They had scarcely time to give any thought to fear, and yet fear lay all around them, daily drawing its circle closer. There had been no deaths as yet, but neither had anyone passed the crisis of the fever. As in earlier years each birth had seemed to force back the circle of darkness, so now with each newly stricken one the darkness moved a step inward, bringing annihilation with it. Even if they did not all die in the epidemic, the loss of any large number might break, it seemed, the communal will to live.
George and Maurine and Molly had taken to prayer, and some of the younger ones had joined with them. They were afraid that God was exacting retribution upon them for the death of Charlie. Ralph was just on the point of taking his family, as yet not stricken, and fleeing off somewhere. Ish dissuaded him, for the moment at least, arguing that any of them might already be infected and that to be taken sick as a small and isolated group would be much more dangerous than to share with the whole community.
“We are close to panic!” thought Ish, and then the next morning he himself awoke—depressed, feverish, and half-prostrated. He forced himself to his feet, made light of Em’s inquiries, and avoided her glances. Bob was very bad, and took most of Em’s time. Ish tended Joey and Josey, who were both in the early stages. Walt, they had sent off to help in one of the other houses.
In the afternoon, leaning over Joey’s bed, Ish felt himself collapsing. With his last effort he managed to get to his own bed, and fall upon it.
Hours later, it seemed, he came to himself. Em was looking down at him. She had managed to undress him and get him into bed.
He looked up at her, feeling small. He gazed as a child might have gazed—above all, fearing that he would see fear. If she was afraid, all was lost!
But in her face he saw no fear.
The dark, wide-set eyes looked calmly at him. Oh, Mother of Nations! And then he slept.
In his days and nights of delirium, he knew little of what happened. Through his fever the great vague dream-shapes moved in and pressed upon him from the dark outside—horrible, inchoate as fog, not to be combated. Then sometimes he called out for someone to bring him his hammer, and he called the name of Joey sometimes, and again (worst of all) the name of Charlie. But also in his terrors he called sometimes on the name of Em, and then it might be that he awoke at the pressure of her hand and looked up. Always he looked for fear, but there was no fear.
Then there was a week when he lay quieter but so prostrated that at times his life seemed to him to be fluttering weakly to take flight and go—and he cared little. Only, when he looked up and saw Em, he felt courage and strength move out from her, and he held his lips hard together, for he thought life itself pressed close behind his lips and that if he opened its mouth it would escape like a butterfly. But as long as he looked up at Em, he knew that he would have strength to hold that little, faintly struggling thing within him.
Only, when she had gone, he said to himself, now that he could think a little, “She will break! Some time she must break! She may not get the fever. We may hope for that good luck! But she cannot carry the burden for all of us.”
Now he realized more of what was happening. There had been deaths, he knew, but not who or how many. He dared not ask.
Once he heard Jeanie come, wailing hysterically at the death of a child, Em said little, but strangely the spirit moved out from her, and Jeanie went away with courage to fight on. George came, unwashed and filth-smeared, a terror-stricken old man—Maurine had suffered a relapse, and their grandchild lay gasping. Em said nothing about God, but again a spirit went out from her, and George walked away with head high, and saying the words, “Yea, though He slay me….” Thus even when the shadows drew in most closely and the little candle seemed flickering and smoky, she knew no despair and sustained them all.
“It is strange,” thought Ish. “She has none of those things on which I used to count so much—not education, not even high intelligence. She supplies no ideas. Yet she has a greatness within her and the final affirmation. Without her, in these last few weeks, we would have despaired and lost hold of life and gone under.” And he felt himself humble beside her.
At last one day he saw her sitting near him, and on her face was such great weariness as he had never seen on a face before. He was appalled. Then suddenly he was happy, for he knew that she would never have sat there and let her weariness show unless the future was safe. Yet it was such a weariness as he scarcely thought could exist. Suddenly he knew that behind such weariness must also lie great grief.
At that moment too he realized that he himself was now on the road to convalescence, probably less weary than she, able to share the load.
He looked at her and smiled, and even in her weariness she smiled back.
“Tell me,” he said gently.
She hesitated, and he was thinking wildly.
“Share it with me,” he said to her. “I am well enough now.” And still he was thinking wildly. It must not be
“Five—up and down the street—five are dead.”
“Which ones?” he said, bracing himself.
“They are all children.”
“What—about ours?” he said, knowing that she was sheltering him still, his fear suddenly dominating. “Yes, five days ago,” she said.
Then he saw her lips start to form the word, and he knew, even before he heard the sounds: “Joey.”
What is the good of anything? (So he thought, and he asked nothing more.) The Chosen One! The rest might have followed; he only could carry the light. The Child of the Promise! Then he closed his eyes, and lay still.
Chapter 9
The weeks of his convalescence dragged along. Very slowly, his physical strength came back to him. Yet, even behind his physical strength, his mental vigor lagged. Looking in a mirror, he saw his hair now showing streaks of gray. “Am I old already?” he thought. “No, not really old!” At least he knew that in some ways he would never be the same. Some fine youthful courage and confidence had faded.
Always he had prided himself on being able to think honestly, to face intellectually whatever must be faced. Now he found his mind swerving off when his thoughts drew near to certain subjects. Well, he was still weak; after a while, he would go ahead once more.
Sometimes (and this frightened him) he found himself refusing to admit the actuality, making plans as if Joey were still there, escaping into the happiness of fantasy. He realized that he had always had something of this tendency. At times it had been an advantage, as when it had enabled him to readjust imaginatively when he had first been left alone. But now he was escaping because the reality seemed too bleak to be faced. Repeatedly a line of poetry, from the wide reading of all those years, came into his head when he tried to breast reality:
No, never again! Joey was gone, and Charlie’s shadow lay over them, and the all-necessary State had arisen, with death in its hands. And everything that he had tried to do so hopefully in that glad morning had failed. He questioned why. Then often in mere despair he fled into fantasy.
When he could think more calmly, the irony of all things impressed him more and more. What you were preparing against—that never happened! All the best-laid plans could not prevent the disaster against which no plans had been laid.
Most of the time he had to be alone. Some of the others still needed care, and what strength remained in
