TRANSITION
When Lucy Dean returned to the den, she found Brooke leaning upon the
desk, her head still pillowed by her arms, and fast asleep. Checking her
first impulse to waken Brooke and discuss the episode of the reporter,
Lucy stood thinking a moment, looked at the clock, then, drawing a sheet
of paper toward her, wrote a few words upon it in vigorous upright
characters, placed it where the sleeper could not fail to see it the
moment her eyes opened, and, after rearranging her furs, that she had
thrown off when she had returned from her walk, vanished from the room.
Her coming and going made a mental movement, for there had been no sound.
Brooke raised her head, and looking about in a dazed way spied the note,
which said, “As everybody and thing seems to be asleep, have gone home to
dine with father; will be back before ten.”
It was a positive relief to Brooke to be quite alone for a few hours,
and it would also give her the chance to see the physicians more
satisfactorily; they were due about six.
Going to her own room, she found her mother had returned to the sick
room, so, slipping on a wrapper and loosening the tension of hair-pains,
she busied herself by laying away in closet and dresser various things
that had lain about since two nights before, which Olga, the maid, under
stress of confusion, had neglected. Taking up her great chinchilla muff
from a chair, she was shaking it in an absent-minded fashion before
putting it in its box, when something slipped from it and fell lightly to
the carpet. Groping in the dim light, she picked up, not her card case,
as she expected, but the silk-covered catalogue of the Parkses’ pictures
and the souvenir menu in its frame of silver filigree. It was only two
days since she had put them in her muff, but it seemed almost as if she
were looking back from another world.
The catalogue naturally opened to the little reproduction of Marte
Lorenz’ picture. Cutting it carefully from the page, she slipped it into
the silver frame, which chanced to be of the exact size, and setting it
upon the dressing table, turned on the light above. Somehow the sight of
it gave her comfort more than anything else could, and the separation of
circumstances and distance seemed suddenly to have grown less. Whatever
the interpretation of the picture might be, whatever else might tide, she
had entered into and formed a part of the artist’s first serious work,
and even if they never met again, they would be comrades upon the canvas
as long as it lasted. For, in spite of the veiling of both the likenesses
by certain subtle touches, it did not obliterate the characteristics of
the two; and the longer that Brooke gazed upon the picture the stronger
grew her conviction that, under guise of an attractive composition,
it was he and she that Lorenz had painted, that he had bound together
forever by some mystical inspiration.
Still Brooke did not formulate her feelings toward this man who had been
the first one to tell her the truth when an untruth or evasion would
have had a pleasanter sound; such a thing did not occur to her. Lucy
Dean would have dragged her emotion into the electric light, diagnosed,
and duly labelled it at once. Neither did Brooke kiss the portrait nor
put it under her pillow, nor hide it away in her orris-scented drawer
for sentiment’s sake or to feed mystery, as many a girl would have done;
but as the light glared upon the glass she turned it out, and lighting
a small green candle of bayberry wax, that stood upon her desk, placed
it near the frame so that its rays fell obliquely in accord with the
picture’s scheme of light, while the pungent fragrance of the wax wafted
like incense at a shrine.
As she stood thus, the outer door closed, a squeaky tread awkwardly
muffled came along the hallway, and stopping outside her door made her
turn hastily. Without further ado the door opened, and a pair of lean,
sloping shoulders and a freckled face topped by a mop of sandy hair
parted the curtain, while two dull, greenish hazel eyes, very round and
wide open, explored the room to the very corners with an expression of
apprehension. Evidently being satisfied with the result, the rest of the
six feet of overgrown boy followed the head, swinging a suit case before
him with one hand, while he closed the door behind him with the other.
Brooke was almost startled into calling out aloud, but the figure clapped
his hand to her mouth, and her voice dropped to a whispered “Oh, Cub,
Cub, where did you come from? How did you hear?”
“Why, from school, to be sure, Sis, and I heard from Mummy, else I hadn’t
dared, or couldn’t have come,—she sent me a ten,—for I spent all that was
left of my quarterly on Pam; she was worth it, even if I’d have had to
walk. I’ve only had her a month, but she knows my whistle out of twenty,
and she just loves me; yes, she does, you ought to see her look at me
with her head on one side. I’ve just left her below with the engineer
till I saw if the coast was clear. I’ll bring her up to you, unless you
think father’s likely to come in. Then I suppose I’ll have to take her to
the stable for keeps.”
While the boy rattled on, Brooke was recalling the fact of her brother’s
letter, and that her mother had told her about sending for him to come
home in spite of everything. He had come, then, in response to that and
knew nothing of what had happened.
“Father will not come in,” she said, going to him and speaking very
quietly to gain time, also because she did not know exactly how best to
break the matter to this sixteen-year-old brother of hers, who, partly
through perversity, but chiefly because his father had never understood
his temperament or considered him as an individual, was the sort of cross
between a mule and a firebrand dubbed “an impossibility” by people in
general.
“Who or what is Pam?”
“She! She’s the finest year-old brindled pup you ever rolled your eyes
on, only a quarter English for bone and grit, and the rest Boston for
looks. Her father’s got eight firsts, and Bill Bent’s father owns the
mother, and she’s reckoned the finest bitch shown this year. I paid
fifty, but if Bill hadn’t been my chum, two hundred was the price! I
called her Pam, after Mummy, you know, and I thought maybe she’d keep
her for her own if father sends me off again to where they won’t have
Pam. Lots of women have Boston bulls to ride out with them every day,”
while, at the likelihood of catastrophe in connection with his pet,
the animation that had lighted the boy’s face and shown the improving
possibility of latent manhood died out, a weary look replacing it, and
the Cub dropped into a lounging chair and began to cough, holding his
hand to his side.
“If you think I’d better not bring her up, I’ll take her round to the
stable right away,” he said, when the fit had passed over.
“Leave her downstairs for now,” said Brooke; “I’m not sure if there is
any stable to-day,” and sitting on the arm of the chair, untangling his
mop of hair with her strong, slender fingers, a proceeding that he did
not resent as roughly as usual, she began to give him a brief history
of the past two days. At first he looked at her in amazement, as if he
thought that she had lost her mind, then his head sank, and when she
finished and tried to take his hand, he pulled it away, and, turning from
her, buried his face in the chair back, breaking into long sobs that
almost strangled him, and that he could not stifle.
In vain Brooke tried to comfort him, to find if there was anything on his
mind of which she did not know. Her brother had never been emotional in
this way, and though she knew that her father’s strictness with the boy
was a sign that all his hope was in him, she never dreamed the Cub would
care so much, if at all. Pushing her away, he staggered toward the door,
his face still hidden by his hands.
“Where are you going? you must be very quiet,” said Brooke, getting
between him and the curtain.
“To mother! I want my mother! I must have her all to myself, and father
can’t prevent it now!” Then, to her amazement, Brooke realized that her
brother’s tears were not born of grief, but of hysterical relief at
release from a mental and physical bondage that had fretted and cramped
and warped his very soul.
“Stay here,” she begged, “and I will bring mother to you!” Turning back,
with a look that told the boy better than words that she understood his
outburst, and did not brand it as foolishness, she said: “Be careful of
her, for I know now that you and I must be father and mother, and do some
hard thinking, and perhaps acting, in these next few weeks, for they
cannot. Will you stand by me, Adam?” Then the boy did not push away the
hands that rested on his shoulders, but held his sister close, awkwardly,
it is true, but as he had not clung to her since the old days in the
down-town house, when as a little girl she stooped over his crib to kiss
him good night.
The doctors came, and when they left, Mrs. Lawton went to her son. An
hour passed, dinner was served, and still the two did not come out.
Brooke went to the door, then prepared and carried in a tray of food,
eating her own meal afterward in solitary silence that was very soothing
to her.
For the first time she had been able to see the specialist alone, and
put such definite questions to him as dispersed the usual non-committal
generalities, while at the same time it convinced him that here was a
member of the family to whom the truth might and should be told. It was
possible that her father might recover from this attack, if there was no
further hemorrhage; also that the clot that plugged the brain channel
might be absorbed, the paralysis of face, leg, and arm relax, and speech
and memory return, so that though full vigour would never again be his he
might still have years of placid living and enjoyment. Or else he might
regain his physical faculties without the brain cloud ever lifting. As
for medicine, a few simple regulations and then quiet must do its work,
coupled with constant care. His failure and its agitation had struck the
blow, and of this cause not the faintest suggestion must reach him or be
even whispered of, for in such cases no one may precisely tell how much
of conscious unconsciousness exists.
Meanwhile the laws of trade must be carried on, and others, to keep
their rights, sift and settle Adam Lawton’s affairs as far as possible,
before Brooke could learn what they as a family had or did not have and
by it measure what might be done. For neither mother nor daughter knew
of the extent of this final venture of all, and beyond keeping domestic
accounts and holding a joint key with her father to a box in an up-town
safe deposit company, where family papers and some securities belonging
to her mother were kept, Brooke was no partner in her father’s affairs.
In fact one of the things, Mr. Dean said, that had hurried the crisis and
complicated its untangling was the habit that Adam Lawton had formed of
holding aloof from the advice and confidence of his fellows.
* * * * *
Later in the evening, when the Cub emerged from Brooke’s room, he found
that she had taken the nurse’s place by her father and the library was
empty. While he walked about the room restlessly, alternately enjoying
his comparative liberty or wondering what he had best do about his dog,
something led him to cross the hall and turn the angle to the den, where,
to his intense astonishment, amid a blaze of lights, that contrasted
vividly with the semi-dark silence of the other rooms, was Lucy Dean, in
the great leather-covered Morris chair, upon one arm of which sat the
bull pup, whose persuasive pink tongue had just succeeded at the moment
he entered in touching Lucy’s nose in affectionate salute.
“Brooke told me about the dear, and I went down and fished her out of
an old box, where they had bedded her, just in time to save her from
spoiling her figure with a whole bowl of oatmeal and soup,” said Lucy,
in answer to the question on the Cub’s face. “You’ve got to be very
particular about feeding her, remember, or she’ll grow groggy and sleepy
and wheeze, instead of keeping her sporting blood up—” and Lucy held
out her unoccupied left hand to the boy, who, after the callowness and
fervour of youth, regarded this friend of his sister’s, eight years his
senior, with her dash and vim, as the combination of everything admirable
and adorable and himself her equal in years.
“No, I’m not going to kiss you this time,” she continued, leaning back in
the chair, as he half stooped behind her; “I’ve just transferred that to
Pam here. Why? Because you’ve gained a year and two inches since I saw
you when you came home last Christmas—and sixteen is a good stile to stop
at. Then hands off, young man, and no kisses outside the family until you
are twenty-one and able to shoulder your own responsibilities.” The Cub
growled out something half sulkily.
“Yes, I know I never had an own brother, but I’ve been a good sister to
more of you boys than were ever born even in a Mormon family, and I’ve
kept them all for good friends, just such as you’re going to be. No,
don’t mope and go over in the corner, because within five minutes you’ll
simply have to come back again and sit by Pam and me—so you might as well
do it now.
“That’s it, stretch and be comfortable! See, chains wouldn’t keep Pam
away from you now! Do you know I don’t blame you for squandering your
last penny on this bull pup—her points are all right, she has an angel
disposition; but she doesn’t forget to whom she belongs for a single
minute—it was all I could do to drag her past your coat in the hall! But
suppose she barks, how can you keep her here?”
“That’s the point, I must take her over to the stable right away; but
you’ll be here when I come back, won’t you? I think Brooke said you were
stopping here.”
“I was, but I guess now that you are here, I’ll go home. I stayed so that
Brooke shouldn’t be lonely; besides, I have your room.”
“That don’t count,” protested the Cub, “I can sleep here just as well as
not.”
“Oh, there is one other thing,” added Lucy. “I’m not so sure who there is
at the stable or how they would treat Pam, so best not take her there.
I’m so glad that you have come home, boy. I dined with dad to-night
and tried to learn as much as I could about this money trouble of your
father’s, and it is about as bad as can be, and though of course it may
be some time before it can be known exactly how things stand, there is
little doubt but when what’s left of the apple is divided there won’t be
even the core for you all. Of course, if the illness had not come, some
arrangement might have been made to tide things over. Suppose you take
Pam down to our house to-night, and stay there and have a talk with dad.
He will tell Brooke all he knows to-morrow. Don’t go yet, it’s only nine,
half an hour later will do as well as now.
“Tell me, what is the matter with you, honour bright? Are you really
sick or only sort of lazy and shilly-shally, obstinate, discouraged, and
crazy to get out of jail? I know the symptoms, for I’ve had them all
one by one, in my youth, doing everything by rule, duty the watchword,
more mathematics the penalty for forgetting it, and dyspepsia the
result. _My_ sons shall be reared in the open, if they never get beyond
horse-breaking and cattle-breeding,” and a shiver of sympathy ran down
Lucy’s flexible spine, branching off in an odd twisting of her fingers
that sent her handkerchief, that she had rolled into a ball to amuse the
pup, flying across the room, much to the amusement of Pam, who caught it,
and made her master jump to rescue the roll of cambric and lace from her
investigating paws.
“Honour bright, Lucy, it’s the being shut up so much, and the confounded
mathematics and knowing that I never seem to satisfy the old man on
top of that. If he’d only let me work at something I like, and learn
to do something out-of-doors, but at this rate I think I’m getting
consumption—” and the Cub gave a really dismal cough.
“Of course a man must know how to count, and a few little things like
that, no matter what he does,” said Lucy, so seriously that the boy did
not at first realize that she was mocking him; “for whether you handle
your own or some other person’s money, or eggs and potatoes, counting
will be a painful necessity.
“Oh, oh! what is this?” she exclaimed, as in handing her back her
handkerchief the thumb and forefinger of his right hand caught her eye.
These were stained a brownish yellow on the inside. Spreading the fingers
apart, she looked the boy in the face, and he flushed scarlet under his
freckles.
“Been smoking cigarettes, on the sly, of course, and consequently in a
hurry, swallowed the smoke, and sometimes chewed the butts to pulp! There
is half the cause why your head won’t work right, as well as one reason
why you are lanky and cough. See here, young man, do you know that only
_what-is-its_ and _mistakes_ smoke cigarettes? _Men_ smoke pipes, or
cigars if they can afford them; and I’m going to give you a pipe on your
next birthday, with Pam’s head carved on a meerschaum bowl. I’ll get
Charlie Ashton to order it to-morrow; he knows a fellow who carves pipes
that are perfect dreams. Meantime not a whiff or sniff of a cigarette.
Yes, of course it’s hard to stop, they all say that, but really, Cub,
it’s a horrid trick. Yes, I know all about it; I tried cigarettes once
myself. Empty your pockets quick and swear off.”
At first the boy had looked annoyed, and a curious, obstinate expression,
akin to that of a horse putting back his ears, crossed his features,
flattening them; but it only lasted a moment. It was impossible to be
angry with Lucy, for her tongue was pointed with common sense born of
experience, and there was never anything censorious or priggish in her
strictures.
So the Cub produced two packages of cigarettes, an amber holder, and a
silver match-box, and piled them in the outstretched hand of his mentor.
“Keep the match-box, and we’ll give those things to the ‘grasshoppers’
that go around the street picking up cigar stumps with a spike in the end
of a stick.” So saying, the vigorous young woman opened the window, and
with a sidewise motion skittled the cigarettes through the air into the
street below, much to the alarm of an old gentleman upon whose shoulders
a shower from the first box fell. He had come out of the house to sample
the weather and immediately returned for umbrella and goloshes, while
the second box landed intact on the top of a passing hansom, much to the
driver’s satisfaction.
Then the Cub brought his suit case, and, picking up Pam, went to carry
out Lucy’s suggestion, while she, after watching him go, said half aloud:—
“He’s all right if you only understand him. I’ll give Brooke a hint. I
shouldn’t wonder if this smashup will give him a push and his chance—for
somebody has got to go to work in this family, and pretty quick, too,
according to father’s ideas.
“Heigh-ho, I wonder what Tom Brownell will have to say in the _Daily
Forum_ to-morrow. Will he make a sensation column of us,—I mean of Brooke
and her object lesson,—or will he turn his back on the devil and give
out a simple, dignified statement regardless of making copy? No, I don’t
wonder either, I’ll gamble he’s straight as a plumb-line. Gracious, what
did I do with those keys?” and Lucy began feeling in the gold chain bag
that hung from her belt, as, hearing Brooke leave her father’s room, she
went to join her.
* * * * *
The _Daily Forum_ not only corrected its insinuation of the previous
day, but printed a further statement, the sincerity and judiciousness
of which at once made the financial disaster of Adam Lawton secondary
to his physical collapse. This allowed the numerous family friends and
acquaintances the chance to offer sympathy with perfect good taste, which
in the conventional society of the Whirlpool usually takes the place of
more spontaneous warm-heartedness.
For many days a stream of callers came and went from the St. Hilaire,
some content merely to leave a card with inquiries, others asking for
Mrs. Lawton or Brooke, emphasizing their offer of “doing something” with
a hand-shake, but asking no prying questions. Still others, as “intimate
friends” of the family, as the days wore on and it was definitely known
that though the creditors might in time receive dollar for dollar, there
would be nothing over, not only called, but stayed and mingled advice and
chiding with their verbal sympathy.
“Reduced to absolute beggars,” was the term that Mrs. Ashton, Lucy Dean’s
aunt, applied to the Lawtons when discussing the affair at a luncheon she
was giving, where all the guests were women of Mrs. Lawton’s class and
set, though few of them had her gentle breeding, “and if Mrs. Lawton and
quixotic Brooke had not had such ridiculous scruples as to what belonged
to whom, quite a lump might have been rescued for them, my brother says.”
“My dear Susie,” protested Mrs. Parks, who since her housewarming was
fast advancing in power and called several exclusives by their first
names by request, “that is not a fault that can be often found with any
one nowadays. The Senator says that through all this business it was
precisely the same trait in Adam Lawton of not being quite willing to
knock down others and make them serve as scaling ladders that dealt him
out at last.”
“The question is now,” continued Mrs. Ashton, “What shall we be expected
to do for them? They will leave the St. Hilaire the 1st of January; Mr.
Dean has manipulated things so far as that for them, and he wants them to
put Mr. Lawton into a partly endowed sanatorium of which he himself is a
trustee, as all the physicians say he must be kept out of turmoil. The
Cub, as they call the boy, is rather out of health, so that a year on a
school-ship would be a good place for him. They say if he went into an
office at once, as Mr. Dean expected, it would probably kill him.
“Brooke, of course, will have to take up her painting, teach, and paint
bonbon boxes for Cuyler and Gaillard, or menus for us. We can all use
influence to get her work of that sort, and it will help out for a time
until we get sick of her style probably. Lucy swears that Brooke shall
live with her; we shall see. I think that there will be something a year
from some little investment they have, with which Mrs. Lawton might board
in some cheap place, not of course in New York, but Brooklyn or up in the
Bronx.”
“Don’t, pray don’t suggest boarding in those dreadful places for that
sweet, sensitive woman; it would be like putting lilies-of-the-valley in
a saucepan,” cried Mrs. Parks with warm-hearted energy; “it’s too awful!
I would be only too glad to have her live with me, if she could put up
with the whirl of it, and Brooke too. I often wish that I had an elder
sister in the house with whom I could talk things over comfortably and
not have them spread over the face of the earth. The hard part of this
is that whatever is done the family will be split to kindlings, and it’s
no joke parting a mother and son!” For be it said that since the arrival
of the belated and beruffled little man in the Easter-egg crib, though
Mrs. Parks’s social ambition had rather increased than diminished, the
cold-heartedness that is often a part of a social career was altogether
lacking.
“Besides, suppose that Mr. Lawton comes back to himself suddenly, for
you know they say that it sometimes happens when this aphasia (I’m
always possessed to call it aspasia, after the snake that bit Cleopatra)
lifts—how will he feel to find himself in an institution and his family
scattered?”
“I don’t see that it concerns us,” said Mrs. Ashton, shrugging her
shoulders. “If he had only died at once and been done with it, they would
all have been comfortable, for my brother says that he carried a simply
fabulous life insurance, and that the keeping it up was what made him so
economical.”
* * * * *
It was the last week in December, Christmas week. Brooke and her mother
sat opposite each other in the den in a silence that was keeping the
brain of each more active than the most rapid speech. Although Adam
Lawton had not spoken, the tension that had drawn his face had relaxed,
and sensation was slowly returning to his foot, though his right hand
was still quite useless. But while he took no apparent notice of what
passed about him, his wife felt that his eyes dwelt upon her and followed
her when she was in range, and only that morning he had feebly retained
the hand she had laid within his upturned left palm. Recovery to a
certain extent was possible, the physician proclaimed, with no further
jars, and care and quietness; but how to secure this? Quiet is not always
the inexpensive thing it seems. But with this new-born hope, everything
else seemed unimportant to her.
The apparent worst had been carefully explained to them and accepted
several days ago, but there had been yet more, for when Brooke had that
morning gone to the safety box, where some jewels of her mother’s,—a
necklace and other things seldom worn,—and some dozen railroad bonds, the
little property that came to her from the Brookes, with some shares of an
industrial stock, a birthday gift to Brooke at twenty-one, were stored,
the box was empty!
Thoughts would come that must not find words even between themselves as
they sat there. They both believed in Adam Lawton’s honour and that if he
could speak he would explain; and finally, as the tension tightened into
agony, Brooke went over to her mother, and kneeling by her said, “Don’t
try to think it out now, mother; some day we shall know, and now it is
how to live and work until that day comes.”
As for Brooke, she had lived five years in those few weeks. Every word
that she had ever heard of criticism of those in their present position
came back to her, the cruel discussion of Julia Garth at the musicale
topping the list.
All the various suggestions, practical and problematical, for their
future arrayed themselves mockingly in a row before her, but one and all
they had their beginning in the separation of the family; not a single
plan offered the remotest possibility of keeping it together.
That morning, after her finding of the empty box, Brooke had seen Mr.
Dean in his office and learned definitely that the only income they could
count upon after the new year was the interest upon her shares of stock,
six hundred dollars a year—fifty dollars a month; for though the shares
themselves were missing, as they stood in her name upon the company’s
books, the interest would keep on. Besides this, there would be a fund
gathered here and there from articles she or her mother personally owned
beyond question—a scant two thousand dollars.
One asset had been overlooked until that interview, the homestead at
Gilead, Brooke’s own property, asked for in a moment of sentiment and
freely given her. Mr. Dean, knowing the place and location well, thought
that, with good management, it might be sold at the right season for
perhaps six or eight thousand dollars.
All these circumstances were pushed into Brooke’s brain, jostling and
crowding each other until it seemed hopeless to think. Even Lucy Dean,
huffed because Brooke would not come to her for the rest of the winter
or borrow money of her father to establish a little apartment where she
could work at her painting, though she came as regularly as ever, had
ceased to question or even offer cheer. And it seemed almost impossible
for Brooke to tell her mother, in the face of hope, that Mr. Dean’s
plan of sending Adam Lawton to the sanatorium in the country seemed the
only feasible solution at the present moment. As for her mother and
herself, she would work for both, but not in anything obtained merely
by the insecure path of social influence. It would be teaching drawing,
of course, for too well she realized Lorenz’ words that as a painter of
pictures she had not yet “awakened,” and in the world of competition the
winners of a single prize or the acclaim won in charity bazaars is a
damning introduction.
* * * * *
The entrance of some one brought Brooke to herself, a shrill voice that
replied in a high key to the answer of the maid, “In the den? Then we’ll
go right in very informally, no need to take the cards,” and Mrs. Ashton,
followed by a married daughter, entered quite abruptly, the elder lady
looking at the two women with something akin to disapproval on her florid
face, an expression that Brooke interpreted instantly. Mrs. Ashton was
becoming bored at the situation and had a feeling of resentment that all
her opportunities of becoming the patroness of the Lawtons were vanishing.
She still had one more card to play, a trump she considered it, and she
suddenly drew it from the pack and cast it before Mrs. Lawton. A widower,
more than passing rich, though not of her precise set, with two daughters
just leaving school, had intrusted her to find a well-bred New Yorker as
chaperon and companion to travel with them until the next autumn, and
then launch them tactfully in the Whirlpool. Any reasonable salary might
be demanded—would dear Pamela like the chance? Six or eight months abroad
would doubtless restore her tone and spirits.
Brooke’s eyes flashed fire, Scotch fire not easily put out when once it
was kindled; but Mrs. Lawton only grew a shade more pale, and said in
her soft, slow accent, looking steadily at her friend, “Susan, you are
forgetting Adam. How could I both go abroad and give him the care he will
always need while he lives?”
For some reason the soft answer not only did not turn away wrath, but
augmented it, and shortly the couple left; but alas for the treachery of
portières—scarcely were the pair in the hall when, forgetting that it
was not a door that closed behind them, Mrs. Ashton said, in an echoing
whisper, “Care, while he lives indeed—it’s just as I said the other
day, if Adam Lawton had only died at once and had done with it, those
women, instead of being beggars, could have lived in luxury on his life
insurance!”
With the harsh, insistent vibration of a graphophone, the words stung the
ears of mother and daughter, who were standing where their guests had
left them. A look of horror froze Mrs. Lawton’s face to the immobility of
a statue, while in Brooke’s brain, still tingling with the other blow,
the thoughts were suddenly clarified as if by fire, and she never noticed
that the Cub had come in and was looking from one to the other in alarm.
“It is monstrous!” she choked out, clasping her mother in her strong
arms. “Oh, mother, mother! do not look so, as if you were turning to
stone! You shall not be torn from father; we will go together and
keep together! Listen, you and he desired me and brought me into your
world for love, and took the responsibility of me when I was helpless;
now you shall come into mine and be my children, and I will bear the
responsibility for that same love. Father needs country quiet; so be it;
we will take him home to Gilead. It is my home, my very own in deed and
truth, given so long ago that no creditor can grumble. I never have lived
in the country, and I know nothing, you may say. What I do not know I can
learn. At worst, with what I have we can be secure somehow for a year.
Cousin Keith has lived and worked there, so can I, and if only Adam will
stand by me, I cannot fail. But you must trust me like a child, as I did
you, and do not question.”
A look of wondrous joy crept into the mother’s eyes, but with it her
strength gave way, and when she tottered and would have fallen, it was
Adam who caught her, and as he held her with tender awkwardness, nodding
at his sister as if in answer to her appeal, he jerked out, “You bet your
life, Sis, I’ll stand by the crowd, and won’t it just suit Pam and me to
get out of town!”