The Helpmate Part 56

"I must go now, Maggie," he said.

When he stood up, his knees shook under him.

"Not yet," said Maggie. "I'm all alone in the house, and I'm afraid."

"There's nothing to be afraid of," he said roughly. "I've got to go."

He strode towards the door while Maggie stared after him in terror. She understood nothing but that he was going to leave her. What had she done to drive him away?

"You're ill," she cried, as she followed him, panting in her fright.

He pushed her back gently from the threshold.

"Don't be a little fool, Maggie. I'm not ill."

Out in the street, five yards from Maggie's door, he battled with a vision of her that almost drove him back again. "It was I who was a fool," he thought. "I shall go back. Why not? She is predestined. Why not I as well as anybody else?"

All the way to his own door an insistent, abominable voice kept calling to him, "Why not? Why not?"

He went with noiseless footsteps up his own stairs, past the dark doors below, past Edith's open door where the lamp still burned brightly beyond the threshold. At Anne's door he paused.

It stood ajar in a dim light. He pushed it softly open and went in.

Anne and her child lay asleep under the silver crucifix.

Peggy had been taken into Anne's bed, and had curled herself close up against her mother's side. Her arm lay on Anne's breast; one hand clutched the border of Anne's nightgown. The long thick braid of Anne's hair was flung back on the pillow, framing the child's golden head in gold.

His eyes filled with tears as he looked at them. For a moment his heart stood still. Why not he as well as anybody else? His heart told him why.

As he turned he sighed. A sigh of longing and tenderness, and of thankfulness for a great deliverance. Above all, of thankfulness.

CHAPTER XXVI

The light burned in Edith's room till morning; for her spine kept sleep from her through many nights. They no longer said, "She is better, or certainly no worse." They said, "She is worse, or certainly no better."

The progress of her death could be reckoned by weeks and measured by inches. Soon they would be giving her morphia, to make her sleep.

Meanwhile she was terribly awake.

She heard her brother's soft footsteps as he pa.s.sed her door. She heard him pause on the upper landing and creep into the room overhead. She heard him go out again and shut himself up in the little room beyond.

There came upon her an awful intuition of the truth.

The next day she sent for him.

"What is it, Edie?" he said.

She looked at him with loving eyes, and asked him as Maggie had asked, "Are you ill?"

He started. The question brought back to him vividly the scene of the night before; brought back to him Maggie with her love and fear.

"What is it? Tell me," she insisted.

He owned to headaches. She knew he often had them.

"It's not a bit of use," she said, "trying to deceive _me_. It's not headaches. It's Anne."

"Poor Anne. I think she's all right. After all, she's got the child, you know."

"Yes. _She_'s got Peggy. If I could see you all right, too, I should die happy."

"Don't worry about me. I'm not worth it."

She gazed at him searchingly, confirmed in her intuition. That was the sort of thing poor Charlie used to say.

"It's my fault," she said. "It always has been."

"Angel, if you could lay everybody's sins on your own shoulders, you would."

"I mean it. You were right and I was wrong. Ah, how one pays! Only _you_'ve had to pay for my untruthfulness. I can see it now. If I'd done as you asked me, in the beginning, and told her the truth--"

"She wouldn't have married me. No, Edie. You're a.s.suming that I've lived to regret that I married her. I never have regretted it for one single moment. Not for myself, that is. For her, yes. Granted that I'm as unhappy as you please, I'd rather be unhappy with her than happy without her. See?"

"Walter--if you keep true to her, I believe you'll have your happiness yet. I don't know how it's coming. It may come very late. But it's bound to come. She's good--"

He a.s.sented with a groan. "Oh, much _too_ good."

"And the goodness in her must recognise the goodness in you; when she understands. I believe she's beginning to understand. She doesn't know how much she understands."

"Understands what?"

"Your goodness. She loved you for it. She'll love you for it again."

"My dear Edie, you're the only person who believes in my goodness--you and Peggy."

"I and Peggy. And Charlie and the Hannays. And Nanna and the Gardners--and G.o.d."

"I wish G.o.d would give Anne a hint that He thinks well of me."

"Dear--if you keep true to her--He will."

If he kept true to her! It was the second time she had said it. It was almost as if she had divined what had so nearly happened.

"I think," she said, "I'd like to talk to Anne, now, while I can talk.

You see, once they go giving me morphia"--she closed her eyes. "Just let me lie still for half an hour, and then bring Anne to me."

She lay still. He watched her for an hour. And he knew that in that hour she had prayed.