My Neighbors | Page 5

with her daughter and her daughter's husband.
So the love of the sisters became forced and strained, each speaking and answering with an ill-favored mouth; it was no longer entire and nothing that was professed united it together.
"I must make my will now," Lisbeth hinted darkly.
"Perhaps Charlie will oblige you," replied Olwen.
"Charlie! You make me smile. Why, he can't keep a wife."
"I thought you had settled all that," Olwen faltered.
"Did you? Anyway, I'll have it in black and white. The minister will do it."
After the minister was gone away, Lisbeth said: "I couldn't very well approach him. He's worried about money for the new vestry. Why didn't you tell me about the new vestry? It was in the magazine."
Olwen mused and from her musings came this: "It'll be a pity to spoil it now. For Jennie's sake."
She got very soft pillows and clean bed-clothes for Lisbeth and she placed toothsome dishes before Lisbeth; and it was Lisbeth's way to probe with a fork all the dishes that Olwen had made and to say "It's badly burnt," or "You didn't give much for this," or "Of course you were never taught to cook."
For three years Olwen endured her sister's taunts and the storms of her daughter and her son-in-law; and then Jennie said: "I'm going to have a baby." If she was glad and feared to hear this, how much greater was her joy and how much heavier was her anxiety as Jennie's space grew narrower? She left over going to the aid of Lisbeth, from whom she took away the pillows and for whom she did not provide any more toothsome dishes; she did not go to her aid howsoever frantic the beatings on the wall or fierce the outcry. Never has a sentry kept a closer look-out than Olwen for Jennie. Albeit Jennie died, and as Olwen looked at the hair which was faded from the hue of daffodils into that of tow and at the face the cream of the skin of which was now like clay, she hated Lisbeth with the excess that she had loved her.
"My dear child shall go to Heaven like a Princess," she said; and she sat at her work table to fashion a robe of fine cambric and lace for her dead.
Disturbed by the noise of the machine, Lisbeth wailed: "You let me starve but won't let me sleep. Why doesn't any one help me? I'll get the fever. What have I done?"
Olwen moved to the doorway of the room, her body filling the frame thereof, her scissors hanging at her side.
"You are wrong, sister, to starve me," Lisbeth said. "To starve me. I cannot walk you know. You must not blame me if I change my mind about my money. It was wrong of you."
Olwen did not answer.
"Dear me," Lisbeth cried, "supposing our father in Heaven knew how you treat me. Indeed the vestry shall have my bit. I might be a pig in a pigsty. I'll get the fever. Supposing our father is looking through the window of Heaven at your cruelty to me."
Olwen muttered the burden of her care: "'The wife would pull through if she had plenty of attention. How could she with her about? The two of you killed her. You did. I warned you to give up everything and see to her. But you neglected her.' That's what Charlie will say. Hoo-hoo. 'It's unheard of for a woman to die before childbirth. Serves you right if I have an inquest.'..."
"For shame to keep from me now," said Lisbeth in a voice that was higher than the continued muttering of Olwen. "Have you no regard for the living? The dead is dead. And you made too much of Jennie. You spoiled her...."
On a sudden Olwen ceased, and she strode up to the bed and thrust her scissors into Lisbeth's breast.

II
ACCORDING TO THE PATTERN
On the eve of a Communion Sunday Simon Idiot espied Dull Anna washing her feet in the spume on the shore; he came out of his hiding-place and spoke jestingly to Anna and enticed her into Blind Cave, where he had sport with her. In the ninth year of her child, whom she had called Abel, Anna stretched out her tongue at the schoolmaster and took her son to the man who farmed Deinol.
"Brought have I your scarecrow," she said. "Give you to me the brown pennies that you will pay for him."
From dawn to sunset Abel stood on a hedge, waving his arms, shouting, and mimicking the sound of gunning. Weary of his work he vowed a vow that he would not keep on at it. He walked to Morfa and into his mother's cottage; his mother listened to him, then she took a stick and beat him until he could not rest nor move