April came, and though snow still covered most of the soil, the air
smelled sweeter. And the noble gas, neon, discovered in the year of
Jean’s birth, stood apart in the air and watched the earth. It combines
with nothing. It is like the Epicurean gods, reclining beside their
nectar while the lightning bolts are hurled. And one morning it was
undisturbed to see a German bomb, filled with the two commonest metals,
powdered, drop from an aeroplane.
Next morning the doctor had gone off early with his sled, leaving the
dog at home. Agricola was not wanted along when his master should bring
home the new Jersey calf, which he had named Sempronia the moment he
bought her.
Mrs. Rich had risen and was planning dinner. She wondered whether Jean
might not find some young cowslip leaves large enough to be eaten as
greens. Then suddenly she felt faint again, and staggered to the old
horsehair sofa in the library.
Jean ran for the hypodermic, and the alkaloid did its work so well that
in half an hour the patient was chatting gaily. Nevertheless Jean had to
pretend not to be frightened, for she had never seen her mother go white
so quickly or gasp so hard.
Mother and daughter had fallen into the habit of calling each other by
their Indian names when they were alone. Mother was the Young Woman, and
Jean the Humming-Bird.
“My Naynokahsee, you are the quickest thing that ever flew for help, but
you forgot to take my curl papers down. Suppose Mainutung should come
back and find me in curl papers.”
“Well,” laughed Jean, “if you will lie perfectly still. I’ll do it now.”
With that she began to loosen the bits of paper and release the locks.
“Did Mainutung love you for your curls?”
“Perhaps so. He loved me in spite of himself. Jean, darling, he had
never intended to marry.”
“There, Oshki, you mustn’t talk.”
“But I’m fifty years old, and I think you ought to know. I’ve always
wanted to tell you how we met. He seemed no older than I, his hearing so
perfect, his eyes so keen. It was like a flash of lightning through us
both—I can feel it yet in my own heart—disarming—”
“There, sweetness, you’re panting again.”
“Disarming—”
Jean ran for the needle, but it was too late. The gasps were terrible
for a minute, the eyes were glazed. Then all was silent as the new life
beginning beneath the snow.
“Agricola! Agricola!”
The dog came bounding in from the kitchen.
“Find him, boy!”
She opened the door, and the collie was gone. It was an hour before her
father came—came and found his darlings ready to receive him. Jean had
done what a brave girl should do for her mother when the time comes, and
there was even a spray of fragrant arbor vitae lying on the breast, like
a palm of victory.
But why was Ambrose Rich steadied into the house by Ojeeg? And why was
it Ojeeg who had to draw the telegram from the pocket of Ambrose Rich?
The other thing had happened too.
Safe in the trenches for six months, under fire and untouched, singing
through it all of the good time coming, relieved and on furlough. And
then, passing an ammunition dump of the Canadian army, blown into pure
ether. A thermite bomb, dropped from an aeroplane, had exploded the
mercury fulminate, and Horatio Rich had disappeared from earth. There
was no more search for him than for the effects of lightning on the sea.
What sudden release was that, as if a billion years had been reversed
and a plangent mass of metal had torn itself loose again, shaking the
pillared crystals to the centre of the earth! What waste of sacred stuff
that might have planted a Sahara with lentils and sent a cluster of
sweet peas to every sick child in Germany!
But all the time the noble gas called neon remained unmoved. Like some
quiet-eyed chemist looking down the future, it heard no explosion.
Ambrose Rich knelt for a long time beside the old haircloth sofa,
holding the hand that returned no clasp, glad that she had been spared
the news, and listening to the stifled sounds from his daughter’s
bedroom. Alas that keenness of hearing should ever persist in the old!