Jap Herron Part 26

The office cat rubbed her sleek side against Bill's leg.

"Get out and let me alone!" he screamed, jumping with nervous irritation.

"Don't do that, Bill," j.a.p said firmly. "What's the matter with you, anyway? You are as pernickety as a setting hen, as Kelly said yesterday. When even Kelly begins to notice your aberrations it's time for you to get a wake-up. Are you sick? Have things gone wrong?"

Bill walked over to the window and ran his thumb down the pane of gla.s.s absently.

"j.a.p, have you that mortgage handy--all that business that Mabelle gave you?"

j.a.p went to the safe and took out the packet of papers.

"Why?" he asked, as he glanced through the long list of items. "Has my sister thought of anything else she absolutely needs? In another week, I'll owe her more than the cottage is worth."

Bill took the doc.u.ments gingerly. His mobile face flamed.

"I--I--want to take up the deeds," he stammered.

j.a.p whirled to face him.

"You see," stuttered Bill, "I--that is, we--Mabelle and I, we----"

j.a.p sprang forward, lithe as a panther, and caught Bill by the arm.

Drawing him to the light, he looked full in the embarra.s.sed face.

"Where is she?" he shouted. "Where is that sister of mine? Where is she hiding?"

The girl came from the dark hall, her eyes defiant, her head set with charming insolence on one side. j.a.p struggled with his self-possession an instant. Then a great, gurgling laugh shook his shoulders as he gathered the pair into his long arms.

"Golly Haggins!" the expletive of his boyhood leaped to his lips, "I'm glad the agony is over. Now perhaps we will be able to get the _Herald_ to our subscribers on time."

CHAPTER XXIV

"Tom Granger got a telegram," announced Bill, coming into the office one morning early in April. "He wants to see you at once, j.a.p."

j.a.p's face blanched. He looked dumbly at Bill.

"No, it's not her," Bill hastened to say. "It's her mother."

j.a.p stumbled awkwardly up the walk to the Granger home. The letters from Isabel had been far from rea.s.suring, and only the previous day Dr.

Hall had sounded a warning that the care of the invalid was too much for the girl, taxed as she was in both mind and body. Into j.a.p's consciousness there crept the thought that she had never fully recovered from those terrible weeks when she hovered over him.

Tom Granger met him at the door. His eyes were red with weeping. He drew j.a.p into the parlor and gave him two telegrams.

"This came at midnight," he said brokenly. j.a.p read:

"Mother sinking. Come. ISABEL."

"And this just arrived," Granger choked, as the fatal words met j.a.p's eye:

"Mother dying. Come. Bring j.a.p. ISABEL."

"The train leaves in half an hour. I don't have to ask you anything, my boy."

j.a.p turned and hastened away. He did not weaken Granger's feeble strength with words of sympathy.

It was the afternoon of the second day when the two stood with Isabel at the foot of the bed. Alice Granger lifted her heavy lids, and a gleam of recognition shone in her eyes. Swiftly those two, the husband and the child, drew near, eager for any word that might pa.s.s the stiffening lips. j.a.p stood looking sorrowfully down on her as they knelt at her side.

"j.a.p," she whispered, "you, too," and her feeble fingers drew him.

With a choked sob he knelt beside Isabel. The mother fumbled with the covers until her hand, icy cold, touched his. Instantly his firm, strong hand closed over it. She smiled and murmured:

"Tom. Isabel."

They leaned over her in a panic of fear.

"Isabel's hand," she breathed, and placed the two hands together.

"Tom, there is time," she whispered; "I want----" She sank helpless.

"I know what you would say," cried Granger, the tears streaming down his face. "You want him to be our son before--before you say good-bye."

A flash of joy illumined her thin face. She sighed contentedly.

A minister was hastily summoned, and a half hour later Isabel sobbed her grief in the arms of her husband, as they stood awaiting the coming of the Death Angel.

"It made such a difference in her feeling toward you, your illness at our house," Tom said, looking down upon her closed eyes and fluttering lips. "She never understood you, and in her quiet way she was always reserving judgment, when I used to talk so much about you. A mother finds it hard to think any man is the right one for her only child, and she was so dependent on Isabel. She hadn't any doubts, after she saw you in that dreadful fever, with all your soul laid bare to us. She knew Isabel would be safe, and after that she stopped worrying."

A grim hand caught at j.a.p's throat, as Tom sank on his knees and buried his face in the pillow to smother his sobs. Into his memory there came the words of Flossy: "When your mother came, there was a revelation. I don't fear for your future now. And when I knew this, j.a.p, I suddenly felt tired and old."

Flossy had clung to life until he had found the woman who could take her place. Then, all at once, she let go. And now Alice Granger, an invalid for twenty-three years, had relaxed her feeble hold on life when she knew that her child was in safe and gentle hands. Must Death forever draw its grim fingers between him and his happiness? He looked at his bride, fragile as a spring flower, and a great fear rushed over him. Dumb, he stood there, stroking Isabel's hair with futile caresses.

At last the glazing eyes opened, and Alice Granger said faintly:

"Tom, not alone."

"Not alone?" he cried in anguish. "Always alone without you, Alice."

She only smiled--and then she fell asleep.

It was a strange wedding journey. Between the half-crazed father and the exhausted wife, j.a.p was taxed to the uttermost. Isabel, for once helpless, lay white and silent in the compartment, too weak to do more than cling to her one tower of strength, while Tom Granger rent j.a.p's sympathetic heart with his unreasoning grief. At length nature demanded her own; from sheer exhaustion they slept. j.a.p left them alone and stood out on the platform between the coaches.

"Is my life always to hold grief?" he queried of his soul. A throb of fear tore at his consciousness. Isabel's death-white face arose before him.

"No!" he cried fiercely, "there is a G.o.d. He will not take all from me."