In a Little Town Part 20

"But supposing it was our boy, Paw?"

"Oh, what's the use of arguin' with a woman! I love you for it, Maw, but--well, I'm sorry I spoke."

He returned to his paper, growling now and then as he read of some new quibble devised by the attorneys for the defense. As softly and as surrept.i.tiously as it begins to rain on a cloudy day, she was crying. He turned again with mock indignation.

"Here, here! What you turning up about now?"

"I want to see my boy. I'm worried. He may be sick. He'd never let us know."

The old man tried to cajole her from her forebodings, tried to reason them away, laugh them away. At last he said, with a poor effort at gruffness:

"Well, for the Lord's sake, why don't you go? He's always askin' us to come and see him. I'm kind o' homesick for a sight of the boy m'self.

You haven't been to town for a month of Sundays. Throw a few things in a valise and I'll hitch up. We'll just about make the next train from the village."

She needed no coercion from without. She rose at once. As she opened the squeaky screen-door he was clumping down the steps. He paused to call back:

"Oh, Maw!"

"Yes, Paw!"

"Better tuck in a jar of those preserves you been puttin' up. The boy always liked those better 'n most anything. Don't wrap 'em in my nights.h.i.+rt, though."

She called out, "All right," and the slap of the screen-door was echoed a moment later by a similar sound in the barn, accompanied by the old man's voice:

"Give over, Fan."

II

The elevator-boy hesitated. "Oh, yes-sum, I got a pa.s.s-key, all right, but I can't hahdly let n.o.body in Mista Coburn's 'pahtment 'thout his awdas."

"But we're his mother and father."

"Of co'se I take yo' wud for that, ma'am, but, you see, I can't hahdly let n.o.body--er--um'm--thank you, sir--well, I reckon Mista Coburn might be mo' put out ef I didn't let you-all in than ef I did."

The elevator soared silently to the eighth floor, and there all three debarked. The boy was so much impressed with the tip the old man had slipped him that he unlocked the door, put the hand-baggage into the room, snapped the switch that threw on all the lights, and said, "Thank you, sir," again as he closed the door.

Paw opened it to give the boy another coin and say: "Don't you let on that we're here. It's a surprise."

The boy, grinning, promised and descended, like an imp through a trap.

The old couple stood stock-still, hesitating to advance. So many feelings, such varied timidities, urged them forward, yet held them back. It was the home of the son they had begotten, conceived, tended, loved, praised, punished, feared, prayed for, counseled, provisioned, and surrendered. Years of separation had made him almost a stranger, and they dreaded the intrusion into the home he had built for himself, remote from their influence. Poor, weak, silly old things, with a boy-and-girlish gawkishness about them, the helpless feeling of uninvited guests!

"You go first, Paw."

And Paw went first. On the sill of the drawing-room he paused and swept a glance around. He would have given an arm to be inspired with some scheme for whisking his wife away or changing what she must see. But she was already crowding on his heels, pus.h.i.+ng him forward. There was no retreat. He tried to laugh it off.

"Well, here we are at last, as the fellow doesn't say in the circus."

There was nothing to do but sit down and wait. The very chairs were of an architecture and upholstery incongruous to them. They knew something of luxury, but not of this school. There was nowhere for them to look that something alien did not meet their eyes. So they looked at the floor.

"It gets awful hot in town, don't it?" said Paw, mopping his beaded forehead.

"Awful," said Maw, dabbing at hers.

Eventually they heard the elevator door gride on its grooves. All the way in on the train they had planned to hide and spring out on the boy.

They had giggled like children over the plot. It was rather their prearrangement than their wills that moved them to action. Automatically they hid themselves, without laughter, rather with a sort of guilty terror. They found a deep wardrobe closet and stepped inside, drawing the door almost shut.

They heard a key in the lock, the click of a k.n.o.b, the sound of a door closed. Then a pause. They had forgotten to turn off the lights.

Hurrying footsteps, loud on the bare floor, m.u.f.fled on the rugs. How well they knew that step! But there was excitement in its rhythm. They could hear the familiar voice muttering unfamiliarly as the footsteps hurried here and there. He came into the room where they were. They could hear him breathe now, for he breathed heavily, as if he had been running. From place to place he moved with a sense of restless stealth.

At length, just as they were about to sally forth, he hurried forward and flung open their door.

Standing among the hanging clothes, the light strong on their faces, they seemed to strike him at first as ghosts. He stared at them aghast, and recoiled. Then the old ghosts smiled and stepped forward with open arms. But he recoiled again, and his welcome to his far-come, heart-hungry parents was a groan.

They saw that he had a revolver in his hand. His eyes recurred to it, and he turned here and there for a place to lay it, but seemed unable to let it go. His mother flung forward and threw her arms about him, her lips pursed to kiss him, but he turned away with lowered eyes. His father took him by the shoulders and said:

"Why, what's the matter, boy? Ain't you glad to see your Maw--and me?"

For answer he only breathed hard and chokingly. His eyes went to the revolver again, then roved here and there, always as if searching for a place to hide it.

"Give that thing to me, Steve," the old man said. And he took it in his hands, forcing from the cold steel the colder fingers that clung as if frozen about the handle.

Once he was free of the weapon, the boy toppled into a chair, his mother still clasping him desperately.

The old man knew something about firearms. He found the spring, broke the revolver, and looked into the cylinder. In every chamber was the round eye of a cartridge. Three of them bore the little scar of the firing-pin.

Old Coburn leaned hard against the wall. He looked about for a place to hide the horrible machine, but he, too, could not let go of it. His mouth was full of the ashes of life. He would have been glad to drop dead. But beyond the sick, clammy face of his son he saw the face of his wife, an old face, a mother's face, witless with bewilderment. The old man swallowed hard.

"What's happened, Steve? What's been goin' on?"

The young man only shook his head, ran his dry tongue along his lips, tore a piece of loose skin from the lower one with his teeth, and breathed noisily through nostrils that worked like a dog's. He pushed his mother's hands away as if they irked him. The old man could have struck him to the ground for that roughness, but the prayers in the mother's eyes restrained him.

"Better tell us, Steve. Maybe we might help you."

The young man's head worked as if he were gulping at a hard lump; his lips moved without sound, his gaze leaped from place to place, lighting everywhere but on his father's waiting, watching eyes, and always coming back to the revolver with a loathing fascination. At last he spoke, in a whisper like the rasp of chafed husks:

"I had to do it. He deserved it."

The mother had not seen the nicks on the cartridges, but she needed no such evidence. She wailed:

"You don't mean that you--no--no--you didn't k-kill-ill-ill--"

The word rattled in her throat, and she went to the floor like a toppling bolster. It was the old man that lifted her face from the rug, ran to fetch water, and knelt to restore her. The son just wavered in his chair and kept saying:

"I had to do it. He was making her life a--"

"Her life?" the old man groaned, looking up where he knelt. "Then there's a woman in it?"