Where the Light Falls by Nancy Hale

Author:Nancy Hale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Library of America
Published: 2019-08-12T23:33:02+00:00

On an afternoon in the yellow sunshine, suddenly she was sitting under an apple tree in the yard beside the hospital, and the nurse, Miss Percy, was sitting on the grass beside her. Mrs. Myles turned her head slowly and smiled. The heat had gone; it was a cool and lovely afternoon; the leaves rustled in the tree above her and from its branches came the smell of apples.

On the grass further away some internes were playing baseball. Their voices shouted to one another, and the ball could be heard smacking their cupped palms. A breeze trickled along the air. The shadows were beginning to lengthen from the wall of the hospital, and in that light the internes, in their white clothes, ran and shouted. From a grass bank on the other side of the road from the hospital a bird called, suddenly, sweetly.

“Hello,” Mrs. Myles said.

“Hello, dear. You’re feeling much better, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. Things were swimming back into her memory, the buildings here were taking their places in the world. And everything was very calm, very peaceful; there was no hurry. It doesn’t matter.

She looked at the nurse, who had been there all the time. In the darkness and the long confusion, in that strange land where she had been, the nurse had been with her all the time. She studied the dark, smooth hair, the oval face, and the long, dark blue, quiet eyes.

“How is Dave?” Mrs. Myles said.

“You’re remembering, aren’t you?” the nurse said, without looking at the patient. “I think he’s fine. I haven’t seen him for a while.”

“But . . .”

That did not fit. She stayed silent for a little time, while the remembrances slowly rearranged themselves within her head.

“But you’re in love with him,” she said slowly. “It was you both. You are in love with each other.”

“Well. . . . You see, we aren’t going together any more.”

Something was wrong. Wait while the sifting memory slowly settled. Her own life was dead, somehow she had learned that, some one had taught her that in the strange, twilight land. She knew that she had been reborn and that this was a new life. She could never have the things of her own old life, for they had gone and they were dead. But one thing only . . . a candle burning down a vista, some constant star that had companioned her through the dark valleys of the land she had left. . . . She remembered two figures standing in a doorway.

“You’re not?”

“No,” the nurse said. She looked tired. They stared at each other and then a new and curious thing happened, a wave swept upward and from her eyes the woman felt tears falling. It was not despair. It was only deepest sadness. The last thing had gone out of the old life. Now the past was wiped black and she was all alone and beginning a new life, reborn alone. The purest, quietest sadness swept her and she could not halt the tears that fell and fell.

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