Part 23 (2/2)
”I think I could, John Henry.”
His hand reached down and closed over hers, and in the long look which they exchanged under the flickering street lamp, she felt suddenly that perfect security which is usually the growth of happy years. Whatever the future brought to them, she knew that she could trust John Henry's love for her.
”And we've lost seven years, dearest,” he said, with a catch in his voice. ”We've lost seven years just because I happened to be born a fool.”
”But we've got fifty ahead of us,” she replied with a joyous laugh.
As she spoke, her heart cried out, ”Fifty years of the thing I want!”
and she looked up into the kind, serious face of John Henry as if it were the face of incarnate happiness. A tremendous belief in life surged from her brain through her body, which felt incredibly warm and young. She thought exultantly of herself as of one who did not accept destiny, but commanded it.
They walked the rest of the way in silence, but he held her hand pressed closely against his heart, and once or twice he turned in the deserted street and looked into her eyes as if he found there all the words that he needed.
”We won't waste any more time, will we, Susan?” he asked when they reached the house. ”Let's be married in December.”
”If mother is better by then. She hasn't been well, and I am anxious about her.”
”We'll go to housekeeping at once. I'll begin looking about to-morrow.
G.o.d bless you, darling, for what you are giving me.”
She caressed his hand gently with her fingers, and he was about to speak again, when the door behind them opened and the head of Cyrus appeared like that of a desolate bird of prey.
”Is that you, Susan?” he inquired. ”Where have you been all this time?
Your mother was taken ill more than an hour ago, and the doctor says that she has been paralyzed.”
Breaking away from John Henry, Susan ran up the steps and past her father into the hall, where Miss w.i.l.l.y stood weeping.
”I was all by myself with her. There wasn't another living soul in the house,” sobbed the little dressmaker. ”She fell over just like that, with her face all twisted, while I was talking to her.”
”Oh, poor mother, poor mother!” cried the girl as she ran upstairs. ”Is she in her room, and who is with her?”
”The doctor has been there for over an hour, and he says that she'll never be able to move again. Oh, Susan, how will she stand it?”
But Susan had already outstripped her, and was entering the sick-room, where Mrs. Treadwell lay unconscious, with her distorted face turned toward the door, as though she were watching expectantly for some one who would never come. As the girl fell on her knees beside the couch, her happiness seemed to dissolve like mist before the grim facts of mortal anguish and death. It was not until dawn, when the night's watch was over and she stood alone beside her window, that she said to herself with all the courage she could summon:
”And it's over for me, too. Everything is over for me, too. Oh, poor, poor mother!”
Love, which had seemed to her last night the supreme spirit in the universe, had surrendered its authority to the diviner image of Duty.
CHAPTER IV
HER CHILDREN
”Poor Aunt Belinda was paralyzed last night, Oliver,” said Virginia the next morning at breakfast. ”Miss w.i.l.l.y Whitlow just brought me a message from Susan. She spent the night there and was on her way this morning to ask mother to go.”
Oliver had come downstairs in one of his absent-minded moods, but by the time Virginia had repeated her news he was able to take it in, and to show a proper solicitude for his aunt.
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