Jap Herron Part 20

Under the right conditions they say I have a fighting chance."

"You are sure that you have every advice?" j.a.p's voice was so hoa.r.s.e that she looked up at him in alarm.

"Yes, j.a.p, but I knew it before. Months ago, even before he was so sick in the summer, I had a dream, and this was my dream: Ellis, with that beautiful smile that every one loved, was waiting out there at the gate, and I was hurrying to get the boy ready to go with him. I knew, when I awoke, that he was ready to wait our boy's coming. Oh, j.a.p, do you think that smile was for me, too?"

The look of agony in j.a.p's sensitive face was more than she could bear.

She clutched his arm.

"Oh, j.a.p, pray--help me to pray that he was waiting for me, too. The time has been so long. I want to be with my boy to the last. You understand, j.a.p. I don't believe that words are needed."

He put his arms around her. He could not speak, but his head bent above hers and the hot tears dropped upon her brown hair, now streaked with gray.

"I have done the work he wanted me to do," she sobbed. "He wanted me to be a mother until you were on the plane he had planned. Like the b.u.t.terfly whose day is done, j.a.p, I would go. I am so tired, and--boy, I have never ceased to long for Ellis. The world could not supply another soul like his."

"Flossy," j.a.p said in smothered tones, "I know. I have walked the floor for hours, missing him until I was almost frantic. But, little Mother, what is left to me if you go? Without you, I am drifting again."

"I would fear that, if I had never seen into the deeps of Isabel's nature. And to think that I once decried--but I didn't understand, j.a.p. When your mother came, there was a revelation. I don't fear for your future now. And when I knew this, I suddenly felt tired and old.

I pray not to survive my boy."

The following morning brought the first fall rain. And then, for endless weeks, the leaden sky drooped over the world. Dreary depression and the penetrating chill of approaching winter filled the air. Only the unwonted pressure of work kept the boys from brooding over the inevitable that would come with the spring-time. To relieve Flossy of all unnecessary burdens, j.a.p and Bill went to the hotel for their meals, but every evening one or the other went to sit with her.

At length there came a time, late in November, when the office work was more than both of them could handle, and for several days the visits were interrupted.

"Flossy is sick," announced Bill, hanging his dripping raincoat behind the door. "I saw Pap just now, and he told me. He and his wife were there all night. He says that J. W. has been so bad off for a week, has had such bad spells at night, that Flossy has hardly slept, and yesterday she broke down and sent for Pap. He took Doc Hall along, and they are afraid she has pneumonia."

j.a.p threw his paper aside.

"Why didn't we know that J. W. was worse?" he demanded. "I sent some one to inquire every morning while we had the big rush on, and Flossy said that they were all right. I thought that she was going to take him to the mountains."

"I guess that she didn't know how sick he was," commented Bill. "Pap was to haul the trunks to-morrow, as Flossy told us. She wanted to start on Sunday so that you and I could go as far as Cliffton with her.

She knew we were working overtime to get things cleaned up."

j.a.p put on his raincoat, for it was pouring a deluge.

"I will not be back if Flossy needs me," he said.

For three days and nights he hovered over the two sick-beds, while the wind soughed mournfully around the cottage, and the rain dripped, dripped, dripped, like tears against the wall outside. Neighbors and friends volunteered their services. Bill and Isabel came as often as was possible; but when all the others had gone, j.a.p kept his solemn vigil alone. On the afternoon of the fourth day, there was a sudden turn for the worse. Dr. Hall was hastily summoned. And then, all at once, without any seeming warning, it happened.

The last gasping breath faded from the body of Ellis's child, and as j.a.p leaned over to close the wide, staring eyes, he could hear the rasping breaths that rent Flossy's bosom, as she lay unconscious in the next room.

"With G.o.d's help we may pull her through," whispered Isabel, twining her arms around his neck. He turned stony eyes of grief upon her.

"If G.o.d helps, He will let her go with J. W. to meet Ellis," he said in a voice strained to breaking.

He drew the girl from the chamber of death, and sat down beside Flossy's bed. He caught one fluttering, fever-burned hand in his, and the restless muttering ceased. Then the eyes opened. They seemed to be looking not at j.a.p but above him.

"Ellis!" she cried, and slept.

"When she awakes, she will be better or----" Dr. Hall broke off, and went over to the window. "It's the crisis," he finished huskily.

Flossy, in her quiet, optimistic bravery, had made her place in the hearts of her townspeople. Isabel knelt beside her, watching j.a.p's face, with its unnatural calm, fearfully. She dared not speak. Bill stood awkwardly at the foot of the bed, his cap twirling uncertainly in his hand. His eyes s.h.i.+fted uneasily from the thin, white face on the pillow to the frozen features of j.a.p. A clock ticked loudly.

The thick gloom broke. A tiny linnet that j.a.p had given Flossy fluttered to the swing in its cage and burst, all at once, into song, and a vagrant sunbeam darted through the western clouds. Flossy opened her eyes.

"j.a.p," she gasped painfully, "is this the thing called Death, this uplift of joy?"

The doctor raised her in his arms and gave her a few sips of medicine.

She was easier. She motioned j.a.p to bend closer.

"Is he gone?" she asked clearly. "Is my boy with his father?"

j.a.p kissed her forehead gently.

"He is with Ellis," he whispered.

"Then I thank You, great Giver of all Good," she cried happily, "for I can go now." She summoned Bill with her eyes.

"I want you to make the boy very proud of the men he was named for,"

she smiled. It was a smile of heavenly beauty, as the pure soul of Ellis Hinton's wife flew to join her loved ones.

CHAPTER XVIII

Bill and Isabel led j.a.p from the room as the doctor drew the sheet over Flossy's face. Together the three left the cottage. In dazed silence they walked past the row of modest homes until the business street was reached. Across Main street they went, in stony silence, the girl clinging to an arm of each of her escorts. In front of the elm-shaded residence of Tom Granger, now stark and bare in its late autumn undress, they paused. Isabel, unheedful of the pa.s.sing crowd, threw her arms around j.a.p's neck and kissed him pa.s.sionately. A moment he held her in his arms, his tearless eyes burning. And in her awakened woman's heart, she knew that he was looking through her, beholding the trio of adored ones whose influence had made his heart a fitting habitation for her own. And in that consciousness Isabel Granger experienced no twinge of jealousy.

Silently she walked up the brick-paved path to the stately old house, as j.a.p and Bill turned back toward Main street. When they reached the office, they locked the door behind them. With the mechanical action of automata, they climbed to their stools and threw the belated issue of the _Herald_ into type.

"Bill, can you do it?" j.a.p asked at length.

"I'll do my best," Bill said huskily. And his tears wet the type as he set up a brief obituary notice.

The morning of the funeral broke clear and sunny, as fall days come.

The air was clear and sounds echoed for long distances. It was a joyous new day, and yet a threnody swept through its music. Something of this j.a.p and Bill felt as they hurried to the house of Death. Judge Bowers met them at the door. His face was red and overcast. He s.h.i.+fted uneasily.

"I sent for you, because we have to fix things decently for Flossy."

"Decently?" echoed Bill.

"Why, yes. Ma and me got the caskets and all that. Everything's 'tended to, but the service. You know Flossy was a free-thinker, and never belonged to no church."

"Well, what of it?" Bill said shortly.

"We have got to get somebody to preach a sermon," a.s.serted the Judge, his flaccid face showing real concern. "I don't see how we are going to manage it. It looks queer to ask anybody to preach over a non-professor."

"Why do it then?" Bill's tone was enigmatic, as he followed j.a.p into the little parlor where the effects of the Judge's work were apparent.

Side by side stood the caskets, each one holding a jewel more precious than any diadem. j.a.p sat down between them, dumb to the greetings of the friends who came for a last look at the two set faces, and there he sat until the afternoon. The room was half filled with people when the Judge aroused him by a sharp grip on his arm.