Part 39 (1/2)

Corinne, whose real name was Mamie Callaghan, emerged from a miniature forest of upright metal rods crowned with hats at various roguish angles. A dark, wavy-nosed woman of cajoling Irish witchery, she could hardly keep the prank from her voice even at such a time as this.

”So, Gussie, you don't know! Well, some one's got to break it to you, and I guess it'll have to be me.”

But it was broken already, even before Corinne had brought forward the paper she was hiding behind her back.

”Teddy!” Gussie cried out. ”There's something about him in that thing.

Let me see it! Let me see it!”

Corinne let her see it, and the work was done. Gussie couldn't read beyond the headlines with their ”Robbery” and ”Murder” in Italic capitals, but she grasped enough. The snapshot of Teddy taken in the road, just as he had been dragged, a ma.s.s of slime, out of the mora.s.s, made her reel backward as if about to fall; but when Eily O'Brien sprang to her support she waved her away gently. She was not going to faint.

Her physical strength wouldn't leave her, whatever else was gone.

”I'm-I'm going home,” was all she said, crus.h.i.+ng the paper against her breast.

”Oh, Gus, lemme go with you!” Eily had begged; but this kindness, too, Gussie put away from her.

She could go alone, and alone she went, with one consuming thought as she sped along.

”Oh, momma! Poor momma! This'll about finish her.”

And yet when she entered the living-room her mother was sitting, calm and serene, while Mr. Brunt told the tale of the New Jersey marshes.

Jennie, white, tearless, terrified, crept up to Gussie, and the two clung together as their mother said, in her steady voice.

”So I understand that only one of them is dead-the Irish one.”

Mr. Brunt a.s.sented.

”Yes, Flynn, the Irish one.”

”I'm not surprised. I told him when he was here the other day that what he called 'law and order' would bring him to grief, as they bring most of us, though I didn't expect it to be so soon. And my son, you say, is in jail.”

”At Ellenbrook.”

”They'll try him, I suppose.”

”I'm afraid so.”

”And then they'll send him to the chair.” Mr. Brunt didn't answer. ”Oh, you needn't be afraid to speak of it. I know they will. I'm not sorry.

Teddy will be sorry, of course-till it's over. But I'd rather he'd suffer a little now and be done with it than go through the h.e.l.l of years his father and I have had. If there was going to be any chance for him, it would be different; but there's no chance, not the way the world is organized now.”

The girls crept forward together.

”Momma darling-”

But Lizzie resumed, calmly:

”Where there's nothing but government by the strong for the strong, people like ourselves must go under. You'll go under, too, Mr. Brunt.