Bob’s mind went back to Stenhouse’s view of Teddy’s character.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Oh, just what I say. You can’t see red like me without being a more
dangerous cuss than you mean to be. I’d have got into trouble sometime,
even if I hadn’t done this." Before Bob could find a response Teddy went
on: "I suppose you think that because I don’t say anything about Flynn I
haven’t got him on my mind. Well, you’re wrong."

"Oh, I didn’t think that."

"But what _can_ I say? I think and think and think, and then begin
thinking again. So that," he jerked out, "that’s a reason, too."

"A reason for what, Teddy?"

He answered obliquely.

"I can’t keep up that kind of thinking. I’ll go crazy if I do. I’d
rather be sent to where I can get another point of view. I don’t care
what kind of point of view it is, so long as it isn’t this one. If I
could come face to face with Flynn, I believe I could make him
understand. Do you suppose there’s any chance of that?"

It was inevitable that, in the long run, speculative questions should
lead them farther still.

"What do you suppose God is?" Teddy said, unexpectedly, one day.

Bob smiled.

"Ask me something easier."

"But you must have some idea."

"I’m not sure that I have."

"Don’t you believe in God? I should have thought that you’d be the kind
of cuss who would."

"I don’t know that you can call it believing. It’s more like—like having
a kind of instinct—helped out by a little thinking."

"Have I got the instinct?"

"Can’t you tell that yourself?"

"If I told you you’d howl."

"No, I shouldn’t. Go to it."

Teddy laughed sheepishly, as if he had ventured to peer into secrets
which were none of his business.

"I’ll tell you the way God seems to me—it’s all come to me while I’ve
been in there." He nodded toward the cells. "I don’t seem to get him as
a great big man, the way the chaplain says he is. He’s all right, the
chaplain, only he don’t seem to know anything about God. He can gas away
to beat the band about law, and society, and the good of the community,
and hell to pay when you don’t respect them; but when it comes to
God—it’s nix."

"Well, what do you make out for yourself?"

"I haven’t made it out exactly. It’s as if some great big hand had
pulled aside a curtain—but it’s a curtain that I didn’t know was there.
See?"

"Yes, I see. And what does it show you?"

"That’s the funny part of it. I can’t tell you what it shows me. I don’t
exactly see it; I only know—mind you, I’m just telling you how it seems
to me—I only know that it’s God."

"But I suppose, if you know that it’s God, you have an idea of what it’s
like?"

"Ye-es; it’s like—like a country into which I’m traveling—not with my
body—see?—but with my _self_. No," he corrected, "that’s not it. It
isn’t a country; it’s more like a life. Oh, shucks! I haven’t got it
straight yet. Now look! This is the way it is. Suppose that everything
we see was alive—that these chairs were alive, and the walls, and the
table—that every blamed thing we ever touch or use was alive, and had a
voice. See?" Bob nodded that he saw. "Now, suppose every voice was
trying to make you understand things. The table would say, ’This is the
way God wants you to work’; and the chair, ’This is the way God wants
you to rest’; and the walls, ’This is the way God stands round you and
backs you up.’ Everything would be helping you then, instead of putting
itself dead against you the way we have it here."

"I get the idea; but would that be God?"

Over this question the boy’s face brooded thoughtfully.

"It mightn’t be God in the way that you’re you and I’m me. It would be
more like a way of _knowing_ God. It’s like my case in the courts. It’s
set down as ’The People against Edward S. Follett.’ But I don’t see the
People; I only feel what they do to me. It’s something like that. I
don’t see God; but I kind of feel—" He broke with another apologetic
laugh. "Oh, I guess it’s all wrong. Gussie’d call me a gump. It just
kind of gets you; that’s all. It makes me feel as if I was moving on
into something—but I guess I’m not."

The pensive silence that followed was broken by Bob’s saying:

"That’s what I mean by instinct."

Teddy resumed as if he hadn’t heard. "When I wake up in the night—and
waking up in the night in that place, with snores and groans and guys
talking in their sleep and having nightmares, is some stunt, believe
_me_—but when I do, it’s just as if I had great big arms round me, and
some one was saying: ’All right, Teddy, I’m holding you. Keep a stiff
upper lip. I’ll make it as easy as I can for you and everyone else. I’m
just drawing you—drawing you—drawing you—a wee little bit at a time—over
here, where you’ll get your big chance.’ What’s more, Bob," he went on,
as if he touched on the heart of his interest, "it says it’ll take care
of Flynn and his wife and his poor little kiddies, and do the things—"
Once more he broke off with his uneasy laugh. "Ah, what’s the use? You
think I’m a quitter, don’t you?"

"Why should I think that?"

"Oh, I don’t know. I talk like a quitter. But it isn’t that. If I could
still do anything for ma and the girls—"

"I’m looking after them, old boy."

"So there you are. What’d be the good of my staying?" He added, between
clenched teeth, "God, how I’d hate to go back!"

"Back into the world?"

He spoke as if to himself: "You see—that day—the day the thing
happened—and they came and caught me—and did all those things to me—and
I saw Flynn lying by the road—it was—it was a kind of sickener. If
putting me out of the way is the thing in the wind, it was done right
there and then. Right there and then I seem to have begun—moving on." He
drew a long breath. "And I’d rather keep moving, Bob—no matter to
where—no matter to what—than turn back again to face a bunch of men."

CHAPTER XXVII

Teddy was not called on to face a bunch of men till going to the
courtroom for his trial. Dressed long before the hour in a new dark-blue
suit, fresh linen, and a dark-blue tie, his prison pallor, a little like
that of death, put him out of the list of the active and free. As he sat
on the edge of his bunk, somber with dread, he was nevertheless obliged
to find suitable jocosities with which to answer the good-luck wishes
that came slithering along the walls from the neighboring cells. It was
half past nine before two guards whom he had never seen before, stalwart
fellows well over six feet, came to the door and unlocked it.

"Ready, Follett? Time’s come."

Springing to his feet, he found handcuffs slipped round his wrists
before he was aware of what was being done. It was an unexpected
indignity. He had never been handcuffed before.

"Say, fellows," he protested, "I’ll go all right. I don’t want these on
me."

"Come along wid ye."

The words were friendly rather than rough, as was also the hand of a
guard on each shoulder as they steered him along the corridor. The Brig
is a rambling building, or succession of buildings, with courthouse and
house of detention under the same series of roofs. The pilgrimage was
long—upstairs, downstairs, through passages, past offices, past
courtrooms, with guards, police, clerks, lawyers, litigants, loungers,
standing about everywhere. The sight of a man in handcuffs arrested all
eyes for the moment, and stilled all tongues. With his glances flying
from right to left and from left to right, Teddy again began to feel the
sense of separation from the human race which had struck to his soul
that day on the marshes.

Of his other impressions, the chief was that of squalor. It seemed as if
all the elements had been brought together that would make poor Justice
vulgar and unimpressive. Out of a squalid cell he had been pushed along
squalid hallways, through groups of squalid faces, into a squalid
courtroom, where he was ushered into a squalid cage, long and narrow,
with a seat hardly wider than a knife blade. Once within the cage the
handcuffs were taken off, the door was locked, and each of the stalwart
guards took his stand at one end. The cage being raised some six or
eight inches above the level of the floor, the boy was well in sight of
everyone. It was like being on a throne—or a Calvary.

On taking his seat, he was vaguely conscious of a bank of faces, tier
above tier, at the back of the courtroom. Before him some fifteen or
twenty officials, reporters, and lawyers lolled at their tables, walked
about, yawned, picked their teeth, or told anecdotes that raised a
smothered laugh. Most of them struck him as untidily dressed; few looked
intelligent. Among them a portly man, whom he afterward saw as the
district attorney, in a cutaway coat, with a line of piqué at the
opening of his waistcoat, seemed like a person in fancy costume.
Everyone paused as he entered the cage, but, a glance having satisfied
their curiosity, they paid him no further attention.

The trial lasted three days, passing before his eyes like a
motion-picture film of which he was only a spectator. Try as he would,
he found it hard to believe that the proceedings had anything to do with
him. "All this fuss," he would comment to himself, grimly, "to get the
right to kill a man." The strain of being under so many cruel or
indifferent eyes sent him back with relief to his cell, where during the
nights he slept soundly.

His one bit of surprise came from Stenhouse’s final argument in his
defense. Up to that point, both defense and prosecution had struck him
as more or less silly. The state had tried to prove him a desperado whom
it was dangerous to let live; the defense had done its best to show him
a youth of arrested intelligence, not responsible for his acts. He
grinned inwardly when Jennie, Gussie, and half a dozen of his old chums
testified to foolish pranks, forgotten or half forgotten by himself, in
the hope of convincing the court that he had never had the normal sense.

But Stenhouse in his concluding speech transcended all that, taking
Teddy’s own stand as the only one which offered the ghost of a chance of
acquittal. He began his final appeal quietly, in a tone little more than
colloquial.

"There’s an old saying, a variant on something said by Benjamin
Franklin, which we might remember oftener than we do. It’s terse, pithy,
humorous, wise. Some one has called it the finest bit of free verse
composed in the eighteenth century. Listen to it. ’_It is hard to make
an empty sack stand upright._' So it is. The empty sack collapses of its
own accord. It can’t do anything but collapse. It was not meant to stand
upright. To demand that it shall stand upright is to insist on the
impossible. A full sack will stand as solid as a tree. A group of full
sacks will support one another. Put the empty sack among them and from
the very law of gravitation it will go down helplessly. Now, gentlemen
of the jury, you’re being asked to bring in a verdict against the empty
sack—the sack that’s been carefully kept empty—because it hasn’t the
strength and stability of that which all the coffers of the country have
combined to fill."

With this as a text, Stenhouse drew a picture of the industrious man who
is limited by the very nature of his industry. He is not limited by his
own desire, but by the use society wishes to make of him. Serving a
turn, he is schooled to serve that turn, and to serve no other turn.
This schooling takes him unawares. He doesn’t know it has begun before
waking to find himself drilled to a system from which only a giant can
escape. Few men being giants, the average man plods on because he
doesn’t know what else to do. There is rarely anything else _for_ him to
do. Having taken the first ill-paid job that comes his way, he hasn’t
meant to give himself to it all his life. He dreams of something bigger,
more brilliant, more productive. The boy who runs errands sees himself a
merchant; the lad who becomes a clerk looks forward to being a partner;
the young man who enters a bank is sure that some day he will be bank
president.

"Sometimes, gentlemen, these early visions work out to a reality. But in
the vast majority of cases, the youth, before he ceases to be a youth,
finds himself where the horse is when he has once submitted to the
bridle. He can go only as he is driven. Life is organized not to let him
go in any other way. Needing him for a certain purpose, it keeps him to
that purpose. Work, taken as a great corporate thing, is made up of
hundreds of millions of tiny tasks each of which calls for a man. The
man being found, he must be trimmed to the size of his task."

Stenhouse had no quarrel with methods universally followed by civilized
man. To criticize them was not his intention, as it was not his
intention to complain because man had not yet brought in the Golden Age.

"But I do claim that the smaller the task to which a man is nailed down,
and the smaller the pay he is able to earn, the greater the
responsibility of collective society toward that individual."

There was a time, he declared, when much had been said to the discredit
of slavery; but one thing could be urged in its favor. The man who had
been kept throughout his life to one small job was not thrown out in his
old age to provide for himself as he could. Having worked for society,
as society was constituted then, society recognized at least the duty of
taking care of him. Stenhouse disclaimed any comparison between free
American labor and a servile condition; he was striving only for a
principle. Men couldn’t be screwed down during all their working lives
to the lowest wage on which body and soul could be kept together, and
then be judged by the same standards as those who had had opportunity to
make provision for themselves and their families. The same
interpretation of the law couldn’t be made to cover the cases of the
full sack and the empty one.

"And yet," he went on, changing his tone with his theme, "the empty sack
is of value because it can be filled. Coarse, cheap, negligible as it
seems, it is much too good to throw away. It is an asset to production,
to the country’s trade, to the whole world’s wealth. And, gentlemen,
what shall we say when we call that empty sack—a man?"

The value of the human asset was the next point to which he led his
listeners.

"It is only a truism to say that among all the precious things with
which the Almighty has blessed his creation the most precious is a human
life; and yet we live in a world which seems to believe this so little
that we must sometimes remind ourselves that it is so. Within a few
years we have seen millions of men reckoned merely as _stuff_. As
productive assets to the race, they haven’t counted. We could read of a
day’s loss on the battlefield running up into the thousands and never
turn a hair. We came to regard a young man’s life as primarily a thing
to throw away. It is for this reason, gentlemen of the jury, that I
venture to remind you that a young man’s life is primarily a thing to
save. It may be a truism to say that a human life is the most precious
of all created things; but it is a truism of which we are only now, to
our bitter and incalculable cost, beginning to realize the truth."

He went on to draw a picture of the contributions to the general good
made by the Folletts, father and son. Their work had been humble, but it
had been essential. Essential work faithfully performed should guarantee
an old age protected against penury. He reminded his hearers that he was
not opposed to the law of supply and demand, which was the only known
method by which the business of the world could be carried on. He only
pleaded for the same humanity to a man as was shown to a broken-down old
horse. From his one interview with Lizzie, Stenhouse had got what he
called "the good line," "_Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out
the corn._" Of this he now made use, following it up with St. Paul’s
explanation: "Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith he it altogether for
our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that
ploweth may plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be
partaker of his hope."

"Gentlemen, so long as we live in a society in which the vast majority
of us can never be partakers of the hope with which we started out, so
long must justice take account of the suffering of the poor muzzled
brute that treadeth out the corn. If he goes frenzied and runs amuck, he
cannot be judged by the standards which apply to him who has been left
unmuzzled and free to satisfy his wants. It is not fair; it is not
human. It is true that to protect your own interests you have the power
to shoot him down; but when he lies dead at your feet, no more muzzled
in death than he was in life, there is surely somewhere in the universe
an avenging force that is on his side, and which will make you—you as
representatives of the society which has placed its action in your
hands—and you as twelve private individuals with duties and
consciences—there is somewhere in the universe this avenging force which
will require his blood at your hands and make you pay the penalty.
Surely you can find a better use for that valuable asset, a young man’s
life, than just to take it away. For the sake of the public whose honor
is in your keeping, you must play the game squarely. For the sake of
your own future peace of mind, you must not add your own crime to this
poor boy’s misfortune. Your duty at this minute is not merely to
interpret the dead letter of a law; it is to be the voice of the People
whom you represent. Remember that by the verdict you bring in that
People will be committed to the most destructive of all destructive
acts, or it will get expression for that deep, human common sense which
transcends written phrases to act in the spirit of the greatest of us
all, judging not according to the appearance—not according to the
appearance, gentlemen, and you remember who counseled that—but judging
righteous judgment."

He fell back into his seat, exhausted. He was so impressive and
impassioned as to convince many of his hearers that he believed his own
plea, while to some who had considered the verdict a certainty it was
now in doubt.

Among Teddy’s friends a hope arose that, in spite of all expectation to
the contrary, he might be saved. Bob looked over and smiled. Teddy
smiled back, but mainly because he rejoiced in what he felt to be his
justification. He couldn’t see how they could convict him after such a
setting forth as that, though for the consequences of acquittal he had
so little heart.

In the excitement of the courtroom, the judge’s voice, when he began to
give the jury their instructions, fell like cool, quiet rain on
thunderous sultriness. He was a small man, with a leathery, unemotional
face, framed by an iron-gray wig of faultless side-parting and long,
straight, unnaturally smooth hair. He had the faculty of seeming
attentive without being influenced. Listening, reasoning, asking a
question, or settling a disputed point, he gave the impression of having
reduced intelligence to the soulless accuracy of a cash register.

He reminded the jury that the law was not on trial; society was not on
trial; the industrial experience of one Josiah Follett was not a feature
in the case. They must not allow the issue to be confused by the social
arguments which befogged so many of the questions of the day. It was
quite possible that the world was not as perfect as it might be; it was
even possible that the law was not the most perfect law that could be
passed. But these were considerations into which they could not enter.
In merely approaching them, they would lose their way. The law as it
stands is the voice of the People as it is; and the only questions
before them were, first, whether or not the accused had broken that law,
and second, if he had broken it, to what degree. In answering these
questions, they must limit themselves to the bare facts of the charge.
With the prisoner’s temptations they had nothing to do, except in so far
as they tended to create intent. The consequences to his person, whether
in the way of liberty or of the last penalty, were no concern of others.
Justice in itself, viewed as justice in the abstract, was no concern of
theirs. They were not, however, to burden their consciences with the
fear that the accused was thus deprived of protection. The duty of a
jury was not protection, but discernment. The administration of the law
was far too big and complex a thing for any one body of men to deal
with. Justice having many aspects, the law had as many departments.
Protection was in other hands than theirs. The application of justice
pure and simple, involving punishment for guilt without excluding pity
for the provocation, was duly guaranteed by the methods of the state.
They would find their task simplified by dismissing all such hesitations
from their minds and confining themselves to the definite question which
he repeated. Had the prisoner at the bar broken the existing law, and if
he had so broken it, to what degree?

Having explained the difference between manslaughter and murder, as well
as between first-degree murder and second, he admitted that, in case the
accused was found guilty, there was much to indicate the second degree
rather than the first. There was, however, one damning fact. The hand
that had shot Peter Flynn went on at once to shoot William Jackman. The
killing of one man might have been an accident. If not an accident, it
might still have mitigating features. But for the murderer of a first
man to proceed at once to become the murderer of a second indicated a
planned and deliberate intent....

When the court had adjourned and the jury had retired to consider their
verdict, one of the guards unlocked the cage and Teddy was taken down by
a corkscrew staircase to a room immediately below. It was a small room,
lighted by one feeble bulb, and aired from an air shaft. A table and two
chairs stood in the middle of the room; a shiny, well-worn bench was
fixed to one of the walls. The guards took the chairs; Teddy sat down on
the bench. One of the guards cut off a piece of tobacco and put it in
his mouth; the other lighted a cheap cigar. Taking another from an upper
waistcoat pocket, he held it out toward Teddy.

"Have a smoke, young fella?"

Teddy shook his head. He was hardly aware of being addressed. Nothing
else was said to him, and the guards, almost silently, began a game of
cards. This waiting with prisoners for verdicts was always a tedious
affair, and one to be got through patiently.

To Teddy, it was not so much tedious as it was unreal. He sat with arms
folded, his head sunk, and the foot of the leg which was thrown across
the other leg kicking outward mechanically. Except for a rare grunted
remark between the players, there was no sound but the slap of the cards
on the table and the scooping in of the tricks.

After nearly half an hour the door opened and Bob Collingham came in
with a basket containing sandwiches and a thermos bottle of hot coffee.
With a word of explanation to the guards, he was allowed to take his
seat beside the prisoner.

"Hello, old sport! Must be relieved that it’s so soon going to be over.
Brought you something to eat."

With this introduction, they took up commonplace ground as if it was a
commonplace occasion. Teddy asked after his mother and sisters; Bob gave
him the family news. Of the trial they said nothing. Of what they were
waiting for no more was said than that Bob had persuaded Jennie and
Gussie to go home, promising to come and tell them the decision. Lizzie
and Gladys had not appeared in the courtroom at all. Of all this Teddy
approved as he munched his sandwiches stolidly.

The supply of food and coffee being large, they invited the guards to
share with them. The invitation was accepted, the officers suspending
their game. The talk became friendly, commenting on the judge’s wig and
the glass eye of the foreman of the jury, but not touching directly on
the trial. These subjects, as well as the supply of sandwiches,
exhausted, the guards returned to their game, the two young men being
left to themselves.

For the most part they sat in silence—a silence as nearly cheerful as
the circumstances permitted.

"Don’t worry about me, Bob," Teddy murmured once. "I’m not going to care
much whichever way it is. Honest to God! I don’t say I wouldn’t like it
if they sent me back home; but if they don’t—"

Allowing his companion to finish the sentence for himself, he lapsed
into silence again.

Another time, speaking as if subterranean thought came for a moment to
the surface, he said:

"I liked what you said about hardness—and pluck. I’ve been practicing
away on them both—making myself tough inside. Funny how you can, isn’t
it? You think at first that, because you’re soft, you’ve got to be soft;
but you find out that you’re just what you like to make yourself. That’s
a great line, Bob, ’_Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of
Jesus Christ._' You watch," he added, with a tremulous smile, "and
you’ll see me doing it."

"All right, old boy, I’ll watch, but we’ll all be doing it with you.
We’re practicing, too. Jennie and the girls are regular bricks, and, of
course, your mother—"

He smiled again.

"Good old ma! She sure is the best ever. I’d be sorrier for her than I
am if I didn’t feel certain that if—that if I go she won’t wait long
after me." He swung away from this aspect of his thought to a new one.
"Say, Bob, do you suppose it’s a sign that God really is with me—gump as
I am!—that he’s sent you to take ma and the girls off my hands—_you_
know—and make my mind easy?"

They discussed those happenings which might reasonably be held to be
signs of Divine good intention, after which silence fell again. The
guards grunted or yawned; the cards were slapped on the table; the
tricks were pulled in with the scratching of paper against wood. An hour
went by; another hour, and then another. In spite of his efforts to make
himself hard, Teddy felt the tension. Having accidentally touched Bob’s
hand, he grasped it with a clutch like a vise. He was still clutching it
when a messenger came to the door to say that the jury was about to
render their verdict and the prisoner must come back into court.

Bob climbed the corkscrew first. A guard followed him, then Teddy, then
the other guard. It was after seven in the evening. The courtroom,
relatively empty, had a sickly look, under crude electric lighting. But
half of the spectators had come back, and only those officials and
lawyers who were obliged to be in their places. All the reporters were
there, watching for every shade in Teddy’s face and seeing more than he
expressed.

Bob managed to pass in front of the cage.

"Remember, Teddy—hardness is the big word."

"Sure thing!" Teddy whispered back.

The jury filed in. The judge took his place. Teddy was ordered to stand
up. He stood very straight, his hands in the pockets of his jacket. In
all that met the eye he was a sturdy, stocky young man, pleasing to look
at, and with no suggestion of the criminal. His face was grave with a
gravity beyond that of death, but he showed no sign of nervousness.

If anyone showed nervousness it was the foreman of the jury, a
good-natured fish dealer, with a drooping reddish mustache, who had
never expected to be in this situation. When asked if the jury had
arrived at a verdict his voice trembled as he answered:

"We have."

"What is your verdict?"

"We find the accused guilty of murder."

"Of murder in the first or the second degree?"

"In the first."

That was all. Bob wheeled round toward Teddy, who smiled courageously.

"It’s all right, Bob," he whispered, as their hands met over the rail of
the cage. "I’ve got the right line on it. It’s my medicine, and I know
how to take it. Keep ma and the girls from worrying, and I can go
straight through with it."

[Illustration: _"ALL RIGHT, MA! I’M READY!"_]

It was all there was time for. They had not noticed that Stenhouse had
said something about appeal, and the judge something about sentence.
Everyone was leaving. Stenhouse came to shake hands with his client and
tell him that the game wasn’t up yet. The boy thanked him. The cage was
unlocked, and once more Teddy, with a guard in front and a guard
following after him, went down the corkscrew stair.

CHAPTER XXVIII

"What I don’t understand, Bob," Collingham said, with faint indignation
in his tone, "is whether you’re a married man or not."

"I’m a married man, father, all right."

"Then why don’t you live like a married man? I suppose you know that
people are saying all sorts of things."

Bob considered the simplest way in which to put his case. It was the
afternoon of the day following the end of Teddy’s trial, and his father
was giving him a lift homeward from the bank. It being winter, dark was
already closing in, and though they were out of the city, great
arc-lights were still strung along the roadways, which were otherwise
lighted by flashes from hundreds of motor cars.

"I’ve never said anything about this before," the father resumed, before
Bob had found the right words, "because we’d all agreed—your mother,
Edith, and myself—that we wouldn’t hamper you with questions about it
while you were busy with something else. But now that that’s over—"

"Part of it is over, but only part of it. We’ve a long road to travel
yet."

"If the appeal is denied, as I expect it will be, you’ll have to let me
in on the application to the Governor for clemency. I think I’d have
some influence there."

"Thanks, dad. That’ll be a help." He asked, after further thinking,
"Should you like me to live as a married man—considering who it is I’ve
married?"

Knowing that the question was a searching one, Bob found the reply much
what he expected.

"I want to see the best thing come out of a mixed-up situation. I don’t
deny that all these problems bother me; but we have them on our hands,
and so there’s no more to be said. We’ve got to find the wise thing to
do, and do it. That’s all I’m after."

"That’s all I’m after, myself, dad."

"I don’t admit any responsibility for all this muss," Collingham
declared, as if his son had accused him. "I don’t care what anyone
thinks; my conscience is clear."

"Of course, dad; of course!"

"But since things have happened as they have, I’d like to make them as
easy as I can for everyone; and whatever money can do—"

"Or recognition?"

They came back to the original question.

"Yes; recognition, too—as soon as we’ve anyone to recognize. What I
don’t understand is all this backing and filling—"

"Have you asked mother?"

"In a way; and she’s just as mysterious as you."

Bob tried another avenue.

"You saw Jennie yourself, didn’t you?"

"Once; yes."

"What did you think of her?"

"What any man would think of her. She was very charming and—and
appealing."

"Did you think anything else?"

The father turned sharply.

"What makes you ask?"

"Because it’s possible you did."

"Well, I did. What of it?"

"Only this—that that’s the thing I want to nail before I bring her to
you as my wife."

"Then why don’t you go to work and nail it?"

He found the words he was in search of.

"Partly because I’ve other things to do; partly because I feel that, by
giving it its time, it will nail itself; and, most of all, for the
reason that neither she nor I want to take the—the great happiness which
we feel is coming to us in the end while—while all this other thing is
in the air. I wonder if you understand me."

"More or less."

"It’s as if we’d accidentally put the cart of marriage before the horse
of engagement. Do you see? Nominally we’re married; but really we’re
only engaged. We can’t be married—we don’t want to be married—till other
things are off our minds."

With this bit of explanation, the Collinghams began to live once more as
if nothing had occurred. It was not easy; but by dint of skimming on the
surface they were able to manage it. That is to say, Bob came and went,
and they asked him no more questions, while on his part he continued to
nerve Teddy and his sisters for another test.

If there was anyone noticeably different, it was Junia. Always quick to
tack according to the wind, she seemed almost to have changed her
course. In putting the best face on Edith’s marriage and Bob’s
complications she had adopted the new ideals that kept her in the
movement.

"It’s the war," she explained to her intimates. "We’re all different.
Life as we used to live it begins to seem so empty. We weren’t real; we
people who spent our time entertaining and being entertained. It’s all
very well to say that we’re much the same since the war as we were
before, but it isn’t so. I know I’m not. I’m quite a revolutionist. I
may not have made much progress, but I’m certainly more in touch with
reality."

With this transition, it became natural to speak of her son-in-law.

"Such a wonderful fellow—all mind, you know, but the type that helps so
many of us to find our way through the mists of materialism and
selfishness out to the great big ends. To me, it’s like a new life just
to hear him talk, and I can’t help feeling it providential that he’s
found a wife like Edith. She’s an extraordinary girl to be my
child—intellectual and practical at once. She can keep her husband
company in all his researches and yet cook him a good dinner if their
little maid is out. Is there anything so astonishing in life as our own
children and what they turn out to be?"

This was a transition, too, leading her to speak of Bob’s affairs in the
tone of one who, though puzzled, takes them sympathetically.

"And yet I think it’s enlarging. Though we’ve kept only on the outer
edge of the drama through which Bob has been going with the girl he’s
married, the whole thing has deepened his life so much that it couldn’t
help deepening ours. It’s broadened us, too, I think, giving us an
insight into lives so different from our own. That’s what we need so
much, it seems to me, that kind of broadening. It’s going to solve a lot
of our national problems which at present seem to be insoluble. Yes; Bob
is still at home with us, and I tell you frankly that I don’t know what
is coming out of it. It’s all so queer and independent and modern. I’m
old-fashioned, and I don’t pretend to see through these young people’s
ways. But I’m Bob’s mother, and through all his developments—and he _is_
developing—I’m going with him."

So Junia talked, and talked so much that she was in danger of talking
herself round. The instinct to be in the front line of fashion had
something to do with it, but self-persuasion had more. The thing of the
hour being the throwing over of the old social code, Junia wouldn’t have
been Junia if she hadn’t done it; but, even so, the creeping-in of
compunction toward Bob took her by surprise. She had told herself
hitherto that she loved him so much that she would work for his
permanent happiness even at the cost of his temporary pain; but now she
began to fear that what had seemed to her his temporary pain might prove
the very life of his life.

She came to this perception through reading in the newspapers the
accounts of the Follett boy’s trial. By the tacit convention which the
Collinghams had established, that they had nothing to do with it, she
never spoke of it to Bradley or Edith, nor did they speak of it to her;
but she kept herself informed, and knew the devotion with which Bob gave
himself to Jennie and her family. The boy’s condemnation hit her hard.
When Bradley came home that night, she saw that it had also hit him.

"I’m worth about five million dollars at a guess," he confided to her,
"and I’d cheerfully have given four of them if this thing hadn’t
happened."

"But, Bradley dear, you had nothing to do with it."

"I know I hadn’t," he declared, savagely; "and yet I’d—I’d do as I say."

But it wasn’t Bradley she was most sorry for; nor was it for the Follett
boy. She was sorry that, because of conditions which she herself had
fostered, Bob would never reap the fruit of a love in which he had been
so chivalrous. She didn’t see how he could. Just as there was a natural
Bradley and a standardized one, so there was a natural and a
standardized Junia. The natural Junia had long seemed dead; but the
bigness of the love which she saw daily and hourly exemplified moved her
to the painful stirrings of new life.

Meanwhile Bob went with Teddy up the remaining steps by which he mounted
his Calvary.

He stood near the cage on the morning when the boy was brought up for
sentence, witnessing his coolness. On being asked if he had anything to
say before sentence was pronounced he replied:

"Nothing, sir, except to thank you for giving me such a fair trial."

The words were spoken in a firmer voice than those which followed:

"The court, in consideration of your crime of murder in the first
degree, sentences you to the punishment of death by the passage of a
current of electricity through your body, within the week beginning...."

                                  ————

When the appeal for a new trial was denied, it was Bob who informed
Teddy. When all efforts to obtain Executive clemency had failed, it was
Bob again who broke the news. When the boy requested that his mother and
sisters should omit their next visit to Bitterwell—should wait till he
sent them word before coming again—it was Bob who conveyed the request.
Bitterwell, the great penitentiary, was twenty miles from Pemberton
Heights, and through the winter they had gone to see him some thirty-odd
times. They went in couples. Gladys and her mother, Jennie and Gussie,
keeping each other company. The visits were less difficult than might
have been expected because of Teddy’s cheerfulness.

Of the request to wait before coming again, they didn’t at first seize
the significance. While frank with them about everything else, Bob had
never given them the date of the week the judge had named, nor had they
asked for it. If they did so ask, he meant to tell them; but they seemed
to divine his intention.

Perhaps they divined the intention in this intimation from Teddy. At any
rate, they didn’t question it, or rebel against it. It followed on
visits first of one pair and then of the other, both of which had been
so normal as almost to pass as gay. That is, Teddy’s spirits had
infected theirs, and they had parted from him smiling. That of Jennie
and Gussie had been the first of the two, and he had sent them off with
a joke.

"My boy, I’m proud of you," had been Lizzie’s farewell words to him.
"Walk firmly, with your head erect, and never, never be sorry for
anything you’ve done."

"Good old ma! The best ever! I sure am proud of _you_! What’ll you bet
that we don’t have some good times together yet?"

A psychologist would have said that by suggestion and autosuggestion
they strengthened each other and themselves; but whatever the process,
the result was evident. Bob had given them the verb "to carry on," so
that "carrying on" became at once an objective and a driving force.
Gussie and Gladys went regularly to work; Jennie took care of the house
and her mother. The latter task had become the more imperative, for the
reason that, after Teddy’s request that they should suspend their
visits, she began to fail. It was not that she was hurt by it, but
rather that she took it as a signal.

In the efforts to be strong, they were helped by the fact that, not long
after Teddy’s removal to Bitterwell, Edith Ayling had come to see them,
all of her own initiative. She had repeated the visit many times, and
had Gussie and Gladys go to see her at Cathedral Heights. Jennie had
never been able to leave home.

"I didn’t say anything about it to you," Edith explained to Bob, after
the occasion of her breaking the ice, "because I wanted to do it on my
own. Quite apart from you and Jennie, I feel that our lots have become
involved and that we Collinghams have some responsibility. I don’t say
responsibility for what, because I don’t know; and yet I feel—" Unable
to say what she felt, she elided to the personal. "Jennie I don’t get
at. She’s so silent—so shut away. The mother has never been well enough
to see me. But the two younger girls I’m really getting to know very
well and to be very fond of. They’re intelligent down to the
finger-tips, and with a little guidance I’m sure they could do big
things."

"What kind of things?"

"I should train Gladys along intellectual lines, and Gussie was born for
the stage. I know that Ernest and I could help them, if you thought it
all right, and we should love doing it. You must read what he says in
his new book, _Salvage_, as to getting people into the tasks for which
they are fitted and in which they can be happy. He thinks that a lot of
our nonproductiveness comes from the people who’d love doing one thing
being compelled to do another, and that if we could only help the
individuals we come across to find their natural jobs...."

It was Edith also who unconsciously helped her mother out of the trap in
which she had found herself caught.

"Oh, by the way, whom do you think I met in the street the other day? No
less a person than Hubert Wray, just back from California. And that
reminds me. He told me you had bought his big picture that everyone was
talking about last year. Where is it? Why did you never say anything
about it?"

Edith was spending a day in May at Collingham Lodge, and was walking
with her mother between rows of irises.

"Come in," Junia said. "I’ll show you. Then you’ll understand."

But not till "Life and Death" had been drawn from its hiding place and
propped against the wall was Edith allowed to enter her mother’s room.
She advanced slowly, her eyes on the canvas. Junia waited for the shock.

"So that’s it," Edith said, at last. "It isn’t a thing I should want to
live and die with—I never can understand that fancy people have for
nudes—but I see it’s very fine."

"And is that all you see?"

"All I see? I see it has a meaning, of course, but—"

Junia’s throat felt dry.

"Don’t you—don’t you recognize anybody?"

"Who? The Brasshead woman? I shouldn’t know her from Eve."

Junia crept nearer.

"’The Brasshead woman’? Who’s she? What are you talking about?"

"Why, the model who sat for it. Hubert told me all about her. He said
she wasn’t his ideal for the part—rather a poor lot as a woman—but he
couldn’t get anyone better." She added, on examining the features, "I
don’t think she’s bad, considering what he wanted."

"Doesn’t she—doesn’t she remind you of—of Bob’s wife?"

"About as much as she does of you. Surely that’s not the reason why you
hid the thing away!"

"I—I did think—I was afraid—that people might see a resemblance—"

Edith made an inarticulate sound intended for derision.

"As a matter of fact, Hubert said it was probably a good thing for him
to be obliged to paint some one else than Jennie. He’d been painting her
so much that he was in danger of painting her into everything, like
Andrea del Sarto with his wife."

"Then you—you don’t think that he’s painted her in here?"

Edith looked again.

"Well, if you put it that way—and you were crazy to find a
likeness—perhaps about the brows—and down here at the curve of the cheek
and neck—but no! Not really! This is a carnal woman, and Jennie’s a
thing of the spirit." She dismissed the subject as of no further
importance. "Do tell me. Is there anyone in New York who reglazes these
English chintzes?"

So Junia made new plans, waiting for Bob to come home to dinner in order
to meet him on the threshold, throw her arms about his neck, and give
him the glad facts.

But Bob sent a telephone message that he would not be home to dinner,
that he would not be home that night. No one was to worry, and he would
turn up at breakfast in the morning.

It was all the information he gave because, by special permission from
the warden, and under a solemn promise not to convey anything to the
prisoner that would enable him to cheat the law, he was spending the
night at Bitterwell.

He was spending it in a low one-storied building some sixty feet long
and not more than twenty in width. Its arrangements were simple. On
entering, you came into a corridor some six feet wide, running the
length of seven little rooms. The seven little rooms were each furnished
with a cot, a fixed wash-basin, a table, and a chair. Each had, however,
this peculiarity—that the end toward the corridor had no wall. Instead
of a wall it had long, strong perpendicular white bars, some two or
three inches apart, and running from ceiling to floor. The inmate was
thus visible at all times, like an animal in a cage. In the corridor
were half a dozen chairs of the kitchen variety, and at the end a little
yellow door.

The little yellow door led into a room of which the chief piece of
furniture was a chair vaguely suggestive of an armchair in a smoking
room, though with some singular attachments. Around it in a semicircle
were some eight or ten other chairs similar to those in the corridor. In
one corner was a walled-off space that might have housed a dynamo; in
the other a stack of brooms and mops. As a passageway gave access to
this room, and the yellow door was carefully kept closed, Bob was not
required to see within.

Of the seven little rooms four were empty, and three had occupants. At
one end was a negro; at the other an Italian; Teddy was in the center.
Outside, there was a guard for the Italian, another for the negro, while
for Teddy there were two. They were big, husky fellows, three Irishmen
and a Swede, genial, good-natured souls to whom their duties had become
a matter of course.

There was something of the matter of course in the whole situation, even
to Teddy and Bob. The human mind being ready to accept anything to which
it is led by steps sufficiently graded, both young men were attuned to
finding themselves as they were. As they were meant that Teddy clung to
one of the bars from within, and Bob to the same bar from without. They
talked through the open spaces, being able to do it quietly because they
were so close.

"You don’t think I’m afraid, do you, Bob? I should have been afraid if
it hadn’t been for you. You’ve bucked me up something—well, there are no
words for it."

"Let it go without words, Teddy. Don’t try to say it."

"I like to say it," he grinned. "Or, rather, I’d like to say it if I
could. I like trying to say it, even when I can’t."

That was all for the time; but after some minutes, Teddy’s hand stole
over Bob’s big paw as it held to the bar, so that they held to it
together.

It was Bob who broke the silence next.

"I didn’t tell you, Teddy—I’ve only just found it out—that dad’s been
taking care of Mrs. Flynn and her kiddies and means to go on doing it."

"That’s good," the boy sighed. "It takes about the last thing off my
mind."

So they talked spasmodically, never saying much, and yet saying all the
things for which language has no words. At intervals the Italian showed
his sympathy by groaning heavily, which was generally a signal for the
negro to begin singing, in a cottony voice, the first verse of "Safe in
the Arms of Jesus." Teddy apologized for them as a host for unseemly
members of his household.

"They’re good guys, all right. That’s just their way of letting me know
they feel for me. It’s funny how kind hearted some mutt will be who’s
committed a cold-blooded murder."

He had probably been following this train of thought for some minutes
when he said, in a reasoning tone:

"What can the law do with fellows of our sort? Look at the thing
straight now. We’ve got good in us, of course; but you can’t trust us to
hold our horses. I don’t blame them for what they’re giving me—hardly
any. Only, I’ll be darned if it doesn’t make me surer that all this is
only an experiment—a way of finding out how not to do it—so that we can
make the next go a better one."

They discussed this topic in a desultory way, not so much letting it
drop as pursuing it each in his own thought. Teddy picked up the line
again after an interval of time, and some distance farther on.

"I suppose you can’t believe that you come to a place where you know
you’re through and are in a hurry to get on. Well, you do. I guess old
people like ma reach there, anyhow; and young people, too, when
they’re—when they’re like me. I’ve had my shot—and I’ve miffed it. Now
I’m all on edge to have another try. I’m so crazy about that that the
thing that’s to happen first doesn’t seem anything—very much."

The hours wore on, but it seemed to Bob a night to which there was no
time. Though the support he brought to Teddy was merely that of
companionship, he felt that the boy was outstripping him. In Teddy’s own
phrase, he was "moving on," but moving on very fast. Bob couldn’t tell
how he knew this; he only felt himself being left behind. Teddy was
quite right; his old experiment _was_ over, and some of the exaltation
of the new one was already breaking through. That was the meaning of his
silences, his abstractions. That was why he came out of each such spell
with a smile that grew more luminous.

The Italian and the negro fell asleep. The four guards talked less to
one another. Clutching the bar grew tiring. Brannigan, one of Teddy’s
guards, brought up a chair, offering it to Bob.

"Why don’t you sit down? It’ll be quite a while yet."

Bob took the chair, Teddy the one inside the cell. Bringing it as close
to the bars as possible, he thrust his fingers through the opening to
touch Bob’s hand. Bob closed the fingers within his palm, and so held
them.

"I’m not going to send any message to ma and the girls. They know I love
them. You can’t add anything to that." A sidelong smile stole through
the bars. "I love you too, Bob. I guess it’s a bum thing to say, but
to-night—well, it’s different—and I’m going to say it. I can’t do
anything to thank you; but it may mean something to you to have me
loving you like the devil all the way from—from over there."

"It means something to me now."

"Then that’s all right."

The Italian breathed heavily. The negro snored. The guards were bored
and somnolent. Teddy might have been asleep except for the look and the
smile that every now and then crept through the bars toward his
companion.

Suddenly he pulled his fingers from Bob’s clasp, jumped to his feet, and
held out his arms.

"All right, ma! I’m ready!"

The cry was so loud and joyous that Bob sprang up. Brannigan lumbered
forward.

"Been dreamin’," he explained. "Just as well if he has."

Teddy looked about him in bewilderment.

"No, I haven’t been. I wasn’t asleep. I was wide awake. I guess you’ll
think I’m dippy, Bob; but I did see ma. ’Pon my soul I did! She was
right there." He pointed to the spot. "She looked lovely, too—young,
like—and yet it was ma all right. She wanted me to come. That’s why I
jumped. Oh, well! Perhaps I _am_ dippy. But it’s funny, isn’t it?"

He was so preoccupied with this happening as not to notice sounds in the
outer passage and beyond the yellow door. Even when he did, it was with
no more than a partial cognizance.

"Listen!" he said once. "There they are. It’ll be only a few minutes
now. I’m not going to let you go in there, Bob. Funny about ma, isn’t
it?"

The sounds grew louder. The guards were moving about. Behind the yellow
door people seemed to enter. There was the scraping of chairs as they
sat down. The Italian woke and howled dismally. The negro shouted his
hymn. Teddy was far away on the wings of speculation; but he came back
to say:

"If ma had gone ahead of me, I know she’d like nothing better than to
come and give me a lift over. But she hasn’t gone ahead of me. She’s
over there in Indiana Avenue. That’s the funny part of it. What do you
suppose it means?"

Bob didn’t know. Neither had he time to offer an opinion, because the
main door opened and the warden appeared, accompanied by the chaplain,
the doctor, the principal keeper, and three other men whom Teddy didn’t
know.

"Here they are!" Teddy whispered, as if their coming was a relief.

The warden advanced to the central cell. The door was unlocked. Teddy
stood on the threshold.

"Thank you, warden. I suppose I can say good-by to my friend?"

Permission was given. Teddy stepped out into the corridor.

"You’d better go now, Bob. No use in your staying any longer." He nodded
toward the men standing round him. "They’ll handle me gently. I’m not
afraid."

Their hands clasped; but the boy was only a boy, loving and in need of
love. Before Bob knew what was happening, Teddy’s arms were about his
neck, in a long, desperate embrace.

A gulp that was almost a sob from each—and it was over.

"All right, boys. I’m ready. Go to it."

The words were spoken steadily. Bob limped toward the door. A guard
unlocked it.

"Say, Bob!" It was Teddy’s voice again. Bob turned. The lad had taken
off his collar, no more conscious of the act than if he was going to
bed. One of the strange men was kneeling on one knee, making a
significant slit in a leg of Teddy’s trousers. "Say, Bob! I wonder—if it
doesn’t take you too far out of your way-if you’d mind driving round by
the house? You see, if anything has happened to ma, why, the girls’ll be
all up in the air, poor things!"

Bob nodded because he couldn’t trust himself to words—and so it was the
end.

                                  ————

Out in the air it seemed to him as if he had dreamed and waked up. The
May night was so exquisite, so hallowing, that the walls of Bitterwell
were mellow and enchanted against the dome of stars. Even in these grim
courts the scent of growing things was sweet.

Driving in the deadest hours of night over the long flat road, he was
too tired to think. His imagination didn’t try to follow Teddy, because
it had become an instinct to spring to the need to "carry on." Teddy was
behind him. There were other things in front; and his mind was already
with them.

And yet not actively. After he had slept he would be able to take them
up; but just now his main desire was to get home to bed. Nothing but
that would dispel this overweight of emotion.

Along the familiar road he drove mechanically. Even Teddy’s last
request, though it formed an intention, was hardly in his mind. At
Bond’s Corner, where the roads forked, to the right to Pemberton
Heights, to the left to the bridge that would take him over toward
Marillo, he was so nearly asleep that he might have gone straight on
homeward had he not been startled by seeing a man and a woman standing
in the middle of the road.

He jammed down the service and emergency brakes, swinging to the right.
The fact that they stood facing him without getting out of his way both
amazed him and rendered him indignant. Turning to look at so strange a
pair of pedestrians, he saw—Teddy and his mother.

They were not quite on the road, but a little above it. Neither were
they in the dark like other things around, but shining with a light of
their own. Neither were they shadowy apparitions, but definite, vital,
forcible. They were dressed as he had generally seen them, and yet they
wore a kind of radiance. The mother’s arm was over her boy’s shoulder,
but Teddy was waving his hand. Smiles were on both faces, on the lips,
in the eyes, and somehow in the personality.

Bob was not frightened, but he was thrilled. It seemed to him that they
stayed long enough to overcome all the doubts of his senses. Though he
pressed on the brakes, the car went a number of yards before he could
bring it to a standstill; and yet they never left his side. They didn’t
exactly move; they were only there—living, lovely, sending out love as
if it had been light, wrapping him round and round. It was so vivid, so
much a fact, that when the car stopped and he saw no one there, he was
amazed once more to find himself alone.

He couldn’t drive on at once. He lingered—staring at the spot where they
had stood, looking over the wide, dim country, gazing up at the stars in
their yearning infinitude. He tried to persuade himself that his own
mind had projected something unreal in itself; but he couldn’t throw off
the extraordinary happiness the vision left behind it.

Before reaching Indiana Avenue he had decided on a course. If there were
no lights in the house, he would drive on homeward. If there were he
would stop. At this hour in the very early morning, unless something
unusual had happened, there would of course be none.

But there were lights. At sound of his approach, Pansy gave a little
silvery yelp. Jennie opened the door before he had time to ring.

"Come in, Bob. I saw your car from the window."

In the living-room Gussie and Gladys, wearing their dressing-gowns,
cried out their relief at seeing him. It was the situation Teddy had
foreseen, in which they were all "up in the air." As usual, Gladys was
the spokesman.

"Oh, Bob, we’re so glad to have you. We didn’t know what to do. Momma—"

A sob stopped her, but Jennie was more calm.

"Momma’s gone, Bob. Gussie went into her room about half past ten to
take her the glass of milk we always put by her bed, and she was
asleep."

They gathered round him as if he formed their rallying point. He took
Jennie and Gussie each by the hand. Gladys held his coat by the lapel.

"You’re not sorry, any of you, are you? She wanted to go; and she’s gone
in the sweetest of all ways."

"She won’t have to hear about Teddy," Gussie wept. "That’s a comfort,
anyhow."

Gladys laid her head against Bob’s breast.

"No; but Teddy’ll have to hear about her."

Bob saw the opportunity. "No, Gladys; Teddy will not have to hear about
her." He let this sink in. "Teddy—_knows_."

It was some seconds before Jennie and Gussie released his hands and
Gladys let go his lapel. When they did they moved away silently. Gussie
dropped on her knees at the arm of a big chair, bowing her head, and
crying quietly. Jennie, a slim figure with hands behind her back, walked
down the length of the room, staring at the curtained window toward
Indiana Avenue. Gladys stood off, looking at Bob, nodding her head
sagely, as she said:

"I thought that’s what it meant when he didn’t want us to come. He liked
it better without saying good-by. So we all do." She gave a big, sudden
sob, controlling herself as suddenly. "We’re going to carry on, Bob.
We’re not going to show the white feather"—there was another big sob,
with another successful effort to keep it back—"we’re not going to show
the white feather—any of us—just to please you."

"Thank you, Gladys. It will please me. But there’s something that
pleases me more. I’d like to tell all three of you about it."

Jennie turned round from the window, coming back down the room. She was
pale, but she didn’t cry. Gussie dried her eyes and was struggling to
her feet when Bob laid his hand on her shoulder.

"No, Gussie; stay where you are. I’ll sit down here." He dropped into
the chair. "You come on this side, Jennie. Gladys—"

But Gladys had already crouched at his feet, while Jennie, balancing
Gussie, sank beside the other arm of the chair. Pansy sprang up to her
place on his knee.

He told them about Teddy and his mother—about Teddy’s vision and his
own.

"I don’t say I know what to make of it. I’m not at all sure that we’re
obliged to explain that sort of thing unless we’re scientists or
psychologists. It seems to me that when beauty and comfort flash on us
at a time of great need, we’re at liberty to take them for what they
seem to be, even if we don’t understand them."

As his hand lay on the arm of the chair, Jennie kissed it again and
again. It was the first spontaneous affection she had ever shown him,
and, though it moved him with a stirring strange and fundamental, he
felt that with the awesome things so fresh in their minds, the time had
not yet come to respond to it. It was one more impulse to gather force
by being restrained a little longer.

"It isn’t as if this thing stood alone. A great many people have had
experiences like it. They may be no more than fancy, just as some people
say; but I do know this: that by what he saw Teddy was helped to do what
he had to do, and that for me—"

"Yes, Bob," Gladys pleaded. "What was it for you?"

"Something real—and assuring—and beautiful—and comforting—and glorious."
He uttered the words slowly, as if selecting his terms. "More than
that," he went on, "it was something that’s given me a happiness I can’t
describe but which I should like to share with you—which perhaps I shall
be able to share with you—as we get to know one another better—and time
goes on."

The little snub-nosed face, something like Pansy’s, was lifted to him
adoringly.

"Are we going to be your very own, Bob?"

"Yes, Gladys, my very own."

CHAPTER XXIX

"How can we be your very own when—you don’t know anything about _me_?"

Gussie and Gladys had gone up to get some sleep. Jennie was crouched,
not against the arm of the chair, as before, but against Bob’s knee.
Still pressing back the instincts of his passion, he did no more than
let his hand rest lightly on her hair.

"I know this much about you, Jennie—that after all we’ve gone through
we’re welded together. Nothing can separate us now—no past—nor anything
you could tell me."

"Is that why you don’t want to know?"

"I don’t want to know _now_. That’s all I’m saying. Things are settled
for us. They’re settled and sealed. It’s what we get out of so much
that’s terrible, that we don’t have to debate that point any more. We
may have to adapt ourselves to conditions we don’t know anything about
as yet—but it will be a matter of adapting, not of cutting loose. What
should I be if I were to cut loose from you and the girls now, Jennie?
What should you be if you were to cut loose from me?"

She pressed her cheek against his knee.

"We’d die," she said, simply.

"So there you are! I know what you mean. I’d die, too. That is, we
mightn’t die outwardly; but something would be so killed in us that we’d
never be really alive again. So why try to pull apart what life has
soldered into one?"

"But you don’t _know_!"

"Yes, I do. I know more than you think. I know that the things that
trouble you are dreams and that our life together is reality. You’ll
tell me the dreams as we go on—a little at a time—and I’ll show you that
you’ve waked from them. I know there are things to explain; but I know,
too, that there’s an explanation. But I don’t want the explanation yet.
I’m—I’m too tired, Jennie. I want to rest. And I can’t rest unless we
all rest together—you with me—and the girls with us—in a kind of quiet
acceptance of the things that have happened—and in the—I hardly know how
to express it—but in the tranquillity of love. I wonder if you
understand me?"

She murmured:

"I don’t know that I understand you, Bob—quite—but I do—I do love you.
It’s—it’s different from love—it’s—it’s more. It’s like—like melting
into you—"

"That’s love, Jennie. It isn’t anything different. It’s just—_love_."

"But you’re so big—"

"And you’re so little—so wee. Don’t you see?—that’s it! That’s the
compensating thing in nature. It’s because we’re different that we need
each other and complete each other. I can’t explain it as you’d explain
a sum in arithmetic. I only _know_. You complete me, Jennie. As I’ve
said so often, you’re the other half of me—"

"And you’re all of me—and more."

"Then since we know that, why not do as I said—just rest awhile? We’ve
come up to our next ledge, as I was trying to explain to you a few
months ago; I know we can camp here a bit; and if we’ve had some
scratches in the climb we can talk of them by and by. We’ve learned the
one big thing we needed to know—that we belong together, that we can’t
be torn apart. Just for now, why can’t that be enough for us?"

"It will be enough if you will let me tell you that—that what I’ve said
about Hubert wasn’t—wasn’t as bad as perhaps you think. I don’t say it
mightn’t have been; it was as bad as that in—in intention; but the magic
cloak of your love which you used to write about seemed to hang round
me—that’s the only way I can put it—"

"That’ll do, Jennie. Don’t try to say any more now. It’s only what—in
some way—I can’t tell you how—I know already."

He knew she was crying, but he let her cry. He would have cried himself,
only that, since the vision at Bond’s Corner, he felt this extraordinary
happiness. While his reason would have striven to accept the
psychologist’s explanation his inner self was convinced of Teddy’s
delight in beginning his next experiment. He himself was tired, but at
peace—tired, but no longer with a need of sleep—only with the need of
being quiet with a sense of fulfillment.

There were tears in her voice as she whispered, brokenly:

"Is it wrong, Bob, to feel so—so comforted—when momma is lying
upstairs—and darling Teddy is—"

"We can’t choose the way by which comfort comes to us, Jennie darling.
Things happen which we don’t want to have happen, and yet they _can_
work together for good if we only give them half a chance—"

He was interrupted by the loud, sweet thrilling of a thrush. Jennie
raised her head in surprise, looking at the pallid shimmer through the
curtained window.

"It’s day!"

They were both on their feet.

"Yes, Jennie; it’s day—again. Let’s go out."

They went as they were, bareheaded like children, into the purity of
morning. Pansy, disturbed by the many strange auras in the house,
scampered ahead of them, relieved by the escape. The street was still
asleep, empty, clean, with every lawn patch and garden bed drenched with
dew. Only the birds and the flowers were waking to the light.

Turning toward the cliffs and the river, their talk became more
practical. Bob suggested to Jennie what his father had suggested to him.
Mr. Huntley was going to Europe in connection with some new European
loan. The proposal was that Bob should go with him. The trip might last
six months.

"And if I go," he added, "we both go. We should have a few weeks to
settle things finally here—"

"Oh, but, Bob—how could I go and—and leave the two girls? They need me
more than ever now. I’m not only their sister, but their mother."

"Why shouldn’t they come with us? I’d love having them. Six months over
there would make a break with what they’ve been through here; and when
we come back, Edith has things she’s going to suggest—"

"That would be heavenly, Bob; but—but the money?"

"The money’s all right. In my new job at the bank I’ve a bigger
salary—five thousand; and now that dad’s giving Edith ten thousand a
year as allowance, he’s giving me the same. That’s a pretty good income
to begin with, besides which, dad—you’ll have to know dad, Jennie—he
doesn’t want me to spare any money while we’re—we’re passing through
this—this crisis."

"And your mother’s lovely. I know _that_."

"Yes; mother’s splendid, too. So’s Edith. You’ll find that they all
want—want to make up to you—and to the girls—for—"

But he didn’t say for what because they came to where they saw above the
cloud-wrapt city the glory of chrysoprase, turquoise, and topaz which
precedes the sunrise and takes the breath away.

"Oh, look!"

"Oh, look!"

Instinctively they clasped hands as they stood on the edge of the
flowery precipice, watching the chrysoprase yellow into saffron, and the
turquoise melt into sapphire, while the topaz became light.

Then silently, above the wraithlike towers and cubes and battlements,
slipped the rim of gold.

"There it is, Bob!"

He drew her to him, holding her close.

"Yes; there it is again, Jennie—always coming back to us! The last time
we were here we had only the moonrise; and now it is the sun—the sun!"

Her head lay against his shoulder; and as the rim became an orb the
cloud-built vision of Manhattan was touched with flecks of fire. Within
its heart lay Broadway, Fifth Avenue, Wall Street, and the Bowery,
shops, churches, brothels, and banks, all passions, hungers, yearnings,
and ambitions, all national impulses worthy and detestable, all human
instincts holy and unclean, all loveliness, all lust, all charity, all
cupidity, all secret and suppressed desire, all shameless exposure on
the housetops, all sorrow, all sin, all that the soul of man conceives
of as evil and good—and yet, with no more than these few miles of
perspective, and this easy play of light, translated into beauty,
uplifting, unearthly, and ineffable.

                                THE END