the great after war pestilence called "flu" swept across scott county that fall and winter, sparing neither the old men nor the young virgins. it knocked at many doors, and often where its knuckles had rapped the undertaker hung his bunch of crape. sometimes the crape was a rusty black, often a rather soiled white. it took away uncle jonah cobb and left aunt selina alone with the bees and rabbits. it took one of joe barnaby's children and aunt abigail's son, noey, and evalina, aunt maggie slatten's second youngest girl. it took babies in arms and young men that the war had spared and women with child. it took uncle sam whitmarsh away from his cheerful traffic in dogs and horses.
"it's allus this way," said jabez moorhouse. "war an' pestilence goes hand in hand. the bigger the war the bigger the pestilence. the bible says them that's near at hand'll fall by the sword an' them that's afur off'll die o' the pestilence. we're a hell of a long ways off, but we're a-dyin' o' the pestilence jes the same."
he hunched his shoulders over the stove, feeling suddenly cold.
once again winter settled down on the wind-shaken little house on the ridge. judith, peering from the window at the mud and clouds of december, felt the old oppression sink upon her, heavier because so drearily familiar. how many years would it go on, she caught herself wondering.
it was nearly a year since the quarrel. since then they had treated each other with the chilly politeness of strangers who do not much like each other's looks. in summer when life dragged less oppressively it was not so hard to bear. but now that winter was come her heart sank within her.
christmas came and went and there was no change.
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it was not until after christmas that the flu came to them. jerry had a light attack which kept him away from the stripping room for two weeks. then when he was almost ready to return to work, andy got it and was followed in a few days by billy.
"if annie gets it, it'll likely go hard with her," said jerry, looking anxiously at the pale, self-contained little girl who was his favorite among the children. "we can't take her to mammy's 'cause dad's got it."
"an' i can't take her to my folks, 'cause luelly's jes a-gittin' over it."
judith did what she could to keep annie away from her sick brothers. but one morning about a week after billy had been taken sick, when she went to dress the little girl she saw that her cheeks were flushed with fever.
"i knowed there was no gittin away from it," she said grimly to jerry, as she mixed a dose of castor oil with warm coffee.
on the third day annie was so much worse that jerry rode over to clayton for dr. mactaggert.
it was late that night when the doctor's mud-spattered ford came panting up the long hill and stopped before their door. the little man looked haggard and hollow-eyed from his constant attendance at sickbeds and his long hours of bumping over rutted roads and up and down steep, perilous trails to the tobacco growers' lonely shanties.
"it's pneumonia," he said, as he straightened up from his examination of the child's chest.
the blood sank away from jerry's face, leaving it a sickly gray color, and he grasped the bedpost to steady himself.
"can't you see your shakin' the child's bed," said judith crossly in a grating voice.
the doctor said that she would have to be watched and tended carefully both day and night. jerry let the tobacco stripping go and stayed at home to help with the nursing. the boys were now well on the way to recovery and beginning to be fractious and noisy. the father and mother took turns at
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nursing the little girl and trying to keep the boys quiet; and through the night one watched while the other slept.
as judith sat by the bedside of the sick child that she had begrudged to life before it was born, her heart failed her at the thought that the little one might die. she felt that to see her die, to have her cold little dead body put into a narrow coffin and laid in the frozen ground would be more than she could bear. her thoughts skirted these images and fled away aghast not daring to face them. keenly she suffered with the sufferings of the child. when she anxiously watched her breathing hard she felt her own chest racked by tearing pains. she had to summon all the courage that remained to her to enable her to bear the sight and touch of the limp and wasted little body. never had the child seemed more inextricably bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh. she felt herself eager to make any sacrifice if only it would bring the little one back to life and health.
and yet at the same moment that she yearned over the sick child, another set of thoughts, strange and sinister, came forward with startling boldness, thoughts that had come to her at other times and before which she had quailed, as, in the darkness of a wakeful night, one quails before thoughts of approaching death.
of what use after all that this baby should live? she would live only to endure, to be patient, to work, to suffer; and at last, when she had gone through all these things, to die without ever having lived and without knowing that she had never lived. judith had seen grow up in the families of the neighbors and among her own kin dozens of just such little girls as this one that had come out of her own body: skimpy little young-old girls, with blank eyes and expressionless faces, who grew into a prim, gawky, old-maidish girlhood and passed quickly from that into dull spinsterhood as luella had done, or to the sordid burdens of too frequent maternity. little annie was just such a one. in every way she was a product of the life that had brought her into being, and that life would claim her to the end.
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why had she been given such a child? it seemed the cruelest irony of chance that had bound her by this strong added link to the sodden life of the soil.
sitting by the sick child through the long vigils of the winter night, the mother dwelt upon these thoughts, facing them squarely. and following them out to the end they brought her relentlessly to the conclusion that it would be better that the child should die. but having come within sight of this conclusion, she turned with instinctive horror and fled away from it. no, she could not have her baby die. she must not die. and yet better children were dying on every side. why not hers as well as another's? the mother shrank and quailed, feeling her burden greater than she could bear.
as she struggled with these bitter thoughts, the moon, which had passed the full, looked palely into the lamplit room through the tracery made by a dead grapevine against the uncurtained window and saw her sitting gaunt and hollow-eyed, her sharp elbows propped on her knees and her chin in her hands. again she restlessly paced the floor or stood by the window looking out and taking no comfort from the dumb stretch of hills and valleys that lay dark and lonely under the waning moon.
when it came jerry's turn to watch by the baby, he was troubled by no such conflict of feelings. his one thought was that the child must be saved. he loved her with all the tenderness that fathers of his nature give to an only daughter, and he saw in her no defect nor resemblance to any other child. she was his girl and she must not be allowed to die.
for nearly a week the child lay tossing and moaning, seeming to be kept alive more by the hectic flicker of fever than by any more stable vital throb. the mother and father alternated in watching over her, silently doing what they could. they grew pale and red-eyed from lack of sleep, frowsy and unkempt. above the tense strain of the anxiety that held them in grip, the dark cloud of their estrangement hovered with cold oppression. they rarely spoke except when they had to. at meals they sat opposite each other in gloomy silence. when, as sometimes happened, their eyes accidentally met across the
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bed of the sick child, they turned hastily away with mutual aversion.
at last, after a long night of feverish tossing, there came a morning when the little one seemed somewhat better. she breathed easier and the fever had sunk away leaving her pale and weak but more like the child that her parents knew. was this a change for the better? or might it possibly be one for the worse?
about the middle of the morning dr. mactaggert came. as he made his examination of the child the parents stood behind him watching anxiously, but never once casting a glance at each other.
"why, she's a heap better," he said at last, turning around to them. "there's not much of her, but she seems to know how to hang onto life better than some of the stouter ones. the worst seems to be over now, and i reckon you'll raise her yet if all goes well."
"judy!" said jerry, when the doctor had closed the door. the one word was full of many things, like a bubble drifting through sunlight.
she fled to him and fell sobbing into his arms.
