The Empty Sack Part 38

"No; not yet. I've been rather hoping that before I told him Bob would-would see his way out of the mess."

"He'll never do that, never in this world-not according to what he's said to me."

"Oh, well, he didn't know everything then that he'll have to know now.

But go and say good night to your father; and I'll come up by the time you're in bed."

"Mother, you're amazing!" Edith spoke more in awe than in admiration; but she obeyed orders by going to her father.

She found him still sitting in the chair by the telephone, bowed forward, his elbows on his knees, and his forehead in his hands. When he lifted his haggard eyes toward her she stood still.

"Daddy, what in the world has happened? Who is it that has killed some one? We couldn't help hearing that much."

He raised himself. "Come here."

Going forward, she knelt down beside him, taking his hand and kissing it.

"You poor daddy! You're bothered, aren't you?"

"It's-it's young Follett. He's been stealing money from the bank, and now he's shot one of the detectives who heard he was hiding in a cabin out on the New Jersey marshes. They'd sent out a description of him to the suburban stations. And only to-day I told his sister that I'd call the thing off and give him another chance."

"She came to see you?"

"She came to see me."

"Then you did what you could, didn't you?"

"I did what I could-then." In spite of the emphasis on the final word, he slapped his knee with new conviction. "I've done what I could all through. It's no use saying I haven't, because I have. There's just so much you can do, and you can't do any more. You can't make a business a home for indigent old gentlemen-now, can you?"

He sprang to his feet, leaving her kneeling by the chair.

"No, I don't suppose you can," she a.s.sented, rising slowly. "But I do wish you'd talk to Mr. Ayling sometime, daddy. He seems to see all these things from new points of view-"

He was pacing about the room very much like Max in moments of agitation.

"Oh, new points of view! There's only one point of view, I tell you, and that's the one on what we've made the country prosperous."

She smiled wistfully.

"Prosperous for some."

"Well, that's better than prosperous for n.o.body, isn't it?"

She said good night to him then, for the reason that she herself was so stirred that she needed seclusion in which to think these strange things over. That Bob should have married Jennie Follett was a shock in itself; but that through his wife he should now be involved in this frightful tragedy was something that her mind found it hard to take in. It was the first time that she had ever come so close to the more terrible happenings in life.

Meanwhile, Junia, overhearing what was said, reconstructed her plan of campaign. In common with great generals, she possessed the faculty of rapid revision, as events took place differently from the way she had expected. By the time she heard Edith go upstairs she had foreseen the line of action which the new situation forced on them.

Collingham was still las.h.i.+ng about the library when she appeared on the threshold. Her calmness arrested him. In a measure it soothed him. It was the kind of juncture in which she always knew what to do, and he had confidence in her judgment. When she said, "Sit down, Bradley; I've something to say," he obeyed her quietly, relighting his cigar. As she, too, sat down, Max or Dauphin would have noted in her the aura of authority which a master wears when about to lecture a schoolboy.

"I've something startling to tell you, Bradley; but I want to say beforehand that you mustn't get worked up, because I see a way out."

Taking his cigar from his lips, he looked at her sidewise. His expression said, "What's it going to be now?"

"What I've heard you telling Edith about this young Follett killing a detective concerns us more closely than you may think, because Bob is married to his sister."

He laid his cigar on an ash tray, swung round to the table between them, clasped his fingers, and leaned on his outstretched elbows. His tone was quiet, even casual.

"When did he do that?"

"Just before he sailed."

"Then I'm through with him."

"Oh no, you're not, Bradley! He's your son, whether he's married anyone or not."

"I can't help his being my son; but I can help having anything more to do with him."

"Listen, Bradley. This whole thing is going to be in the papers in the course of two or three days; and you must come through it with honors.

It's perfectly simple to do it, and win everyone's respect and sympathy.

In addition to that you can get Bob's devoted affection; and you know how much that means to us all."

To Collingham it meant so much that he listened to her attentively, with eager eyes. In Bob's marriage, with its attendant circ.u.mstances, they had obviously received a shock. All Marillo Park, as well as the public in general, would know it to be a shock and would be watching to see how they took it. In that case, the best thing was the sporting thing. They must stand right up to the facts and accept them. Everyone knew that the younger generation was peculiar. It was the war, Junia supposed, and yet she didn't know. In any case, it was not the Collinghams alone who were so afflicted, but dotted all over Marillo were families whose young ones were acting strangely. There were the Rumseys, whose twin sons had refused an uncle's legacy amounting to something like three millions, because they held views opposed to the owning of private property. There were the Addingtons, whose son and heir had married a girl twice imprisoned as a Red and was believed to have gone Red in her company.

There were the Bendlingers, whose daughter had eloped with a chauffeur, divorced him, and then gone back and married him again. These were Marillo incidents, and in no case had the parents found any course more original than the antiquated one of discarding and disinheritance. And yet you couldn't wash your hands of your flesh and blood like that. They were your flesh and blood whatever they did; and it was idiotic to act as if you could cut the tie between yourself and them. He could see for himself that Rumseys, Addingtons, and Bendlingers had lost rather than gained in general esteem by their melodramatic poses.

Now, the thing for the Collinghams was to accept the situation with a great big generous heart. They were to open their arms to Bob, and back him loyally in the combination of difficulties he had to swing. But he himself must swing them. Junia laid emphasis on that. By direct action they couldn't intervene. They could only make it possible for him to act directly on his own responsibility. He had married a wife whose family was in trouble. They, the Collinghams, would not share that trouble, but they would help him to share it, since he had brought on himself the necessity for doing so.

To accomplish this, Junia suggested sending to Bob a cablegram covering the following five points. The Follett boy was in jail charged with murdering a detective; Bob should publish at once his marriage to this boy's sister; he should return to New York by the first convenient steamer; his father was placing ten thousand dollars to his account, and when that was used would place more; he was also ready, if instructed by Bob, to engage the best counsel in New Jersey to defend the boy.

"That will take care of everything till he gets here," Junia concluded, "and in the meantime, we can't do better, it seems to me, than go up, as we always do at this time of year, to our camp in the Adirondacks. This house can be kept open for Bob when he arrives, and Gull can stay with one of the motors to run him in and out of town."

"And what are we to do about the girl?"

"Nothing. That isn't for us to take up. We must leave it to Bob. If he ever brings her to us as his wife-But, then, he never may."

"What makes you think so?"

Her superb eyes covered him with their fine, audacious, womanly regard.

"I'd tell you, Bradley, if-if I didn't think there are things that had better not go into words, even between you and me. Whatever Bob discovers will be his own affair. You and I had best know as little as possible. We can back Bob up, and that's all we can do. Everything else he will have to work out for himself. By the time he's done that he'll be a grown-up man. It's possible he's needed something of the sort to develop him."

So Collingham telephoned his cablegram to Bob, and went to bed comforted. Next morning, on arriving at the bank, he found Junia's counsels supported by the best opinion among his co-workers. That is, he changed his mind as to going to the court in Ellenbrook for the first hearing of the Follett boy, or otherwise expressing himself toward the Follett family. He had given Bob the means of doing whatever needed to be done, and Bob had the cable at his disposition. To go to the court, or to express sympathy in any way, would, according to Bickley, be dangerous to discipline. Feeling in the bank was extremely hostile to young Follett, and it was better that it should remain so. The bank employee's cast of mind, so Bickley said, was, not revolutionary or rebellious against acknowledged rights. By sheer force of habit, it was schooled to reverence for life and property. The principle of owners.h.i.+p being holier to it than any tenet of religion, the Follett boy could not be looked upon otherwise than as an enemy of mankind; and this was as it should be.

While Collingham thus weighed the counsels offered him at the bank, Gussie Follett was blindly making her way homeward from Corinne's with a paper so folded in her hand as not to display its headlines. She had gone to her work with comparative cheerfulness, since, on the previous day, Jennie had been a.s.sured by no less authority than Mr. Collingham himself that Teddy should not be sent to jail. So long as he was not sent to jail, they would be free from public comment, and, free from public comment, they could "manage somehow." Managing somehow being an art in which they had gained authority, they were not afraid of that, even though it involved parting with the one great a.s.set against calamity, the house.

Gussie's first intimation of bad news came when, on entering the shop, she found the four or five other girls huddled round Corinne. Her appearance made them start as if she was a ghost. Her own heart sank at that, though she hailed this shudder with a laugh.

"Say, girls, is this the big reel in 'The Specter Bride'?"