IN THE minds of Mrs. Savage’s neighbours across the street and of the habitual passers-by, that broad plate-glass window where it was her custom to sit for the last hour of every afternoon had come to bear the significance of a glass over a portrait. All long thoroughfares and many of even the shortest have such windows; and the people who repeatedly pass that way will often find the portrait window becoming a part, however slight, of their own lives; but it will seldom be an enduring part, except as a fugitive, pathetic memory. For a time the silent old face is seen framed there every day, or it may be a pale and wistful child looking out gravely upon the noisy world. Then abruptly one day the window is only a window and no more a portrait; the passer-by has a moment of wonder whenever he goes by, but presently may have his faintly troubled question answered by a wreath on the door; and afterwards the window that was once a portrait will seem to him a little haunted.
Mrs. Savage’s window had been a portrait so long that even the school children who went homeward that way in the autumn afternoons noticed a vacancy behind the glass and missed her from the frame; but new seasons came and passed, and no wreath appeared upon her door. She had been so thoroughly alive for so many years that the separation of herself from life could not be abrupt, even if she wished it. She did not wish it she told Harlan, one rainy night, as he sat beside her bed after bringing her the news that she was a great-grandmother.
“I suppose it seems funny to you,” she said. “You must wonder why an old woman with nothing to live for would still want to live. I suppose you think it’s because I just want to eat a little more and to lie here listening to that!” With a hand now become the very ghost of a hand, she gestured toward a window where the parted curtains revealed black panes slushed with noisy water by the strong west wind. “How you must wonder!”
“Oh, no,” Harlan said, though she spoke the truth. “I don’t wonder at all, grandma.”
“Yes, you do! How could a young person help wondering about such a thing? Year before last I could still go out for a little walk; last year I could only go for a drive in the afternoons. After that I could still get downstairs and sit by the window; then I couldn’t even do that, and could only hobble around upstairs;—then I couldn’t even get into another room without being helped. And now for a month I’ve not been able to get out of bed—and I’ll never be able to. No wonder you wonder I want to hang on!”