15

She must have made her choice or her body did, for right away she started to resist treatment. Her stomach could not retain anything after the first day when she was very hungry and ate a good breakfast. As time went on when they gave her shots her veins seemed to close automatically or else were too collapsed; they could not take the intravenous nourishment. When she grew weaker and they tried to give her a blood transfusion it produced shock and sent her into a coma.

Ash was in constant telephone communication with her doctor in New Haven who had been a classmate of his at the Yale Medical School, and he learned that what was happening in Taos was but a repetition of what had been going on at home, only her weakness has increased and the effort of the long journey had not done her any good and the two baths she had had at Ejo had had some reaction upon her that whipped up her temperature.

One significant fact her doctor told Ash was that her arthritic symptoms did not date from her first visit to Taos. Three years before she came here she had an attack and it had cleared up. But since her visit here she had had severe recurrences that crippl-ed her terribly, turning her to stone, making her helpless for months, when she had lain in bed like a graven image and the family had been obliged to do everything for her. Finally she would come out of an attack, resume her violin practice, give concerts and live a normal life.

Later her daughter Midge told Brett that she had always seemed to have a queer control of herself when she wanted to. If there was to some special performance of a musician she wanted to

16

hear very much, several times she had risen from her bed and dressed,
gone on a train and enjoyed some event in the city or in Philadelphia
or somewhere and then returned to her house where her body resumed
the symptoms she had temporarily held in abeyance.

She told me herself the Thursday morning after she got to
the hospital that in 1943 she had worked all day for months doing
Red Cross work but that she had been stupid for when she felt herself
growing tired out she had kept on and finally had broken down again.

She lay there in bed staring out the window at the lovely
view across the fields, and across the town beyond, to the sacred
mountain. She seemed to honestly trying to probe into the enigma of
herself and help to solve her own mystery. That first day she seemed
to me to be eased, she breathed better and she looked contented. But
it did not last. The adverse conflicting force hidden in her resumed
its dominance very soon.

Just on this very day Freida and Angellino returned from
California where they had been spending the winter months. Near
Carmel, near the Jeffers.

Freida told me Una was very jaunty in her Red Cross
Uniform and cap in which she had worked many thousand hours during
the war. Una's hair was white now but this made her eyes very blue.
She took great care of herself and stayed in bed every morning until
eleven o'clock, Robin getting her breakfast for her and attending to
all the chores.

I remembered how Una had scoured and polished and cleaned
the Taos House every morning ten years ago. She would take out the
rugs and shake them, polish the brasses, scrub the kitchen, and
everything shone and sparkled.

17

"The house looks _shabby_, Mabel!" exclaimed Freida who still polishes things up pretty well herself. "You know a _man_ doesn't know how to do things!" She continued. "Una goes out to the Red Cross every day before lunch and stays till evening and Robin does the housework! That's all he does and still it looks dir-r-rty! Poor Robin! He looks old and tired and he doesn't write any more. He did that "Medea" and that's all. I read it and it's _got_ something. Of course it's all about Una . . ."

I remembered sitting on the side of the ditch beside him the morning after Una shot herself and his words: "The tension has been growing greater year by year." And when I said: "But what is going to _happen_?" he answered: "All I know today is the future will be to look after Una."

I remembered too, how Hildegarde had told me Robin had told her to go home and he would take Una home to Carmel and explain what had happened to him and Hildegarde and then he would go to New Haven and see Norman and tell him about it and after that they could be together for ever . . . .

Had he ever written to her after the crash had separated them?

While I was thinking about this, Freida went on and said: "I didn't mean to tell you but I always do!" She gave an enormous shout of laughter and continued: "You know Una blames you for _that_."

"I didn't even know about it till it was nearly over!" I exclaimed indignantly. I still am not used to be being blamed for everything.

18

"I know but Una has to blame you. She looked so dark and
wild one day. Robin was sitting by smoking his pipe and Una was mad
at something. She had been talking about "that" and she said: "I
made a mistake. I was feeling down at that time and I should have
stayed away from Mabel. If one is down Mabel is too much for one."

I didn't say anything more, nothing to say. After a
moment's silence Freida announced casually: "Una and Robin are think-
ing of coming up to our ranch for the summer."

"Well!" I thought to myself, "That will round out the
circle with Hildegarde in the hospital and all!"

Friday a fine interlude came at once, for me at least,
when we could go down to the River House for the week end. I
practically forgot Hildegarde while I was there but before I went
I had her room full of May flowers, the adorable perfumed blossoms
of the wild plum. It helped to mask the stench around her bed where
there was always a smell of putrefaction.

Outside in the carefree Valley the May flowers on the wild
plum bushes bloomed all over the valley. White hedges of them separ-
ated the Indian fields from each other and our place was perfumed
from one end to the other. This would be a good year for the wild
plums. On all the Indian and Mexican roofs they would be drying in
the sun in the autumn. All winter there would be pies and tarts to
eat at the Fiestas.

Ash had decided he must send for Norman and her daughter
and they would come as soon as they could get a plane.

While he had been away John and Claire had come up from
Albuquerque to lunch with us on the river and John told me about
Donnan, Gareth's brother.

19

Donnan had been married for several years to a classmate of Patricia, Claire's older daughter. He had succeeded in keeping out of the war by consulting six different doctors and finally finding one who found he had a "murmur" in his heart. Though he had no regular job he helped in the business of the rich family into which he had married. They had two children.

The day before the girl called Pat by long distance and begged her to come to her in her middle Western home. Donnan, she said, was about to sue her for a divorce, for what reason she could not imagine and she implored Pat to come and see her through, for, she sobbed, Una was going to fight to take the children away from her to Carmel.

Donnan had been acting strangely for some time. One evening she could not find him and searching the house she finally discovered him in the dark kitchen lying unconscious under the kitchen table with a box marked "poison" beside him.

She called the family doctor who carried the limp fellow off to the hospital where he stayed for two days and then returned home in a dark, uncommunicative mood.

The girl went to the doctor's office to try and find out something about it all.

"What happened?" she implored. "What was the matter? What poison did he take?"

"Sister," replied the friendly old man. "Donnan didn't take any poison any more than I did!"

In so short a time to learn the results of Una's possessive love for both her boys, to see life's unfolding relentless

20

retribution seemed like one of Jeffers own tragic poems. Una had destroyed her little boys when they were already very young. One sought to escape her, the other could not remain away. Now we would watch the progress of human wilfulness, I thought.

When we came back to Taos Monday morning I went to see how she was. Worse, much worse. She could not talk and did not notice me.

Beppie was worn out. She had to be there both night and day. She said, that afternoon: "Isn't there some nurse we could get for tonight? I don't think I can go through another night without rest."

I telephoned around but couldn't find a soul. Ash telephoned that evening and said there was a Mrs. Young living out on a ranch outside town, that Dr. Rosen was trying to locate someone he had heard of but if he didn't report on it by dinner time I might drive out and see if Mrs. Young would come. She was a nurse who had married and given up her work. Ollie and Jo were having dinner with us and when I called Ash afterwards he told me Dr. Rosen had had no success and that I had better go see what I could do.

It was very muddy and cold after a heavy rain but we all got into the car and Tony drove us out in the pitch black night and we went to Ranchitos and slithered around trying to find the way into the Young's place.

We felt our way around the house, Ollie and I, until we located the entrance and knocked at the door. A nice man, middle aged and grizzled let us in and called his wife who was in the other end of the candle lighted house. She came in where we waited

21

by the fire, a tall, good looking blonde no longer very young,
dressed in a cambric house coat. She looked tired, and surprised
to see us. I was rather conscious of the fumes of Bourbon high-
balls I had been drinking before dinner to change my mood and I
wondered if I could persuade her if she thought I had been drink-
ing! Anyway I threw myself into it and said earnestly: "Mrs.
Young - - this is an emergency. I have a very sick friend at the
hospital and she has to have care through tonight. It is a matter
of life and death. Dr. Pond asked me to try and get you to come.
Will you?"

She looked at me un-allured. "Oh dear!" she said. "I
am awfully worn out! My husband and I have been plastering the
house all day. Just what is the case?"

"Well, she has to have a number of shots, she is helpless,
a very obscure illness . . . she is terribly weak and cannot be left
alone, and a friend who has been spending nights with her has to
have a rest. Do come - - just for tonight, will you? We can drive
you right over."

She looked at her husband. "I hate to refuse a call if I
am badly needed . . . ." she began.

"Oh, you are! I interrupted.

"Can you wait till I change and get into my uniform?"

"Oh yes!" What a relief.

We got her over to the hospital by nine o'clock and pick-
ed Beppie up. She was so glad to get out she was laughing hysteri-
cally. She had had no dinner, no sleep the night before for
Hildegarde wouldn't stay alone and hated the hospital night nurse. We

22

dropped her in Taos and she was quite gay at her release, and she ran off to a steak counter she had discovered.

Mrs. Young left the next morning not promising to return for the night. Hildegarde was no longer appealing, not the least bit. She was irrational now most of the time and she had developed a strange new aspect. From blankness and empty rigidity her face had taken on a tough expression, her chin pushed her lower lip up and she looked like someone from the lower world. Her conscious control was gone and in her unconscious state the evil that in all of us rose and revealed itself upon her features. Her language had become indecent and bullying, she bawled out the Sister and the hospital aides.

The nursing sisters of all orders are usually jolly and gay. They see all the sadness and badness of humanity as well as the most heroic and stoical behavior. They themselves are often smiling stoics. Little Sister Agnes, not five feet tall, pale from lack of sunshine, running up and down the corridors twelve hours a day had been Hildegarde's favorite when she was at the surface. At those times Sister Agnes could persuade her to have her medications and endure all the discomforts. When Hildegarde sank into the abysmal irrational state and would turn rough in that weak uncivilized way Sister Agnes would pat her gently and treat her like a sick baby. She was never frightened or shocked as I was. When Hildegarde first began to change and I saw that underside rise and replace the real Hildegarde I said to Ash: "I've never seen a sick person sink into that kind of unconsciousness. When she can't censor herself any more she turns into such a **tough** character! Do you suppose we are all gangsters underneath?"

23

"Well, most of us are able to control ourselves a little," he answered smiling.

"But she has lost her control! So what?"

But he had no more to say. Hildegarde was fighting every assistence now. The shots, the intravenous feeding, the few drops of water they tried to get down her, and the oxygen that enabled her to breathe. She seemed unaware of the tiny nasal tube in her nostril which was taped to her cheek to support it, but every time she was left alone for an instant she tore it off with her rigid claw and resumed her hurried gasps for air, and her face would wear a hideous sneering look of triumph. Over and over Sister Agnes replaced the tube, over and over again Hildegarde clawed it out.

Occasionally she made a slow effort to raise her arm and she would pick at the infected scabby skin below her nose, trying to pry it loose with a long nailed finger that bent backwards, hard as bone.

Beppie, with her all day said flatly that she couldn't go back to the night duty again. So I hunted for Ash and found him writing up a chart at the hall desk. I told him I wasn't sure Mrs. Young would come back that night.

"She's got to have someone. Shall I run out to her house and see if she's coming?"

"You'd better," he answered, disliking the interruption.

So I drove to the ranch that looked very different in the morning sun after last night's groping around in the mud.

Mr. Young was plastering the wall and he got down and came to meet me.

24

"I came to see if Mrs. Young will come back to the hospital tonight," I began.

"Wal, I don't know. Right now, she's sound asleep. She was mighty tired when I brought her over. Seems like it's a hard case."

"Oh yes! But Dr. Pond is very anxious to have her come again. He said Mrs. Young really pulled her through last night," I lied earnestly.

"Is that so?" He was smiling in a pleased way. "Wal, she'll wake up about three or four, and I'll have some hot coffee ready for her and then I'll tell her she's wanted back. Truth is I don't think she cares about going back but mebby she will to oblige."

I went back home and cut some fresh branches of plum blossoms and carried them to the fetid room. There wasn't much else I could do. When I got there she was conscious and she gasped a few nice words to me. For sometimes she would rise to consciousness for a short time and the ugly aspect of her nature would vanish. Something of the former Hildegarde returned then and her voice would be sweet in its weakness at these moments, and she lay and stared out the window in front of her gazing at the mountains that as always seemed to bloom and pulsate and to lead its own life, oblivious of human miseries.

Sometimes a faint secret smile was like a mist upon her face where no muscle contracted any more, an indescribable change that came over it and altered its toneless surface. I asked her if there wasn't anything she could think of that she would like to have and she replied with an effort, raising her chin to get the words out: "Ice cream. Cold."

25

At the drug store I had to get her a slab to get any at all. When Beppie put some to her lips she swallowed two small teaspoonsful and could not take any more. I suppose the Sisters finished it up! I hope so!

Mrs. Young did return that night and the next day the family arrived. I sat in a corner at the hall with Norman and we talked. He was a small, gentle, fine man, weary from the sleepless night on the plane and the long drive up from Albuquerque. He had come at last to this place Hildegarde had talked about for so many years.

All the problems and responsibilities he had had for so long as managing editor of the University Press at Yale were nothing compared to what he had endured in taking care of Hildegarde, while, in baffled ignorance, only in the end to find her here sunk now to deeper levels than ever before.

He was torn to pieces by it all, by her struggles to survive and her determination to be done with it. But he was poised and controlled. I thought there was something like a priest in his upright bearing, a kind of composure and control, and his voice was steady and low. "Mabel, I haven't had a chance to talk to Dr. Pond yet but I want to say to him: She suffers so much from these shots ..." he hesitated while he made an effort to maintain his unemotional calm. "I am going to say; If there is a chance, one in a thousand, that she can get well and be cured ... if not then stop all treatment, medications, make her as comfortable as possible and ... let her go."

26

I answered as gently as possible: "But I don't know if Dr. Pond would agree to that, whether he would continue . . . doctors fight death . . ."

Norman nodded: "I know . . ."

He was fine and understanding. There was a peculiar patience and dignity about him that only those people have who live in the front of their brains. He showed no resentment at the cheerful hustle and bustle going on around us, at the obliviousness of others to what was to him the major problem in that building. The Sisters were swishing by in their starched white skirts, smiling, calling answers to people behind them, running to answer bells the patients rang continually, and to answer the telephone that rang all day. Through the open door of a room across from us we could see the happy relatives of a convalescent patient laughing gaily, and a girl ran past with a bunch of fresh flowers for some one. Down the corridor the feeding hour of the new babies had started up a chorus of screams and squaks. They all woke up at once and demanded attention. They were like a bunch of little birds in a nest. The Sister cooed and argued with them as she hastened to bring bottles out of the ice box and warm them. The life in this hospital was intimate and informal. It was cheerful. Only in the farthest corner down in my mother's Memorial room there was that darkened spirit, that bitterness of disease and approaching death.

"We have to try and find a night nurse," I told Norman. "Hildegarde cannot be left alone. She resists everyone. She doesn't like anyone but Sister Agnes and she goes off at midnight after being on duty on the floor all day."

27

I refrained from telling him that Mrs. Young had left
that morning refusing in no uncertain terms to return again.
Hildegarde was too difficult a patient, she said. She couldn't
put up with her again.

"Midge can give her her shots," he said. "She is used
to it."

Later he told me without explanation: "Midge says she
doesn't want to give the shots." I learned afterwards that
Hildegarde had fired her out of the room. After all he was the
one who stayed up with her that night gently persuading her to let
the night nurse stick in all those needles -- seven times!

That week was a nightmare. Hour after hour Norman stood
beside the bed with his hand under the bedclothes rubbing her cold
aching ankles and feet, striving to make the blood circulate.

I went in one day and again she recognized me and tried
to smile but only the faintest flicker of expression showed it.
Ash came in and reached for her wrist. "Isn't she good?" I said
in the false bon homie of the sickroom.

"Well, sometimes she is good and sometimes not so good,"
he murmured gently, smiling. When he left Hildegarde sank into
lethargy. Norman went to the head of the bed and put his hand on
her forehead.

"Mom," he called to her like a summons. There was no
flicker of response. "Mommie -- Mommie!" He called her in a
low firm voice but she did not come back. Her eyes were closed
tight.

Little Sister Agnes was standing in the doorway momentarily. She was smiling as usual and gave me a beckon with her head.

28

When I stepped out to join her she whispered: "She puts on such acts!"

"Gone to sleep", Norman murmured calmly and went back to his task of persuading the stagnating blood to move in its stream bed.

Brett took the two Donaldsons and Beppie out fishing in relays. I had them for dinner and they had Tony and me for dinner at the Sagebrush Inn. I who never dine out if I can help it ate Jumbo Shrimps and chocolate Ice cream three nights in one week there and almost wrecked my excellent digestion. I felt we had to go when they wanted us and above the pitiable collapsing wreck we all maintained the appearance of everyday life and we all behaved like real Yale men. However while carrying on this normal surface life, laughing and joking and drinking highballs before dinner, enjoying our food and each other, out of sight was the continual weight of a shared burden.

I had at that time a reaction that was traditional and the result of our collective training. As my simple self I did not feel personally involved but as a member of society I felt responsible for Hildegarde's downfall for I was the one who had brought her here first -- and last. I told Norman I felt very badly about this. He was magnanimous and realistic about it.

"Mabel you didn't urge her to come. You simply tried to help by telling her very clearly what the baths might do for her. And she was determined to come. Nothing would stop her."

"Well I feel badly just the same." To appease my feeling of guilt I had given Ash a check and asked him to pay the

29

hospital bills and the doctor's expenses with it. However this
effort to buy my way out didn't make me feel any better. I con-
tinued to feel awful!

Then at times I had a revulsion of feeling and switched
to being angry with Hildegarde for having loaded me with this re-
sponsibility. I felt cold towards her much as I had towards Una
years ago. Ghastly suicides on my conscience, I said to myself.
But is it really true that we are all members one of another like
fingers on a hand, and that we partake of each other's doom? Oh!
My sisters!

Norman remained firm and quiet. It was arranged between
then that he or one of the girls would always be with Hildegarde,
so Brett and I took the free ones out somewhere every day. When
Norman was away from her he looked relieved and seemed to enjoy
everything but he never forgot her. Whenever we were in a lovely
place he would murmur: "How Hildy would like this!"

I motored him and Beppie over to Tony's ranch at Arroyo
Secco one afternoon. It is at the north end of the Reservation and
close to the big mountains. Beautiful.

The lambs and kids were skipping about in the short grass,
glad to be out in the world and in life one forgot the woman over
there fighting for death.

When we returned to the hospital to let Norman out and
collect Midge whose vigil had lasted during our hours away in the
happy valley.

When she came up to the car she said in answer to an en-
quiring look from her father: "It has been pretty bad. She didn't
have a sane moment." When she got into the car beside me her clothes

30

wafted out a faint loathsome aroma of the room she had been in.

"Won't you come in and see Hildegarde for a minute, Mabel?"
Norman asked me.

"No, I guess I won't come in, Normy," I told him. I couldn't forget the look of her as she had been the day before, sagg-ing in the bed, weaker and more forlorn. Her right eye was closed and her left eye stared balefully, unseeing, unaware of the mountain glow-ing in the distance unpictured upon her retina.

We all longed for it to be finished though we did not speak
the words to each other.

The following evening I invited the three of them for
dinner at the Tony House. The girls were coming but Norman said he
would stay with her. However at five o'clock a message came to say
he would be there too. Perhaps he couldn't keep it up. We had a
jolly time together - the evening was easy and agreeable but under-
neath we were not able to forget.

That night - perhaps she had been conscious of being left
and resented it - I don't know - but she had a further sinking and
Ash had been called from his bed and had worked over her.

While I unaware of this - - was at the hairdresser's
early the next morning undergoing a permanent, Zelie was called to
the telephone for one of those interminable chats with her mother-
in-law. Suddenly it was interrupted and she exclaimed: "The
operator has cut in with an emergency call for you."

Beppie was at the house looking for me, she had to see me,
could she come to the Beauty Shop? Hildegarde was dead.

31

She taxied over and ran in. She looked terribly, pale with dark smudges around her eyes.

"We were all called over to the hospital at three this morning. It was awful. Dr. Pond tried another blood transfusion. Nothing helped. . . . I think it was the morphine. . . . Anyway now it's over. Normy wants to know who to get for a very simple little ceremony?"

"Here?" I asked surprised.

"Oh yes! Here in the little cemetery and as soon as possible."

I didn't know who to suggest. I didn't know the Presbyterian minister and maybe he wouldn't suit. Maybe Judge Kiker? He would know how to do it as they would like to have it done.

Suddenly another car stopped outside and Lou Pond ran in. She looked very pale. I asked her who we should have for this funeral and she always knows the answers! She said quickly: "Mr. Stevens would be just the one. He is very nice and would know what Mr. Donaldson wants."

"Something very short and simple," pleaded Beppie.

"Will you take care of it, Lou?" I asked her. At the moment my hair was wound up on small wooden pegs and saturated with a lotion. A sort of cellophane dunce cap covered this intricate, Egyptian looking arrangement. "I won't be out of here for two hours!"

She and Beppie hurried away. So Hildegarde was staying on here! I had never dreamed of this, some how, but it seemed logical when I heard it. Had she herself planned it so perhaps?

When I got home I called Beppie at the hotel.

"It's all arranged," she told me. "Tomorrow morning at ten. The doctors are doing an autopsy now. It will take most of the day. Dr. Pond is anxious to track down the cause of it all if possible. . . ."

32

"What are you all doing?"

"Well, lying on beds . . . we're all pretty tired . . . we're writing telegrams . . ."

"How is Normy?" I enquired.

"He's pretty good. Exhausted of course."

"Will you all come for dinner tonight? You have to eat and it's better than being at the restaurant."

They agreed to come and I asked the Ponds too.

That evening the two girls came into the house first for Norman lingered at the gate looking across the fields to the mountain velvety purple below and rosy on the crest.

I had some cocktails ready, stiff, strong ones that I had sampled freely.

"Now girls," I said, "We have to be glad for Hildegarde that she is out of that trap and free."

They nodded and took their glasses and they both took a good swallow.

Norman came in smiling, really wonderful in his feeling for behavior. His eyes met mine as we raised our glasses and he nodded at me, not saying anything. When Lou and Ash came in it looked like a pleasant friendly gathering.

I had to suppress my quick thoughts of Ash's day spent working on that body, slicing, exploring, tracking the elusive germ. I could not help imagining where his hands had been so short a time ago while he cut cross sections of Hildegarde's tissues, taking cultures from the teeth, from the organs, and bottling the brain which was sent to the New Haven laboratory.

33

When I heard later that nothing was found to explain the
corruption, nothing from the roots of a dead tooth, nothing from the
stomach, liver, or intestines and only a few strep bacteria from a
live tooth which meant little for we all have strep in our mouths
all the time and it is only when our resistance is low that they
have any danger for us, I was not surprised. I don't know whether
Ash was baffled or not. He never tells one anything. He looked the
same as usual though very tired. He had tried his best and doctors
hate to lose a patient.

I kept refilling the glasses until every one was relaxed.
Every one made quite a gay noise.

"Oh dear! Now you'll have to go back to that awful job
of yours, Normy!" I burst out.

"Why Mabel! I <u>love</u> my job! And we're not going right
away. We're going to stay on a week and fish and . . . and every-
thing . . ." he ended vaguely. I must confess my heart sank. I
wanted to get away and be through with all of it, any reminder of it,
though I liked them all so much.

I heard Tony come in from his day at his ranch, and turn
to go upstairs. "Oh dear! He doesn't know yet!" I cried and ran
after him. I knew he would not be casual like we were. It is no
part of his training to act and pretend and cover up.

At the foot of the stairs I caught hold of him and said:
"Tony! Hildegarde died." His face became very serious and he asked,
"When?"

"Today. Early this morning." He gave a big sigh. "Poor
thing," he said, and turned up the stairs. When he was ready for
dinner he joined us, and went the rounds shaking hands with the three

34

bereaved ones, saying nothing, only bowing his head and looking terribly sympathetic and grave. Then the bell rang and we went into the dining room.

It was harder here to keep conversation going and it lapsed into silence all the time. They were frozen and like stones. How to break them up or really warm them? I let myself go desperately.

"We're going to miss Taos," Norman said. "You have such a wonderful life here, Mabel."

"No I haven't," I contradicted. "I am bored all the time since I stopped writing!"

"Why don't you go on then?" he asked kindly.

Because It is all to close. I couldn't publish it. I can only tell about what I see, I can't make up things. What I see is too painful generally for people to read when it is about themselves. And it is no fun writing just for oneself. So what? I don't like farming, I don't like running this place. I was a fool to build so many houses and have them to take care of! I can't have any fun with my tenants - it all turns to problems and fixing things for them. I hate gardening, I don't like to bend over and pull out weeds ..."

"Why don't you crawl then?" interrupted Beppie facetiously.

I went on angrily working myself up artificially. "And I hate going round every morning and hearing what the people in our houses want ..."

"Did it ever occur to you _they_ might not care to have you do that?" interrupted Lou looking cold and irritated. I had ignited them anyway, I thought.

35

"Well," I said, "I guess they're glad to see me when the kitchen door has fallen off or the community pump threatens to go dry!"

Norman kept his eyes on his plate and appeared to withdraw a little. This was not going strictly according to Yale, he was feeling.

At his end of the table Tony made no effort to mask the occasion. He felt very sorry for these people and for Hildegarde's sad end. He did not perform like we were doing, he just looked very large and quiet and compassionate and now he said: "I think this a good place to rest. We got a good mother here. The earth give us ever' thin' we need . . . ."

Norman looked up at him quickly and down again at his plate, then said: "Yes Tony. This is a good place to be and now we have a reason to come back."

The telephone beside the door rang sharply and Norman got up and hurried to it, explaining: "I think that's my long distance call."

We heard him get his connection and then in his gentle affectionate voice a few words . . . .

"Yes, sonnyboy, very," and "tomorrow at ten" . . . .

Oh God, their son? And I had never even heard they had one!

I rushed into discourse not to hear him any more, to give him a bit of privacy until Ash beside me murmured low: "Shush! Don't you know he's talking on long distance?"

No one ever knows that I always know what's going on! I may not be intellectual but I am aware and intelligent and I know what I am about though I do not always, or even often show it!"

36

They left soon after dinner. At the door I told Norman
we would call for them in the morning about a quarter of ten.

They went through the garden and I watched them from the
door. The apple tree beside the path was shimmering white and
motionless. There had never been so many blossoms upon it until
this year and Midge could not resist reaching for a low branch and
breaking it off.

Then I went up to bed and read my mystery story for a
long time. Before I went to sleep I put out the light and went over
and turned back the casement window, the same window from where I
heard Robin run over from the Big House and calling me in an awful
strangled voice eight years ago. Then the tree was small and noth-
ing stood between us as he raised his ghastly face and begged me to
come.

As I paused there it all came back so vividly. But this
night I heard a different sound. From my high room now I looked
right down into the quiet white tree. I remembered the old words:

"Oh world as God
Has made it, all is beauty!
And knowing this is love
And love is duty.
What further may be sought for
Or declared . . . ."

And suddenly from the old orchard beyond I heard that bird!
The bird that comes back every year as soon as it begins to be summer.
It is a lonesome bird and makes the nights wonderful. It reminds me
of the nightingales at the Villa Curomia only it has not so pure and
certain a song. I called it "the Rusty Nightingale" in a book years
ago. It is so faithful, so mysterious and anonymous I have never
tried to find out about it, it's kind or color. I felt if I tracked

37

it down and named it it would vanish away -- that it was a kind of
Lohengrin bird. The night was so still I could hear it very plainly.
The soft gurgling, the plaintive wood notes, the urgent call, rising
and falling, had the magic as ever before. It wiped away human sorrow
with a lovely sadness that soothed the heart.

I stayed awake a long time listening and felt the air grow
chill before I slept. In the morning when I looked out the window, the apple
tree had been burned brown from a hard frost and when I went down-
stairs Max came over and told me all the fruit trees had been frozen
during the night.

"We have to have a lot of plum blossoms," I told him, "a
whole carload to put on my friend's grave. Try and find some shelter-
ed bushes that aren't spoiled." It was hard to find enough untouched
blooms to fill the back of the station wagon but I helped him and
between us we cut a great many branches that seemed alright.

How I hated the hours ahead of me! I have never gone to
funerals because I don't believe in them but Hildegarde still had her
way with me and I had to go. There were so few that would see her
through! Norman had asked me to gather just those that she had known
before and who were they? Freida, Brett, Spud and ourselves! And
most of these were mere acquaintances.

When I went back to house Low called me: "Mabel! The
undertaker has just telephoned me there be a little delay. The
grave is not dug yet -- about half past ten."

"Well, isn't that just like Taos!" I cried.

"Perhaps it is. Will you call the Donaldsons and tell
them?"

38

So I did and that was bad too. I knew Norman had girdled himself up for that last effort. Beppie told me none of them had slept much.

The last half hour of waiting was hard for us all for we were ready. When Tony and I called for them at the hotel they came right out looking unfamiliar in their town clothes and hats, and they were all paper white and haggard but they all forced painful smiles and said good morning in low pleasant voices. So we drove up to the cemetery.

"Max has gone ahead with some flowers," I told them conversationally, over my shoulder.

"How nice," Norman said in his composed way.

We had to wait out on the highway quite a while before we turned in for the grave diggers were still digging and the undertaker had not arrived. Spud was there sitting in his little open Ford and when we passed we looked at each other like strangers with blank faces: some convention of being transported to an unusual environment by death duties, I think.

Brett and Freida bowled up in Brett's station wagon and Brett had on her kilt. Soon Lon came and then we were all there when Hildegarde arrived in the same vehicle that had brought her over from Ojo Caliente - - then her ambulance, now her hearse.

We could start so we got out and walked into the graveyard. It is a barren place for there is no water connected with it and the graves are all bare, brown mounds, most of them untended, only one or two with flowering shrubs blooming where relatives still remember the departed and care enough to bring water in

39

buckets or jars and keep things alive. Only on Decoration Day some spasmodic attention lights it all up. Then bright paper flowers and streamers of all colors decorate every grave, the place is screaming with fiesta emotion. Overnight it blooms with the vernal store tissue paper wreaths, roses, and a carnival atmosphere. It is only after a heavy rain, when these are wilted and faded that a sweet aesthetic melancholy pervades the place and artists like to paint it.

Hildegarde's funeral was different from the one or two others I had seen. The mound of earth the grave diggers had piled up was covered with a large green mantle made of some synthetic material imitating grass. The casket was pulled out of the hearse and carried by six strange men and it was evidently heavy in itself for Hildegarde's fragments could weigh very little yet the men staggered awkwardly.

Norman, deathly looking now, held up on either side by the two girls, followed the cortege. His face was altered, his mouth drawn down in tragic grooves. Beepie cast anxious sidewise looks at him. A few minutes before she had crept up to me and whispered: "I am afraid Normy is going to break down."

"It would be good for him to break down -- a little." I had answered unfeelingly. Why do I never feel anything until afterwards?

"Do you want a hand there?" spoke up loudly a soiled grave digger on the side, where the two of them rested on their shovels, and he joined them and seemed to steady it.

While these preparations were taking place they were accompanied by the frustrated attempts Max was making to start the

40

station wagon right behind our solemn little group. He had thrown
the plum blossoms in a heap near the grave and he wanted to get back
to his work.

"He's going to run down that battery!" I thought with my
acquired practicality.

The casket was lowered and sort of suspended, over the
gaping cavity. It was made of shiny metal and very faded grass green
velvet. I could not help remembering that Tony had told me years
ago how these coffins are taken up at night and sold back to the
undertaker and so are used for public performances over and over again.

The pall bearers, strangers all, backed away. We few mourn-
ers, nearly all strangers, really, to Hildegarde, drew a little closer,
as young Mr. Stevens with a little book in his hand stood at the head
of the pretty box. Norman never took his tearless eyes off it. He
gazed and gazed and remembered all about Hildegarde, I think.

Mr. Stevens opened his book and read a few very nerve
wracking verses from it. He did not read the regular burial service
at all; none of that "Dust to dust" stuff. I was so nervous by this
time that I was trying not to listen for fear I would cry but they
got through to me finally:

"And she has seen a new Heaven and a new earth. . . ."

"She certainly needed to!" I thought and those tears
came down my cheeks.

He only read for a few minutes and then he raised two
long fingers and pronounced a blessing on the odds and ends in the
coffin, dropped his arm and stood in silence waiting. I turned my
head to Lon.

41

"Now what?" I croaked.

"Well, that's all: Now we leave." She was shaky too.

As we trickled out she said: "We better come back in an hour, when the grave is filled in and fix those flowers on it."

We passed Mr. Hanlon the undertaker, who gave me a dirty look and cut me dead. I presume our communication system here, as swift as jungle tom-toms, had bourne to him my comments upon Hildegarde's trip from Ojo Caliente to Taos!

Behind me the Donaldsons were accompanied by Mr. Stevens. The funeral was over and I heard him say to Norman in a normal conversational tone: "Such a beautiful morning - - really like an Inness!"

Norman was restored to himself by now anyway, the memories and the regrets and pain all shoved down again. At the car he took my hand and said smiling: "Thank you for everything Mabel. This has been beautiful. Just what Hildegarde would have liked!"

"What are you all doing now?"

Well the plan was for Brett to rush home and put on her pants, and for them to tear off their formal clothes at the hotel and wait till she came back and picked them up, and they would go off for the day, fishing on the river, resting under the trees, with a package of sandwiches along.

We dropped them back at the hotel, and then I went home and got my daily "list" and collected the needful in the village and in an hour I was back in the cemetery again.

The grave diggers were just finishing the mound over Hildegarde, patting it down and smoothing it out. It was one of six others in two rows, unadorned and bleak. One of the men stuck a little sign with a long metal foot into the head of the grave,

42

facing the east. On it was the legend:

HILDEGARDE DONALDSON
Died May 10th 1946
Aged 50 yrs. 10 mo. 4 days
Hanlon Funeral Home
Burch Avenue
Taos, New Mex.

The other man threw his shovel on the ground, spat on one hand and rubbed the other.

"Pretty hard work this year," he growled. "So dry. Earth too hard."

They waited a moment and one said enquiringly: "That's all?" To which I answered: "Absolutely **all**" - - so they shouldered their shovels and ambled away and I was left there alone.

I didn't wait for Lon. I started to disentangle the thorny branches of the plum trees. In the last hour the white flowers had turned brown. They had been burned by the frost and altered as soon as they were cut, even the whitest of them. Nature works fast, I thought.

They were all I had and I had to use them. They were inextricably woven together and pinned by their long thorns - - the most intransigent of growing things. Wild plum wood is tough and close fibered, fine for drumsticks and other Indian things, but so obstinate! By the time I had separated one branch from another I was scratched up and down my hands and arms, my fingers were full of thorns, and my stockings full of runs.

I began laying them on the brown featureless heap. Brown on brown they were - - dust to dust - - all the way through. It felt strange and lonely in the cemetery with no one near, silent as the grave indeed but in half an hour I had a huge tangle of dead flowers over that dead body.

43

While I was working in the hot sun with perspiration running down my face, up drove Brett with the others! I hadn't expected that! She had to stop and Norman got out and came to the barbed wire fence to speak to me, and when I went over to him he smiled and said: "We want you and Tony to be sure and come to dinner at the Sagebrush tonight. You will, won't you?"

"Oh Normy! You know how I <u>hate</u> going out for dinner . . . but yes, we'll come if you say so!"

Apparently I had to keep on. There seemed no end to all this and I was so <u>completely</u> through with it!

They drove away and presently Lon came along with a carful of children on her way home with her groceries. She wasn't stopping until she saw me and then she pulled up.

"But Mabel! Mr. Hanlon told me we needn't come back! I tried to get you but you were out. He said those workmen would attend to the flowers."

"That's what <u>he</u> said! The men finished covering up the grave and then they departed."

Lon had gathered a handful of early tulips and narcissus that morning and now he wove them into the decayed plumb blossoms.

As we left I looked around. "Pretty dismal!" I murmured.

"Yes, it is," she agreed, and we got into our cars and drove away and that was the end of Hildegarde's hegira on this old earth.

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"MEDEA.

You will stay here,
And watch the end. (The women are beginning to mill
like scared cattle, huddled and circular) You will be quiet
you women. You came to see
How the barbarian woam endures betrayal. Watch and you'll
know."

From
MEDEA

Freely adapted from the Medea
of Euripedes by

ROBINSON JEFFERS

Random House
New York

Copyright 7946 by
Robinson Jeffers