Out of a black curdled ocean where for ages he had struggled and
stifled, Seth Appleby raised his head for an instant, and sank again.
For longer ages, and more black, more terrible, he fought on the bottom
of the ocean of life. He had reached the bottom now. He began to rise.
His coughing was shaking him into a half-consciousness, and very dimly
he heard her cough, too. He feverishly threw out one hand. It struck the
mouth-organ he had thrown upon the bed, struck it sharply, with a pain
that pierced to his nerve-centers.
He had the dismaying thought, "I'll never play the mouth-organ to her
again.... We won't ever sit in the rose-arbor while I play the
mouth-organ to her. Where is she? Yes! Yes! This is her hand." He was
trying to think now. Something said to him, sharply, "Suicide is
wicked."
Yes, he reflected, in the tangles of a half-thought, he had always been
told that suicide was wicked. Let's see. What was it he was trying to
think--suicide wicked--blame the cowards who killed themselves--suicide
wicked-- No, no! That wasn't the thought he was trying to lay hold of.
What was it he was trying to think? Suicide wicked-- God, how this cough
hurt him. What was it-- Suicide? No! He violently pushed away the
thought of suicide and its wickedness, and at last shouted, within
himself: "Oh, that's what I was thinking! I must play to Mother again!
Where is she? She needs me. She's 'way off somewhere; she's helpless;
she's calling for me--my poor little girl."
He hurled himself off the bed, to find her, in that cold darkness. He
stood wavering under the gas-jet. "Why--oh, yes, we turned on the gas!"
he realized.
He thrust his hand up and reached the gas-jet. Then, staggering, feeling
inch by inch for leagues along the edge of the cupboard, raising his
ponderous hand with infinite effort, he touched a plate, feebly fitted
his fingers over its edge, and with a gesture of weak despair hurled it
at the window. The glass shattered. He fell to the floor.
Strained with weeks of trying to appear young and brisk in the store,
Mother had become insensible before the gas could overcome him, and he
awoke there, limp on the floor, before she revived. The room was still
foul with gas-fumes, and very cold, for they had not rekindled the fire
when they had returned after dinner.
He feebly opened the window, even the door. A passing woman cried, "Gas
in the room! My Gawd! my old man almost croaked himself last year with
one of them quarter meters." She bustled in, a corpulent, baggy,
unclean, kindly, effectual soul, and helped him fan the gas out of the
room. She drove away other inquisitive neighbors, revived Mother
Appleby, and left them with thick-voiced words of cheer, muttering that
"her old man would kill her if she didn't get a hustle on herself and
chase that growler."
With the broken window-pane stuffed up, the gas lighted, and the fire
started, the Applebys faced life again, and were very glad. They
couldn't have been long under the gas; Father's eons of drowning
struggle must have been seconds. Propped up in bed, Mother refused a
doctor and smiled--though confusedly, with the bewilderment of one who
had felt the numbness of death.
"I'll tell you how it is," cried Father. "We-- _Lord!_ how glad I am to
have you again! It's like this: We felt as if we'd gone the very limit,
and nothing ever would come right again. But it's just like when we were
a young married couple and scrapped and were so darn certain we'd have
to leave each other. That's the way it's been with us lately, and we
needed something big like this to get our nerve up, I guess. Now we'll
start off again, and think, honey, whatever we do will be a
vict'ry--it'll be so much bigger than nothing.
"Let's see. New York doesn't want us. But somewhere there must be a
village of folks that does. We'll start out right now, walking through
New York, and we'll hunt till we find it, even if we have to go clean
out to San Francisco. Gee! think, we're free, no job or nothing, and we
could go to San Francisco! Travel, like we've always wanted to! And we
won't have any more pride now to bother us, not after--that. I'll play
the mouth-organ for pennies! Come on, we'll start for Japan, and see the
cherry-blossoms. Come on, old partner, we're going to pioneer, like our
daddies that went West."
And he struck up "Susanna" on his mouth-organ.