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Page 68
"They're all well, are they?"
"All well. Your mother's been kind of poorly. She thought you'd
write to her." The girl clenched her hands under the bedclothing.
She could not speak just then. "There's nothing much happened. The
post office burned down last summer. They're building a new one.
And--I've been building. I tore down the old place."
"Are you going to be married, Jerry?"
"Some day, I suppose. I'm not worrying about it. It was something to
do; it kept me from--thinking."
The girl looked at him and something gripped her throat. He knew!
Rose might have gone down with her father, but Jerry knew! Nothing
was any use. She knew his rigid morality, his country-bred horror of
the thing she was. She would have to go back--to Rose and the
others. He would never take her home.
Down at the medicine closet the Probationer was carbolising
thermometers and humming a little song. Everything was well. The
Avenue Girl was with her people and at seven o'clock the Probationer
was going to the roof--to meet some one who was sincerely repentant
and very meek.
In the convalescent ward next door they were singing softly--one of
those spontaneous outbursts that have their origin in the hearts of
people and a melody all their own:
_'Way down upon de S'wanee Ribber,
Far, far away,
Dere's wha my heart is turnin' ebber--
Dere's wha de old folks stay._
It penetrated back of the screen, where the girl lay in white
wretchedness--and where Jerry, with death in his eyes, sat rigid in
his chair.
"Jerry?"
"Yes."
"I--I guess I've been pretty far away."
"Don't tell me about it!" A cry, this.
"You used to care for me, Jerry. I'm not expecting that now; but if
you'd only believe me when I say I'm sorry----"
"I believe you, Elizabeth."
"One of the nurses here says----Jerry, won't you look at me?" With
some difficulty he met her eyes. "She says that because one starts
wrong one needn't go wrong always. I was ashamed to write. She made
me do it."
She held out an appealing hand, but he did not take it. All his life
he had built up a house of morality. Now his house was crumbling and
he stood terrified in the wreck. "It isn't only because I've been
hurt that I--am sorry," she went on. "I loathed it! I'd have
finished it all long ago, only--I was afraid."
"I would rather have found you dead!"
There is a sort of anesthesia of misery. After a certain amount of
suffering the brain ceases to feel. Jerry watched the white curtain
of the screen swaying in the wind, settled his collar, glanced at
his watch. He was quite white. The girl's hand still lay on the
coverlet. Somewhere back in the numbed brain that would think only
little thoughts he knew that if he touched that small, appealing
hand the last wall of his house would fall.
It was the Dummy, after all, who settled that for him. He came with
his afternoon offering of cracked ice just then and stood inside the
screen, staring. Perhaps he had known all along how it would end,
that this, his saint, would go--and not alone--to join the vanishing
circle that had ringed the inner circle of his heart. Just at the
time it rather got him. He swayed a little and clutched at the
screen; but the next moment he had placed the bowl on the stand and
stood smiling down at the girl.
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