Prize Short Story A Life For A Life

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 88, 15 April 1939, Page 6 (Supplement)

Prize Short Story A Life For A Life

W VTO," said Lillian Mesh almost 1 l sharply, as her husband, Fred, rose to accompany her. "Let me go alone. It is the last time," she added almost in a whisper. Beluctantly, looking almost injured, Fred .Mesh ~ank hack into his chair again to continue his meditations, while his wife softly opened the door into the darkened room where lay the dead body nl' their \ oungest son. Softly, as though she feared a sound might, waken that loved one who slept his last sleep, slic eloped the door and moved quie'tly towards the bed. Beside it she sank slowly to her knees, uttering a little wordless prayer for courage and strength. Courage and strength to bear a burden that was so heavy that it seemed to ,ier it was beyond her powers of endurance. "Billy, Billy,"' she whispered, "why couldn't it have been me? Xot you?" Yes, she thought, it would lie easy to die, if only she could give back to her

ByH. B. Lamont

youngest son that happy, joyous, vigorous life that had been his. To die would have been as nothing to her if it had but given him life. Lillian Mesh did.not fear death —for herself. She put out her hand and stroked again the shining curls that she had loved so on her baby 22 years ago. How he had hated those curls as a child! Curly Top the boys had calle4 him. How he had plastered it down to try and make it straight. He bated her to stroke it, too. A real boy he had been, she thought proudly. But she could stroke it now. "Billv, Billy," a grief stricken whisper. Twenty-two! Such a short life! Was it for this she had loved him the best of all her children? Yes, she admitted it now, to herself, that which she had never before admitted even to her innermost self, she loved Billy, her last born, better than she loved cither of her other sons. Perhaps it was because she had gone down nearly to death's door for Billy, than either of the others. Perhaps—she could not tell, she did not know. She only knew that this, her last born, held her heart more securely than either of her other sons. She had not meant .to have a' third child. Two fine sons she had—they were men now with families of their own— for after the second one was born the doctor said emphatically! "No more. If you want to live and bring up those boys of yours see to it that there are no little brothers and sisters. If you don't —I won't be answerable for the consequences. You are not fit to have another child." To her husband she knew he had put it even more emphatically. So she had gone on till Fred Junior was nine and Arthur seven. That was during the war years when death had brought so many of their finest young men to an untimely end. She looked at her own boys a7id prayed thankfully, "Thank God they are only children yet." Then, she still remembered it vividly, her husband came in one evening, looking even more depressed than usual. He had looked worried and worn a good deal lately, but this night it was even more noticeable than usual. "What is the matter, Fred?" she asked gently, "what is worrying you?" Usually when she asked such questions he said: "Nothing. Don't be absurd, Lillian. Of course nothing is worrying me. I'm just a little tired, that is all." But this evening he just said dully: "They're beginning to call up the married men with one child now. Bob Mallory pot his to-day. Next thing you know they will be taking those with two children and I'll have to go."

"Don't, Fred, don't," said HTTTTan sharply. "Don't think about it. War is such a terrible thing." "How can I help thinking about it?" he asked, almost wildly, "when someone I know is. taken every clay. It's driving me mad. How can I leave you and the boys? What will you do?" "Other women manage," said Lillian quietly. "We will bo all right. Don't worry about us." Even then, before lie spoke, she sensed the panic that held her man—the panic for himself. "If only," he said, almost to himself, "if only we had another child. That would make it at least a little longer." For some moments. Lillian sat motionless, her mind a seething pool of unformed thoughts. "It's himself, he is afraid— The doctor said not any— Perhaps it would not bo so dangerous now— - Anyhow it didn't matter —" all flashed wildly through her mind. "Fred," she said gently, "there is no reason why we shouldn't have another child if we like." The relief in his whole body struck her almost like a blow. "Oh, but we couldn't; the risk for you is too great," he protested. But she knew it was just a formal protest. She realised then just howgreat had been his fear of going to fight for his home and his country, just how great a relief the thought of even a possible postponement was. She knew then that even if it killed her ehe must try to have that other baby. He had talked long and solemnly against it, yet at the same time he had pointed out how much better it would be for her and the boys if he could remain*with them.

"A Life Fop a Life" was adjudged the winner in the short story contest for March. Entries for the current month's contest should be posted in time to reach literary editor, "Auckland Star," not later than April 25.

But in the end, in spite of his highprincipled words, she had had the third baby.

The old doctor had shaken his head pessimistically when she had told him.

"It'ri madness," lie said.' "You'll kill yourself."

Perhaps if it had been an ordinarycase she might have died. But she knew she must not. Her love for her husband upheld her. This was something she could do for him. Something that proved her love for him, proved it to herself. This was not like having the other children. This was a gift, perhaps a gift of life to her man. A little new life to save an older one! No, she would not die with the bearing of this child. She dare not. The life of the child, the life of her husband perhaps, depended on her bearing this third child successfully. Through all the long period of waiting these thoughts and her love for her husband upheld her. She seemed almost to live in some rarified world of her own. The little life that grew within her seemed more part of herself than either of tho other children had done. The other children had been normal tokens of the love she and her husband bore for one another. But this third child, this, was something more. A life for a life, she thought fancifully, twisting the meaning of that ominous threat to her own happier meaning.

Only the old doctor knew how nearly it had been a life for a life when the babe was born. But at last the little mother struggled back from the dark

places. The child himself seemed to draw her back to life with his tiny clutching fingers. From the moment that she emerged from that terrible darkness of pain and looked upon the little creature* that was so laughably, so ridiculously like his father, she knew that something of her feeling for her husband had died.

Perhaps the effort had been too much. She did not know, possibly hardly consciously realised that much of her love, for her husband had gone. She gave the baby double measure. He seemed, more part of her, of every fibre of her being than either of the older boys had seemed. Her Benjamin, she thought.

From the first he had been a fine, strong, healthy little chap. How she had gloried in his strength, his vitality, his courage and his kindness. She could seo him now, remember again all the little incidents throughout his boyhood and young manhood. Though frequently mischievous and full of boyish pranks, he had always had courage, owned up to his misdeeds, taken his punishment like a man, and in a hundred and one ways shown his character, and, to his mother's joy. above all his courage. Ho looked so like his father! That was one of Lillian Mesh's burdens, that little nagging knowledge, pushed away at the bark of her mind, the knowledge her husband was a coward, that he had willingly allowed her to risk her life that he might increase his chance of saving his own.

Yes, she admitted it to herself today in all its naked ugliness. Never before liatl she done that. Always she had clothed her knowledge decently, as he had done, in the garments of expediency, and its ultimate success. Always she had tried to ignore it, to forget it. But to-day, alone with the' body of her

dead son, the son she bad borne in such great anguish, every last illusion was swept away.

Two days ago —was it only two days? It might haveJ)een a lifetime, eternity itself, she fejt, so endless and enduring seemed the agony of her loss. Two days ago they had carried him in, drowned. Her husband, too, they had carried in, numb and exhausted with exposure and shock. But his needs had been as nothing to her in the face of the greater calamity. They ,had been out fishing, Fred and Billy, and the boat had overturned. Lillian gathered, from the things Fred did not say, and the muddled and soothing tilings he did say, that the overturning of the boat had been his fault. But there was the fact. The boat had overturned. Fred could not swim, but Billy had rescued his father, dived, helped him back to the surface, helped him to climb on'to and cling to the bottom of the overturned boat. Then, exhausted (Fred did not say so, but she knew he must have been, for his father was no lightweight, and in a panic not likely to be very helpful, even to himself), yes, exhausted she was sure, Billy had set out to swim to the shore and get help. What happened she would never know. CrampT Perhaps. Exhaustion? Perhaps. Possibly both. Fred, lying clinging to the overturned boat, had seen nothing, heard nothing. Hour after hour passed and no one came. At last, when he felt he could cling there no longer, someone had passed and noticed his plight. Fred had been rescued. Later Billy's body had been recovered. Billy—her baby, her best beloved. If he had not helped his father, he would have been able to save himself. A life for a life.

"Would that it had been mine, not yours, my son," she murmured to hes>self. "If only I had died when yon we» born, perhaps it would not htwe happened. Yea, it would, just the same." She laughed, wildly, horribly. "Always it was your life to save yosn~ father's." The door opened and Fred Mesh came quietly into the room. He had heard her wild, overwrought laughter. "Lillian, beloved." he said. "You must come away. You can do no good. You will only harm yourself if you stay here sorrowing." "Do you think I care for myself?" she flung at him fiercely. "Perhaps not, Lillian, but there are others. No, darling, you must come away." He put a gentle arm round her shoulders and raised her to her feet, and tried to lead her from the room. "You know you have a duty to the living as well as the dead," he said quietly, as though to distract her overwrought mind from her sorrow. "Don't touch me," she panted wildly,, withdrawing herself fiercely from his guiding arm. Standing there, her face drawn and haggard with grief, she looked first at the dead boy and then at the living man whom he so closely resembled. "Lillian, my darling, remember you still have me." In that moment, all the pent-up thoughts and emotions of the last fortyeight hours, of the last twenty-three years, crystallised. She knew now, at last, that all that was left to her of this marriage of hers, this marriage that had given her so many joys, so mauy fears, and this la<3t great sorrow, was this man. In that moment, too. she knew that all she Mould now ever feci for him was hate, hate.