Oddly Enough, The Other Old Woman Had Also
Been Travelling All Day, But From An Opposite Direction, Over Somerset
Way, Just To Visit Chitterne.
It seemed an astonishing thing to them
when it came out that they had both been looking forward for years to
this visit, and that it should have been made on the same day, and that
they should have met there in that same forsaken little graveyard.
It
seemed stranger still when they came to tell why they had made this
long-desired visit. They were both natives of the village, and had both
left it early in life, one aged seven, the other ten; they had left
much about the same time, and had never returned until now. And they
were now here with the same object - just to find the graves, unmarked
by a stone, where the mother of one of them, the grandparents of both,
and other relatives they still remembered had been buried more than
half a century ago. They were surprised and troubled at their failure
to identify the very spots where the mounds used to be. "It do all look
so different," said one, "an' the old stones be mostly gone." Finally,
when they told their names and their fathers' names - farm-labourers
both - they failed to remember each other, and could only suppose that
they must have forgotten many things about their far-off childhood,
although others were still as well remembered as the incidents of
yesterday.
The old dames had become very friendly and confidential by this time.
"I dare say," I said to myself, "that if I can manage to stay to the
end I shall see them embrace and kiss at parting," and I also thought
that their strange meeting in the old village churchyard would be a
treasured memory for the rest of their lives. I feared they would
suspect me of eavesdropping, and taking out my penknife, I began
diligently scraping the dead black moss from the letters on the stone,
after which I made pretence of copying the illegible inscription in my
notebook. They, however, took no notice of me, and began telling each
other what their lives had been since they left Chitterne. Both had
married working men and had lost their husbands many years ago; one was
sixty-nine, the other in her sixty-sixth year, and both were strong and
well able to work, although they had had hard lives. Then in a tone of
triumph, their faces lighting up with a kind of joy, they informed each
other that they had never had to go to the parish for relief. Each was
anxious to be first in telling how it had come about that she, the poor
widow of a working man, had been so much happier in her old age than so
many others. So eager were they to tell it that when one spoke the
other would cut in long before she finished, and when they talked
together it was not easy to keep the two narratives distinct.
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