The Empty Sack Part 55

Knowing that the question was a searching one, Bob found the reply much what he expected.

"I want to see the best thing come out of a mixed-up situation. I don't deny that all these problems bother me; but we have them on our hands, and so there's no more to be said. We've got to find the wise thing to do, and do it. That's all I'm after."

"That's all I'm after, myself, dad."

"I don't admit any responsibility for all this muss," Collingham declared, as if his son had accused him. "I don't care what anyone thinks; my conscience is clear."

"Of course, dad; of course!"

"But since things have happened as they have, I'd like to make them as easy as I can for everyone; and whatever money can do-"

"Or recognition?"

They came back to the original question.

"Yes; recognition, too-as soon as we've anyone to recognize. What I don't understand is all this backing and filling-"

"Have you asked mother?"

"In a way; and she's just as mysterious as you."

Bob tried another avenue.

"You saw Jennie yourself, didn't you?"

"Once; yes."

"What did you think of her?"

"What any man would think of her. She was very charming and-and appealing."

"Did you think anything else?"

The father turned sharply.

"What makes you ask?"

"Because it's possible you did."

"Well, I did. What of it?"

"Only this-that that's the thing I want to nail before I bring her to you as my wife."

"Then why don't you go to work and nail it?"

He found the words he was in search of.

"Partly because I've other things to do; partly because I feel that, by giving it its time, it will nail itself; and, most of all, for the reason that neither she nor I want to take the-the great happiness which we feel is coming to us in the end while-while all this other thing is in the air. I wonder if you understand me."

"More or less."

"It's as if we'd accidentally put the cart of marriage before the horse of engagement. Do you see? Nominally we're married; but really we're only engaged. We can't be married-we don't want to be married-till other things are off our minds."

With this bit of explanation, the Collinghams began to live once more as if nothing had occurred. It was not easy; but by dint of skimming on the surface they were able to manage it. That is to say, Bob came and went, and they asked him no more questions, while on his part he continued to nerve Teddy and his sisters for another test.

If there was anyone noticeably different, it was Junia. Always quick to tack according to the wind, she seemed almost to have changed her course. In putting the best face on Edith's marriage and Bob's complications she had adopted the new ideals that kept her in the movement.

"It's the war," she explained to her intimates. "We're all different.

Life as we used to live it begins to seem so empty. We weren't real; we people who spent our time entertaining and being entertained. It's all very well to say that we're much the same since the war as we were before, but it isn't so. I know I'm not. I'm quite a revolutionist. I may not have made much progress, but I'm certainly more in touch with reality."

With this transition, it became natural to speak of her son-in-law.

"Such a wonderful fellow-all mind, you know, but the type that helps so many of us to find our way through the mists of materialism and selfishness out to the great big ends. To me, it's like a new life just to hear him talk, and I can't help feeling it providential that he's found a wife like Edith. She's an extraordinary girl to be my child-intellectual and practical at once. She can keep her husband company in all his researches and yet cook him a good dinner if their little maid is out. Is there anything so astonishing in life as our own children and what they turn out to be?"

This was a transition, too, leading her to speak of Bob's affairs in the tone of one who, though puzzled, takes them sympathetically.

"And yet I think it's enlarging. Though we've kept only on the outer edge of the drama through which Bob has been going with the girl he's married, the whole thing has deepened his life so much that it couldn't help deepening ours. It's broadened us, too, I think, giving us an insight into lives so different from our own. That's what we need so much, it seems to me, that kind of broadening. It's going to solve a lot of our national problems which at present seem to be insoluble. Yes; Bob is still at home with us, and I tell you frankly that I don't know what is coming out of it. It's all so queer and independent and modern. I'm old-fashioned, and I don't pretend to see through these young people's ways. But I'm Bob's mother, and through all his developments-and he _is_ developing-I'm going with him."

So Junia talked, and talked so much that she was in danger of talking herself round. The instinct to be in the front line of fashion had something to do with it, but self-persuasion had more. The thing of the hour being the throwing over of the old social code, Junia wouldn't have been Junia if she hadn't done it; but, even so, the creeping-in of compunction toward Bob took her by surprise. She had told herself hitherto that she loved him so much that she would work for his permanent happiness even at the cost of his temporary pain; but now she began to fear that what had seemed to her his temporary pain might prove the very life of his life.

She came to this perception through reading in the newspapers the accounts of the Follett boy's trial. By the tacit convention which the Collinghams had established, that they had nothing to do with it, she never spoke of it to Bradley or Edith, nor did they speak of it to her; but she kept herself informed, and knew the devotion with which Bob gave himself to Jennie and her family. The boy's condemnation hit her hard.

When Bradley came home that night, she saw that it had also hit him.

"I'm worth about five million dollars at a guess," he confided to her, "and I'd cheerfully have given four of them if this thing hadn't happened."

"But, Bradley dear, you had nothing to do with it."

"I know I hadn't," he declared, savagely; "and yet I'd-I'd do as I say."

But it wasn't Bradley she was most sorry for; nor was it for the Follett boy. She was sorry that, because of conditions which she herself had fostered, Bob would never reap the fruit of a love in which he had been so chivalrous. She didn't see how he could. Just as there was a natural Bradley and a standardized one, so there was a natural and a standardized Junia. The natural Junia had long seemed dead; but the bigness of the love which she saw daily and hourly exemplified moved her to the painful stirrings of new life.

Meanwhile Bob went with Teddy up the remaining steps by which he mounted his Calvary.

He stood near the cage on the morning when the boy was brought up for sentence, witnessing his coolness. On being asked if he had anything to say before sentence was p.r.o.nounced he replied:

"Nothing, sir, except to thank you for giving me such a fair trial."

The words were spoken in a firmer voice than those which followed:

"The court, in consideration of your crime of murder in the first degree, sentences you to the punishment of death by the pa.s.sage of a current of electricity through your body, within the week beginning...."

When the appeal for a new trial was denied, it was Bob who informed Teddy. When all efforts to obtain Executive clemency had failed, it was Bob again who broke the news. When the boy requested that his mother and sisters should omit their next visit to Bitterwell-should wait till he sent them word before coming again-it was Bob who conveyed the request.

Bitterwell, the great penitentiary, was twenty miles from Pemberton Heights, and through the winter they had gone to see him some thirty-odd times. They went in couples. Gladys and her mother, Jennie and Gussie, keeping each other company. The visits were less difficult than might have been expected because of Teddy's cheerfulness.

Of the request to wait before coming again, they didn't at first seize the significance. While frank with them about everything else, Bob had never given them the date of the week the judge had named, nor had they asked for it. If they did so ask, he meant to tell them; but they seemed to divine his intention.