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Show Page 209 I pictured the woman John described drifting into death in a trash-filled hole, lying amidst the ashes, the pieces of broken pipkin, a few rotted pumpkin rinds, old tenterhooks, broken pipes, some slop water. Margaret, who thought herself a bastion against the wilderness, who took time each morning to put up her hair in an elaborate roll, as if she thought civilization would end should she not make the effort and instead twist it into a knot upon her neck. Margaret, daughter of a wealthy yoeman, a good lady, a gentle lady, dying and buried in a pit of trash. Suddenly it seemed most funny and I began to giggle, then laugh, until my voice was spiralling like a clarion into the evening air and tears were streaming down my cheeks like the stream down the nearby gully. At last my face crumpled and my tears of laughter turned to tears of loss. I wept for Margaret Davidson, who had met her end in a trash pit. The haunting cry of the geese in the star-pricked sky was all the sound in the world when at last I dried my eyes. Enough, I decided. It is time to put an end to weeping. Though John had looked upon me only with kindness in his eyes the past few weeks, I feared he was beginning to think me a weak, overweening child, for I went constantly about with my eyes bleary and burning, my face swollen. So I promised myself at that moment that I would shed no more tears. Yet |
