She had fallen across the doorway, a flat-iron still in her hand--the
weapon with which she had fought the world, kept the wolf from that
same door--all the strain gone out of her face, a little twisted to the
left side, and oddly smiling. One child's pinafore was still unironed;
the rest were folded, finished.
They raised her between them, laid her upon her bed. It was Jenny who
washed her, wrapped her in clean linen--no one else should touch her;
Ben who sat by her, with hardly a break, until the day that she was
buried, wiped out with self-reproach, grief; desolate as any child,
sodden with tears.
He collected all his music into a pile, the day before the funeral,
gave it to Jenny to put under the copper--a burnt-offering.
"If it hadn't been for that, she might be here now. I don't want ever
to see it again--ever to hear a note of it!" That was what he said.
Jenny went back to the house with him after the funeral: she was going
to give him his tea, and then return to her own room. In a week they
were to be married, and she would be with him for good, looking after
him.
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