Part 52 (1/2)

”My own girl!” he murmured. ”I shall not forget that you have done this for me!”

x.x.xVI

”AND YET--”

”What's the big idea?”

d.i.c.ky looked up from the breakfast table with a mildly astonished air as I came hurriedly into the room dressed for the street, wearing my hat, and carrying my coat over my arm.

”I'm going into town with you,” I returned quietly.

”Shopping, I suppose.” The words sounded idle enough, but I, who knew d.i.c.ky so well, recognized the note of watchfulness in the query.

”I shall probably go into some of the shops before I return,” I said carelessly, ”but the real reason of my going into the city is Mrs.

Stewart. I should have gone to see her yesterday.”

d.i.c.ky frowned involuntarily, but his face cleared again in an instant.

It was the second day after he had brought me the terrible news that Jack Bickett, my brother-cousin, was reported killed ”somewhere in France.” I knew that d.i.c.ky, in his heart, did not wish me to go to see Mrs. Stewart, but I also knew that he was ashamed to give voice to his reluctance.

When d.i.c.ky spoke at last, it was with just the right shade of cordial acquiescence in his voice.

”Of course you must go to see her,” he said, ”but are you sure you're feeling fit enough? It will try your nerves, I imagine.”

Far better than d.i.c.ky could guess I knew what the day's ordeal would be. Mrs. Stewart had been very fond of my brother-cousin. With my mother, she had hoped that he and I would some day care for each other. With her queer partisan ideas of loyalty, when d.i.c.ky had been so cruelly unjust to me about Jack, she had wished me to divorce d.i.c.ky and marry Jack, even though Jack himself had never whispered such a solution of my life's problem. That she believed me to be responsible for his going to the war I knew. I dreaded inexpressibly the idea of facing her.

But when, after a rather silent trip to the city with d.i.c.ky, I stood again in Mrs. Stewart's little upstairs sitting-room, I found only a very sorrowful old woman, not a reproachful one.

”I thought you'd come today,” she said, and her voice was tired, dispirited. I felt a sudden compunction seize me that my visits to her had been so few since Jack's going.

”I couldn't have kept away,” I said, and then my old friend dropped my hand, which she had been holding, and, sinking into a chair, put her wrinkled old hands up to her face. I saw the slow tears trickling through her fingers, and I knelt by her side and drew her head against my shoulder, comforting her as she once had comforted me.

Mrs. Stewart was never one to give way to emotion, and it was but a few moments before she drew herself erect, wiped her eyes, and said quietly:

”I'll show you the cablegram.”

She went to her desk, and drew out the message, clipped, abbreviated in the puzzling fas.h.i.+on of cablegrams:

”Regret inform you, Bickett killed, action French front. Details later.”

(Signed) ”CAILLARD.”

”Caillard? Caillard?” Where had I heard that name? Then I suddenly remembered. Paul Caillard was the friend with whom Jack had gone across the ocean to the Great War. I examined the paper carefully.

”I thought d.i.c.ky said you received the usual official notification,” I remarked.

”That's what I told him,” she replied. ”That's it.”

”But this isn't an official message,” I persisted.