| |
| NOTHING to say to all those marriages! | |
| She had made three herself to three of his. | |
| The score was even for them, three to three. | |
| But come to die she found she cared so much: | |
| She thought of children in a burial row; | 5 |
| Three children in a burial row were sad. | |
| One man’s three women in a burial row | |
| Somehow made her impatient with the man. | |
| And so she said to Laban, “You have done | |
| A good deal right; don’t do the last thing wrong. | 10 |
| Don’t make me lie with those two other women.” | |
| |
| Laban said, No, he would not make her lie | |
| With anyone but that she had a mind to, | |
| If that was how she felt, of course, he said. | |
| She went her way. But Laban having caught | 15 |
| This glimpse of lingering person in Eliza, | |
| And anxious to make all he could of it | |
| With something he remembered in himself, | |
| Tried to think how he could exceed his promise, | |
| And give good measure to the dead, though thankless. | 20 |
| If that was how she felt, he kept repeating. | |
| His first thought under pressure was a grave | |
| In a new boughten grave plot by herself, | |
| Under he didn’t care how great a stone: | |
| He’d sell a yoke of steers to pay for it. | 25 |
| And weren’t there special cemetery flowers, | |
| That, once grief sets to growing, grief may rest; | |
| The flowers will go on with grief awhile, | |
| And no one seem neglecting or neglected? | |
| A prudent grief will not despise such aids. | 30 |
| He thought of evergreen and everlasting. | |
| And then he had a thought worth many of these. | |
| Somewhere must be the grave of the young boy | |
| Who married her for playmate more than helpmate, | |
| And sometimes laughed at what it was between them. | 35 |
| How would she like to sleep her last with him? | |
| Where was his grave? Did Laban know his name? | |
| |
| He found the grave a town or two away, | |
| The headstone cut with John, Beloved Husband, | |
| Beside it room reserved; the say a sister’s; | 40 |
| A never-married sister’s of that husband, | |
| Whether Eliza would be welcome there. | |
| The dead was bound to silence: ask the sister. | |
| So Laban saw the sister, and, saying nothing | |
| Of where Eliza wanted not to lie, | 45 |
| And who had thought to lay her with her first love, | |
| Begged simply for the grave. The sister’s face | |
| Fell all in wrinkles of responsibility. | |
| She wanted to do right. She’d have to think. | |
| Laban was old and poor, yet seemed to care; | 50 |
| And she was old and poor—but she cared, too. | |
| They sat. She cast one dull, old look at him, | |
| Then turned him out to go on other errands | |
| She said he might attend to in the village, | |
| While she made up her mind how much she cared— | 55 |
| And how much Laban cared—and why he cared, | |
| (She made shrewd eyes to see where he came in.) | |
| |
| She’d looked Eliza up her second time, | |
| A widow at her second husband’s grave, | |
| And offered her a home to rest awhile | 60 |
| Before she went the poor man’s widow’s way, | |
| Housekeeping for the next man out of wedlock. | |
| She and Eliza had been friends through all. | |
| Who was she to judge marriage in a world | |
| Whose Bible’s so confused up in marriage counsel? | 65 |
| The sister had not come across this Laban; | |
| A decent product of life’s ironing-out; | |
| She must not keep him waiting. Time would press | |
| Between the death day and the funeral day. | |
| So when she saw him coming in the street | 70 |
| She hurried her decision to be ready | |
| To meet him with his answer at the door. | |
| Laban had known about what it would be | |
| From the way she had set her poor old mouth, | |
| To do, as she had put it, what was right. | 75 |
| |
| She gave it through the screen door closed between them: | |
| “No, not with John. There wouldn’t be no sense. | |
| Eliza’s had too many other men.” | |
| |
| Laban was forced to fall back on his plan | |
| To buy Eliza a plot to lie alone in: | 80 |
| Which gives him for himself a choice of lots | |
| When his time comes to die and settle down. | |
| |
