The Prodigal Women by Nancy Hale

Author:Nancy Hale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Library of America
Published: 2023-01-27T22:17:17+00:00

CHAPTER XXXIV

On an evening in May Betsy walked out into the yard after supper. The yard faced west and the light was failing down the streaky sky. The Brats were playing Prisoner’s Base, farther over, near the house. Where Betsy stood it was bare and flat, looking off towards the distant woods at the back of Hampton, and the sky. It was like a frontier. At her feet lay the remains of a flower bed attempted by her mother the summer before: there were old stems, and seed-­pods, flat to the damp earth. Far away in the marshes beyond the town, near the woods, the frogs sang loud and sweet in their springtime chorus. The voices of the children screamed. The air was sweet with the things beginning to come out of the earth, the buds swelling on the twigs. The light faded from the soft late afternoon into the spring night.

Betsy felt the torrent of tears behind her eyes, but she could not cry. Here was the spring, and here the mild weather, the sweet smells and the country all around in the dusk; the beautiful time had come. And she was alone, and she smelled it all alone and felt the little chill of the air on her skin, her neck, her cheeks. The high days of autumn were long ago gone, and the winter was over, and the spring had come at last and she was alone. She stood for a long time looking over the country toward the woods, listening to the sad, sweet music of the frogs.

After a while she turned and walked back to the house. The children were running in the deepening twilight. She went in the back door and through the unlighted rooms to the hall. There were lights in the study where her parents sat. She went up the stairs, and up the second flight, to her own room where it was dark and the windows were open. She took her clothes off slowly and felt the blowing air on her body. She went into the bathroom and switched on the strong white light and ran a bath. She stood and watched the water run, pale green in the white tub. The room was white and bare and clean. When it was full she got into the tub and let the hot water go on running. There was the faint sucking gurgle of the water running out of the overflow pipe.

The hot water soaked through her and she lay in the bath staring at the faucets. The heat made her feel better; not so rigid, not so aching. She began to cry, without noise; the tears fell from her eyes, off her cheeks, and dropped into the water. She began to sing, under her breath, in the tub, as she cried. “O. G., I’m mighty blue . . . for you, I’ve been mighty true . . . to you, I’ve decided, Something I did, made . . . you go away.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.