"What I don't understand, Bob," Collingham said, with faint indignation
in his tone, "is whether you're a married man or not."
"I'm a married man, father, all right."
"Then why don't you live like a married man? I suppose you know that
people are saying all sorts of things."
Bob considered the simplest way in which to put his case. It was the
afternoon of the day following the end of Teddy's trial, and his father
was giving him a lift homeward from the bank. It being winter, dark was
already closing in, and though they were out of the city, great
arc-lights were still strung along the roadways, which were otherwise
lighted by flashes from hundreds of motor cars.
"I've never said anything about this before," the father resumed, before
Bob had found the right words, "because we'd all agreed--your mother,
Edith, and myself--that we wouldn't hamper you with questions about it
while you were busy with something else. But now that that's over--"
"Part of it is over, but only part of it. We've a long road to travel
yet."
"If the appeal is denied, as I expect it will be, you'll have to let me
in on the application to the Governor for clemency. I think I'd have
some influence there."
"Thanks, dad. That'll be a help." He asked, after further thinking,
"Should you like me to live as a married man--considering who it is I've
married?"
Knowing that the question was a searching one, Bob found the reply much
what he expected.
"I want to see the best thing come out of a mixed-up situation. I don't
deny that all these problems bother me; but we have them on our hands,
and so there's no more to be said. We've got to find the wise thing to
do, and do it. That's all I'm after."
"That's all I'm after, myself, dad."
"I don't admit any responsibility for all this muss," Collingham
declared, as if his son had accused him. "I don't care what anyone
thinks; my conscience is clear."
"Of course, dad; of course!"
"But since things have happened as they have, I'd like to make them as
easy as I can for everyone; and whatever money can do--"
"Or recognition?"
They came back to the original question.
"Yes; recognition, too--as soon as we've anyone to recognize. What I
don't understand is all this backing and filling--"
"Have you asked mother?"
"In a way; and she's just as mysterious as you."
Bob tried another avenue.
"You saw Jennie yourself, didn't you?"
"Once; yes."
"What did you think of her?"
"What any man would think of her. She was very charming and--and
appealing."
"Did you think anything else?"
The father turned sharply.
"What makes you ask?"
"Because it's possible you did."
"Well, I did. What of it?"
"Only this--that that's the thing I want to nail before I bring her to
you as my wife."
"Then why don't you go to work and nail it?"
He found the words he was in search of.
"Partly because I've other things to do; partly because I feel that, by
giving it its time, it will nail itself; and, most of all, for the
reason that neither she nor I want to take the--the great happiness
which we feel is coming to us in the end while--while all this other
thing is in the air. I wonder if you understand me."
"More or less."
"It's as if we'd accidentally put the cart of marriage before the horse
of engagement. Do you see? Nominally we're married; but really we're
only engaged. We can't be married--we don't want to be married--till
other things are off our minds."
With this bit of explanation, the Collinghams began to live once more as
if nothing had occurred. It was not easy; but by dint of skimming on the
surface they were able to manage it. That is to say, Bob came and went,
and they asked him no more questions, while on his part he continued to
nerve Teddy and his sisters for another test.
If there was anyone noticeably different, it was Junia. Always quick to
tack according to the wind, she seemed almost to have changed her
course. In putting the best face on Edith's marriage and Bob's
complications she had adopted the new ideals that kept her in the
movement.
"It's the war," she explained to her intimates. "We're all different.
Life as we used to live it begins to seem so empty. We weren't real; we
people who spent our time entertaining and being entertained. It's all
very well to say that we're much the same since the war as we were
before, but it isn't so. I know I'm not. I'm quite a revolutionist. I
may not have made much progress, but I'm certainly more in touch with
reality."
With this transition, it became natural to speak of her son-in-law.
"Such a wonderful fellow--all mind, you know, but the type that helps so
many of us to find our way through the mists of materialism and
selfishness out to the great big ends. To me, it's like a new life just
to hear him talk, and I can't help feeling it providential that he's
found a wife like Edith. She's an extraordinary girl to be my
child--intellectual and practical at once. She can keep her husband
company in all his researches and yet cook him a good dinner if their
little maid is out. Is there anything so astonishing in life as our own
children and what they turn out to be?"
This was a transition, too, leading her to speak of Bob's affairs in the
tone of one who, though puzzled, takes them sympathetically.
"And yet I think it's enlarging. Though we've kept only on the outer
edge of the drama through which Bob has been going with the girl he's
married, the whole thing has deepened his life so much that it couldn't
help deepening ours. It's broadened us, too, I think, giving us an
insight into lives so different from our own. That's what we need so
much, it seems to me, that kind of broadening. It's going to solve a lot
of our national problems which at present seem to be insoluble. Yes; Bob
is still at home with us, and I tell you frankly that I don't know what
is coming out of it. It's all so queer and independent and modern. I'm
old-fashioned, and I don't pretend to see through these young people's
ways. But I'm Bob's mother, and through all his developments--and he
_is_ developing--I'm going with him."
So Junia talked, and talked so much that she was in danger of talking
herself round. The instinct to be in the front line of fashion had
something to do with it, but self-persuasion had more. The thing of the
hour being the throwing over of the old social code, Junia wouldn't have
been Junia if she hadn't done it; but, even so, the creeping-in of
compunction toward Bob took her by surprise. She had told herself
hitherto that she loved him so much that she would work for his
permanent happiness even at the cost of his temporary pain; but now she
began to fear that what had seemed to her his temporary pain might prove
the very life of his life.
She came to this perception through reading in the newspapers the
accounts of the Follett boy's trial. By the tacit convention which the
Collinghams had established, that they had nothing to do with it, she
never spoke of it to Bradley or Edith, nor did they speak of it to her;
but she kept herself informed, and knew the devotion with which Bob gave
himself to Jennie and her family. The boy's condemnation hit her hard.
When Bradley came home that night, she saw that it had also hit him.
"I'm worth about five million dollars at a guess," he confided to her,
"and I'd cheerfully have given four of them if this thing hadn't
happened."
"But, Bradley dear, you had nothing to do with it."
"I know I hadn't," he declared, savagely; "and yet I'd--I'd do as I
say."
But it wasn't Bradley she was most sorry for; nor was it for the Follett
boy. She was sorry that, because of conditions which she herself had
fostered, Bob would never reap the fruit of a love in which he had been
so chivalrous. She didn't see how he could. Just as there was a natural
Bradley and a standardized one, so there was a natural and a
standardized Junia. The natural Junia had long seemed dead; but the
bigness of the love which she saw daily and hourly exemplified moved her
to the painful stirrings of new life.
Meanwhile Bob went with Teddy up the remaining steps by which he mounted
his Calvary.
He stood near the cage on the morning when the boy was brought up for
sentence, witnessing his coolness. On being asked if he had anything to
say before sentence was pronounced he replied:
"Nothing, sir, except to thank you for giving me such a fair trial."
The words were spoken in a firmer voice than those which followed:
"The court, in consideration of your crime of murder in the first
degree, sentences you to the punishment of death by the passage of a
current of electricity through your body, within the week beginning...."
----
When the appeal for a new trial was denied, it was Bob who informed
Teddy. When all efforts to obtain Executive clemency had failed, it was
Bob again who broke the news. When the boy requested that his mother and
sisters should omit their next visit to Bitterwell--should wait till he
sent them word before coming again--it was Bob who conveyed the request.
Bitterwell, the great penitentiary, was twenty miles from Pemberton
Heights, and through the winter they had gone to see him some thirty-odd
times. They went in couples. Gladys and her mother, Jennie and Gussie,
keeping each other company. The visits were less difficult than might
have been expected because of Teddy's cheerfulness.
Of the request to wait before coming again, they didn't at first seize
the significance. While frank with them about everything else, Bob had
never given them the date of the week the judge had named, nor had they
asked for it. If they did so ask, he meant to tell them; but they seemed
to divine his intention.
Perhaps they divined the intention in this intimation from Teddy. At any
rate, they didn't question it, or rebel against it. It followed on
visits first of one pair and then of the other, both of which had been
so normal as almost to pass as gay. That is, Teddy's spirits had
infected theirs, and they had parted from him smiling. That of Jennie
and Gussie had been the first of the two, and he had sent them off with
a joke.
"My boy, I'm proud of you," had been Lizzie's farewell words to him.
"Walk firmly, with your head erect, and never, never be sorry for
anything you've done."
"Good old ma! The best ever! I sure am proud of _you_! What'll you bet
that we don't have some good times together yet?"
A psychologist would have said that by suggestion and autosuggestion
they strengthened each other and themselves; but whatever the process,
the result was evident. Bob had given them the verb "to carry on," so
that "carrying on" became at once an objective and a driving force.
Gussie and Gladys went regularly to work; Jennie took care of the house
and her mother. The latter task had become the more imperative, for the
reason that, after Teddy's request that they should suspend their
visits, she began to fail. It was not that she was hurt by it, but
rather that she took it as a signal.
In the efforts to be strong, they were helped by the fact that, not long
after Teddy's removal to Bitterwell, Edith Ayling had come to see them,
all of her own initiative. She had repeated the visit many times, and
had Gussie and Gladys go to see her at Cathedral Heights. Jennie had
never been able to leave home.
"I didn't say anything about it to you," Edith explained to Bob, after
the occasion of her breaking the ice, "because I wanted to do it on my
own. Quite apart from you and Jennie, I feel that our lots have become
involved and that we Collinghams have some responsibility. I don't say
responsibility for what, because I don't know; and yet I feel--" Unable
to say what she felt, she elided to the personal. "Jennie I don't get
at. She's so silent--so shut away. The mother has never been well enough
to see me. But the two younger girls I'm really getting to know very
well and to be very fond of. They're intelligent down to the
finger-tips, and with a little guidance I'm sure they could do big
things."
"What kind of things?"
"I should train Gladys along intellectual lines, and Gussie was born for
the stage. I know that Ernest and I could help them, if you thought it
all right, and we should love doing it. You must read what he says in
his new book, _Salvage_, as to getting people into the tasks for which
they are fitted and in which they can be happy. He thinks that a lot of
our nonproductiveness comes from the people who'd love doing one thing
being compelled to do another, and that if we could only help the
individuals we come across to find their natural jobs...."
It was Edith also who unconsciously helped her mother out of the trap in
which she had found herself caught.
"Oh, by the way, whom do you think I met in the street the other day? No
less a person than Hubert Wray, just back from California. And that
reminds me. He told me you had bought his big picture that everyone was
talking about last year. Where is it? Why did you never say anything
about it?"
Edith was spending a day in May at Collingham Lodge, and was walking
with her mother between rows of irises.
"Come in," Junia said. "I'll show you. Then you'll understand."
But not till "Life and Death" had been drawn from its hiding place and
propped against the wall was Edith allowed to enter her mother's room.
She advanced slowly, her eyes on the canvas. Junia waited for the shock.
"So that's it," Edith said, at last. "It isn't a thing I should want to
live and die with--I never can understand that fancy people have for
nudes--but I see it's very fine."
"And is that all you see?"
"All I see? I see it has a meaning, of course, but--"
Junia's throat felt dry.
"Don't you--don't you recognize anybody?"
"Who? The Brasshead woman? I shouldn't know her from Eve."
Junia crept nearer.
"'The Brasshead woman'? Who's she? What are you talking about?"
"Why, the model who sat for it. Hubert told me all about her. He said
she wasn't his ideal for the part--rather a poor lot as a woman--but he
couldn't get anyone better." She added, on examining the features, "I
don't think she's bad, considering what he wanted."
"Doesn't she--doesn't she remind you of--of Bob's wife?"
"About as much as she does of you. Surely that's not the reason why you
hid the thing away!"
"I--I did think--I was afraid--that people might see a resemblance--"
Edith made an inarticulate sound intended for derision.
"As a matter of fact, Hubert said it was probably a good thing for him
to be obliged to paint some one else than Jennie. He'd been painting her
so much that he was in danger of painting her into everything, like
Andrea del Sarto with his wife."
"Then you--you don't think that he's painted her in here?"
Edith looked again.
"Well, if you put it that way--and you were crazy to find a
likeness--perhaps about the brows--and down here at the curve of the
cheek and neck--but no! Not really! This is a carnal woman, and Jennie's
a thing of the spirit." She dismissed the subject as of no further
importance. "Do tell me. Is there anyone in New York who reglazes these
English chintzes?"
So Junia made new plans, waiting for Bob to come home to dinner in order
to meet him on the threshold, throw her arms about his neck, and give
him the glad facts.
But Bob sent a telephone message that he would not be home to dinner,
that he would not be home that night. No one was to worry, and he would
turn up at breakfast in the morning.
It was all the information he gave because, by special permission from
the warden, and under a solemn promise not to convey anything to the
prisoner that would enable him to cheat the law, he was spending the
night at Bitterwell.
He was spending it in a low one-storied building some sixty feet long
and not more than twenty in width. Its arrangements were simple. On
entering, you came into a corridor some six feet wide, running the
length of seven little rooms. The seven little rooms were each furnished
with a cot, a fixed wash-basin, a table, and a chair. Each had, however,
this peculiarity--that the end toward the corridor had no wall. Instead
of a wall it had long, strong perpendicular white bars, some two or
three inches apart, and running from ceiling to floor. The inmate was
thus visible at all times, like an animal in a cage. In the corridor
were half a dozen chairs of the kitchen variety, and at the end a little
yellow door.
The little yellow door led into a room of which the chief piece of
furniture was a chair vaguely suggestive of an armchair in a smoking
room, though with some singular attachments. Around it in a semicircle
were some eight or ten other chairs similar to those in the corridor. In
one corner was a walled-off space that might have housed a dynamo; in
the other a stack of brooms and mops. As a passageway gave access to
this room, and the yellow door was carefully kept closed, Bob was not
required to see within.
Of the seven little rooms four were empty, and three had occupants. At
one end was a negro; at the other an Italian; Teddy was in the center.
Outside, there was a guard for the Italian, another for the negro, while
for Teddy there were two. They were big, husky fellows, three Irishmen
and a Swede, genial, good-natured souls to whom their duties had become
a matter of course.
There was something of the matter of course in the whole situation, even
to Teddy and Bob. The human mind being ready to accept anything to which
it is led by steps sufficiently graded, both young men were attuned to
finding themselves as they were. As they were meant that Teddy clung to
one of the bars from within, and Bob to the same bar from without. They
talked through the open spaces, being able to do it quietly because they
were so close.
"You don't think I'm afraid, do you, Bob? I should have been afraid if
it hadn't been for you. You've bucked me up something--well, there are
no words for it."
"Let it go without words, Teddy. Don't try to say it."
"I like to say it," he grinned. "Or, rather, I'd like to say it if I
could. I like trying to say it, even when I can't."
That was all for the time; but after some minutes, Teddy's hand stole
over Bob's big paw as it held to the bar, so that they held to it
together.
It was Bob who broke the silence next.
"I didn't tell you, Teddy--I've only just found it out--that dad's been
taking care of Mrs. Flynn and her kiddies and means to go on doing it."
"That's good," the boy sighed. "It takes about the last thing off my
mind."
So they talked spasmodically, never saying much, and yet saying all the
things for which language has no words. At intervals the Italian showed
his sympathy by groaning heavily, which was generally a signal for the
negro to begin singing, in a cottony voice, the first verse of "Safe in
the Arms of Jesus." Teddy apologized for them as a host for unseemly
members of his household.
"They're good guys, all right. That's just their way of letting me know
they feel for me. It's funny how kind hearted some mutt will be who's
committed a cold-blooded murder."
He had probably been following this train of thought for some minutes
when he said, in a reasoning tone:
"What can the law do with fellows of our sort? Look at the thing
straight now. We've got good in us, of course; but you can't trust us to
hold our horses. I don't blame them for what they're giving me--hardly
any. Only, I'll be darned if it doesn't make me surer that all this is
only an experiment--a way of finding out how not to do it--so that we
can make the next go a better one."
They discussed this topic in a desultory way, not so much letting it
drop as pursuing it each in his own thought. Teddy picked up the line
again after an interval of time, and some distance farther on.
"I suppose you can't believe that you come to a place where you know
you're through and are in a hurry to get on. Well, you do. I guess old
people like ma reach there, anyhow; and young people, too, when
they're--when they're like me. I've had my shot--and I've miffed it. Now
I'm all on edge to have another try. I'm so crazy about that that the
thing that's to happen first doesn't seem anything--very much."
The hours wore on, but it seemed to Bob a night to which there was no
time. Though the support he brought to Teddy was merely that of
companionship, he felt that the boy was outstripping him. In Teddy's own
phrase, he was "moving on," but moving on very fast. Bob couldn't tell
how he knew this; he only felt himself being left behind. Teddy was
quite right; his old experiment _was_ over, and some of the exaltation
of the new one was already breaking through. That was the meaning of his
silences, his abstractions. That was why he came out of each such spell
with a smile that grew more luminous.
The Italian and the negro fell asleep. The four guards talked less to
one another. Clutching the bar grew tiring. Brannigan, one of Teddy's
guards, brought up a chair, offering it to Bob.
"Why don't you sit down? It'll be quite a while yet."
Bob took the chair, Teddy the one inside the cell. Bringing it as close
to the bars as possible, he thrust his fingers through the opening to
touch Bob's hand. Bob closed the fingers within his palm, and so held
them.
"I'm not going to send any message to ma and the girls. They know I love
them. You can't add anything to that." A sidelong smile stole through
the bars. "I love you too, Bob. I guess it's a bum thing to say, but
to-night--well, it's different--and I'm going to say it. I can't do
anything to thank you; but it may mean something to you to have me
loving you like the devil all the way from--from over there."
"It means something to me now."
"Then that's all right."
The Italian breathed heavily. The negro snored. The guards were bored
and somnolent. Teddy might have been asleep except for the look and the
smile that every now and then crept through the bars toward his
companion.
Suddenly he pulled his fingers from Bob's clasp, jumped to his feet, and
held out his arms.
"All right, ma! I'm ready!"
The cry was so loud and joyous that Bob sprang up. Brannigan lumbered
forward.
"Been dreamin'," he explained. "Just as well if he has."
Teddy looked about him in bewilderment.
"No, I haven't been. I wasn't asleep. I was wide awake. I guess you'll
think I'm dippy, Bob; but I did see ma. 'Pon my soul I did! She was
right there." He pointed to the spot. "She looked lovely, too--young,
like--and yet it was ma all right. She wanted me to come. That's why I
jumped. Oh, well! Perhaps I _am_ dippy. But it's funny, isn't it?"
He was so preoccupied with this happening as not to notice sounds in the
outer passage and beyond the yellow door. Even when he did, it was with
no more than a partial cognizance.
"Listen!" he said once. "There they are. It'll be only a few minutes
now. I'm not going to let you go in there, Bob. Funny about ma, isn't
it?"
The sounds grew louder. The guards were moving about. Behind the yellow
door people seemed to enter. There was the scraping of chairs as they
sat down. The Italian woke and howled dismally. The negro shouted his
hymn. Teddy was far away on the wings of speculation; but he came back
to say:
"If ma had gone ahead of me, I know she'd like nothing better than to
come and give me a lift over. But she hasn't gone ahead of me. She's
over there in Indiana Avenue. That's the funny part of it. What do you
suppose it means?"
Bob didn't know. Neither had he time to offer an opinion, because the
main door opened and the warden appeared, accompanied by the chaplain,
the doctor, the principal keeper, and three other men whom Teddy didn't
know.
"Here they are!" Teddy whispered, as if their coming was a relief.
The warden advanced to the central cell. The door was unlocked. Teddy
stood on the threshold.
"Thank you, warden. I suppose I can say good-by to my friend?"
Permission was given. Teddy stepped out into the corridor.
"You'd better go now, Bob. No use in your staying any longer." He nodded
toward the men standing round him. "They'll handle me gently. I'm not
afraid."
Their hands clasped; but the boy was only a boy, loving and in need of
love. Before Bob knew what was happening, Teddy's arms were about his
neck, in a long, desperate embrace.
A gulp that was almost a sob from each--and it was over.
"All right, boys. I'm ready. Go to it."
The words were spoken steadily. Bob limped toward the door. A guard
unlocked it.
"Say, Bob!" It was Teddy's voice again. Bob turned. The lad had taken
off his collar, no more conscious of the act than if he was going to
bed. One of the strange men was kneeling on one knee, making a
significant slit in a leg of Teddy's trousers. "Say, Bob! I wonder--if
it doesn't take you too far out of your way-if you'd mind driving round
by the house? You see, if anything has happened to ma, why, the girls'll
be all up in the air, poor things!"
Bob nodded because he couldn't trust himself to words--and so it was the
end.
----
Out in the air it seemed to him as if he had dreamed and waked up. The
May night was so exquisite, so hallowing, that the walls of Bitterwell
were mellow and enchanted against the dome of stars. Even in these grim
courts the scent of growing things was sweet.
Driving in the deadest hours of night over the long flat road, he was
too tired to think. His imagination didn't try to follow Teddy, because
it had become an instinct to spring to the need to "carry on." Teddy was
behind him. There were other things in front; and his mind was already
with them.
And yet not actively. After he had slept he would be able to take them
up; but just now his main desire was to get home to bed. Nothing but
that would dispel this overweight of emotion.
Along the familiar road he drove mechanically. Even Teddy's last
request, though it formed an intention, was hardly in his mind. At
Bond's Corner, where the roads forked, to the right to Pemberton
Heights, to the left to the bridge that would take him over toward
Marillo, he was so nearly asleep that he might have gone straight on
homeward had he not been startled by seeing a man and a woman standing
in the middle of the road.
He jammed down the service and emergency brakes, swinging to the right.
The fact that they stood facing him without getting out of his way both
amazed him and rendered him indignant. Turning to look at so strange a
pair of pedestrians, he saw--Teddy and his mother.
They were not quite on the road, but a little above it. Neither were
they in the dark like other things around, but shining with a light of
their own. Neither were they shadowy apparitions, but definite, vital,
forcible. They were dressed as he had generally seen them, and yet they
wore a kind of radiance. The mother's arm was over her boy's shoulder,
but Teddy was waving his hand. Smiles were on both faces, on the lips,
in the eyes, and somehow in the personality.
Bob was not frightened, but he was thrilled. It seemed to him that they
stayed long enough to overcome all the doubts of his senses. Though he
pressed on the brakes, the car went a number of yards before he could
bring it to a standstill; and yet they never left his side. They didn't
exactly move; they were only there--living, lovely, sending out love as
if it had been light, wrapping him round and round. It was so vivid, so
much a fact, that when the car stopped and he saw no one there, he was
amazed once more to find himself alone.
He couldn't drive on at once. He lingered--staring at the spot where
they had stood, looking over the wide, dim country, gazing up at the
stars in their yearning infinitude. He tried to persuade himself that
his own mind had projected something unreal in itself; but he couldn't
throw off the extraordinary happiness the vision left behind it.
Before reaching Indiana Avenue he had decided on a course. If there were
no lights in the house, he would drive on homeward. If there were he
would stop. At this hour in the very early morning, unless something
unusual had happened, there would of course be none.
But there were lights. At sound of his approach, Pansy gave a little
silvery yelp. Jennie opened the door before he had time to ring.
"Come in, Bob. I saw your car from the window."
In the living-room Gussie and Gladys, wearing their dressing-gowns,
cried out their relief at seeing him. It was the situation Teddy had
foreseen, in which they were all "up in the air." As usual, Gladys was
the spokesman.
"Oh, Bob, we're so glad to have you. We didn't know what to do. Momma--"
A sob stopped her, but Jennie was more calm.
"Momma's gone, Bob. Gussie went into her room about half past ten to
take her the glass of milk we always put by her bed, and she was
asleep."
They gathered round him as if he formed their rallying point. He took
Jennie and Gussie each by the hand. Gladys held his coat by the lapel.
"You're not sorry, any of you, are you? She wanted to go; and she's gone
in the sweetest of all ways."
"She won't have to hear about Teddy," Gussie wept. "That's a comfort,
anyhow."
Gladys laid her head against Bob's breast.
"No; but Teddy'll have to hear about her."
Bob saw the opportunity. "No, Gladys; Teddy will not have to hear about
her." He let this sink in. "Teddy--_knows_."
It was some seconds before Jennie and Gussie released his hands and
Gladys let go his lapel. When they did they moved away silently. Gussie
dropped on her knees at the arm of a big chair, bowing her head, and
crying quietly. Jennie, a slim figure with hands behind her back, walked
down the length of the room, staring at the curtained window toward
Indiana Avenue. Gladys stood off, looking at Bob, nodding her head
sagely, as she said:
"I thought that's what it meant when he didn't want us to come. He liked
it better without saying good-by. So we all do." She gave a big, sudden
sob, controlling herself as suddenly. "We're going to carry on, Bob.
We're not going to show the white feather"--there was another big sob,
with another successful effort to keep it back--"we're not going to show
the white feather--any of us--just to please you."
"Thank you, Gladys. It will please me. But there's something that
pleases me more. I'd like to tell all three of you about it."
Jennie turned round from the window, coming back down the room. She was
pale, but she didn't cry. Gussie dried her eyes and was struggling to
her feet when Bob laid his hand on her shoulder.
"No, Gussie; stay where you are. I'll sit down here." He dropped into
the chair. "You come on this side, Jennie. Gladys--"
But Gladys had already crouched at his feet, while Jennie, balancing
Gussie, sank beside the other arm of the chair. Pansy sprang up to her
place on his knee.
He told them about Teddy and his mother--about Teddy's vision and his
own.
"I don't say I know what to make of it. I'm not at all sure that we're
obliged to explain that sort of thing unless we're scientists or
psychologists. It seems to me that when beauty and comfort flash on us
at a time of great need, we're at liberty to take them for what they
seem to be, even if we don't understand them."
As his hand lay on the arm of the chair, Jennie kissed it again and
again. It was the first spontaneous affection she had ever shown him,
and, though it moved him with a stirring strange and fundamental, he
felt that with the awesome things so fresh in their minds, the time had
not yet come to respond to it. It was one more impulse to gather force
by being restrained a little longer.
"It isn't as if this thing stood alone. A great many people have had
experiences like it. They may be no more than fancy, just as some people
say; but I do know this: that by what he saw Teddy was helped to do what
he had to do, and that for me--"
"Yes, Bob," Gladys pleaded. "What was it for you?"
"Something real--and assuring--and beautiful--and comforting--and
glorious." He uttered the words slowly, as if selecting his terms. "More
than that," he went on, "it was something that's given me a happiness I
can't describe but which I should like to share with you--which perhaps
I shall be able to share with you--as we get to know one another
better--and time goes on."
The little snub-nosed face, something like Pansy's, was lifted to him
adoringly.
"Are we going to be your very own, Bob?"
"Yes, Gladys, my very own."