He lost her for a while, and when he saw her again she was in the open
air. He was with her, though not exactly by her side. As far as he
could judge he was both leading her and following after her. He was
above her, and also holding her hand. If he could have been everywhere
about her at one and the same instant, it was that.
It seemed to be Sunday. There was no work going on in the streets, and
there was the Sunday air of leisure. Molly walked rapidly, her eyes
toward the ground. Her whole little figure expressed concentration of
purpose.
He knew the suburb. The shady streets, the trim green lawns, the low
stone walls with vines tumbling over them, the wooden houses painted
for the most part in dull tones of red and yellow, were those with
which he had always been familiar. High on a knoll he saw the deep
verandas of his own old home. Molly did not hesitate. She turned in at
the gate.
There was a short driveway, between clumps of shrubbery and under elms.
At a sudden turning she met Ethelind. The two girls stopped and looked
at each other as they came face to face.
"You're Ethelind, aren't you?" Molly said, without trembling or
awkwardness.
Ethelind's wild eyes were all ablaze.
"Yes, and you're Molly. I'm--I'm so glad you've come. I've wanted to
know you. I was coming one day to see you--I don't care what any one
says. I know it's what my brother would want me to do. We--we miss him
so."
"Thank you," Molly said, with a gentle smile. "I'm glad you thought of
me so kindly. Just now there's something I want to say to your father
or mother. Do you think either of them would see me?"
Ethelind's face fell.
"I--I can't say--for sure. They're--Oh, I don't know!--But my brother--"
"Yes, I know all that; but this is something important."
The girl seized the sister-in-law's arm. "It--it isn't--anything
you've--you've heard?"
"It's nothing I've heard; it's only something that I feel I know."
But they had been seen from the window. The mother came running out,
all her gay audacity transformed, as a lamp is transformed when,
instead of giving light, it becomes the center of conflagration.
"Oh, what is it? What is it?" she cried, as she hurried toward them.
"It's nothing very definite, Mrs. Lester," Molly replied, calmly. "It's
only something I feel so strongly that--"
"Oh, feel!" Mrs. Lester exclaimed, impatiently. "Don't frighten us with
feelings when--"
"Is Mr. Lester in? I should like to talk to him as well."
The mother led the way toward the house. Molly followed, Ethelind
clinging to her arm. It did not occur to any of them that no farther
explanation had been made as to who Molly was. That seemed to take
itself for granted.
The father was in the hall at the foot of the stairs. Cora was coming
down them. Both had been summoned by the sense of something wrong.
Molly went straight to her husband's father.
"Oh, I want to tell you, Mr. Lester; I feel I have a message."
"Feel you have a message?" he echoed, with a kind of tremulous
severity. "What do you mean by that?"
"I don't know what I mean; only this morning he--he seemed to come and
stand beside me--"
"Nonsense!" It was Cora who said that, from the position in which she
had come to a standstill half-way down the stairs. To Molly she seemed
very magisterial and commanding. "Nonsense!" she repeated. "This is
pure nervousness--or hysterics."
"No, it isn't, Miss Lester," Molly contradicted, not rudely, but with
imploring earnestness. "I'm sure he did come. He spoke to me.
_Something_ spoke to me."
"Did you hear anything?" the mother demanded.
"No, it wasn't in words; or if it was in words it was only as it turned
itself into words in my own mind. It was more like--like a
conviction--an intense conviction--that came to me from outside."
"And what did your conviction say?" Cora inquired, icily.
"It said-- Oh, you must forgive me!--I shouldn't come if I didn't feel
it so strongly!--It's as hard for me as it is for you--"
The father backed away to the baluster. His face had grown gray. The
mother dropped to a hall chair. Ethelind was crying already, but
standing by as if to give aid. Cora was still commanding and severe. It
was she who interrupted.
"Yes; we understand all that. But tell us what you've come to say."
Under this authority and severity Molly began to grow nervous. She
clasped and unclasped her hands, sometimes twisting her fingers.
"You see, it was this way. I was reading the Bible and--and
thinking--and trying to understand what it meant---when all at once
he--he seemed to be with me--and to be saying things."
"What sort of things?"
"I don't exactly know, Miss Lester. I knew he was there--and that he
was telling me how beautiful it was with him--but I can't explain how
he made me understand it--"
"No," Cora interrupted again, "nobody ever can explain. Once they get
notions into their heads, they seem to think explanations are not
important." She came down to the second lowest step, but still stood
over the trembling young wife in her attitude of authority. "This is
all nerves, my dear--and excitement. The book you were reading--oh,
yes, it's a very good book, and full of the wisdom of the ages and all
that!--But it reacted on you in such a way that you've conjured up
these frightening things--"
"But I'm not frightened at all," Molly burst out. "That's the wonderful
part of it. If he hadn't come and told me beforehand, and made me feel
how happy he is, I should have been. But I'm not now; and I don't want
you to be. That's why I came."
"Yes; no doubt," Miss Lester agreed, coldly. "But now that you've come,
you'll do well to run home again and try to calm yourself and be
sensible. If my brother has been"--she stumbled at the word, but forced
herself to utter it--"if my brother has been--k-killed--we shall hear
of it from the proper authorities."
"Cora, that's not fair," Ethelind cried, indignantly. "Molly's come
over here to warn us, and even if she's wrong--" She broke off to make
another sort of appeal. "Father, can't you say something? Here's your
son's wife--the mother of the child he's expecting--"
But Mrs. Lester rose, still clinging to her chair.
"If this is a ruse for getting into our house and making our
acquaintance whether we would or no--"
"Mother, how can you?" came from Ethelind. "You deserve that your son
should never be given back to you. Father, can't you say anything at
all?"
But what the father did say was uttered brokenly. "I don't--I don't
believe it. He's not--not dead. She's come here to get us to own
her--to take her in--"
"And if we don't," Ethelind cried, "and she goes away again, I'll go
with her. Whether he comes back or not I shall be there."
It was extraordinary to Lester that he could look on at this scene
without conscious pain. It Was exactly as if he had watched them
rehearsing a play in which emotions were simulated but not experienced.
When the rehearsal was over they would become their actual selves
again. Beyond hardness, and suffering, and misunderstanding he could
see the end.
He could see the end as Molly cast an imploring look around her and
prepared to depart. Ethelind, who was already in street clothes, gave
all the signs of going with her. Over them both Lester threw the
protection of his love, which apparently gave them nerve. Neither of
them flinched; but it was in Molly that the real valor shone. She was
both quiet and firm as she took her few steps toward the door, Ethelind
clinging to her arm.
But at the door there was a ring, and on the porch outside there stood
a boy with a telegram in his hand.
"Charles E. Lester live here?"
Ethelind seized the envelope, while with feverish fingers Cora signed
for it. The father took it in his hands and held it helplessly.
The mother uttered one great cry.
"Open it!"
He opened it--read it--and let it flutter to the floor.
Cora snatched it up; but she, too, dropped it after a hurried glance.
She stood as if turned to stone.
The mother took it--sat down deliberately--read it carefully--read it
again--read it again--and folding it, slipped it into the bosom of her
gown.
Molly and Ethelind had not waited. They had not needed to hear the
news. Rather they were eager to run away. It was Molly, however, who
pressed onward, dragging the other with her--out to the porch--down the
steps--on to the driveway.
The three in the hallway remained as if paralyzed, without tears,
without words, seemingly without thoughts.
The mother came first to the possession of her faculties.
"Stop her," she cried, in a deep, tragic voice a little like a man's.
"Stop her. Bring her back." She struggled to her feet, hurrying toward
the door. "She's my dead son's wife. He spoke to her. He's not dead.
He's alive. If he wasn't alive he couldn't have come to her. Stop her.
Call her back. She's my child. Nothing shall take her away from me."
Lester saw the two girls pause, while Ethelind whispered:
"Go back. She's calling you."
Slowly Molly turned round. Slowly she mounted the steps of the veranda.
The vision faded out as Lester saw his mother's arms go round the neck
of his young wife and draw her close.
But it faded out in radiance. It also faded out in confidence. He was
not only at peace, he was at peace with the certainty of a vast
readjustment.
It was readjustment in himself first of all--the adaptation of the
"fan" at ball-games, and of the broker of The Street, to the eternities
of which he could just discern the beginnings.
Then it would be the readjustment of his family--to each other--to
Molly--to their memory of him. A new kind of tenderness would settle
down among them with a new and farther outlook.
It would be the readjustment, too, of his country--to a new
world-position--to a wider world responsibility. In the ending of
enmities it would play a ruling part.
And it would be the readjustment of nations to nations, and of men to
men. The blind hatreds that had hurled him against the Bavarian and the
Bavarian against him would cease. Their folly would be recognized. Of
the blood that had been shed, and was still to be shed, this would be
the recompense. It would be shed to its highest purpose when it should
be shown that it had been shed in vain.
Soon those who were in the turmoil that mortals create for one another
would have come west like himself--into the sunset, into the glory,
into the great repose. They would come into the great activities, too,
where work never ceases, and strength never tires, and love never
wanes. And as he turned into the radiance he felt content to wait
patiently for that.
THE END