going on the stage and playing a part. She remembered what the old stage-manager had said. She must do her best, put "heart" into her performance. She had to play herself, the Julie she had always been, but she seemed like a stranger. To-night, the real Julie had a heavy heart and a childish desire to throw herself down somewhere—anywhere —and cry and cry. She managed to enter the library, however, with her usual air of smart prettiness. It was a big, square, oakpaneled room with long, French windows that looked far away over the water to blue hills beyond. To-night the water and sky were visible only in a luminous blending of dark intense blue, pierced with many stars. Mr. Seaton, gray and bright-eyed, sat in his high-backed chair beside a big oak table with a beautiful Chinese screen behind him to keep out possible drafts. The evening papers lay beside him in a pile. At Julie's approach, he laid down a pencil and dictionary with which he was seeking to solve an intricate cross-word puzzle. "Hello, Grandpère! Is the sloth on the job?" She bent over and kissed himthe faint, clean smell of eau de Cologne was about him—and slipped into a low chair near his. "It's nice to see you, Julie! No, the sloth is off for the evening, but the gnu is taking his place—in the plural, mind you! Do you know, I've about made up my mind that these fellows make the new puzzles up from the old ones-piece 'em together; that's why the same words appear so often." ing very fit!" He nodded slowly, with a queer little smile. “I'm a sham, child-a hollow mockery-by right I should have died five years ago. I'm virtually dead, as it is no good to myself or any one else. It's only nitroglycerin that's keeping me going. I sometimes wonder why I take it at all. What is this thing in us that forces us to prolong our lives away beyond our allotted time?” "I don't know, Grandpère, but your allotted time isn't up yet-no it isn't!" She shook her bobbed head with emphasis. "I doubt it!" he smiled at her; "Now what have you been doing this week? Have a cigarette? I'll have one with you." Mr. Seaton reached over to the table and took up an ivory box. "Your favorites!" Julie did not move to help him; he was sensitive about it. She sat quite still while he passed the box to her and while he struck a match for her to light her cigarette. Not that she wanted it particularly, but there was a sociability in the two of them smoking together that she knew appealed to her grandfather. Cigarettes, and those few and far between, were all that he was allowed to smoke-a miserable comedown, he considered it, for a man accustomed to strong cigars and the best English brier-pipes. It was all a part of the tiresome ritual of getting ready to die. It irked him terribly this lingering thing; he had always been a methodical man—nothing on his desk, every task finished day by day with promptness and despatch. "What happened this week, anything interesting? Anybody nice come to see you?" Julie put her "I shouldn't wonder! You're look- ashes carefully into the receiver. Old Mr. Seaton shook his head. "There's nobody I want to see; they're all dead. The only people who take the trouble to come out here are the heads of charitable institutions!" He spoke bitterly. "Don't be such a silly old pessimist, don't I come to see you? I'm not an organized charity!" Julie crossed her knees vehemently. "It's good of you, my dear; your visits mean so much, I don't have to tell you!" He touched her cheek lightly with his thin finger. "Certainly you don't! But I like to hear it, it flatters me. Oh, I had a letter from mother this morning. She sent her love to you. Her play's doing wonderfully at His Majesty's; she's made a hit. Isn't that fine! The only thing is it will probably run forever the way they do over there, and she won't come back for ages." "You can always come here, you know, Julie. I'm glad your mother's a success. How does she look now as pretty as ever?" "Oh, prettier! she's gray, you know, and she's bobbed her hair; she looks lovely; as slender as she can be, and not nearly so tall as I amlooks younger than I do in her makeup." "She always was a beauty, but it's her spirit that keeps her young-a wonderful woman, my dear; and your play-how's that going?" "It's a riot! Starting in on the fourth month, and selling out every night! The management has given us all new gowns. I wish you could see mine-it's gorgeous-all front and no back-the eel's whiskers!" The old man smiled and shook his head. A silence fell between them while his thoughts seemed to drift off toward some strange country which he glimpsed perhaps because he was so near the Borderland. Julie kept still. In her intercourse with him she had discovered that he tired less if she let the conversation drift with the tide of his mood in a restful ebb and flow of talk. Sometimes there were long silences between them, when she would pick up a puzzle, and old Mr. Seaton would drop off into a short sleep that would refresh his tired brain. Mechanically, Julie took up the paper and turned to the puzzle, but the squares danced before her eyes. Her thoughts harassed her almost beyond endurance. To sit and talk commonplaces with him when the grim specter of death stood just behind his shoulder, was more than she could bear. She usually forgot his frail condition, in the selfless pleasure of their companionship; but to-night she was the instrument chosen to give him pain; she had to hurt him. unspeakably; stab him in a vulnerable spot, perhaps be responsible for his death. She groped for a way out, but was met only by an impasse. Through the mist of her thoughts, she became aware that Mr. Seaton had awakened; he was talking. She looked up and met his keen blue eyes. An article he had been reading he said, dealt with certain conditions in the juvenile courts and suggested his boyhood to him. He laid down the magazine and began to recall certain happenings, escapades of his boyhood at school, nearly—it was incredible-seventy-five years ago! He talked of his school, the life there, the masters, the discipline, and above all, the pranks that he, as a boy of ten had played on the stodgy teachers. She listened while he drew her the picture of that small boy; clever, rebellious, resourceful; brilliant when he chose to be; resentful of injustice—just like little boys she knew. But that boy, that brilliant, incorrigible, profane and mischievous little Seymour that the old man was making live in her imagination, like Peter Pan, had not gone back to the Never-Never-Land! He had remained to grow up-to grow old, to decay-she shuddered. The small, gray, desiccated figure with the keen blue eyes and snow-white imperial, sitting opposite in the high-backed chair, was that boy! He still lived. The thick brown hair-silver nowbut the same hair; the bony structure of the frail body was the same structure that had served the boy, Seymour, to win cups and medals in certain athletic achievements. Those thin, immaculate, slowly-moving, ivory hands were the same, made of the actual bone and muscular tissue, they were the chubby, dirty fingers that had collected bugs and frogs and put worms on fish-hooks for that grimy, vivid little Seymour of seventy-five years ago. Seventy-five years! Julie couldn't take it in. So long ago was a "period"; something that belonged in her school history book. The people who lived so long ago, only existed between the covers of books. But here was Grandpère telling animated anecdotes of his childhood! She wondered how he could remember. It would be the ego-that enduring little flame that could burn as brightly at eighty as at eight. The only difference was that in maturity one learned to screen the flame from observation. Grandpère had given her a picture of that boy, and made him live; they had the same soul, the child and the old man-it would endure. Perhaps when the old man waked from his last sleep, he would again be the boy in the Never-Never-Land. It took away the ugliness from death. That mischievous little spirit in Grandpère was deathless; in eighty-five years, its vigor was undimmed! "Yes, I was suspended for two months, but when I came back, I wrote a composition on the Egyptian mummies that was read out in class, and took a prize. Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' bound in red and gold calf!” "You were bright, even if you were naughty, weren't you, Grandpère?" He nodded and leaned his head against the high back of his chair. The narrative had evidently tired him. Already Julie felt the little boy slipping back into the shadows whence he had been evoked-there was only left a tired old gentleman. "How about us all going to bed, dear?" Julie spoke softly. "Not just yet-you know I don't like to lose a minute of your visitI'm all right-play something, and then we'll go to bed." Julie rose obediently. Over in a shadowy corner of the room was a small, grand piano. It had been placed there for Julie. Mr. Seaton liked the pleasant, desultory way she played and the warm sweetness of her somewhat husky contralto. She sat down and played a few chords of an Irish song of her mother's. There was an ache-a sob-in her throat. She wondered how she could get a song out of it. She took the highest note of the refrain, an E, very softly. She thought she heard Mr. Seaton give a little sigh. It was a sad song. She wished now she hadn't sung it. She'd try a more cheerful one. After improvising to change the key, she swung into the charming "Cuckoo." "The cuckoo is a pretty bird, She singeth as she flies, She bringeth us good tidings, She telleth us no lies; She flies the approaching winter, While she was singing, Julie was confirming the wisdom of a thought she had in mind. For the last half hour she had been making up her mind not to tell Mr. Seaton of his son's death until the morning. It would be Sunday. The papers were often delayed on that day, so it would be an easy matter to keep them away from the library. He seemed so peaceful to-night-she couldn't bear to tell him-to-night. "Cuckoo-Cuckoo-" she sang joyously, "I nowhere have a home!" Somehow the cheerful little song made Julie happier. That and her resolution to spare Mr. Seaton until to-morrow. She got up from the piano and went over to his chair. "Wake up, dear!" She patted his shoulder. "Twelve fifteen, time to go to bed! You know what they'll do to me they always think I keep you up! I'll ring for Peters." She leaned over and touched the buzzer; she had never known him to sleep so soundly in his chair. "Grandpère!" She was puzzled. Peters, an old retainer, never very far away, appeared at her side. "Peters, he's so sound asleep!" Her voice rose a little. "Excuse me, Miss!" The old servant suddenly became a person. He put Julie firmly to one side and leaned over his master. He took one of his hands and felt his pulse-then laid it gently back on the arm of the chair. "Grandpère!" Julie called nerv ously. Peters stepped back. "No usecalling-Miss." "You-mean?" She bent over the quiet figure in the chair. Julie stood by the apparently sleeping figure in the chair, stunned by the mystery of death. He had spoken to her fifteen minutes ago and now, he would never speak again. A merciful and allwise Power had taken him at a tranquil moment! He had been spared pain that was beyond his strength to endure. There was something beautiful about it, but at the same time, Julie found herself engulfed in a wave of sadness. Tears began to gather in her eyesgreat tears of pity-the abysmal longing to have done greater service for the one who has passed on that comes inexorably into the presence of death. A response to the pathos of that journey which must be taken alone. It all swept over Julie, and tore her heart with great, heavy sobs. If she only could have done more for him! In a moment the othersthe family-would come in; but for this one moment he belonged to her. She leaned over and kissed the silky white hair on the top of his head. "Good-by, Grandpère." Her tears showered upon his hair; she wiped them gently away with her small, red handkerchief-it was soaking wet, and she decided to commit a theft; she took old Mr. Seaton's beautiful, monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket and wiped her eyes with it. The perfume clung to it. She would keep that handkerchief always, and she would never smell that cologne without thinking of Grand père, if she lived to be a hundred. When they came in, they found her standing, in her red dress beside the quiet, gray figure in the chair. They swept her away like a dry sirocco. Sure that she had been the victim of their demands, they had no further use for her. She let them think what they pleased. Some day she would tell the truth to the doctor. It was enough for her that she had given the old man a last hour of happiness. That night she had been drafted to play a part which she would have thought was beyond the compass of her meager talent. Never before had she dared to explore the resources which might lie deep in her nature, for fear that if she tried to draw too heavily upon that slender treasury, she would find herself bankrupt. Now the ghost of that fear was laid. Her "performance" had been a brave one, she knew. There was no one to praise her-no flowers or telegrams. The ritual of a successful début was lacking. But it was enough for her that she had given her best to the beloved audience of one. The memory of that evening would be a little shrine where she would go sometimes and burn the slender candle of her talent. There she would find inspiration in the recollection of her part in the drama of Grandpère's quiet passing. With that thought in mind, she knew she would never again fail to put the "heart" into her work. She held the handkerchief smelling of eau de Cologne pressed close to her cheek and went away, full of tears, but with a new courage. |