Worcester Democrat and the ledger-enterprise. (Pocomoke City, Md.) 1921-1953, 1942-08-07

lie went DdCk 10 MS WOEh anu ~
occasional visits to the Lewis house,
now much more quiet, for Annie had
done as she had promised, and Grant
had ordered her to bed A blight had
come down from the sky and lay
heavy on that hilltop. Beverly was
sad and remote and not a little ter
rified. 1t was no time for love-mak-
ing.
Beverly would ask, whitefaced and
silent, "Will she suffer, Chris ?"
They'll look after that, my dear"
Looking back on those months
later, he was to remember them as a
tumble of hard, driving work, of hasty
and sober hours with Beverly, and of
quiet intervals in cool and orderly
hospital. He was not on duty now,
but he was still called in on emer-
gencies. Occasionally he operated.
He was utterly content then with a
return of that early feeling of his,
not that he was king or God, but that
some Of that power on which old
Dave had depended had for a time
passed into him.
And then old Dave died, and not
from age after all. Chris received a
telegram from Hiram
"Father killed last night. Auto
mobile accident. Mother asking for
you. Can you come? ?"
He went at once, shocked and stun
ned, and a day or two later he saw
old David laid away in the country
cemetery where he had always said he
buried all his mistakes. The crowd
was enormous, and in the forefront
stood Letitia surrounded by her boys.
She did not look down. She stood with
her head thrown back and her eyes
on the sky, as if she saw David rid
ing in triumph there, looking after
his own somewhere beyond the clouds.
That night, lying alone in her big
bed, the other side hollow with the
weight of that missing body, she sent
for Chris. The boys had gone back
to their houses scattered over the big
farm-neat white wooden houses,
each with its wood lot, its barn, its
chickens, and its overlooking children.
land, they said, but what lay next to
his! So there was plenty of land.
And Letitia, lying there alone, was
thinking of all this, that the boys had
plenty and would have more, and that
Chris, who was also one of her boys,
looked worn and not too prosperous.
"Sit down, Chris" she said in her
thin voice.
He sat down and took her hand with
its knotted veins. She was like David
himself, still indomitable, still unde-
feated.
"I'm lonely tonight" she told him,
'but I'm not grieving, Chris. Not for
David. He's all right. He would be
glad to get rid of his body. 1t had
troubled him lot lately"
She came at last to her reason for
sending for him. She was like the
old doctor in some ways; her body
was troubling her now, and she didn't
care how soon she could cast it off. !
No, nothing wrong. Just a nuisance.
But the point was that she had saved
little money of her own, and when
that happened it was to go to Chris.
what 1 thought was maybe you'd
take it and go abroad to study, Chris.
1t might be enough"
He protested, but she was firm.
None of the boys had studied medi-
cine, and that had disappointed their
father. He had always hoped secret
ly that Chris would follow him there
in the country. And she relaxed only !
when at last Chris agreed, as he left
her with that hollow beside her. He
noticed that one of her small hands |
lay there, as if perhaps, now that old
David was gone, she felt closer to him
that she had ever dared to be while
he lived.
There was nothing to tell Chris,
that night, that the time would come
when he himself would find sanctuary
and almost peace in that same bed
room.
He went back to the city again,
self-confident and perhaps the better
for Letitia's confidence in him, to his
work, to seeing Beverly, and to face
again the problem of the Walters
family.
May ended in a burst of heat. It
hung in waves over the car tracks on
the street and set the paving soft