At the Crossroads Part 57

"Don't get talking booky, Mary-Clare. You don't as much as you once did." A pause, then hardly above a whisper: "Do you go to the cabin in the woods now, Mary-Clare?"

"I haven't been there for a long while, Larry." Mary-Clare's hands clutched each other until the bones ached.

"I'm sorry, Mary-Clare, G.o.d knows I am, for what I did up there. It was the note as drove me mad. Across--over there, I used to read that note, you and he were queer lots."

"Larry, I will not talk about that--ever!"

"You can't forgive?"

"I have forgiven long ago."

"Nothing happened between you and him, Mary-Clare. You're great stuff.

Great! And so is he."

A thin, blue-veined hand stole out and rested on Mary-Clare's head and Mary-Clare looked down at the empty place where Larry's strong right leg should have been. A divine pity stirred her, but she knew now, as always, that Larry did not crave pity; sympathy; and the awful Truth upheld Mary-Clare in her weak moment. She would never again fail herself or him by misunderstanding.

"When I'm well, Mary-Clare, you'll be everything to me, won't you?

We'll begin again. You, me, and little Noreen. You are lovely, girl!

The lights in your hair dance, your neck is white, and----"

The heart of Mary-Clare seemed to stop as the groping fingers touched her.

"Look at me, Mary-Clare!"

There was the tone of the conqueror in the words--Larry laughed. Then Mary-Clare looked at him! Long and unfalteringly she let her eyes meet his, and there was that in them that no man misunderstands.

"You mean you do not care?" Larry's voice shook like a frightened child's; "that you'll never care?"

"I care tremendously, Larry, and I will do my best. But you must not ask for more."

"Good G.o.d! and I crawled back for this!" The words ended in a sob; "for this! I thought I could pay but I cannot--ever, ever!"

And in the distant city Helen Northrup waited for her son. There had been a cable--then the long silence. He was on the way, that was all she knew.

In the work-room Helen tried to keep to the routine of her days. Her work had saved her; strengthened her. Her contact with people had given her vision and sympathy. She was marvellously changed, but of that she took little heed.

And then Northrup came, unannounced. He stood in the doorway of the room where his mother sat bent upon her task on the desk before her.

For a moment he hardly knew her. He had feared to find her broken, crushed beyond the hope of health and joy. He had counted that possibility among the things that his experience had cost him. A wave of relief, surprise, and joy swept over him now.

"Mother!"

Helen paused--her pen held lightly--then she rose and came toward him.

Her face Northrup was never to forget. So might a face look that welcomed the dead back to life. Just for one, poor human moment, they could not speak, they simply clung close. After that, life caught them in its common current.

The afternoon, warm and sunny, made it possible for the windows to be open wide; there were flowers blooming in a window-box and a cool breeze, now and again, drew the white curtains out, then released them with a little sighing sound. The peacefulness and security stirred Northrup's imagination.

"It doesn't seem possible, you know!" he said.

"Being home, dear?" Helen watched him. Every new line of his fine brown face made her lips firmer.

"Yes. I'd given up hope, and then when hope grew again I was afraid to crawl back. You'll laugh, but I was afraid to come home and find things just the same! I couldn't have stood it, after what I learned.

I would have felt like a ghost. A lot of fellows feel this way. It's all a mistake for our home folks to think they're doing the best for us by trying to fool us into forgetting."

"Brace, we've tried, all of us, to be worthy of you boys. Even they who attempt the thing you mention are doing it for the best. Often it is the hardest way."

They were both thinking of Kathryn. Monstrous as it might seem, Brace recalled her as she looked that day--pulling the shades of the automobile down! That ugly doubt had haunted him many times.

Helen was half sick with fear of what would occur when Brace saw Kathryn.

"I ought not keep you, son," she said weakly. "You ought to go to Kathryn. No filial duty toward me, dear! I'm a terribly self-sufficient woman."

"Bully! And that's why I want to have dinner with you alone. I've got used to the self-sufficient woman--I like her."

It was long after eight o'clock, that first evening, when Northrup left his mother's house.

So powerfully hypnotic is memory that as he walked along in the bland summer night he s.h.i.+vered and recalled the snowstorm that blotted him out after his last interview with Kathryn. With all earnestness he had prepared himself for this hour. He was ready to take up his life and live it well--only so could he justify what he had endured. His starved senses, too, rose to reinforce him. He craved the beauty, sweetness, and tenderness--though he was half afraid of them. They had so long been eliminated from his rugged existence that he wondered how he was again to take them as his common fare.

He paused before touching the bell at the Morris house. Again that hypnotic s.h.i.+ver ran over him; but to his touch on the bell there was immediate response.

"Will you wait, sir, in the reception-room?" The trim maid looked flurried. "I will tell Miss Kathryn at once."

Northrup sat down in the dim room, fragrant with flowers, and a sense of peace overcame his doubts.

Now the Morris house was curiously constructed. The main stairway and a stairway leading to a side entrance converged at the second landing, thus making it possible for any one to leave the house more privately, should he so desire, than by the more formal way.

After leaving Northrup in the reception-room, the maid was stopped by Miss Anna Morris somewhere in the hall. A hurried whispered conversation ensued and made possible what dramatically followed.

A door above opened--the library door--and it seemed to set free Kathryn's nervous, metallic laugh and Sandy Arnold's hard, indignant words:

"What's the hurry? I guess I understand." Almost it seemed as if the girl were pus.h.i.+ng the man before her. "I was good enough to pa.s.s the time with; pay for your fun while you weighed the chances."

"Please, Sandy, you are cruel." Kathryn was pleading.

"Cruel be d.a.m.ned! And what are you? I want you--you've told me that you loved me--what's the big idea?"

"Oh! Sandy, do lower your voice. Aunt Anna will think the servants are quarrelling."

"All right." Sandy's voice sank a degree. "But I'm going to put this to you square----" The two above had come to the dividing stairways.

"What in thunder!" Sandy gave a coa.r.s.e laugh. "Keeping to the servant notion, eh? Want me to go out the side door? Why?"

"Oh! Sandy, you won't mind?--I have a reason, I'll tell you some day."

There was a pause, a scuffle. Then:

"Sandy, you are hurting me!"