Judith took her sister again in her arms, holding her close, as though she were the older. Sylvia was weeping again, the furious, healing, inexhaustible tears of youth. To both the sisters it seemed that they were passing an hour of supreme bitterness; but their strong young hearts, clinging with unconscious tenacity to their right to joy, were at that moment painfully opening and expanding beyond the narrow bounds of childhood. Henceforth they were to be great enough to harbor joy—a greater joy—and sorrow, side by side.
Moreover, as though their action-loving mother were still watching over them, they found themselves confronted at once with an inexorable demand for their strength and courage.
Judith detached herself, and said in a firm voice: "Sylvia, you mustn't cry any more. We must think what to do."
As Sylvia looked at her blankly, she went on: "Somehow Lawrence must be taken away for a while—until Father's—either you or I must go with him and stay, and the other one be here with Father until he's—he's more like himself."
Sylvia, fresh from the desolation of solitude in sorrow, cried out:"Oh, Judith, how can you! Now's the time for us all to stay together!Why should we—?"
Judith went to the door and closed it before answering, a precaution so extraordinary in that house of frank openness that Sylvia was struck into silence by it. Standing by the door, Judith said in a low tone, "You didn't notice—anything—about Father?"
"Oh yes, he looks ill. He is so pale—he frightened me!"
Judith looked down at the floor and was silent a moment. Sylvia's heart began to beat fast with a new foreboding. "Why, whatisthe matter with—" she began.
Judith covered her face with her hands. "I don't know what todo!" she said despairingly.
No phrase coming from Judith could have struck a more piercing alarm into her sister's heart. She ran to Judith, pulled her hands down, and looked into her face anxiously. "What do you mean, Judy—what do you mean?"
"Why—it's five days now since Mother died, three days since the funeral—and Father has hardly eaten a mouthful—and I don't think he's slept at all. I know he hasn't taken his clothes off. And—and—" she drew Sylvia again to the bed, and sat down beside her, "he says such things … the night after Mother died Lawrence had cried so I was afraid he would be sick, and I got him to bed and gave him some hot milk,"—the thought flashed from one to the other almost palpably, "That is what Mother would have done"—"and he went to sleep—he was perfectly worn out. I went downstairs to find Father. It was after midnight. He was walking around the house into one room after another and out on the porch and even out in the garden, as fast as he could walk. He looked so—" She shuddered. "I went up to him and said, 'Father, Father, what are you doing?' He never stopped walking an instant, but he said, as though I was a total stranger and we were in a railway station or somewhere like that, 'I am looking for my wife. I expect to come across her any moment, but I can't seem to remember the exact place I was to meet her. She must be somewhere about, and I suppose—' and then, Sylvia, before I could help it, he opened the door to Mother's room quick—and the men were there, and the coffin—" She stopped short, pressing her hand tightly over her mouth to stop its quivering. Sylvia gazed at her in horrified silence.
After a pause, Judith went on: "He turned around and ran as fast as he could up the stairs to his study and locked the door. He locked me out—the night after Mother died. I called and called to him—he didn't answer. I was afraid to call very loud for fear of waking Lawrence. I've had to think of Lawrence too." She stopped again to draw a long breath. She stopped and suddenly reached out imploring hands to hold fast to Sylvia. "I'm sogladyou have come!" she murmured.
This from Judith ran like a galvanic shock through Sylvia's sorrow-sodden heart. She sat up, aroused as she had never been before to a stern impulse to resist her emotion, to fight it down. She clasped Judith's hand hard, and felt the tears dry in her eyes. Judith went on: "If it hadn't been for Lawrence—he's sick as it is. I've kept him in his room—twice when he's been asleep I've managed to get Father to eat something and lie down—there seem to be times when he's so worn out that he doesn't know what he's doing. But it comes back to him. One night I had just persuaded him to lie down, when he sat up again with that dreadful face and said very loud: 'Where is my wife? Where is Barbara?' That was on the night after the funeral. And the next day he came to me, out in the garden, and said,—he never seems to know who I am: 'I don't mind the separation from my wife, you understand—it's not that—I'm not a child, I can endure that—but Imustknow where she is. Imustknow where she is!' He said it over and over, until his voice got so loud he seemed to hear it himself and looked around—and then he went back into the house and began walking all around, opening and shutting all the doors. What I'm afraid of is his meeting Lawrence and saying something like that. Lawrence would go crazy. I thought, as soon as you came, you could take him away to the Helman farm—the Helmans have been so good—and Mrs. Helman offered to take Lawrence—only he oughtn't to be alone—he needs one of us—"
Judith was quiet now, and though very pale, spoke with her usual firmness. Sylvia too felt herself iron under the pressure of her responsibilities. She said: "Yes, I see. All right—I'll go," and the two went together into Lawrence's room. He was lying on the bed, his face in the pillows. At the sound of their steps he turned over and showed a pitiful white face. He got up and moved uncertainly towards Sylvia, sinking into her arms and burying his face on her shoulder.
But a little later when their plan was told him, he turned to Judith with a cry: "No,yougo with me, Judy! I wantyou! You 'know'—about it."
Over his head the sisters looked at each other with questioning eyes; and Sylvia nodded her consent. Lawrence had always belonged to Judith.
"Strange that we creatures of the petty ways,Poor prisoners behind these fleshly bars,Can sometimes think us thoughts with God ablaze,Touching the "fringes of the outer stars.""
And so they went away, Lawrence very white, stooping with the weight of his suitcase, his young eyes, blurred and red, turned upon Judith with an infinite confidence in her strength. Judith herself was pale, but her eyes were dry and her lips firm in her grave, steadfast face, so like her mother's, except for the absence of the glint of humor. Sylvia kissed her good-bye, feeling almost a little fear of her resolute sister; but as she watched them go down the path, and noted the appealing drooping of the boy towards Judith, Sylvia was swept with a great wave of love and admiration—and courage.
She turned to face the difficult days and nights before her and forced herself to speak cheerfully to her father, who sat in a chair on the porch, watching the departing travelers and not seeing them. "How splendid Judith is!" she cried, and went on with a break in the voice she tried to control: "She will take Mother's place for us all!"
Her father frowned slightly, as though she had interrupted him in some effort where concentration was necessary, but otherwise gave no sign that he heard her.
Sylvia watched him anxiously through the window. Presently she saw him relax from his position of strained attention with a great sigh, almost a groan, and lean back in his chair, covering his eyes with his hands. When he took them down, his face had the aged, ravaged expression of exhaustion which had so startled her on her arrival. Now she felt none of her frightened revulsion, but only an aching pity which sent her out to him in a rush, her arms outstretched, crying to him brokenly that he still had his children who loved him more than anything in the world.
For the first time in her life, her father repelled her, shrinking away from her with a brusque, involuntary recoil that shocked her, thrusting her arms roughly to one side, and rising up hastily to retreat into the house. He said in a bitter, recriminating tone, "You don't know what you are talking about," and left her standing there, the tears frozen in her eyes. He went heavily upstairs to his study on the top floor and locked the door. Sylvia heard the key turn. It shut her into an intolerable solitude. She had not thought before that anything could seem worse than the desolation of her mother's absence.
She felt a deathlike sinking of her heart. She was afraid of her father, who no longer seemed her father, created to protect and cherish her, but some maniac stranger. She felt an impulse like that of a terrified child to run away, far away to some one who should stand before her and bear the brunt. She started up from her chair with panic haste, but the familiar room, saturated with recollections of her mother's gallant spirit, stood about her like a wall, shutting her in to the battle with her heart. Who was there to summon whom she could endure as a spectator of her father's condition? Her mother's empty chair stood opposite her, against the wall. She looked at it fixedly; and drawing a long breath sat down quietly.
This act of courage brought a reward in the shape of a relaxation of the clutch on her throat and about her heart. Her mother's wise materialism came to her mind now and she made a heartsick resolve that she would lead as physically normal a life as possible, working out of doors, forcing herself to eat, and that, above all things, she would henceforth deny herself the weakening luxury of tears. And yet but an hour later, as she bent over her mother's flower-beds blazing in the sun, she found the tears again streaming from her eyes.
She tried to wipe them away, but they continued to rain down on her cheeks. Her tongue knew their saltness. She was profoundly alarmed and cowed by this irresistible weakness, and stood helplessly at bay among the languid roses. The sensation of her own utter weakness, prostrate before her dire need for strength, was as bitter as the taste of her tears.
She stood there, among the sun-warmed flowers, looking like a symbolic figure of youth triumphant … and she felt herself to be in a black and windowless prison, where the very earth under her feet was treacherous, where everything betrayed her.
Then, out of her need, her very great need, out of the wide and empty spaces of her inculcated unbelief, something rose up and overwhelmed her. The force stronger than herself which she had longed to feel, blew upon her like a wind out of eternity.
She found herself on her knees, her face hidden in her hands, sending out a passionate cry which transcended words. The child of the twentieth century, who had been taught not to pray, was praying.
She did not know how long she knelt there before the world emerged from the white glory which had whirled down upon it, and hidden it from her. But when she came to herself, her eyes were dry, and the weakening impulse to tears had gone. She stretched out her hands before her, and they did not tremble. The force stronger than herself was now in her own heart. From her mother's garden there rose a strong, fragrant exhalation, as sweet as honey.
* * * * *
For more than an hour Sylvia worked steadily among the flowers, consciously wrought upon by the healing emanations from the crushed, spicy leaves, the warm earth, and the hot, pure breath of the summer wind on her face.
Once she had a passing fancy that her mother stood near her … smiling.
"Call now; is there any that will answer thee?"—JOB.
When she went back to the silent, echoing house, she felt calmer than at any time since she had read the telegram in Naples. She did not stop to wash her earth-stained hands, but went directly up the stairs to the locked door at the top. She did not knock this time. She stood outside and said authoritatively in a clear, strong voice, the sound of which surprised her, "Father dear, please open the door and let me in."
There was a pause, and then a shuffle of feet. The door opened and Professor Marshall appeared, his face very white under the thick stubble of his gray, unshaven beard, his shoulders bowed, his head hanging. Sylvia went to his side, took his hand firmly in hers, and said quietly: "Father, you must eat something. You haven't taken a bit of food in two days. And then you must lie down and rest," She poured all of her new strength into these quietly issued commands, and permitted herself no moment's doubt of his obedience to them. He lifted his head, looked at her, and allowed her to lead him down the stairs and again into the dining-room. Here he sat, quite spent, staring before him until Sylvia returned from the kitchen with a plate of cold meat and some bread. She sat down beside him, putting out again consciously all her strength, and set the knife and fork in his nerveless hands. In the gentle monologue with which she accompanied his meal she did not mention her mother, or anything but slight, casual matters about the house and garden. She found herself speaking in a hushed tone, as though not to awake a sleeping person. Although she sat quite quietly, her hands loosely folded on the table, her heart was thrilling and burning to a high resolve. "Now it is my turn to help my father."
After he had eaten a few mouthfuls and laid down the knife and fork, she did not insist further, but rose to lead him to the couch in the living-room. She dared not risk his own room, the bed on which her mother had died.
"Now you must lie down and rest, Father," she said, loosening his clothes and unlacing his shoes as though he had been a sick child. He let her do what she would, and as she pushed him gently back, he yielded and lay down at full length. Sylvia sat down beside him, feeling her strength ebbing. Her father lay on his back, his eyes wide open. On the ceiling above him a circular flicker of light danced and shimmered, reflected from a glass of water on the table. His eyes fastened upon this, at first unwinkingly, with a fixed intensity, and later with dropped lids and half-upturned eyeballs. He was quite quiet, and finally seemed asleep, although the line of white between his eyelids made Sylvia shudder.
With the disappearance of the instant need for self-control and firmness, she felt an immense fatigue. It had cost her dearly, this victory, slight as it was. She drooped in her chair, exhausted and undone. She looked down at the ash-gray, haggard face on the pillow, trying to find in those ravaged features her splendidly life-loving father. It was so quiet that she could hear the big clock in the dining-room ticking loudly, and half-consciously she began to count the swings of the pendulum: One—two—three—four—five—six— seven—eight—nine—ten—eleven—twelve—thirteen—fourteen—
She awoke to darkness and the sound of her mother's name loudly screamed. She started up, not remembering where she was, astonished to find herself sitting in a chair. As she stood bewildered in the dark, the clock in the dining-room struck two. At once from a little distance, outside the window apparently, she heard the same wild cry ringing in her ears—"Bar-ba-ra!" All the blood in her body congealed and the hair on her head seemed to stir itself, in the instant before she recognized her father's voice.
The great impulse of devotion which had entered her heart in the garden still governed her. Now she was not afraid. She did not think of running away. She only knew that she must find her father quickly and take care of him. Outside on the porch, the glimmering light from the stars showed her his figure, standing by one of the pillars, leaning forward, one hand to his ear. As she came out of the door, he dropped his hand, threw back his head, and again sent out an agonizing cry—"Bar-ba-ra!Where are you?" It was not the broken wail of despair; it was the strong, searching cry of a lost child who thinks trustingly that if he but screams loudly enough his mother must hear him and come—and yet who is horribly frightened because she does not answer. But this was a man in his full strength who called! It seemed the sound must reach beyond the stars. Sylvia felt her very bones ringing with it. She went along the porch to her father, and laid her hand on his arm. Through his sleeve she could feel how tense and knotted were the muscles. "Oh, Father,don't!" she said in a low tone. He shook her off roughly, but did not turn his head or look at her. Sylvia hesitated, not daring to leave him and not daring to try to draw him away; and again was shaken by that terrible cry.
The intensity of his listening attitude seemed to hush into breathlessness the very night about him, as it did Sylvia. There was not a sound from the trees. They stood motionless, as though carved in wood; not a bird fluttered a wing; not a night-insect shrilled; the brook, dried by the summer heat to a thread, crept by noiselessly. As once more the frantic cry resounded, it seemed to pierce this opaque silence like a palpable missile, and to wing its way without hindrance up to the stars. Not the faintest murmur came in answer. The silence shut down again, stifling. Sylvia and her father stood as though in the vacuum of a great bell-glass which shut them away from the rustling, breathing, living world. Sylvia said again, imploringly, "Oh,Father!" He looked at her angrily, sprang from the porch, and walked rapidly towards the road, stumbling and tripping over the laces of his shoes, which Sylvia had loosened when she had persuaded him to lie down. Sylvia ran after him, her long bounds bringing her up to his side in a moment. The motion sent the blood racing through her stiffened limbs again. She drew a long breath of liberation. As she stepped along beside her father, peering in the starlight at his dreadful face, half expecting him to turn and strike her at any moment, she felt an immense relief. The noise of their feet on the path was like a sane voice of reality. Anything was more endurable than to stand silent and motionless and hear that screaming call lose itself in the grimly unanswering distance.
They were on the main road now, walking so swiftly that, in the hot summer night, Sylvia felt her forehead beaded and her light dress cling to her moist body. She took her father's hand. It was parched like a sick man's, the skin like a dry husk. After this, they walked hand-in-hand. Professor Marshall continued to walk rapidly, scuffling in his loose, unlaced shoes. They passed barns and farmhouses, the latter sleeping, black in the starlight, with darkened windows. In one, a poor little shack of two rooms, there was a lighted pane, and as they passed, Sylvia heard the sick wail of a little child. The sound pierced her heart. She longed to go in and put her arms about the mother. Now she understood. She tightened her hold on her father's hand and lifted it to her lips.
He suffered this with no appearance of his former anger, and soon after Sylvia was aware that his gait was slackening. She looked at him searchingly, and saw that he had swung from unnatural tension to spent exhaustion. His head was hanging and as he walked he wavered. She put her hand under his elbow and turned him about on the road. "Now we will go home," she said, drawing his arm through hers. He made no resistance, not seeming to know what she had done, and shuffled along wearily, leaning all his weight on her arm. She braced herself against this drag, and led him slowly back, wiping her face from time to time with her sleeve. There were moments when she thought she must let him sink on the road, but she fought through these, and as the sky was turning faintly gray over their heads, and the implacably silent stars were disappearing in this pale light, the two stumbled up the walk to the porch.
Professor Marshall let himself be lowered into the steamer chair. Sylvia stood by him until she was sure he would not stir, and then hurried into the kitchen. In a few moments she brought him a cup of hot coffee and a piece of bread. He drank the one and ate the other without protest She set the tray down and put a pillow under her father's head, raising the foot-rest. He did not resist her. His head fell back on the pillow, but his eyes did not close. They were fixed on a distant point in the sky.
Sylvia tiptoed away into the house and sank down shivering into a chair. A great fit of trembling and nausea came over her. She rose, walked into the kitchen, her footsteps sounding in her ears like her mother's. There was some coffee left, which she drank resolutely, and she cooked an egg and forced it down, her mother's precepts loud in her ears. Whatever else happened, she must have her body in condition to be of use.
After this she went out to the porch again and lay down in the hammock near her father. The dawn had brightened into gold, and the sun was showing on the distant, level, green horizon-line.
* * * * *
It was almost the first moment of physical relaxation she had known, and to her immense, her awed astonishment it was instantly filled with a pure, clear brilliance, the knowledge that Austin Page lived and loved her. It was the first, it was the only time she thought of anything but her father, and this was not a thought, it was a vision. In the chaos about her, a great sunlit rock had emerged. She laid hold on it and knew that she would not sink.
* * * * *
But now,nowshe must think of nothing but her father! There was no one else who could help her father. Could she? Could any one?
She herself, since her prayer among the roses, cherished in her darkened heart a hope of dawn. But how could she tell her father of that? Even if she had been able to force him to listen to her, she had nothing that words could say, nothing but the recollection of that burning hour in the garden to set against the teachings of a lifetime. That had changed life for her … but what could it mean to her father? How could she tell him of what was only a wordless radiance? Her father had taught her that death meant the return of the spirit to the great, impersonal river of life. If the spirit had been superb and splendid, like her mother's, the river of life was the brighter for it, but that was all. Her mother had lived, and now lived no more. That was what they had tried to teach her to believe. That was what her father had taught her—without, it now appeared, believing it himself.
And yet she divined that it was not that he would not, but that he could not now believe it. He was like a man set in a vacuum fighting for the air without which life is impossible. And she knew no way to break the imprisoning wall and let in air for him.Wasthere, indeed, any air outside? There must be, or the race could not live from one generation to the next. Every one whose love had encountered death must have found an air to breathe or have died.
Constantly through all these thoughts, that day and for many days and months to come, there rang the sound of her mother's name, screamed aloud. She heard it as though she were again standing by her father under the stars. And there had been no answer.
She felt the tears stinging at her eyelids and sat up, terrified at the idea that her weakness was about to overtake her. She would go again out to the garden where she had found strength before. The morning sun was now hot and glaring in the eastern sky.
"A bruised reed will He not break, and a dimly burning wick will He not quench,"—ISAIAH.
As she stepped down the path, she saw a battered black straw hat on the other side of the hedge. Cousin Parnelia's worn old face and dim eyes looked at her through the gate. Under her arm she held planchette. Sylvia stepped through the gate and drew it inhospitably shut back of her. "What is it, Cousin Parnelia?" she said challengingly, determined to protect her father.
The older woman's face was all aglow. "Oh, my dear; I've had such a wonderful message from your dear mother. Last night—"
Sylvia recoiled from the mad old creature. She could not bear to have her sane, calm, strong mother's name on those lips. Cousin Parnelia went on, full of confidence: "I was sound asleep last night when I was awakened by the clock's striking two. It sounded so loud that I thought somebody had called to me. I sat up in bed and said, 'What is it?' and then I felt a great longing to have planchette write. I got out of bed in my nightgown and sat down in the dark at the table. Planchette wrote so fast that I could hardly keep up with it. And when it stopped, I lighted a match and see … here … in your mother's very handwriting"—fervently she held the bit of paper up for Sylvia to see. The girl cast a hostile look at the paper and saw that the writing on it was the usual scrawl produced by Cousin Parnelia, hardly legible, and resembling anything rather than her mother's handwriting.
"Read it—read it—it is too beautiful!" quivered the other, "and then let me show it to your father. It was meant for him—"
Sylvia shook like a roughly plucked fiddle-string. She seized the wrinkled old hand fiercely. "Cousin Parnelia, I forbid you going anywhere near my father! You know as well as I do how intensely he has always detested spiritualism. To see you might be the thing that would—"
The old woman broke in, protesting, her hat falling to one side, her brown false front sliding with it and showing the thin, gray hairs beneath. "But, Sylvia, this is the very thing that would save him—such a beautiful, beautiful message from your mother,—see! In her own handwriting!"
Sylvia snatched the sheet of yellow paper. "That'snot my mother's handwriting! Do you think I am as crazy asyouare!" She tore the paper into shreds and scattered them from her, feeling a relief in the violence of her action. The next moment she remembered how patient her mother had always been with her daft kinswoman and seeing tears in the blurred old eyes, went to put placating arms about the other's neck. "Never mind, Cousin Parnelia," she said with a vague kindness, "I know you mean to do what's right—only we don't believe as you do, and Fathermustnot be excited!" She turned sick as she spoke and shrank away from the hedge, carrying her small old cousin with her. Above the hedge appeared her father's gray face and burning eyes.
He was not looking at her, but at Cousin Parnelia, who now sprang forward, crying that she had had a beautiful, beautiful message from Cousin Barbara. "Itcame last night at two o'clock … just after the clock struck two—"
Professor Marshall looked quickly at his daughter, and she saw that he too had heard the clock striking in the dreadful night, and that he noted the coincidence.
"Just after the clock struck two she wrote the loveliest message for you with planchette. Sylvia tore it up. But I'm sure that if we try with faith, she will repeat it …"
Professor Marshall's eyes were fixed on his wife's old cousin. "Come in," he said in a hoarse voice. They were almost the first words Sylvia had heard him say.
Cousin Parnelia hastened up the path to the house. Sylvia followed with her father, at the last extremity of agitation and perplexity.
When Cousin Parnelia reached the dining-room table, she sat down by it, pushed the cloth to one side, and produced a fresh sheet of yellow paper from her shabby bag. "Put yourselves in a receptive frame of mind," she said in a glib, professional manner. Sylvia stiffened and tried to draw her father away, but he continued to stand by the table, staring at the blank sheet of paper with a strange, wild expression on his white face. He did not take his eyes from the paper. In a moment, he sat down suddenly, as though his knees had failed him.
There was a long silence, in which Sylvia could hear the roaring of the blood in her arteries. Cousin Parnelia put one deeply veined, shrunken old hand on planchette and the other over her eyes and waited, her wrinkled, commonplace old face assuming a solemn expression of importance. The clock ticked loudly.
Planchette began to write—at first in meaningless flourishes, then with occasional words, and finally Sylvia saw streaming away from the pencil the usual loose, scrawling handwriting. Several lines were written and then the pencil stopped abruptly. Sylvia standing near her father heard his breathing grow loud and saw in a panic that the veins on his temples were swollen.
Cousin Parnelia took her hand off planchette, put on her spectacles, read over what had been written, and gave it to Professor Marshall. Sylvia was in such a state of bewilderment that nothing her father could have done would have surprised her. She half expected to see him dash the paper in the old woman's face, half thought that any moment he would fall, choking with apoplexy.
What he did was to take the paper and try to hold it steadily enough to read. But his hand shook terribly.
"I will read it to you," said Cousin Parnelia, and she read aloud in her monotonous, illiterate voice: "'I am well and happy, dearest Elliott, and never far from you. When you call to me, I hear you. All is not yet clear, but I wish I could tell you more of the whole meaning. I am near you this moment. I wish that—' The message stopped there," explained Cousin Parnelia, laying down the paper.
Professor Marshall leaned over it, straining his eyes to the rude scrawls, passing his hand over his forehead as though to brush away a web. He broke out in a loud, high voice. "That is her handwriting…. Good God, her very handwriting—the way she writes Elliott—it is fromher!" He snatched the paper up and took it to the window, stumbling over the chairs blindly as he went. As he held it up to the light, poring over it again, he began to weep, crying out his wife's name softly, the tears streaming down his unshaven cheeks. He came back to the table, and sank down before it, still sobbing, still murmuring incessantly, "Oh, Barbara—Barbara!" and laid his head on his outstretched arms.
"Let him cry!" whispered Cousin Parnelia sentimentally to Sylvia, drawing her away into the hall. A few moments later when they looked in, he had fallen asleep, his head turned to one side so that Sylvia saw his face, tear-stained and exhausted, but utterly relaxed and at peace, like that of a little child in sleep. Crushed in one hand was the yellow sheet of paper covered with coarse, wavering marks.
"That our soul may swim We sink our heart down, bubbling, under wave"
The two sisters, their pale faces grave in the shadow of their wide hats, were on their knees with trowels in a border of their mother's garden. Judith had been giving a report of Lawrence's condition, and Sylvia was just finishing an account of what had happened at home, when the gate in the osage-orange hedge clicked, and a blue-uniformed boy came whistling up the path. He made an inquiry as to names, and handed Sylvia an envelope. She opened it, read silently, "Am starting for America and you at once. Felix." She stood looking at the paper for a moment, her face quite unmoved from its quiet sadness. The boy asked, "Any answer?"
"No," she said decisively, shaking her head. "No answer."
As he lingered, lighting a cigarette, she put a question in her turn,"Anything to pay?"
"No," said the boy, putting the cigarette-box back in his pocket, "Nothing to pay." He produced a worn and greasy book, "Sign on this line," he said, and after she had signed, he went away down the path, whistling. The transaction was complete.
Sylvia looked after the retreating figure and then turned to Judith as though there had been no interruption. "… and you can see for yourself how little use I am to him now. Since he got Cousin Parnelia in the house, there's nothing anybody else could do for him. Even you couldn't, if you could leave Lawrence. Not for a while, anyhow. I suppose he'll come slowly out of this to be himself again … but I'm not sure that he will. And for now, I actually believe that he'd be easier in his mind if we were both away. I never breathe a word of criticism about planchette, of course. But he knows. There's that much left of his old self. He knows how I must feel. He's really ever so much better too, you know. He's taken up his classes in the Summer School again. He said he had 'a message' from Mother that he was to go back to his work bravely; and the very next day he went over to the campus, and taught all his classes as though nothing had happened. Isn't it awfully, terribly touching to see how even such a poor, incoherent make-believe of a 'message' from Mother has more power to calm him than anything we could do with our whole hearts? But howcanhe! I can't understand it! I can't bear it, to come in on him and Cousin Parnelia, in their evenings, and see them bent over that grotesque planchette and have him look up at me so defiantly, as though he were just setting his teeth and saying he wouldn't care what I thought of him. He doesn't really care either. He doesn't think of anything but of having evening come when he can get another 'message' from Mother … from Mother! Mother!"
"Well, perhaps it would be as well for us not to be here for a while," murmured Judith. There were deep dark rings under her eyes, as though she had slept badly for a long time. "Perhaps it may be better later on. I can take Lawrence back with me when I go to the hospital. I want to keep him near me of course, dear little Lawrence. My little boy! He'll be my life now. He'll be what I have to live for."
Something in the quality of her quiet voice sent a chill to Sylvia's heart. "Why, Judy dear, after you are married of course you and Arnold can keep Lawrence with you. That'll be the best for him, a real home, with you. Oh, Judy dear," she laid down her trowel, fighting hard against a curious sickness which rose within her. She tried to speak lightly. "Oh, Judy dear, whenareyou going to be married? Or don't you want to speak about it now, for a while? You never write long letters, I know—but your late ones haven't hadanynews in them! You positively haven't so much as mentioned Arnold's name lately."
As she spoke, she knew that she was voicing an uneasiness which had been an unacknowledged occupant of her mind for a long time. But she looked confidently to see one of Judith's concise, comprehensive statements make her dim apprehensions seem fantastic and far-fetched, as Judith always made any flight of the imagination appear. But nothing which Sylvia's imagination might have been able to conceive would have struck her such a blow as the fact which Judith now produced, in a dry, curt phrase: "I'm not going to be married."
Sylvia did not believe her ears. She looked up wildly as Judith rose from the ground, and advanced upon her sister with a stern, white face. Before she had finished speaking, she had said more than Sylvia had ever heard her say about a matter personal to her; but even so, her iron words were few. "Sylvia, I want to tell you about it, of course. I've got to. But I won't say a word, unless you can keep quiet, and not make a fuss. I couldn't stand that. I've got all I can stand as it is."
She stood by an apple-tree and now broke from it a small, leafy branch, which she held as she spoke. There was something shocking in the contrast between the steady rigor of her voice and the fury of her fingers as they tore and stripped and shredded the leaves. "Arnold is an incurable alcoholic," she said; "Dr. Rivedal has pronounced him hopeless. Dr. Charton and Dr. Pansard (they're the best specialists in that line) have had him under observation and they say the same thing. He's had three dreadful attacks lately. We … none of their treatment does any good. It's been going on too long—from the time he was first sent away to school, at fourteen, alone! There was an inherited tendency, anyhow. Nobody took it seriously, that and—and the other things boys with too much money do. Apparently everybody thought it was just the way boys are—if anybody thought anything about it, except that it was a bother. He never had anybody, you know—never, neveranybody who …" her voice rose, threatened to break. She stopped, swallowed hard, and began again: "The trouble is he has no constitution left—nothing for a doctor to work with. It's not Arnold's fault. If he had come out to us, that time in Chicago when he wanted to—we—he could—with Mother to—" Her steady voice gave way abruptly. She cast the ravaged, leafless branch violently to the ground and stood looking down at it. There was not a fleck of color in her beautiful, stony face.
Sylvia concentrated all her will-power on an effort to speak as Judith would have her, quietly, without heroics; but when she broke her silence she found that she had no control of her voice. She tried to say, "But, Judith dear, if Arnold is like that—doesn't he need you more than ever? You are a nurse. How can you abandon him now!" But she could produce only a few, broken, inarticulate words in a choking voice before she was obliged to stop short, lest she burst out in the flood of horror which Judith had forbidden.
Broken and inarticulate as they were, Judith knew what was the meaning of those words. The corners of her mouth twitched uncontrollably. She bit her marble lower lip repeatedly before she could bring out the few short phrases which fell like clods on a coffin. "If I—if we—Arnold and I are in love with each other." She stopped, drew a painful breath, and said again: "Arnold and I are in love with each other. Do you know what that means? He is the only man I could not take care of—Arnold! If I should try, we would soon be married, or lovers. If we were married or lovers, we would soon have—" She had overestimated her strength. Even she was not strong enough to go on.
She sat down on the ground, put her long arms around her knees, and buried her face in them. She was not weeping. She sat as still as though carved in stone.
Sylvia herself was beyond tears. She sat looking down at the moist earth on the trowel she held, drying visibly in the hot sun, turning to dust, and falling away in a crumbling, impalpable powder. It was like seeing a picture of her heart. She thought of Arnold with an indignant, passionate pity—how could Judith—? But she was so close to Judith's suffering that she felt the dreadful rigidity of her body. The flat, dead tones of the man in the Pantheon were in her ears. It seemed to her that Life was an adventure perilous and awful beyond imagination. There was no force to cope with it, save absolute integrity. Everything else was a vain and foolish delusion, a two-edged sword which wounded the wielding hand.
She did not move closer to Judith, she did not put out her hand. Judith would not like that. She sat quite motionless, looking into black abysses of pain, of responsibilities not met, feeling press upon her the terrifying closeness of all human beings to all other human beings—there in the sun of June a cold sweat stood on her forehead….
But then she drew a long breath. Why, there was Austin! The anguished contraction of her heart relaxed. The warm blood flowed again through her veins. There was Austin!
She was rewarded for her effort to bring herself to Judith's ways,when presently her sister moved and reached out blindly for her hand.At this she opened her arms and took Judith in. No word was spoken.Their mother was there with them.
Sylvia looked out over the proud, dark head, now heavy on her bosom, and felt herself years older. She did not try to speak. She had nothing to say. There was nothing she could do, except to hold Judith and love her.
There was nothing,nothingleft but love.
The tall, lean young man, sitting his galloping horse very slackly, riding fast with a recklessly loose rein, and staring with bloodshot eyes down at the dust of the road, gave an exclamation, brought the mare upon her haunches, and sprang down from the saddle. A woman, young, tall, grave, set like a pearl in her black mourning dress, stood up from the roadside brook and advanced to meet him. They looked at each other as people do who meet after death has passed by. They stammered vague words, their eyes brimming.
"I—she was always so good to me," said Arnold, his voice breaking and quavering as he wrung Sylvia's hand again and again. "I never knew—saw much of her, I know—but when I was a little boy, I used—I used to dream about her at night." His thin, sallow face flushed with his earnestness. "I don't believe—honestly, Sylvia, I don't believe her own children loved her any more than I did. I've thought so many times how different everything would have been if I'd—I don't suppose you remember, but years ago when you and she were in Chicago, I ran away from school to go out there, and ask if—"
Sylvia remembered, had thought of nothing else from the moment she had seen far down the road the horseman vainly fleeing the black beast on his crupper. She shook her head now, her hand at her throat, and motioned him to silence. "Don't! Don't!" she said urgently. "Yes, I remember. I remember."
There was a moment's silence, filled by the murmur of the little brook at their feet. The mare, which had been drinking deeply, now lifted her head, the water running from the corners of her mouth. She gave a deep breath of satisfaction, and began cropping the dense green grass which grew between the water and the road. Her master tossed the reins over the pommel and let her go. He began speaking again on a different note. "But, Sylvia, what in the world—here, can't we go up under those trees a few minutes and have a talk? I can keep my eye on the mare." As they took the few steps he asked again, "How ever does it happen that you're here at Lydford Junction of all awful holes?"
Sylvia took an abrupt resolution, sat down on the pine-needles, and said, very directly, "I am on my way to Austin Farm to see if Austin Page still wants to marry me." Her manner had the austere simplicity of one who has been moving in great and grave emotions.
Arnold spoke with an involuntary quickness: "But you've heard, haven't you, about his giving up all his Colorado …"
Sylvia flushed a deep crimson and paid with a moment of bitter, shamed resentment for the other bygone moments of calculation. "Yes, yes, of course." She spoke with a stern impatience. "Did you suppose it was for his fortune that—" She paused and said humbly, "Of course, it's natural that you should think that of me."
Arnold attempted no self-exculpation. He sat down by her, his riding-crop across his knees. "Could you—do you feel like telling me about it?" he asked.
She nodded. It came to her like an inspiration that only if she opened her heart utterly to Arnold, could he open his sore heart to her. "There's not much to tell. I don't know where to begin. Perhaps there's too much to tell, after all, I didn't know what any of it meant till now. It's the strangest thing, Arnold, how little people know what is growing strong in their lives! I supposed all the time I only liked him because he was so rich. I thought it must be so. I thought that was the kind of girl I was. And then, besides, I'd—perhaps you didn't know how much I'd liked Felix Morrison."
Arnold nodded. "I sort of guessed so. You were awfully game, then, Sylvia. You're game now—it's awfully white to fall in love with a man because he's rich and then stick to him when he's—"
Sylvia waved her hand impatiently. "Oh, you don't understand. It's not because I thinkI oughtto—Heavens, no! Let me try to tell you. Listen! When the news came, about this Colorado business—I was about crazy for a while. I just went to pieces. I knew I ought to answer his letter, but I couldn't. I see now, looking back, that I had just crumpled up under the weight of my weakness. I didn't know it then. I kept saying to myself that I was only putting off deciding till I could think more about it, but I know now that I had decided to give him up, never to see him again—Felix was there, you know—I'd decided to give Austin up because he wasn't rich any more. Did you know I was that base sort of a woman? Do you suppose he will ever be willing to take me back?—now after this long time? It's a month since I got his letter."
Arnold bent his riding-crop between his thin, nervous hands. "Are you sure now, Sylvia, are you sure now, dead sure?" he asked. "It would be pretty hard on Austin if you—afterwards—he's such a square, straight sort of a man, you ought to be awfully careful not to—"
Sylvia said quickly, her quiet voice vibrant, her face luminous: "Oh, Arnold, I could never tell you how sure I am. There just isn't anything else. Over there in Paris, I tried so hard to think about it—and I couldn't get anywhere at all. The more I tried, the baser I grew; the more I loved the things I'd have to give up, the more I hung on to them. Thinking didn't do a bit of good, though I almost killed myself thinking—thinking—All I'd done was to think out an ingenious, low, mean compromise to justify myself in giving him up. And then, after Judith's cablegram came, I started home—Arnold, what a journey that was!—and I found—I found Mother was gone, just gone away forever—and I found Father out of his head with sorrow—and Judith told me about—about her trouble. It was like going through a long black corridor. It seemed as though I'd never come out on the other side. But when I did—A door that I couldn't ever, ever break down—somehow it's been just quietly opened, and I've gone through it into the only place where it's worth living. It's the last thing Mother did for me—what nobody but Mother could have done. I don't want to go back. I couldn't if I wanted to. Those things don't matter to me now. I don't think they're wrong, the ease, the luxury, if you can have them without losing something finer. And I suppose some people's lives are arranged so they don't lose the finer. But mine wouldn't be. I see that now. And I don't care at all—it all seems so unimportant to me, what I was caring about, before. Nothing matters now but Austin. He is the only thing that has lived on for me. I'm down on my knees with thankfulness that he just exists, even if he can't forgive me—even if he doesn't care for me any more—even if I shouldn't ever see him again—even if he should die—he would be like Mother, he couldn't die, for me. He's there. I know what he is. Somehow everything's all right—because there's Austin."
She broke off, smiling palely and quietly at the man beside her. He raised his eyes to hers for an instant and then dropped them. Sylvia went on. "I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs of this Colorado business. It may be that it was quixotic on Austin's part. Maybe ithasupset business conditions out there a lot. It's too complicated to besureabout how anything, I suppose, is likely to affect an industrial society. But I'm sure about how it has affected the people who live in the world—it's a great golden deed that has enriched everybody—not just Austin's coal-miners, but everybody who had heard of it. The sky is higher because of it. Everybody has a new conception of the good that's possible. And then for me, it means that a man who sees an obligation nobody else sees and meets it—why, with such a man to help, anybody, even a weak fumbling person like me, can be sure of at least loyallytryingto meet the debts life brings. It's awfully hard to know what they are, and to meet them—and it's too horrible if you don't."
She stopped, aware that the life of the man beside her was one of the unpaid debts so luridly present to her mind.
"Sylvia," said Arnold, hesitating, "Sylvia, all this sounds so—look here, are you sure you're inlovewith Austin?"
She looked at him, her eyes steady as stars. "Aren't there as many ways of being in love, as there are people?" she asked. "I don't know—I don't know if it's what everybody would call being in love—but—" She met his eyes, and unashamed, regally, opened her heart to him with a look. "I can't live without Austin," she said quickly, in a low tone.
He looked at her long, and turned away. "Oh yes, you're in love with him, all right!" he murmured finally, "and I don't believe that the Colorado business or any of the rest of what you're saying has much to do with anything. Austin's a live man and you're in love with him; and that's all there is to it. You're lucky!" He took out his handkerchief, and wiped his forehead and the back of his neck. Sylvia, looking at him more closely, was shocked to see how thin and haggard was his face. He asked now, "Did you ever think that maybe what Austin was thinking about when he chucked the money was what you'd say, how you'd take it? I should imagine," he added with a faint smile,' "that he is hard to please if he's not pretty well satisfied."
Sylvia was startled. "No. Why no," she said, "I thought I'd looked at every single side of it, but I never dreamed of that."
"Oh, I don't mean he did itforthat! Lord, no! I suppose it's been in his mind for years. But afterwards, don't you suppose he thought … he'd been run after for his money such a terrible lot, you know … don't you suppose he thought he'd be sure of you one way or the other, about a million times surer than he could have been any other way; if you stuck by him, don't you see, with old Felix there with all his fascinations, plus Molly's money." He turned on her with a sudden confused wonder in his face. "God! What a time he took to do it! I hadn't realized all his nerve till this minute. He must have known what it meant, to leave you there with Felix … to risk losing you as well as—Any other man would have tried to marry you first and then—! Well, what a dead-game sport he was! And all for a lot of dirty Polacks who'd never laid eyes on him!"
He took his riding-cap from his head and tossed it on the dried pine-needles. Sylvia noticed that his dry, thin hair was already receding from his parchment-like forehead. There were innumerable fine lines about his eyes. One eyelid twitched spasmodically at intervals. He looked ten years older than his age. He looked like a man who would fall like a rotten tree at the first breath of sickness.
He now faced around to her with a return to everyday matters. "See here, Sylvia, I've just got it through my head. Are you waiting here for that five-fifteen train to West Lydford and then are you planning to walk out to the Austin Farm? Great Scott! don't do that, in this heat. I'll just run back to the village and get a car and take you there in half an hour." He rose to his feet, but Sylvia sprang up quickly, catching at his arm in a panic. "No! no! Arnold, you don't understand. I haven't written Austin a word—he doesn't know I'm coming. At first in Paris I couldn't—I was so despicable—and then afterwards I couldn't either,—though it was all right then. There aren't any words. It's all too big, too deep to talk about. I didn't want to, either. I wanted toseehim—to see if he still, if he wants me now. He couldwriteanything. He'd feel he'd have to. How would I ever know but that it was only because he thought he ought to? I thought I would just go to him all by myself, without his knowing I was coming.Ican tell—the first moment he looks at me I can tell—for all my life, I'll be sure, one way or the other. That first look, what's in him will show! He can't hide anything then, not even to be kind. I'll know! I'll know!"
Arnold sat down again with no comment. Evidently he understood. He leaned his head back against the rough bark of the pine, and closed his eyes. There was a painful look of excessive fatigue about his whole person. He glanced up and caught Sylvia's compassionate gaze on him. "I haven't been sleeping very well lately," he said very dryly. "It breaks a fellow up to lose sleep." Sylvia nodded. Evidently he was not minded to speak of his own troubles. He had not mentioned Judith.
She looked up thoughtfully at the well-remembered high line of the mountain against the sky. Her mother's girlhood eyes had looked at that high line. She fell into a brooding meditation, and presently, obeying one of her sure instincts, she sat down by Arnold, and began to talk to him about what she divined for the moment would most touch and move him; she began to talk about her mother. He was silent, his worn, sallow face impassive, but she knew he was listening.
She told one incident after another of her mother's life, incidents which, she told him, she had not noted at the time, incidents which were now windows in her own life, letting in the sunlight her mother loved so well. "All the time I was growing up, I was blind, I didn't see anything. I don't feel remorseful, I suppose that is the way children have to be. But I didn't see her. There were so many minor differences between us … tastes, interests. I always said hatefully to myself that Mother didn't understand me. And it was true too. As if it matters! What if she didn't! She never talked morality to us, anyhow. She never talked much at all. She didn't need to. She was herself. No words would express that. She lived her life. And there it is now, there it always will be for me, food for me to live on. I thought she had died. But she has never been so living for me. She's part of me now, for always. And just because I see the meaning of her life, why, there's the meaning of mine as clear as morning. How can poor Father crave those 'messages' from her! Everything is a message from her. We've lived with her. We have her in our hearts. It's all brightness when I think of her. And I see by that brightness what's in my heart, and that's Austin … Austin!" On the name, her voice rose, expanded, soared, wonderfully rang in the ensuing silence….
Arnold said slowly, without opening his eyes: "Yes, yes, I see. I see how it is all right with you and Austin. He's big enough for you, all of you. And Felix—he's not so bad either—but he has, after all, a yellow streak. Poor Felix!"
This brought up to Sylvia the recollection of the day, so short a time ago when she had sat on the ground thus, much as she now sat next to Arnold, and had felt Judith's body rigid and tense. There was nothing rigid about Arnold. He was relaxed in an exhausted passivity, a beaten man. Let what would, befall. He seemed beyond feeling. She knew that probably never again, so life goes, could they speak together thus, like disembodied spirits, freed for once from the blinding, entangling tragic web of self-consciousness. She wondered again if he would find it in his heart to speak to her of Judith. She remembered something else she had meant to ask him, if she could ever find words for her question; and she found that, in that hour of high seriousness, they came quite without effort. "Arnold, when I was in Paris, I met Professor Saunders. I ran across him by accident. He told me some dreadful things. I thought they couldn't all be true. But I wondered—"
Arnold opened his eyes and turned them on her. She saw again, as she had so many times, the honesty of them. They were bloodshot, yellowed, set deep in dark hollows; but it was a good gaze they gave. "Oh, don't take poor old Saunders too seriously. He went all to pieces in the end. He had a lot to say about Madrina, I suppose. I shouldn't pay much attention to it. Madrina's not such a bad lot as he makes her out. Madrina's all right if you don't want anything out of her. She's the way she is, that's all. It's not fair to blame her. We're all like that," he ended with a pregnant, explanatory phrase which fell with an immense significance on Sylvia's ear. "Madrina's all right when she's got what she wants."
The girl pondered in silence on this characterization. After a time Arnold roused himself to say again: "I mean she wouldn't go out of her way to hurt anybody, for anything. She's not the kind that enjoys seeing other folks squirm. Only she wants things the way she wants them. Don't let anything old Saunders said worry you. I suppose he laid all my worthlessness at Madrina's door too. He'd got into that way of thinking, sort of dotty on the subject anyhow. He was terribly hard hit, you know. I don't deny either that Madrina did keep him strung on hot wire for several years. I don't suppose it occurred to her that there was any reason why she shouldn't if he were fool enough. I never could see that he wasn't some to blame too. All he had to do—all they any of them ever had to do, was to get out and stay out. Madrina'd never lift a finger to hinder. Even Saunders, I guess, would have had to admit that Madrina always had plenty of dignity. And as for me, great Scott! what could you expect a woman like Madrina to do with a boy like me! She never liked me, for one thing; and then I always bored her almost more than she could stand. But she never showed her impatience, never once. She's really awfully good-natured in her way. She wanted to make me into a salon sort of person, somebody who'd talk at her teas—converse, don't you know. You seeme, don't you! It was hard on her. If she'd had you, now—I always thought you were the only person in the world she ever really cared for. She does, you know. All this year you've been with her, she's seemed so different, more like a real woman. Maybe she's had her troubles too. Maybe she's been deathly lonely. Don't you go back on her too hard. Madrina's no vampire. That's just old Saunders' addled wits. She's one of the nicest people in the world to live with, if you don't need her for anything. And she really does care a lot for you, Sylvia. That time out in Chicago, when we were all kids, when I wanted to go to live with your mother, I remember that Madrina suggested to her (and Madrina would have done it in a minute, too)—she suggested that they change off, she take you to bring up and I go out to live with your mother," He stopped to look at the woman beside him. "I don't know about you, Sylvia, but I guess it would have made some difference in my life!"
Sylvia drew back, horrified that he was even in thought, even for a moment robbing her of her mother. "Oh, what I would have been—I can't bear tothinkof what kind of woman I would have been without my mother!" The idea was terrible to her. She shrank away from her aunt as never before in her life. The reminiscence brought an idea, evidently as deeply moving, into Arnold's mind. The words burst from him, "I might now be married to Judith!" He put his hands over his eyes and cast himself down among the pine-needles.
Sylvia spoke quickly lest she lose courage. "Arnold! Arnold! What are you going to do with yourself now? I'm so horribly anxious about you. I haven't dared speak before—"
He turned over and lay on his back, staring up into the dark green of the pine. "I'm going to drink myself to death as soon as I can," he said very quietly. "The doctors say it won't take long."
She looked at his wasted face and gave a shocked, pitying exclamation, thinking that it would be illness and not drink which was to come to his rescue soon.
He looked at her askance, with his bloodshot eyes. "Can you give me any single reason why I shouldn't?" he challenged her.
Sylvia, the modern, had no answer. She murmured weakly, "Why must any of us try to be decent?"
"That's for the rest of you," he said. "I'm counted out. The sooner I get myself out of the way, the better for everybody. That's whatJudiththinks."
The bitterness of his last phrase was savage. Sylvia cried out against it. "Arnold! That's cruel of you! It's killing Judith!"
"She can't care for me," he said, with a deep, burning resentment."She can't ever have cared a rap, or she wouldn't beableto—"
Sylvia would not allow him to go on. "You must not say such a thing, Arnold. You know Judith's only reason is—she feels if she—if she had children and they were—"
He interrupted her with an ugly hardness. "Oh, I know what her reason is, all right. It's the latest fad. Any magazine article can tell you all about it. And I don't take any stock in it, I tell you. It's just insanity to try to guess at every last obligation you may possibly have! You've got to live your life, and have some nerve about it! If Judith and I love each other, what is it to anybody else if we get married? Maybe we wouldn't have any children. Maybe they'd be all right—how could they be anything else with Judith for their mother? And anyhow, leave that to them! Let them take care of themselves! We've had to do it for ourselves! What the devil did my father do for me, I'd like to know, that I should die to keep my children unborn? My mother was a country girl from up here in the mountains. Since I've been staying here winters, I've met some of her people. Her aunt told me that my father was as drunk as a lord on his wedding night—What did he think ofhisson? Why should I think of mine?"
He was so evidently talking wildly, desperately, that Sylvia made no attempt to stop him, divining with an aching pity what lay under his dreadful words. But when he said again, "It's simply that Judith doesn't care enough about me to stick by me, now I'm down and out. She can't bear me in her narrow little good world!" Judith's sister could keep her silence no more.
"Look here, Arnold, I haven't meant to tell you, but Ican'thave you thinking that. Listen! You know Judith, how splendid and self-controlled she is. She went all through the sorrow of Mother's death without once breaking down, not once. But the night before I started to come here, in the middle of the night, I heard such a sound from Judith's room! It frightened me, so I could hardly get my breath! It was Judith crying, crying terribly, so that she couldn't keep it back any more. I never knew her to cry before. I didn't dare go into her room—Mother would—but I didn't dare. And yet I couldn't leave her there alone in such awful trouble. I stood by the door in the dark—oh, Arnold, I don't know how long—and heard her—When it began to be light she was quiet, and I went back to bed; and after a while I tiptoed in. She had gone to sleep at last. Arnold, there under her cheek was that old baseball cap of yours … all wet, all wet with her tears, Judith's tears."
Before she had finished she was sorry she had spoken. Arnold's face was suffused with purple. He put his hand up to his collar and wrenched at it, clenched his fists, and finally, flinging his riding-crop far from him, hid his face in his hands and burst into tears. "Isn't it damnable!" he said over and over. "Isn't it damnable!"
Sylvia had nothing more to say. It seemed indeed damnable to her. She wondered again at Judith's invincible force of will. That alone was the obstacle—no, it was something back of Judith's will, something which even Arnold recognized; for now, to her astonishment, he looked up, his face smeared like a weeping child's, and said in a low tone, "You know, of course, that Judith's right."
The testimony was wrung out of him. But it came. The moment was one never to be forgotten.
Out of her passionate pity was born strength that was not to be denied. She took his hand in hers, his dry, sick man's hand. "Arnold, you asked me to give you a reason why you should get the best you can out of yourself. I'll give you a reason. Judith is a reason. Austin is a reason. I'm a reason. I am never going to let you go. Judith can't be the one to help you get through the best you can, even though it may not be so very well—poor, poor Judith, who would die to be able to help you! Mother wasn't allowed to. She wanted to, I see that now. But I can. I'm not a thousandth part as strong or as good as they; but if we hang together! All my life is going to be settled for me in a few hours. I don't know how it's going to be. But however it is, you will always be in my life. For as long as you live," she caught her breath at the realization of how little that phrase meant, "for as long as you live, you are going to be what you wanted to be, what you ought to have been, my brother—my mother's son."
He clung to her hand, he clung to it with such a grip that her fingers ached—and she blessed the pain for what it meant.