"Tom Granger got a telegram," announced Bill, coming into the office
one morning early in April. "He wants to see you at once, Jap."
Jap's face blanched. He looked dumbly at Bill.
"No, it's not her," Bill hastened to say. "It's her mother."
Jap stumbled awkwardly up the walk to the Granger home. The letters
from Isabel had been far from reassuring, and only the previous day Dr.
Hall had sounded a warning that the care of the invalid was too much
for the girl, taxed as she was in both mind and body. Into Jap's
consciousness there crept the thought that she had never fully
recovered from those terrible weeks when she hovered over him.
Tom Granger met him at the door. His eyes were red with weeping. He
drew Jap into the parlor and gave him two telegrams.
"This came at midnight," he said brokenly. Jap read:
"Mother sinking. Come. ISABEL."
"And this just arrived," Granger choked, as the fatal words met Jap's
eye:
"Mother dying. Come. Bring Jap. ISABEL."
"The train leaves in half an hour. I don't have to ask you anything,
my boy."
Jap turned and hastened away. He did not weaken Granger's feeble
strength with words of sympathy.
It was the afternoon of the second day when the two stood with Isabel
at the foot of the bed. Alice Granger lifted her heavy lids, and a
gleam of recognition shone in her eyes. Swiftly those two, the husband
and the child, drew near, eager for any word that might pass the
stiffening lips. Jap stood looking sorrowfully down on her as they
knelt at her side.
"Jap," she whispered, "you, too," and her feeble fingers drew him.
With a choked sob he knelt beside Isabel. The mother fumbled with the
covers until her hand, icy cold, touched his. Instantly his firm,
strong hand closed over it. She smiled and murmured:
"Tom. Isabel."
They leaned over her in a panic of fear.
"Isabel's hand," she breathed, and placed the two hands together.
"Tom, there is time," she whispered; "I want----" She sank helpless.
"I know what you would say," cried Granger, the tears streaming down
his face. "You want him to be our son before--before you say good-bye."
A flash of joy illumined her thin face. She sighed contentedly.
A minister was hastily summoned, and a half hour later Isabel sobbed
her grief in the arms of her husband, as they stood awaiting the coming
of the Death Angel.
"It made such a difference in her feeling toward you, your illness at
our house," Tom said, looking down upon her closed eyes and fluttering
lips. "She never understood you, and in her quiet way she was always
reserving judgment, when I used to talk so much about you. A mother
finds it hard to think any man is the right one for her only child, and
she was so dependent on Isabel. She hadn't any doubts, after she saw
you in that dreadful fever, with all your soul laid bare to us. She
knew Isabel would be safe, and after that she stopped worrying."
A grim hand caught at Jap's throat, as Tom sank on his knees and buried
his face in the pillow to smother his sobs. Into his memory there came
the words of Flossy: "When your mother came, there was a revelation. I
don't fear for your future now. And when I knew this, Jap, I suddenly
felt tired and old."
Flossy had clung to life until he had found the woman who could take
her place. Then, all at once, she let go. And now Alice Granger, an
invalid for twenty-three years, had relaxed her feeble hold on life
when she knew that her child was in safe and gentle hands. Must Death
forever draw its grim fingers between him and his happiness? He looked
at his bride, fragile as a spring flower, and a great fear rushed over
him. Dumb, he stood there, stroking Isabel's hair with futile caresses.
At last the glazing eyes opened, and Alice Granger said faintly:
"Tom, not alone."
"Not alone?" he cried in anguish. "Always alone without you, Alice."
She only smiled--and then she fell asleep.
It was a strange wedding journey. Between the half-crazed father and
the exhausted wife, Jap was taxed to the uttermost. Isabel, for once
helpless, lay white and silent in the compartment, too weak to do more
than cling to her one tower of strength, while Tom Granger rent Jap's
sympathetic heart with his unreasoning grief. At length nature
demanded her own; from sheer exhaustion they slept. Jap left them
alone and stood out on the platform between the coaches.
"Is my life always to hold grief?" he queried of his soul. A throb of
fear tore at his consciousness. Isabel's death-white face arose before
him.
"No!" he cried fiercely, "there is a God. He will not take all from
me."
He went back into the car and, kneeling beside his sleeping wife,
prayed madly to his God for mercy.
The grasses were green along the tracks, and the blue violets lifted
their rain-washed faces as the familiar stations loomed in sight near
the journey's end. At the last station below Bloomtown, Bill and Dr.
Hall entered the sleeper.
"We have everything arranged," Dr. Hall said to Jap, while Bill fought
with his tears. "Isabel Granger has gone through too much to stand the
harrowing experience of a funeral. The carriages are waiting, and it
has all been attended to at the cemetery. We'll just have a short
service out there, and I want you to keep her in the carriage with you.
Bill and I did things with a high hand, but it had to be so. I
wouldn't risk having the girl look into her mother's grave. She
couldn't stand it."
The platform was crowded with friends, and Tom Granger was responding
to sympathetic greetings with tears he did not try to hold. Jap half
carried Isabel to the nearest carriage, and Dr. Hall took his place
with them. Bill had hurried to meet Mabelle, who tactfully drew Tom
Granger into the second carriage, in which the minister sat waiting.
In a dream the well known landmarks of Bloomtown passed before Jap's
eyes. There was the quick jolt that marked the crossing of the
railroad tracks, and then the cool green of the cemetery came into view.
While the brief service was read, Jap held Isabel tight to his aching
breast. His eyes wandered away beyond the yellow mound of earth, and
in the hazy distance he saw his City of Hope. The young grass smiled
above the mounds that held the empty shells of those he had loved, the
first in all the world who had loved him. On Flossy's straight white
shaft he read "I Hope." That was all.
After the slow cortege had moved its way back to town, Mabelle left the
carriage and approached her brother. Bill, with his face frankly
tear-stained, was beside her. The coachman had descended from his box,
and was opening the door.
"Let me take her--let me take your sweetheart to our cottage," she
pleaded. Leaning past him, she took one of Isabel's black-gloved
hands. "Dear, I am Jappie's sister. I want to have you with me until
you are better."
Tom Granger sat up and leaned out of the carriage, so that all could
hear him.
"Jap is coming home with us," he said. "He is my son. He was married
to Isabel just before her mother left us."
And it was thus that after well-nigh three years of waiting Bloomtown
celebrated the long-expected happiness of her best loved son.