Part 38 (1/2)

Suzanna kissed the soft, wrinkled cheek. ”Good-bye, Drusilla,” she breathed. ”I love you with all my heart, and I'm coming to see you again very soon.”

CHAPTER XXI

MR. BARTLETT SEES THE MACHINE

But Suzanna did not go to see her friend Drusilla again. For within a few days after the hurried night visit, Drusilla set off on her journey.

There was but one with her when she left, all aquiver to be gone, her eyes set in the distance on visions hid from earthly eyes.

Her boy was close beside her, his arms about her, his heart filled with woe for all the years he had forgotten. And when he kissed her and begged her forgiveness, she was all love and understanding for him, even as when a small boy he had sought her forgiveness and her understanding.

The tents were up now in the big Bartlett grounds. Tents with floors and movable stoves. Children played about the grounds on the rare sunny day that Drusilla went away.

Mr. Bartlett, returning from his mother's bedside, went hurriedly through his grounds, and on upstairs to his own room. There, waiting for him, was Graham. The boy knew at once the truth.

”Father,” he cried, and put his arms about the tall figure.

They stood so, the man finding comfort in the contact of his boy. And so Mrs. Bartlett, returned temporarily from a journey, found them.

She started back at sight of them thus together. They seemed in their new intimacy to have shut her out, quite out of their lives. ”I've been looking for you, Graham,” she began, and then caught her breath sharply at the look the boy gave her; not a premeditated cold look, only one that he might bestow upon a stranger.

”Father has just come home,” he said; ”grandmother--”

But he did not finish. He saw that his mother understood that Drusilla had gone away. Mr. Bartlett spoke to his wife. ”I heard this morning that you had returned to stay for a day. I'm afraid the tents and the children will still disfigure our grounds for some time.”

His bitterness made her wince. But she answered calmly. ”Yes, I returned while you were absent.”

”For a day, as I was told?”

”My plans must change now of necessity--my trip to Italy--”

”Why?” he asked. ”Nothing that has happened need interfere with any of your plans, your mode of living. My mother would not wish that.”

She broke forth then, the color surging up into her face. ”Why are you so unjust to me? Did I suggest that you neglect your mother? You could not expect me to take your place.”

”No--” he spoke sadly. ”No, I could not expect that. Believe me, please, when I say that I put blame on no one but myself. Money--that has been the main thing in life. Money, and more money. There was always need for all I could make.” His eyes swept her lovely gown; the costly cape across her arm. Thought, much money, much time had gone into building her perfect completeness. ”No. A man cannot expect another, even a wife, to fulfill his sacred obligations.”

Perhaps the thought came to her that a wife need not ask so much, ask so demandingly that a man must yield his finest dreams, his every hour to fulfill her wishes. The color deepened and deepened in her cheek.

Perhaps she remembered their first months together when in the grayest days he saw color, because they belonged one to the other.

They had both forgotten Graham. She looked at the boy now. He stood regarding her with that strange aloofness in his eyes, that sharp question. She felt all at once very lonely.

For Graham, she knew, was estranged from her! And now she knew that she desired most of all his love in all its purity. Her social strivings, her desire for leaders.h.i.+p balanced against Graham's former wors.h.i.+pful, chivalrous love for her, dwindled to a pitiful insignificance.

And with the value of her child's love, she suddenly realized the older mother's longings--the one who had just gone on. An old mother--in her full years mourning for the child she had borne, nursed, and succored.

Grieving, that in his manhood he had gone from her; that he had seemingly forgotten in his feverish striving after wealth the lessons she had sought to teach him.

Was the wife to blame for this? But some stern sense of justice derided her efforts to exculpate herself. She remembered how she had held the power to influence him in the early days of their marriage; he had believed so wonderfully in the whiteness of her ideals. He was malleable material in her fingers.