The Lookout Man Part 24

She went upstairs, forgetting to telephone to the maids as she had intended. She moved slowly, apathetically, pausing long before the closed door of Jack's room. She would not go in, after all. Why dig deeper into the grief that must be mastered somehow, if she would go on living? She remembered the maids, and when she had put on one of her soft, silk house gowns that she used to like so well, she went slowly down the stairs, forgetting that she had a telephone in her room, her mind swinging automatically to the one in the hall that she had used as she came in. She had just reached it when the doctor came hurrying up the steps and pressed the bell b.u.t.ton. She saw him dimly through the curtained gla.s.s of the door, and frowned while she let him in. And then--

She knew that the doctor was propelled violently to one side by some one coming behind him, and she knew that she was dreaming the rest of it. The feel of Jack's arm around her shoulders, and Jack's warm, young lips on her cheeks and her lips and her eyelids, and the sound of Jack's voice calling her endearing pet names that she had never heard him speak while she was awake and he was with her--It was a delicious dream, and Mrs. Singleton Corey smiled tremulously while the dream lasted.

"Gee, I'd like to give you a _real_ old bear-hug, but I've got a b.u.m wing and I can't. Gee, we musta pa.s.sed each other on the road somewhere, because I was streaking it down here to see you--gee, but you look good to me!--and you were streaking it up there to see me--"

The adorable young voice hesitated and deepened to a yearning half-whisper. "Did you go away up there just because you--_wanted_ to see me? Did you do that, mother? Honest?"

Mrs. Singleton Corey snapped into wakefulness, but she still leaned heavily within her curve of Jack's good arm. Her eyes--brown, and very much like Jack's--stared up with a shining, wonderful gladness into his face. But she was Mrs. Singleton Corey, and she would not act the sentimental fool if she could help it!

"Yes, I--thought I should have to dig you out of a snowdrift, you--young--scamp!"

"She'd a done it, believe _me_! Only I wasn't in any snowdrift, so she couldn't--G.o.d love her!" He was half crying all the while and trying to hide it; and half laughing, too, and altogether engrossed in the joy of being able to hold his own mother like that, just as he had hungered to do up there on the mountain.

It was the doctor who saw that emotion had reached the outer edge of safety for Mrs. Singleton Corey. Over her head he scowled and made warning signs to Jack, who gave her a last exuberant squeeze and let the doctor lead her to a chair.

"I've got a wife out in the taxi, mother," he announced next. "She wouldn't come in--she's afraid you won't like her. But you will, won't you? Can't I tell her--"

"Bring her right in here to me, Jack," said Mrs. Singleton Corey, gasping a bit, but fighting still for composure to face this miracle of a pitying G.o.d.

Bit by bit the miracle resolved itself into a series of events which, though surprising enough, could not by any stretch of the credulity be called supernatural.

Mrs. Singleton Corey learned that, with a bullet lodged somewhere in the upper, northwest corner of Jack's person, he had nevertheless managed to struggle down through the storm to Marston, with Marion helping him along and doing wonders to keep his nerve up. They had taken the train without showing themselves at the depot, which was perfectly easy, Jack informed her, but cold as the d.i.c.kens.

She managed to grasp the fact that Jack and Marion had been married in Sacramento, immediately after Jack had his shoulder dressed, and that they had come straight on to Los Angeles, meaning to find her first and face the music afterwards. She was made to understand how terribly in earnest Jack had been, in going straight to the chief of police and letting the district attorney know who he was, and then telling the truth about the whole thing in court. She could not quite see how that had settled the matter, until Jack explained that Fred Humphrey was a good scout, if ever there was one. He had testified for the State, but for all that he had told it so that Jack's story got over big with the jury and the judge and the whole cheese.

Fred Humphrey had remembered what Jack had shouted at the boys when they fired. "--And mother, that was the luckiest call-down I ever handed the bunch. It proved, don't you see, that the hold-up was just a josh that turned out wrong. And it proved the boys weren't planning to shoot--oh, it just showed the whole thing up in a different light, you know, so a blind man had to see it. So they let me go--"

"If you could have seen him, you wouldn't have wondered, Mrs. Corey!"

Marion had been dumb for an hour, but she could not resist painting Jack into the scene with the warm hues of romance. "He went there when he ought to have gone to the hospital. Why, he had the highest fever!--and he was so thin and hollow-eyed he just looked simply pathetic! Why, they wouldn't have been human if they had sent him to jail! And he told the whole thing, and how it just started in fooling; and why, it was the grandest, n.o.blest thing a boy could do, when the others had been mean enough to lay all the blame on Jack. And he had his shoulder all bandaged and his arm in a sling, and he looked so--so brave, Mrs. Corey, that--"

Mrs. Singleton Corey reached out and patted Marion on the hand, and smiled strangely. "Yes, my dear--I understand. But I think you might call me mother."

If it cost her something to say that, she was amply repaid. Marion gave her one grateful look and fled, fearing that tears would be misunderstood. And Jack made no move to follow her, but stayed and gathered his mother again into a one-armed imitation of a real bear-hug. I think Jack wiped the last jealous thought out of Mrs.

Singleton Corey's mind when he did that. So they clung to each other like lovers, and Jack patted her white cloud of hair that he had never made bold to touch since he was a baby.

"My own boy--that I lost from the cradle, and did not know--" She reached up and drew her fingers caressingly down his weathered cheek, that was losing some of its hardness in the softer air of the South.

"Jack, your poor old mother has been cheating herself all these years.

Cheating you too, dear--"

"Not much! Your cub of a son has been cheating himself and you. But you watch him make it up. And--mother, don't you think maybe all this trouble has been kind of a good thing after all? I mean--if it's brought the real stuff out to the surface of me, you know--"'

"I know. The gold in us all is too often hidden away under so much worthless--"

"Why, forev--" In the doorway Marion checked herself abruptly, because she had resolved to purify her vocabulary of slang and all frivolous expressions. Her eyelids were pink, her lips were moist and tremulous, her face was all aglow. "I--may I please--mother--"

Mrs. Singleton Corey did not loosen her hold of Jack, but she held out her free hand with a beckoning gesture. "Come. I'm going to be a foolishly fond old lady, I know. But I want to hold both my children close, and see if I can realize the miracle."

"Mother!" Jack murmured, as though the word held a wonderful, new meaning. "Our own, for-keeps mother!"

THE END