Part 39 (1/2)

”Do you think there are any other sons have such a mother?” she said.

”Why don't you ask yourself that question?”

The little old lady looked up with a twinkle in her eyes. ”I thought perhaps you'd understand it better that way,” she answered.

”Besides--it's easy to be a mother. You have only to have a son. It's not so easy to be a son, because you need more than a mother for that.”

Jill looked at her tenderly, then bent and kissed her cheek.

”I think John's very like you,” she whispered. She could not keep it back. And that was as much as the little old white-haired lady wanted; that was all she had been playing for. With her head high in triumph, she walked back with Jill to join the others.

Soon afterwards Jill declared she must go; that her friends would be waiting for her.

”But when----” the old people began in a breath, then stopped together.

”You say, my dear,” said the old gentleman--”I can wait.”

Oh, no--she would not hear of it. He began first. Let him say what he wanted to. He shook his head and bowed. John caught Jill's eye and they held their laughter.

”Then when----” they both began again together and this time, they finished out their sentence--”are we going to see you again?”

We share the same thoughts when we know each other well. But life runs along in its separate channels with most people. They may be many years beneath the shadow of one roof, yet for all they know of each other, they might live at opposite ends of the earth, so little is it given to human beings to understand humanity; so little do people study it except in the desires which are in themselves.

In these two old people, it was quite charming to see one standing out of the way to let the other pa.s.s on, as if they both were going in vastly different directions, and then, to find that one was but speaking the other's thoughts.

They all laughed, but their laughter died away again when Jill announced that in two days she was leaving Venice for Milan, pa.s.sing through the Italian lakes on her way back to England.

”You only stay three days!” exclaimed the little old lady, and she looked quickly at John. But John had known of it. There was no surprise in his face. He breathed deeply; looked away out of the window over the old Italian garden--that was all.

They made her promise to come the next day to lunch--to tea again if she would--to stay with them the whole day. John looked to her appealingly for her answer.

”But I can't leave my friends all that time,” she said reluctantly.

”I'll come to lunch--I'll try and stay to tea. I can't do more than that.”

Then John took her down to her gondola. In the archway, before they stepped on to the _fondamenta_, he took her arm and held her near him.

”You're sure it's too late?” he said hoa.r.s.ely, below his breath.

”You're sure that there is nothing I could do to make things different--to make them possible?”

She clung to him quietly. In the darkness, her eyes searched impenetrable depths; stared to the furthest horizons of chance, yet saw nothing beyond the track of many another woman's life before her.

”It is too late,” she whispered--”Oh, I should never have come! I should never have seen these two wonderful old people of yours. Now I know all that the City of Beautiful Nonsense meant. You very nearly made them real to me that day in Fetter Lane; but now I know them. Oh, I don't wonder that you love them! I don't wonder that you would come every year--year after year to see them! If only my mother and father were like that, how different all of it would be then.”

”You haven't the courage to break away from it all?” asked John quietly--”to make these old people of mine--to make them yours. If I couldn't support you over in London, you could live with them here, and I would do as much of my work here as possible.”

Jill looked steadily into his eyes.

”Do you think I should be happy?” she asked. ”Would you be happy if, to marry me, you had to give up them? Wouldn't their faces haunt you in the most perfect moments of your happiness? Wouldn't his eyes follow you in everything you did? Wouldn't those poor withered hands of hers be always pulling feebly at your heart? And if you thought that they were poor----?”

”They are,” said John. He thought of the Treasure Shop; of that pathetic figure, hiding in the shadows of it, who would not sell his goods, because he loved them too well.