvest moon flooded the room with its soft light. She could
see through the window how it lay like a mantle on the silent fields.
It was one of those glorious, cloudless nights, with a hint of frost in
the air that come just as the grain is ripening. From some place down
the creek a dog barked; once in a while a cow-bell tinkled: a horse
stamped in the stable and then all was still. Numberless stars shone
through the window. The mystery of life and death and growing things
was around her. As for man his days are as grass; as a flower of the
field so he flourisheth--for it is soon cut off and we fly away--fly
away where?--where?--her head throbbed with the question.
The eastern sky flushed red with morning; a little ripple came over the
grain. She watched it listlessly. Polly had died at daybreak--didn't
the letter say? Just like that, the light rising redder and redder, the
stars disappearing, she wondered dully to herself how often she would
see the light coming, like this, and yet, and yet, some time would be
the last, and then what?
We shall be where suns are not,
A far serener clime.
came to her memory she knew not from whence. But she shuddered at it.
Polly's eyes, dazed, pleading like the lamb's, rose before her; or was
it that Other Face, tender, thorn-crowned, that had been looking upon
her in love all these long years!
She spoke so kindly to Pearl when she went into the kitchen that the
little girl looked up apprehensively.
"Are ye not well, ma'am?" she asked quickly.
Mrs. Motherwell hesitated.
"I did not sleep very well," she said, at last.
"That's the mortgage," Pearl thought to herself.
"And when I did sleep, I had such dreadful dreams," Mrs. Motherwell
went on, strangely communicative.
"That looks more like the cancer," Pearl thought as she stirred the
porridge.
"We got bad news," Mrs. Motherwell said. "Polly is dead."
Pearl stopped stirring the porridge.
"When did she die," she asked eagerly.
"The morning before yesterday morning, about daylight."
Pearl made a rapid calculation. "Oh good!" she cried,
"goody--goody--goody! They were in time."
She saw her mistake in a moment, and hastily put her hand over her
mouth as if to prevent the unruly member from further indiscretions.
She stirred the porridge vigorously, while her cheeks burned.
"Yes, they were," Mrs. Motherwell said quietly.
Pearl set the porridge on the back of the stove and ran out to where
the poppies nodded gaily. Never before had they seemed so beautiful.
Mrs. Motherwell watched her through the window bending over them.
Something about the poppies appealed to her now. She had once wanted
Tom to cut them down, and she thought of it now.
She tapped on the window. Pearl looked up, startled.
"Bring in some," she called.
When the work was done for the morning, Mrs. Motherwell went up the
narrow stair way to the little room over the kitchen to gather together
Polly's things.
She sat on Polly's little straw bed and looked at the dismal little
room. Pearl had done what she could to brighten it. The old bags and
baskets had been neatly piled in one corner, and quilts had been spread
over them to hide their ugliness from view. The wind blew gently in the
window that the hail had broken. The floor had been scrubbed clean and
white--the window, what was left of it--was shining.
She was reminded of Polly everywhere she looked. The mat under her feet
was one that Polly had braided. A corduroy blouse hung at the foot of
the bed. She remembered now that Polly had worn it the day she came.
In a little yellow tin box she found Polly's letters--the letters that
had given her such extravagant joy. She could see her yet, how eagerly
she would seize them and rush up to this little room with them,
transfigured.
Mrs. Motherwell would have to look at them to find out Polly's mother's
address. She took out the first letter slowly, then hurriedly put it
back again in the envelope and looked guiltily around the room. But it
had to be done. She took it out again resolutely, and read it with some
difficulty.
It was written in a straggling hand that wandered uncertainly over the
lines. It was a pitiful letter telling of poverty bitter and grinding,
but redeemed from utter misery by a love and faith that shone from
every line:
My dearest polly i am glad you like your plice and
your misses is so kind as wot you si, yur letters are
my kumfit di an nit. bill is a ard man and says hif
the money don't cum i will ave to go to the workus.
but i no you will send it der polly so hi can old my
little plice hi got a start todi a hoffcer past hi
that it wos the workhus hoffcer. bill ses he told im
to cum hif hi cant pi by septmbr but hi am trustin
God der polly e asn't forgot us. hi 'm glad the poppies
grew. ere's a disy hi am sendin yu hi can mike the
butonoles yet. hi do sum hevry di mrs purdy gave me
fourpence one di for sum i mide for her hi ad a cup
of tee that di. hi am appy thinkin of yu der polly.
"And Polly is dead!" burst from Mrs. Motherwell as something gathered
in her throat. She laid the letter down and looked straight ahead of
her.
The sloping walls of the little kitchen loft, with its cobwebbed beams
faded away, and she was looking into a squalid little room where an old
woman, bent and feeble, sat working buttonholes with trembling fingers.
Her eyes were restless and expectant; she listened eagerly to every
sound. A step is at the door, a hand is on the latch. The old woman
rises uncertainly, a great hope in her eyes--it is the letter--the
letter at last. The door opens, and the old woman falls cowering and
moaning, and wringing her hands before the man who enters. It is the
officer!
Mrs. Motherwell buried her face in her hands.
"Oh God be merciful, be merciful," she sobbed.
Sam Motherwell, knowing nothing of the storm that was passing through
his wife's mind, was out in the machine house tightening up the screws
and bolts in the binders, getting ready for the harvest. The barley was
whitening already.
The nurse's letter had disturbed him. He tried to laugh at himself--the
idea of his boxing up those weeds to send to anybody. Still the nurse
had said how pleased Polly was. By George, it is strange what will
please people. He remembered when he went down to Indiana buying
horses, how tired he got of the look of corn-fields, and how the sight
of the first decent sized wheat field just went to his heart, when he
was coming back. Someway he could not laugh at anything that morning,
for Polly was dead. And Polly was a willing thing for sure; he seemed
to see her yet, how she ran after the colt the day it broke out of the
pasture, and when the men were away she would hitch up a horse for him
as quick as anybody.
"I kind o' wish now that I had given her something--it would have
pleased her so--some little thing," he added hastily.
Mrs. Motherwell came across the yard bareheaded.
"Come into the house, Sam," she said gently. "I want to show you
something."
He looked up quickly, but saw something in his wife's face that
prevented him from speaking.
He followed her into the house. The letters were on the table, Mrs.
Motherwell read them to him, read them with tears that almost choked
her utterance.
"And Polly's dead, Sam!" she cried when she had finished the last one.
"Polly's dead, and the poor old mother will be looking, looking for
that money, and it will never come. Sam, can't we save that poor old
woman from the poorhouse? Do you remember what the girl said in the
letter, 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my little
ones, ye have done it unto Me?' We didn't deserve the praise the girl
gave us. We didn't send the flowers, we have never done anything for
anybody and we have plenty, plenty, and what is the good of it, Sam?
We'll die some day and leave it all behind us."
Mrs. Motherwell hid her face in her apron, trembling with excitement.
Sam's face was immovable, but a mysterious Something, not of earth, was
struggling with him. Was it the faith of that decrepit old woman in
that bare little room across the sea, mumbling to herself that God had
not forgotten? God knows. His ear is not dulled; His arm is not
shortened; His holy spirit moves mightily.
Sam Motherwell stood up and struck the table with his fist.
"Ettie," he said, "I am a hard man, a danged hard man, and as you say
I've never given away much, but I am not so low down yet that I have to
reach up to touch bottom, and the old woman will not go to the poor
house if I have money enough to keep her out!"
Sam Motherwell was as good as his word.
He went to Winnipeg the next day, but before he left he drew a check
for one hundred dollars, payable to Polly's mother, which he gave to
the Church of England clergyman to send for him. About two months
afterwards he received a letter from the clergyman of the parish in
which Polly's mother lived, telling him that the money had reached the
old lady in time to save her from the workhouse; a heart-broken letter
of thanks from Polly's mother herself accompanied it, calling on God to
reward them for their kindness to her and her dear dead girl.