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.