CHAPTER VII.
OF THE PASSING OF THE SHADOW.
Better is little, than treasure and trouble therewith. Better a
dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.
None but a great man would have dared to utter such a glaring
commonplace as that. Not only on Sundays now, but all the week, came
the hot joint to table, and on every day there was pudding, till a
body grew indifferent to pudding; thus a joy-giving luxury of life
being lost and but another item added to the long list of
uninteresting needs. Now we could eat and drink without stint. No
need now to organise for the morrow's hash. No need now to cut one's
bread instead of breaking it, thinking of Saturday's bread pudding.
But there the saying fails, for never now were we merry. A silent
unseen guest sat with us at the board, so that no longer we laughed
and teased as over the half pound of sausages or the two sweet-scented
herrings; but talked constrainedly of empty things that lay outside
us.
Easy enough would it have been for us to move to Guilford Street.
Occasionally in the spiritless tones in which they now spoke on all
subjects save the one, my mother and father would discuss the project;
but always into the conversation would fall, sooner or later, some
loosened thought to stir it to anger, and so the aching months went
by, and the cloud grew.
Then one day the news came that old Teidelmann had died suddenly in
his counting house.
"You are going to her?" said my mother.
"I have been sent for," said my father; "I must--it may mean
business."
My mother laughed bitterly; why, at the time, I could not understand;
and my father flung out of the house. During the many hours that he
was away my mother remained locked in her room, and, stealing
sometimes to the door, I was sure I heard her crying; and that she
should grieve so at old Teidelmann's death puzzled me.
She came oftener to our house after that. Her mourning added, I
think, to her beauty, softening--or seeming to soften--the hardness of
her eyes. Always she was very sweet to my mother, who by contrast
beside her appeared witless and ungracious; and to me, whatever her
motive, she was kindness itself; hardly ever arriving without some
trifling gift or plan for affording me some childish treat. By
instinct she understood exactly what I desired and liked, the books
that would appeal to me as those my mother gave me never did, the
pleasures that did please me as opposed to the pleasures that should
have pleased me. Often my mother, talking to me, would chill me with
the vista of the life that lay before me: a narrow, viewless way
between twin endless walls of "Must" and "Must not." This soft-voiced
lady set me dreaming of life as of sunny fields through which one
wandered laughing, along the winding path of Will; so that, although
as I have said, there lurked at the bottom of my thoughts a fear of
her; yet something within me I seemed unable to control went out to
her, drawn by her subtle sympathy and understanding of it.
"Has he ever seen a pantomime?" she asked of my father one morning,
looking at me the while with a whimsical screwing of her mouth.
My heart leaped within me. My father raised his eyebrows: "What
would your mother say, do you think?" he asked. My heart sank.
"She thinks," I replied, "that theatres are very wicked places." It
was the first time that any doubt as to the correctness of my mother's
judgments had ever crossed my mind.
Mrs. Teidelmann's smile strengthened my doubt. "Dear me," she said,
"I am afraid I must be very wicked. I have always regarded a
pantomime as quite a moral entertainment. All the bad people go down
so very straight to--well, to the fit and proper place for them. And
we could promise to leave before the Clown stole the sausages,
couldn't we, Paul?"
My mother was called and came; and I could not help thinking how
insignificant she looked with her pale face and plain dark frock,
standing stiffly beside this shining lady in her rustling clothes.
"You will let him come, Mrs. Kelver," she pleaded in her soft
caressing tones; "it's Dick Whittington, you know--such an excellent
moral."
My mother had stood silent, clasping and unclasping her hands, a
childish trick she had when troubled; and her lips were trembling.
Important as the matter loomed before my own eyes, I wondered at her
agitation.
"I am very sorry," said my mother, "it is very kind of you. But I
would rather he did not go."
"Just this once," persisted Mrs. Teidelmann. "It is holiday time."
A ray of sunlight fell into the room, lighting upon her coaxing face,
making where my mother stood seem shadow.
"I would rather he did not go," repeated my mother, and her voice
sounded harsh and grating. "When he is older others must judge for
him, but for the present he must be guided by me--alone."
"I really don't think there could be any harm, Maggie," urged my
father. "Things have changed since we were young."
"That may be," answered my mother, still in the same harsh voice; "it
is long ago since then."
"I didn't intend it that way," said my father with a short laugh.
"I merely meant that I may be wrong," answered my mother. "I seem so
old among you all--so out of place. I have tried to change, but I
cannot."
"We will say no more about it," said Mrs. Teidelmann, sweetly. "I
merely thought it would give him pleasure; and he has worked so hard
this last term, his father tells me."
She laid her hand caressingly on my shoulder, drawing me a little
closer to her; and it remained there.
"It was very kind of you," said my mother, "I would do anything to
give him pleasure, anything-I could. He knows that. He understands."
My mother's hand, I knew, was seeking mine, but I was angry and would
not see; and without another word she left the room.
My mother did not allude again to the subject; but the very next
afternoon she took me herself to a hall in the neighbourhood, where we
saw a magic-lantern, followed by a conjurer. She had dressed herself
in a prettier frock than she had worn for many a long day, and was
brighter and gayer in herself than had lately been her wont, laughing
and talking merrily. But I, nursing my wrongs, remained moody and
sulky. At any other time such rare amusement would have overjoyed me;
but the wonders of the great theatre that from other boys I had heard
so much of, that from gaudy-coloured posters I had built up for
myself, were floating vague and undefined before me in the air; and
neither the open-mouthed sleeper, swallowing his endless chain of
rats; nor even the live rabbit found in the stout old gentleman's
hat--the last sort of person in whose hat one would have expected to
find such a thing--could draw away my mind from the joy I had caught a
glimpse of only to lose.
So we walked home through the muddy, darkening streets, speaking but
little; and that night, waking--or rather half waking, as children
do--I thought I saw a figure in white crouching at the foot of my bed.
I must have gone to sleep again; and later, though I cannot say
whether the intervening time was short or long, I opened my eyes to
see it still there; and frightened, I cried out; and my mother rose
from her knees.
She laughed, a curious broken laugh, in answer to my questions. "It
was a silly dream I had," she explained "I must have been thinking of
the conjurer we saw. I dreamt that a wicked Magician had spirited you
away from me. I could not find you and was all alone in the world."
She put her arms around me, so tight as almost to hurt me. And thus
we remained until again I must have fallen asleep.
It was towards the close of these same holidays that my mother and I
called upon Mrs. Teidelmann in her great stone-built house at Clapton.
She had sent a note round that morning, saying she was suffering from
terrible headaches that quite took her senses away, so that she was
unable to come out. She would be leaving England in a few days to
travel. Would my mother come and see her, she would like to say
good-bye to her before she went. My mother handed the letter across
the table to my father.
"Of course you will go," said my father. "Poor girl, I wonder what
the cause can be. She used to be so free from everything of the
kind."
"Do you think it well for me to go?" said my mother. "What can she
have to say to me?"
"Oh, just to say good-bye," answered my father. "It would look so
pointed not to go."
It was a dull, sombre house without, but one entered through its
commonplace door as through the weed-grown rock into Aladdin's cave.
Old Teidelmann had been a great collector all his life, and his
treasures, now scattered through a dozen galleries, were then heaped
there in curious confusion. Pictures filled every inch of wall, stood
propped against the wonderful old furniture, were even stretched
unframed across the ceilings. Statues gleamed from every corner (a
few of the statues were, I remember, the only things out of the entire
collection that Mrs. Teidelmann kept for herself), carvings,
embroideries, priceless china, miniatures framed in gems, illuminated
missals and gorgeously bound books crowded the room. The ugly little
thick-lipped man had surrounded himself with the beauty of every age,
brought from every land. He himself must have been the only thing
cheap and uninteresting to be found within his own walls; and now he
lay shrivelled up in his coffin, under a monument by means of which an
unknown cemetery became quite famous.
Instructions had been given that my mother was to be shown up into
Mrs. Teidelmann's boudoir. She was lying on a sofa near the fire when
we entered, asleep, dressed in a loose lace robe that fell away,
showing her thin but snow-white arms, her rich dark hair falling loose
about her. In sleep she looked less beautiful: harder and with a
suggestion of coarseness about the face, of which at other times it
showed no trace. My mother said she would wait, perhaps Mrs.
Teidelmann would awake; and the servant, closing the door softly, left
us alone with her.
An old French clock standing on the mantelpiece, a heart supported by
Cupids, ticked with a muffled, soothing sound. My mother, choosing a
chair by the window, sat with her eyes fixed on the sleeping woman's
face, and it seemed to me--though this may have been but my fancy born
of after-thought--that a faint smile relaxed for a moment the sleeping
woman's pained, pressed lips. Neither I nor my mother spoke, the only
sound in the room being the hushed ticking of the great gilt clock.
Until the other woman after a few slight movements of unrest began to
talk in her sleep.
Only confused murmurs escaped her at first, and then I heard her
whisper my father's name. Very low--hardly more than breathed--were
the words, but upon the silence each syllable struck clear and
distinct: "Ah no, we must not. Luke, my darling."
My mother rose swiftly from her chair, but she spoke in quite
matter-of-fact tones.
"Go, Paul," she said, "wait for me downstairs;" and noiselessly
opening the door, she pushed me gently out, and closed it again behind
me.
It was half an hour or more before she came down, and at once we left
the house, letting ourselves out. All the way home my mother never
once spoke, but walked as one in a dream with eyes that saw not. With
her hand upon the lock of our gate she came back to life.
"You must say nothing, Paul, do you understand?" she said. "When
people are delirious they use strange words that have no meaning. Do
you understand, Paul; you must never breathe a word--never."
I promised, and we entered the house; and from that day my mother's
whole manner changed. Not another angry word ever again escaped her
lips, never an angry flash lighted up again her eyes. Mrs. Teidelmann
remained away three months. My father, of course, wrote to her often,
for he was managing all her affairs. But my mother wrote to her
also--though this my father, I do not think, knew--long letters that
she would go away by herself to pen, writing them always in the
twilight, close to the window.
"Why do you choose this time, just when it's getting dark, to write
your letters," my father would expostulate, when by chance he happened
to look into the room. "Let me ring for the lamp, you will strain
your eyes." But my mother would always excuse herself, saying she had
only a few lines to finish.
"I can think better in this light," she would explain.
And when Mrs. Teidelmann returned, it was my mother who was the first
to call upon her; before even my father knew that she was back. And
from thence onward one might have thought them the closest of friends,
my mother visiting her often, speaking of her to all in terms of
praise and liking.
In this way peace returned unto the house, and my father was tender
again in all his words and actions towards my mother, and my mother
thoughtful as before of all his wants and whims, her voice soft and
low, the sweet smile ever lurking around her lips as in the old days
before this evil thing had come to dwell among us; and I might have
forgotten it had ever cast its blight upon our life but that every day
my mother grew feebler, the little ways that had seemed a part of her
gone from her.
The summer came and went--that time in towns of panting days and
stifling nights, when through the open window crawls to one's face the
hot foul air, heavy with reeking odours drawn from a thousand streets;
when lying awake one seems to hear the fitful breathing of the myriad
mass around, as of some over-laboured beast too tired to even rest;
and my mother moved about the house ever more listlessly.
"There's nothing really the matter with her," said Dr. Hal, "only
weakness. It is the place. Cannot you get her away from it?"
"I cannot leave myself," said my father, "just yet; but there is no
reason why you and the boy should not take a holiday. This year I can
afford it, and later I might possibly join you."
My mother consented, as she did to all things now, and so it came
about that again of afternoons we climbed--though more slowly and with
many pauses--the steep path to the ruined tower old Jacob in his happy
foolishness had built upon the headland, rested once again upon its
topmost platform, sheltered from the wind that ever blew about its
crumbling walls, saw once more the distant mountains, faint like
spectres, and the silent ships that came and vanished, and about our
feet the pleasant farm lands, and the grave, sweet river.
We had taken lodgings in the village: smaller now it seemed than
previously; but wonderful its sunny calm, after the turmoil of the
fierce dark streets. Mrs. Fursey was there still, but quite another
than the Mrs. Fursey of my remembrance, a still angular but cheery
dame, bent no longer on suppressing me, but rather on drawing me out
before admiring neighbours, as one saying: "The material was
unpromising, as you know. There were times when I almost despaired.
But with patience, and--may I say, a natural gift that way--you see
what can be accomplished!" And Anna, now a buxom wife and mother,
with an uncontrollable desire to fall upon and kiss me at most
unexpected moments, necessitating a never sleeping watchfulness on my
part, and a choosing of positions affording means of ready retreat.
And old Chumbley, still cobbling shoes in his tiny cave. On the bench
before him in a row they sat and watched him while he tapped and
tapped and hammered: pert little shoes piping "Be quick, be quick, we
want to be toddling. You seem to have no idea, my good man, how much
toddling there is to be done." Dapper boots, sighing: "Oh, please
make haste, we are waiting to dance and to strut. Jack walks in the
lane, Jill waits by the gate. Oh, deary, how slowly he taps." Stout
sober boots, saying: "As soon as you can, old friend. Remember we've
work to do." Flat-footed old boots, rusty and limp, mumbling: "We
haven't much time, Mr. Chumbley. Just a patch, that is all, we
haven't much further to go." And old Joe, still peddling his pack,
with the help of the same old jokes. And Tom Pinfold, still puzzled
and scratching his head, the rejected fish still hanging by its tail
from his expostulating hand; one might almost have imagined it the
same fish. Grown-up folks had changed but little. Only the foolish
children had been playing tricks; parties I had left mere sucking
babes now swaggering in pinafore or knickerbocker; children I had
known now mincing it as men and women; such affectation annoyed me.
One afternoon--it was towards the close of the last week of our
stay--my mother and I had climbed, as was so often our wont, to the
upper platform of old Jacob's tower. My mother leant upon the
parapet, her eyes fixed dreamingly upon the distant mountains, and a
smile crept to her lips.
"What are you thinking of?" I asked.
"Oh, only of things that happened over there"--she nodded her head
towards the distant hills as to some old crony with whom she shares
secrets--"when I was a girl."
"You lived there, long ago, didn't you, when you were young?" I asked.
Boys do not always stop to consider whether their questions might or
might not be better expressed.
"You're very rude," said my mother--it was long since a tone of her
old self had rung from her in answer to any touch; "it was a very
little while ago."
Suddenly she raised her head and listened. Perhaps some twenty
seconds she remained so with her lips parted, and then from the woods
came a faint, long-drawn "Coo-ee." We ran to the side of the tower
commanding the pathway from the village, and waited until from among
the dark pines my father emerged into the sunlight.
Seeing us, he shouted again and waved his stick, and from the light of
his eves and his gallant bearing, and the spring of his step across
the heathery turf, we knew instinctively that trouble had come upon
him. He always rose to meet it with that look and air. It was the
old Norse blood in his veins, I suppose. So, one imagines, must those
godless old Pirates have sprung to their feet when the North wind,
loosed as a hawk from the leash, struck at the beaked prow.
We heard his quick step on the rickety stair, and the next moment he
was between us, breathing a little hard, but laughing.
He stood for awhile beside my mother without speaking, both of them
gazing at the distant hills among which, as my mother had explained,
things had happened long ago. And maybe, "over there," their memories
met and looked upon each other with kind eyes.
"Do you remember," said my father, "we climbed up here--it was the
first walk we took together after coming here. We discussed our plans
for the future, how we would retrieve our fortunes."
"And the future," answered my mother, "has a way of making plans for
us instead."
"It would seem so," replied my father, with a laugh. "I am an unlucky
beggar, Maggie. I dropped all your money as well as my own down that
wretched mine."
"It was the will--it was Fate, or whatever you call it," said my
mother. "You could not help that, Luke."
"If only that damned pump hadn't jambed," said my father.
"Do you remember that Mrs. Tharand?" asked my mother.
"Yes, what of her?"
"A worldly woman, I always thought her. She called on me the morning
we were leaving; I don't think you saw her. 'I've been through more
worries than you would think, to look at me,' she said to me,
laughing. I've always remembered her words: 'and of all the troubles
that come to us in this world, believe me, Mrs. Kelver, money troubles
are the easiest to bear.'"
"I wish I could think so," said my father.
"She rather irritated me at the time," continued my mother. "I
thought it one of those commonplaces with which we console ourselves
for other people's misfortunes. But now I know she spoke the truth."
There was silence between them for awhile. Then said my father in a
cheery tone:
"I've broken with old Hasluck."
"I thought you would be compelled to sooner or later," answered my
mother.
"Hasluck," exclaimed my father, with sudden vehemence, "is little
better than a thief; I told him so."
"What did he say?" asked my mother.
"Laughed, and said that was better than some people."
My father laughed himself.
I wish to do the memory of Noel Hasluck no injustice. Ever was he a
kind friend to me; not only then, but in later years, when, having
come to learn that kindness is rarer in the world than I had dreamt, I
was glad of it. Added to which, if only for Barbara's sake, I would
prefer to write of him throughout in terms of praise. Yet even were
his good-tempered, thick-skinned ghost (and unless it were
good-tempered and thick-skinned it would be no true ghost of old Noel
Hasluck) to be reading over my shoulder the words as I write them
down, I think it would agree with me--I do not think it would be
offended with me (for ever in his life he was an admirer and a lover
of the Truth, being one of those good fighters capable of respecting
even his foe, his enemy, against whom from ten to four, occasionally a
little later, he fought right valiantly) for saying that of all the
men who go down into the City each day in a cab or 'bus or train, he
was perhaps one of the most unprincipled: and whether that be saying
much or little I leave to those with more knowledge to decide.
To do others, as it was his conviction, right or wrong, that they
would do him if ever he gave them half a chance, was his notion of
"business;" and in most of his transactions he was successful. "I
play a game," he would argue, "where cheating is the rule. Nine out
of every ten men round the table are sharpers like myself, and the
tenth man is a fool who has no business to be there. We prey upon
each other, and the cutest of us is the winner."
"But the innocent people, lured by your fine promises," I ventured
once to suggest to him, "the widows and the orphans?"
"My dear lad," he said, with a laugh, laying his fat hand upon my
shoulder, "I remember one of your widows writing me a pathetic letter
about some shares she had taken in a Silver Company of mine. Lord
knows where the mine is now--somewhere in Spain, I think. It looked
as though all her savings were gone. She had an only son, and it was
nearly all they possessed in the world, etc., etc.--you know the sort
of thing. Well, I did what I've often been numskull enough to do in
similar cases, wrote and offered to buy her out at par. A week later
she answered, thanking me, but saying it did not matter. There had
occurred a momentary rise, and she had sold out at a profit--to her
own brother-in-law, as I discovered, happening to come across the
transfers. You can find widows and orphans round the Monte Carlo card
tables, if you like to look for them; they are no more deserving of
consideration than the rest of the crowd. Besides, if it comes to
that, I'm an orphan myself;" and he laughed again, one of his deep,
hearty, honest laughs. No one ever possessed a laugh more suggestive
in its every cadence of simple, transparent honesty. He used to say
himself it was worth thousands to him.
Better from the Moralists' point of view had such a man been an
out-and-out rogue. Then might one have pointed, crying: "Behold:
Dishonesty, as you will observe in the person of our awful example, to
be hated, needs but to be seen." But the duty of the Chronicler is to
bear witness to what he knows, leaving Truth with the whole case
before her to sum up and direct the verdict. In the City, old Hasluck
had a bad reputation and deserved it; in Stoke-Newington--then a green
suburb, containing many fine old houses, standing in great wooded
gardens--he was loved and respected. In his business, he was a man
void of all moral sense, without bowels of compassion for any living
thing; in retirement, a man with a strong sense of duty and a fine
regard for the rights and feelings of others, never happier than when
planning to help or give pleasure. In his office, he would have
robbed his own mother. At home, he would have spent his last penny to
add to her happiness or comfort. I make no attempt to explain. I
only know that such men do exist, and that Hasluck was one of them.
One avoids difficulties by dismissing them as a product of our
curiously complex civilisation--a convenient phrase; let us hope the
recording angel may be equally impressed by it.
Casting about for some reason of excuse to myself for my liking of
him, I hit upon the expedient of regarding him as a modern Robin Hood,
whom we are taught to admire without shame, a Robin Hood up to date,
adapted to the changed conditions of modern environment; making his
living relieving the rich; taking pleasure relieving the poor.
"What will you do?" asked my mother.
"I shall have to give up the office," answered my father. "Without
him there's not enough to keep it going. He was quite good-tempered
about the matter--offered to divide the work, letting me retain the
straightforward portion for whatever that might be worth. But I
declined. Now I know, I feel I would rather have nothing more to do
with him."
"I think you were quite right," agreed my mother.
"What I blame myself for," said my father, "is that I didn't see
through him before. Of course he has been making a mere tool of me
from the beginning. I ought to have seen through him. Why didn't I?"
They discussed the future, or, rather, my father discussed, my mother
listening in silence, stealing a puzzled look at him from time to
time, as though there were something she could not understand.
He would take a situation in the City. One had been offered him. It
might sound poor, but it would be a steady income on which we must
contrive to live. The little money he had saved must be kept for
investments--nothing speculative--judicious "dealings," by means of
which a cool, clear-headed man could soon accumulate capital. Here
the training acquired by working for old Hasluck would serve him well.
One man my father knew--quite a dull, commonplace man--starting a few
years ago with only a few hundreds, was now worth tens of thousands.
Foresight was the necessary qualification. You watched the "tendency"
of things. So often had my father said to himself: "This is going to
be a big thing. That other, it is no good," and in every instance his
prognostications had been verified. He had "felt it;" some men had
that gift. Now was the time to use it for practical purposes.
"Here," said my father, breaking off, and casting an approving eye
upon the surrounding scenery, "would be a pleasant place to end one's
days. The house you had was very pretty and you liked it. We might
enlarge it, the drawing-room might be thrown out--perhaps another
wing." I felt that our good fortune as from this day was at last
established.
But my mother had been listening with growing impatience, her puzzled
glances giving place gradually to flashes of anger; and now she turned
her face full upon him, her question written plainly thereon,
demanding answer.
Some idea of it I had even then, watching her; and since I have come
to read it word for word: "But that woman--that woman that loves you,
that you love. Ah, I know--why do you play with me? She is rich.
With her your life will be smooth. And the boy--it will be better far
for him. Cannot you three wait a little longer? What more can I do?
Cannot you see that I am surely dying--dying as quickly as I
can--dying as that poor creature your friend once told us of; knowing
it was the only thing she could do for those she loved. Be honest
with me: I am no longer jealous. All that is past: a man is ever
younger than a woman, and a man changes. I do not blame you. It is
for the best. She and I have talked; it is far better so. Only be
honest with me, or at least silent. Will you not honour me enough for
even that?"
My father did not answer, having that to speak of that put my mother's
question out of her mind for all time; so that until the end no word
concerning that other woman passed again between them. Twenty years
later, nearly, I myself happened to meet her, and then long physical
suffering had chased the wantonness away for ever from the pain-worn
mouth; but in that hour of waning voices, as some trouble of the
fretful day when evening falls, so she faded from their life; and if
even the remembrance of her returned at times to either of them, I
think it must have been in those moments when, for no seeming reason,
shyly their hands sought one another.
So the truth of the sad ado--how far my mother's suspicions wronged my
father; for the eye of jealousy (and what loving woman ever lived that
was not jealous?) has its optic nerve terminating not in the brain but
in the heart, which was not constructed for the reception of true
vision--I never knew. Later, long after the curtain of green earth
had been rolled down upon the players, I spoke once on the matter with
Doctor Hal, who must have seen something of the play and with more
understanding eyes than mine, and who thereupon delivered to me a
short lecture on life in general, a performance at which he excelled.
"Flee from temptation and pray that you may be delivered from evil,"
shouted the Doctor--(his was not the Socratic method)--"but remember
this: that as sure as the sparks fly upward there will come a time
when, however fast you run, you will be overtaken--cornered--no one to
deliver you but yourself--the gods sitting round interested. It is a
grim fight, for the Thing, you may be sure, has chosen its right
moment. And every woman in the world will sympathise with you and be
just to you, not even despising you should you be overcome; for
however they may talk, every woman in the world knows that male and
female cannot be judged by the same standard. To woman, Nature and
the Law speak with one voice: 'Sin not, lest you be cursed of your
sex!' It is no law of man: it is the law of creation. When the
woman sins, she sins not only against her conscience, but against her
every instinct. But to the man Nature whispers: 'Yield.' It is the
Law alone that holds him back. Therefore every woman in the world,
knowing this, will be just to you--every woman in the world but
one--the woman that loves you. From her, hope for no sympathy, hope
for no justice."
"Then you think--" I began.
"I think," said the Doctor, "that your father loved your mother
devotedly; but he was one of those fighters that for the first
half-dozen rounds or so cause their backers much anxiety. It is a
dangerous method."
"Then you think my mother--"
"I think your mother was a good woman, Paul; and the good woman will
never be satisfied with man till the Lord lets her take him to pieces
and put him together herself."
My father had been pacing to and fro the tiny platform. Now he came
to a halt opposite my mother, placing his hands upon her shoulders.
"I want you to help me, Maggie--help me to be brave. I have only a
year or two longer to live, and there's a lot to be done in that
time."
Slowly the anger died out of my mother's face.
"You remember that fall I had when the cage broke," my father went on.
"Andrews, as you know, feared from the first it might lead to that.
But I always laughed at him."
"How long have you known?" my mother asked.
"Oh, about six months. I felt it at the beginning of the year, but I
didn't say anything to Washburn till a month later. I thought it
might be only fancy."
"And he is sure?"
My father nodded.
"But why have you never told me?"
"Because," replied my father, with a laugh, "I didn't want you to
know. If I could have done without you, I should not have told you
now."
And at this there came a light into my mother's face that never
altogether left it until the end.
She drew him down beside her on the seat. I had come nearer; and my
father, stretching out his hand, would have had me with them. But my
mother, putting her arms about him, held him close to her, as though
in that moment she would have had him to herself alone.
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