The Houma courier. (Houma, La.) 1878-1939, 1897-09-04
ut evening Cine.
~~-
~ LILLIAN CUTLER COUCH.
1ANN8N

insufficient to press out the molding of
40 years. So the curves Of his lips were
but partially Strengthened as he stood
with n hard, toil-shapened hand rest
ing heavily upon the table and looked
upon Martha, his wife, though the light
of good content might be shut from his
eyes and the ache in his heart seem un-
ending.
The face of Martha Penruddoek had
been slowly nodded. by an uneventful
happiness into curves of calm satfsfac-
ton, but on her the weight of the six
days sorrow had left deep dentings,
and her eyes were awful with the shade
of a cold, voiceless misery as she stood
straight and motionless at the window
and looked down across the sunny slope
to the spot where her son, her one
comely son, had just been laid, dead.
Outside, the afternoon sun blazed
down upon the square gray walls and
hardened the blisters already raised up
on the green front door. In days now
passed a fat baby hand had pressed the
blisters on the lower panels and a baby
heart bemoaned a lack of inches as baby
eyes gazed higher. But with growth
came Indifference, and the blisters of
the upper panels were still unmuti-
lated, standing out as so many protests
against the SUMS immoderation. In the
trim front garden, however, there were
no such protests. The sunfowers, the
dahlias, the holyhocks, the roses, all
opened their glorious hearts to receive
his fire and loved him for his ardency.
While mignonette and marioram, Law
ender and nasturtiums, candy tuft,
sweet peas and boid-eyed marigolds
mingled their charms to the making
of a glowing, growing pomander,
stretching on either side the gravel box
edged path, from blistered door to gar
den gate. And the bees buzzed desul-
torily, slipping honey as if there were
no need for haste; and the big rides
cent flies rested. still and cleaning, on
the hot gray pillars of the porch.
Beyond the house, and the garden,
and the dusty white road along which
the black-suited villagers had passed
so short time ago, sloped down q tawny
cornfield, where the reapers bent to
their labor, leaving the grain in long,
fallen swathes behind them as they
passed upon their way. And beyond
this slope, dotted with life and spread
with the means of life, lay the peaceful
acre of death, with one brown mound
among the grassy mounds, beneath
which lay the gladness of a woman's
life.
And the afternoon wore on. The sun
moved slowly across the clear, still sky,
leaving a shadow pillar athwart the
gray stone doorstep and a grief in the
heart Of the sunflowers. The bright
square, too, which had blazed through
the parlor window on to the rose
wreathed carpet, had travelled and trav-
eled by slow degrees along the floor,
then climbed the damasE-patterned
wall and finally disappeared in the
scroll work of the cornice. And Peter
Perruddock's lips seemed to grow
straighter and narrower as he looked
upon Martha, his wife. And the tall
clock in the stone hall licked the mo-
ments away-always the same, no hur-
ry, no change of tone, no ~relenting.
Sweet is the scent of pink clover by
the path across a short wheat field,
when the evening dew falls gently and
damps the full-blown petals. Peaceful
and kind is the twilight when a faint
breeze sways the slight gossamers, cool
ing the sun-scorched verdure and re-
viving a fainting land, Yet scent and
light were as nothing to the senses Of
Peter Penruddock as he stood by the
gate of his rick yard and gazed at the
steep, winding field path up which Mar
tina had slowly gone an hour ago.
1t was so terrible, this great silencing
grief which had shut MIN, her husband,
from her heart and care. His SORROW
surely his, if hers-could have been
eased by speech and softened by sym
pathy; but the wife had taken it 9TH
erwise, lad held her heart and lips
tight shut against words of comfort,
leaving him to mourn alone, outside.
But it wa not of this that Peter
thought as he looked up across the
steep wheat field; he was not given to
the weighing of his rights and his
wrongs; only TO him the pain of her
anguish "a unbearabIe, a sorrow ever
greater than the other sorrow, mas
much as it was living and more in
tangible.
With wistful eyes and weighted heart
he left the rick yard and turned up
wards by the clover-edged path through
the bare brown field at the back of the
gray farm house. He knew where he
should find her; he knew how shewould
receive him; this last was knowledge
which had come to him within the past
dark week. She had no need of him;
she chose to suffer alone-silent, and
hard and uncontrolled.
On the old wooden seat at the bend
of the sloping field he found her; her
shawl had fallen back from her shout
Gers; her eyes, wide and expression
less, fixed on that peaceful spot beyond
the new-reaped cornfield in the val
ley below. She did not stir as he drew
near nor move her eyes as he sat on the
bench beside her and took one cold and
unresisting hand in his.
Patty" he said, gently. 'Patty, dear.
Wife"
But it was as if she did not hear. And
the lines of her face were deep and