BREAKING THE NEWS
There was an instant of stark, palsied silence. The rector, his wife,
and McPherson looked at the all-unconscious boy with dumb horror. A
horror that for the time crowded out indignation. Frederik, ignorant as
he was of any cause for emotion, was struck by the tense bearing of the
trio and looked from one to the other with the air of the only man in
the room who does not catch a joke's point.
Peter Grimm alone was not affected by Willem's words. He was used to the
child's oddities, his alternating high spirits, and dashes of sadness;
his old-fashioned phrases and his queer lapses. Grimm broke the ominous
silence with an amused chuckle.
"Most people die, sooner or later, Willem," he answered, stroking the
boy's shock of soft yellow hair. "I'll live to see you in the business
though. And we'll go to dozens of circuses together, too. Don't worry
your little head over your Oom Peter's dying. I----"
He paused. The electrified atmosphere generated by the three
conspirators began to reach his non-sensitive brain. A quick glance at
Mr. Batholommey and a second at the rector's wife confirmed his vague
feeling that something was wrong. He turned back to Willem, in time to
intercept a blighting scowl of warning the doctor was trying to flash to
the boy.
"Willem," asked Grimm gently, "how did you happen to say such a queer
thing just now? What made you think I'm going to die?"
A concerted and unintelligible interruption from the trio was voiced too
late to prevent Willem's reply.
"_He_ said so," replied the boy, pointing at McPherson.
Then he caught the doctor's annihilating frown. And, simultaneously the
rector cried in stern admonition:
"Willem!"
Mrs. Batholommey, too, was making quite awful and wholly
incomprehensible faces at him. Under the triple menace the boy wilted.
Like every child, since Cain, he had a thousand times been reproved for
things he had said or done in perfect innocence. In fact, the more
unconscious the offence, the more dire was the reproof. Children do not
reason in such matters. It is enough for them to know they have said or
done the wrong thing; without stopping to discover why or how that thing
chanced to be wrong.
The non-linguist traveller in a foreign land cannot read the "Keep off
the Grass" or "No Thoroughfare" signs. But the policeman's threatening
club has a universal language that he understands and intuitively obeys.
So Willem (ignorant of death save as an empty name that vaguely carried
a note of sorrow, and wholly unaware why he should not have imparted the
news of Grimm's coming demise), saw he had said something very terrible.
And a look of abject panic came into his face.
But Grimm's hand was still on his head,--gentle, caressing, infinitely
tender in its touch.
"No, don't stop the boy," commanded Peter, meeting the variously
anguished glances of the others with a half smile that began and ended
in the suddenly widened eyes. "Don't stop him. Only children speak the
truth nowadays. It used to be 'children and fools.' But fools have
learned to tell fool-lies, and they have left children the monopoly of
truth telling. Go on, Willem. You heard the doctor say that I am going
to----?"
Willem's fragile little body was trembling from head to foot. Under Mrs.
Batholommey's distorted glare and threatening noiseless mouthings his
puny courage had gone to pieces. Big tears began to roll down his
cheeks. And noting the child's terror, Grimm fell to soothing him.
"There, there, _jounker_," comforted Peter. "Don't let them frighten
you. Oom Peter will stand by you. You haven't done anything wrong and
nobody's going to scold you. Don't be scared."
Under the strangely gentle voice and the consoling touch of the rough,
kindly hand, Willem's fears subsided. With Oom Peter on his side, he
could brave the frowns of all Grimm Manor if need be. For who was so
strong, so wise as Oom Peter?
Did not every one bend to his orders and come running to him for advice
and aid, as troubled children seek out a loving father? The boy ceased
to tremble. He looked up into Grimm's face for something that should
confirm the words and the touch.
And he found it. The rugged old visage had never before been so kindly,
so unruffled. And in the little eyes that could flash so obstinately
and irritably, there was nothing but friendliness.
Yes--something more that the boy had never before seen. Something he
could not read, but that seemed to draw him strangely close to the old
man, and freed him of his last vestige of fear.
"Don't be scared, dear lad," repeated Grimm. "So you heard Dr. McPherson
say I am going to die?"
"Yes, sir."
Grimm turned slowly to the doctor, who still stood glowering, red,
speechless, furiously miserable.
"Andrew," asked Grimm quietly, "what did you mean?"
Before McPherson could speak, Grimm checked him with a move of the head
and glanced down at the boy.
"Never mind just now," said he. "Willem didn't mean any harm in telling
me. It just popped out, didn't it, Willem? The only person who never
says the wrong thing at the wrong time is a deaf mute whose fingers are
paralysed. We'll forget all about it. Now run along, lad, and get those
circus tickets before all the best ones are gone. Front row seats,
remember. We're going to have the finest sort of a spree, you and I.
Hurry now."
"_Ja_, Oom Peter!" cried the boy, all laughter once more.
He snatched his cap from the rack, in his haste almost upsetting Grimm's
antiquated tile that hung beside it; and, with a farewell shout, was
gone. His feet padded joyously on the gravel outside; then silence fell
again in the big room. It was Mr. Batholommey who broke the spell.
Walking solemnly up to Peter, who stood looking with a sort of stunned
wistfulness straight in front of him, the rector held out his hand.
"Good-bye, dear brave friend," he said, with an air gruesomely if
unconsciously reminiscent of his burial service manner. "Any time you
telephone for me, day or night, I'll run over _immediately_. God bless
you, sir!" his rounded voice shaking uncontrollably. "I have never come
to you in behalf of any worthy charity and been refused. You have set an
example in upright living, in generosity, in true manliness, and in
constant church attendance that should be an example to all my vestrymen
and to the town at large. I have never seen a nobler man. Never.
Good--good-morning."
He moved toward the door, winking very fast and clearing his throat. At
the threshold he beckoned to his wife. But she had already borne down
upon Peter.
"Mr. Grimm!" she sobbed. "The best--the kindest--the--the--Oh, I _don't_
see how we are going to bear it."
"Dear Mrs. Batholommey," answered Grimm. "Please don't be so overcome. I
may outlive you all. Nevertheless, I am grateful to your husband for
letting me hear my funeral eulogy in advance, and to you for----"
"Oh, how _can_ you make light of it?" she sobbed. "Yes, dear, I'm
coming. Good-bye, Mr. Grimm."
Like a confused and somewhat elderly hen she scuttled off in her
husband's wake, while Peter Grimm stared after the two with a
half-amused, half-perplexed smile.
"Of all the wall-eyed, semi-anthropoid congenital idiots," roared
McPherson as the door closed behind them, "those two are----"
"You're mistaken, Andrew," contradicted Grimm. "They're kind-hearted,
good people, who spend their lives and their substance in helping
others. If you and they can't get on together it's no one's fault. Any
more than because fuchsias and sunflowers won't thrive in the same bed.
Now calm down a bit, old friend, and tell me----"
"Nothing! It was nothing. Just nonsense. Don't give it another thought,
Peter. You said, yourself, a while ago, that many a man who was given up
by the doctors at twenty-five lives to be a hundred. And there is no
reason on earth why you----"
"Don't!" urged Grimm. "I don't need that. I----"
"Don't fret yourself, Peter," insisted McPherson. "You mustn't get the
idea that you are worse off than you really are. Don't get cold feet or
let this thing worry you to death. You must live for----"
"Andrew!" chided Grimm, with tolerant reproof. "Are you so tangled up
that you think you're talking to Willem instead of to a full-grown man?
If it's got to be, it's got to be. And you were wrong not to tell me at
once. That is the way with you doctors. You are so in the habit of
dealing with hysterical women and hypochondriacs that you forget that a
_man_ is shaped by nature to bear the naked truth without having it
rigged up beforehand in a lot of fluff to disguise its shape. I think I
understand. I may live a while longer. And I may not. The same thing
could be said of every one."
McPherson tried to speak, then turned and made blindly for the door.
"Wait a minute!" called Grimm.
McPherson halted. Peter crossed to where his friend stood. With an
effort at his old-time whimsical banter he held out his hand.
"I just want to promise again, Andrew," he said, "that if there's
anything in this spook business of yours, I'll come back. And I'll
apologise. Good-bye and good luck."
McPherson wrung his hand, without speaking, and strode noisily out.