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Read Ebook: History of the World War: An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War by Beamish Richard Joseph March Francis Andrew
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Ebook has 4062 lines and 240994 words, and 82 pages
"I don't know why I should tell you this--except that it's a relief to tell anyone. Father is up there waiting for him--with not long to live. If he hears this--his heart--"
Her fingers closed convulsively over the letter.
"Not to see him, but to hear him, to feel him. Father is blind."
"That's still worse. The boy knows of his trouble?"
She nodded.
"Then why won't he come?"
"Because of a quarrel. He wrote this."
She handed the letter to Barnes with a quick motion as though in sudden hope that he might be able to gather from it something she herself had missed. He glanced it through. It was a thoughtless letter. Its whole tone was one of boyish bravado. Barnes flushed as he read it.
"What the boy seems to need," he commented, "is a cowhiding."
"I'm afraid he has fallen into bad company," she apologized for him, but none too heartily.
He checked his own opinion.
Barnes refrained from congratulating her. He realized how really serious an affair she had upon her hands.
"And you--you must tell your father this yourself?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered, "and it's like being ordered to kill him."
She drew in a deep breath that was half a gasp.
Barnes thought a moment.
"The first thing I should do," he advised, "would be to tear up the letter."
"You mean--?"
"I should never let him see that."
She hesitated a moment and then still half dazed tore it into little bits. She tossed the fragments to the ground. They were harried about the greensward by a light sunset breeze. The yellow cat began to play with them.
"Now," he advised, "I shouldn't tell your father anything."
"But he expected Joe to-day! That would leave him to wait."
"Isn't that better?" he asked.
"Ah," she exclaimed, "the blind wait so hard. There is nothing else for them."
"But they suffer hard, too. While waiting he could at least--hope."
She shook her head quickly.
"He would guess."
"A guess is never a certainty," he persisted.
"It would be certainty enough to break down his poor heart. Dr. Merriweather said that Joe alone could keep him with us another week."
Barnes glanced again at the brick house. It scarcely seemed possible that so grim a crisis as this could center there. The situation struck home. In some way he felt the responsibility of this unknown young man's action resting upon his own shoulders. He, too, in a fit of anger had left a father behind him.
"There is just one other course for us," he announced deliberately. "We might deceive him."
She started back.
"I don't understand."
"How many up there must know of this?" he inquired.
"There is only Aunt Philomela," she managed to answer.
"The servants?"
"They have heard of Joe but never seen him."
"The neighborhood?"
"We moved here after Joe left."
She answered his questions mechanically with no suspicion as to what he was leading.
"The boy was young? You say this was five years ago?"
"Yes. Yes."
"A lad changes a good deal in that time. Do I resemble him--even remotely?"
"You?"
She studied him again as though for the first time she had seen him.
"Joe," she faltered, "must be now--about your height."
"That's enough. A grown man may change in every way except in height."
"But--"
"There is only a week or so. I am free. Why couldn't I play the son? Why," he smiled at the odd whirligig, "why couldn't I play the prodigal?"
She started back, her hands clasped to her breast, her eyes grown big.
"How impossible!" she exclaimed.
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