“By that time,” Chet assured me, “everybody in town knowed about Uncle
Jed and this pain of his, and from now on he talked about it more. You
stop to see him any day, and he’d groan and take on in a way that ’u’d
surprise you. He stayed in bed all the time, in a room all shut up
tight, reading his papers and drinking his gin and eating all the time.
Deborah took good care of him; she was that kind of a woman. She had
backbone, but she was built to take care of folks, and half the town had
had her in when folks was sick. There was times when she threatened to
leave him, but she never did, him always saying he was about to die.”
There were skeptics, it appeared. Doctor Crapo himself was at last
beginning to suspect the old miser’s play-acting.
“If he’d had that pain all this time,” he told Deborah, “he’d be howling
with it night and day or dead long ago. He’s a lazy hound; that’s all,
Miss Grant.”
But Deborah would not altogether be convinced, and when Jed heard the
doctor’s words, he wagged his head and said pathetically:
“That’s what I git for bearing it so brave’. If I’d yell and take on,
you’d believe me; but because I keep my mouth shut and stand these
torments, you think I’m lying.”
So Deborah stayed with him. There was no avarice in her, but there was
the instinct for service, and some trace of blood affection for this
worthless brother, last of her kin alive. She gave him pitying and
tender care, and the old man, in his slothful bed, fattened enormously,
till it was scarcely possible for him to move at all. Yet in May, 1900,
he was, as Chet had recorded, still alive and kicking; and in June of
that year Deborah suddenly died.
V
This woman was loved in Fraternity, and with reason. To the funeral
services in the little farmhouse came more men and women than could be
crowded within doors. Jed, abed in the next room, listened to the
minister’s slow and reverent words with a derisive grin. One or two
people came in to speak to him, charitably, as people do at such hours.
There was an element of martyrdom about the woman’s death that awed
them, glorifying even the ugly ceremonies of the funeral.
Jed did not feel this at all. He was amusing himself with his own
reflections, and as the service drew toward its end he became so
absorbed in his own thoughts that he was not aware when the stirring of
feet marked the departure of the little cortège. The last man and the
last woman left the house to follow what was left of Deborah to her
grave, and five minutes after they were gone Jed realized that he was
alone.
Not at first sure of this, he called out; but no one answered. When he
knew that he would not be overheard, the fat man began to chuckle and
shake with mirth at thought of how he had tricked his brother and
sisters; how, trading upon their avarice and their faint love for him,
he had bought their lives with empty promises, never to be fulfilled.
But after a little this amusement passed; it gave way to a desire to
talk to some one, share this jest with them. He called out once more,
but no answer came to his call.
The realization that he was in fact utterly alone, the abrupt
possibility that hereafter he would always be alone, with no tender
hands to serve him, startled the old man, and somewhat affrighted him.
He was aware of a tremor of fear at the prospect of the loneliness that
lay ahead, and because he wished to reassure himself, give evidence that
power still dwelt in him, he decided to get out of bed.
With some effort he pushed away the heavy coverlets with which he was
accustomed to swaddle his vast body, and tried to swing his feet to the
floor, lift his bulk from the bed. He struggled for an instant, then
fell back with white face and staring eyes, and the sweat of fear upon
his forehead.
For the first time in his life he had suddenly been stricken with a
terrific pain in his bowels. He had never suffered this agony before,
yet knew it for what it was; knew it for one of those shafts of anguish
that presage months or years of torment, with no relief save a torturous
death at the end.
He whispered, with stiff and horror-stricken lips, “I’m a-dying.” This
time he spoke truth. He had, in fact, at last begun to die.