第51章

She got down and followed him while Liff led the horse away.As she approached the door she said to herself: "This is where I was born...this is where Ibelong...." She had said it to herself often enough as she looked across the sunlit valleys at the Mountain;but it had meant nothing then, and now it had become a reality.Mr.Miles took her gently by the arm, and they entered what appeared to be the only room in the house.It was so dark that she could just discern a group of a dozen people sitting or sprawling about a table made of boards laid across two barrels.They looked up listlessly as Mr.Miles and Charity came in, and a woman's thick voice said: "Here's the preacher."But no one moved.

Mr.Miles paused and looked about him; then he turned to the young man who had met them at the door.

"Is the body here?" he asked.

The young man, instead of answering, turned his head toward the group."Where's the candle? I tole yer to bring a candle," he said with sudden harshness to a girl who was lolling against the table.She did not answer, but another man got up and took from some corner a candle stuck into a bottle.

"How'll I light it? The stove's out," the girl grumbled.

Mr.Miles fumbled under his heavy wrappings and drew out a match-box.He held a match to the candle, and in a moment or two a faint circle of light fell on the pale aguish heads that started out of the shadow like the heads of nocturnal animals.

"Mary's over there," someone said; and Mr.Miles, taking the bottle in his hand, passed behind the table.

Charity followed him, and they stood before a mattress on the floor in a corner of the room.A woman lay on it, but she did not look like a dead woman; she seemed to have fallen across her squalid bed in a drunken sleep, and to have been left lying where she fell, in her ragged disordered clothes.One arm was flung above her head, one leg drawn up under a torn skirt that left the other bare to the knee: a swollen glistening leg with a ragged stocking rolled down about the ankle.The woman lay on her back, her eyes staring up unblinkingly at the candle that trembled in Mr.Miles's hand.

"She jus' dropped off," a woman said, over the shoulder of the others; and the young man added: "I jus' come in and found her."An elderly man with lank hair and a feeble grin pushed between them."It was like this: I says to her on'y the night before: if you don't take and quit, Isays to her..."

Someone pulled him back and sent him reeling against a bench along the wall, where he dropped down muttering his unheeded narrative.

There was a silence; then the young woman who had been lolling against the table suddenly parted the group, and stood in front of Charity.She was healthier and robuster looking than the others, and her weather-beaten face had a certain sullen beauty.

"Who's the girl? Who brought her here?" she said, fixing her eyes mistrustfully on the young man who had rebuked her for not having a candle ready.

Mr.Miles spoke."I brought her; she is Mary Hyatt's daughter.""What? Her too?" the girl sneered; and the young man turned on her with an oath."Shut your mouth, damn you, or get out of here," he said; then he relapsed into his former apathy, and dropped down on the bench, leaning his head against the wall.

Mr.Miles had set the candle on the floor and taken off his heavy coat.He turned to Charity."Come and help me," he said.

He knelt down by the mattress, and pressed the lids over the dead woman's eyes.Charity, trembling and sick, knelt beside him, and tried to compose her mother's body.She drew the stocking over the dreadful glistening leg, and pulled the skirt down to the battered upturned boots.As she did so, she looked at her mother's face, thin yet swollen, with lips parted in a frozen gasp above the broken teeth.There was no sign in it of anything human: she lay there like a dead dog in a ditch Charity's hands grew cold as they touched her.

Mr.Miles drew the woman's arms across her breast and laid his coat over her.Then he covered her face with his handkerchief, and placed the bottle with the candle in it at her head.Having done this he stood up.

"Is there no coffin?" he asked, turning to the group behind him.

There was a moment of bewildered silence; then the fierce girl spoke up."You'd oughter brought it with you.Where'd we get one here, I'd like ter know?"Mr.Miles, looking at the others, repeated: "Is it possible you have no coffin ready?""That's what I say: them that has it sleeps better," an old woman murmured."But then she never had no bed....""And the stove warn't hers," said the lank-haired man, on the defensive.

Mr.Miles turned away from them and moved a few steps apart.He had drawn a book from his pocket, and after a pause he opened it and began to read, holding the book at arm's length and low down, so that the pages caught the feeble light.Charity had remained on her knees by the mattress: now that her mother's face was covered it was easier to stay near her, and avoid the sight of the living faces which too horribly showed by what stages hers had lapsed into death.

"I am the Resurrection and the Life," Mr.Miles began;"he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live....Though after my skin worms destroy my body, yet in my flesh shall I see God...."IN MY FLESH SHALL I SEE GOD! Charity thought of the gaping mouth and stony eyes under the handkerchief, and of the glistening leg over which she had drawn the stocking....

"We brought nothing into this world and we shall take nothing out of it----"There was a sudden muttering and a scuffle at the back of the group."I brought the stove," said the elderly man with lank hair, pushing his way between the others."I wen' down to Creston'n bought it...n' I got a right to take it outer here...n' I'll lick any feller says I ain't....""Sit down, damn you!" shouted the tall youth who had been drowsing on the bench against the wall.