The Empty Sack Part 34

"You'll do just as you like about that," Lizzie interposed, with dignity; "but if you see my son before I do, tell him not to be sorry for what he's done, and above all not to think that I blame him. 'Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.' When you do, the eighth commandment doesn't apply any longer."

Jennie followed her visitors to the doorstep. After her mother's reckless talk, they seemed like friends, as, indeed, at bottom of their kindly hearts they could easily have been. They brought no ill will to their job-only a conviction that if Teddy Follett was a thief, they must "get him."

"Does-does Mr. Collingham know that all this is going on?"

She asked her question in trepidation, lest these men, trained to ferret out whatever was most hidden, should be able to read her secret. It was Jackman who shouldered the duty of answering. He seemed more laconic than his colleague, and more literate.

"We don't trouble Mr. Collingham with trifles. If it was a big thing-"

So Jennie was left with that consolation-that it was not _a big thing_.

How big it was she could only guess at, but, whatever the magnitude, she had no doubt at all but that it was "up to her." She got some inspiration from the little word "up." There was a lift in it that made her courageous.

Nevertheless, when she returned to the living room, finding her mother seated, erect and stately, in an armchair, with Pansy gazing at her with eyes of quenchless, infinite devotion, Jennie knew a qualm of fear.

"Oh, momma, wouldn't it be awful if Teddy had to go to jail?"

"It would be awful or not, just as you took it. If you thought he went to jail as a thief, it _would_ be awful, but if you saw him only as the martyr of a system, you'd be proud to know he was there."

"Oh, but, momma, what's the good of saying things like that?"

"What's the good of letting them throw you down, a quivering bundle of flesh, before a Juggernaut, and just being meekly thankful? That's what your father and I have always done, and, now that the wheels have pa.s.sed over him, I see the folly of keeping silent. I may not do any good by speaking, but at least I speak. When they muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn, it isn't much wonder if the famished beast goes mad. Did you ever see a mad ox, Jennie? Well, it's a terrible sight-the most patient and laborious drudge among animals, goaded to a desperation in which he's conscious of nothing but his wrongs and his strength. They generally kill him. It's all they can do with him-but, of course, they can do that."

"So that it doesn't do the ox much good to go mad, does it?"

"Oh yes; because he gets out of it. That's the only relief for us, Jennie darling-to get out of it. I begin to understand how mothers can so often kill themselves and their children. They don't want to leave anyone they love to endure the sufferings this world inflicts."

From these ravings Jennie was summoned by the tinkle of the telephone bell.

"Teddy!" cried the mother, starting to her feet.

"No; it's Mr. Wray. I knew he'd ring me if I didn't turn up."

The instrument was in the entry, and Jennie felt curiously calm and competent as she went toward it. All decisions being taken out of her hands, she no longer had to doubt and calculate. The renunciations, too, were made for her. She was not required to look back, only to go on.

In answer to the question, "Is this Mrs. Follett's house?" she replied, as if the occasion were an ordinary one:

"Yes, Mr. Wray. I'm sorry I can't come to the studio."

"Oh! so it's you! You can't come-what? Then you needn't come any more."

"Yes; that's what I thought. I see now that-that I can't."

"Well, of all-" He broke off in his expostulation to say: "Jennie, for G.o.d's sake, what's the matter with you? What are you afraid of?"

"I'm not afraid of anything, Mr. Wray; but there's a good deal the matter which I can't explain on the telephone."

"Do you want me to come over there?"

"No; you couldn't do any good."

"Is it money?"

"No." She remembered the acc.u.mulation of untouched bills and checks in her glove-and-handkerchief box upstairs. "I've got plenty of money.

There's nothing you could do, thank you."

There was a pause before he said:

"Then it's all off? Is that what you mean?"

"Isn't it what you meant yourself only a minute ago?"

"Oh, well, you needn't stake your life on that."

She began to feel faint. It cost her more to stand there talking than she had supposed it would when she took up the receiver.

"I'm afraid I must-must stake my life on that. I-I can't stay now. I can't come any more to see you, either. I've-I've given up posing.

G-good-by."

She heard him beginning to protest from the other end.

"No, Jennie! Wait! For G.o.d's sake!"

But her putting-up of the receiver cut them off from each other.

"So that's all over," she said to herself, turning again into the living room.

But she said it strongly, as Lizzie had many a time said similar things on witnessing the death of hopes, with desolation in the heart, perhaps, but no wish to cry.

Meanwhile, Flynn and Jackman, trudging toward the car station in the square, were discussing this strange case.

"That was a funny line o' talk about the ox treadin' out the corn. I never heard nothin' like that in our church."

But Jackman, being a Methodist and a student of the Bible before coming to New York and giving himself to detective work, was able to explain.

"That's in the Old Testament, to begin with; but Paul takes it up and says that, though it was meant, in the first place, to apply to the animals, its real application is to man. 'That he that ploweth may plow in hope, and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope'-that's the way it runs. That everyone should get a generous living wage and not be cheated of it in the end is the way you might put it into our kind of talk."

"Is it now? And it do seem fair-don't it?-for all the old woman yonder is so daft. And would that Paul be the same _Saint_ Paul as we've got in our church?"

"Oh, the very same."

"Would he now? And you a Protestant! That's one thing I've often wondered-why there had to be so many religions and everyone wasn't a Catholic. It'd be just as easy, and cost us less. Ah, well! It's a quare world, and that poor woman's had a powerful dose o' trouble. I don't wonder she's got wheels in her head. Do you? Maybe you and me'd have them if we'd gone through the same." Having thus worked up to his appeal, he plunged into it. "I know wan little woman 'd be glad if I was to come home to-night and tell her we'd called the thing off. That's my Tessie. It's amazin' how she's set her heart on my not trackin' down this boy."

"Not to track him down would be to compound a felony," Jackman replied, severely.

"Ah, well! So it would, now. You sure have got the right dope there, Jackman, and that I'll tell Tessie. I'll say I'd be compounding a felony, and them words 'll scare her good."

So Flynn, too, resigned himself, putting on once more the mask of craft and implacability that was part of his stock in trade, and which Jackman rarely took off.