CHAPTER XXIV
"Tom Granger got a telegram," announced Bill, coming into the office one morning early in April. "He wants to see you at once, Jap."
Jap's face blanched. He looked dumbly at Bill.
"No, it's not her," Bill hastened to say. "It's her mother."
Jap stumbled awkwardly up the walk to the Granger home. The letters from Isabel had been far from reassuring, and only the previous day Dr. Hall had sounded a warning that the care of the invalid was too much for the girl, taxed as she was in both mind and body. Into Jap's consciousness there crept the thought that she had never fully recovered from those terrible weeks when she hovered over him.
Tom Granger met him at the door. His eyes were red with weeping. He drew Jap into the parlor and gave him two telegrams.
"This came at midnight," he said brokenly. Jap read:
"Mother sinking. Come. ISABEL."
"And this just arrived," Granger choked, as the fatal words met Jap's eye:
"Mother dying. Come. Bring Jap. ISABEL."
"The train leaves in half an hour. I don't have to ask you anything, my boy."
Jap turned and hastened away. He did not weaken Granger's feeble strength with words of sympathy.
It was the afternoon of the second day when the two stood with Isabel at the foot of the bed. Alice Granger lifted her heavy lids, and a gleam of recognition shone in her eyes. Swiftly those two, the husband and the child, drew near, eager for any word that might pass the stiffening lips. Jap stood looking sorrowfully down on her as they knelt at her side.
"Jap," she whispered, "you, too," and her feeble fingers drew him.
With a choked sob he knelt beside Isabel. The mother fumbled with the covers until her hand, icy cold, touched his. Instantly his firm, strong hand closed over it. She smiled and murmured:
"Tom. Isabel."
They leaned over her in a panic of fear.
"Isabel's hand," she breathed, and placed the two hands together. "Tom, there is time," she whispered; "I want——" She sank helpless.
"I know what you would say," cried Granger, the tears streaming down his face. "You want him to be our son before—before you say good-bye."
A flash of joy illumined her thin face. She sighed contentedly.
A minister was hastily summoned, and a half hour later Isabel sobbed her grief in the arms of her husband, as they stood awaiting the coming of the Death Angel.
"It made such a difference in her feeling toward you, your illness at our house," Tom said, looking down upon her closed eyes and fluttering lips. "She never understood you, and in her quiet way she was always reserving judgment, when I used to talk so much about you. A mother finds it hard to think any man is the right one for her only child, and she was so dependent on Isabel. She hadn't any doubts, after she saw you in that dreadful fever, with all your soul laid bare to us. She knew Isabel would be safe, and after that she stopped worrying."
A grim hand caught at Jap's throat, as Tom sank on his knees and buried his face in the pillow to smother his sobs. Into his memory there came the words of Flossy: "When your mother came, there was a revelation. I don't fear for your future now. And when I knew this, Jap, I suddenly felt tired and old."
Flossy had clung to life until he had found the woman who could take her place. Then, all at once, she let go. And now Alice Granger, an invalid for twenty-three years, had relaxed her feeble hold on life when she knew that her child was in safe and gentle hands. Must Death forever draw its grim fingers between him and his happiness? He looked at his bride, fragile as a spring flower, and a great fear rushed over him. Dumb, he stood there, stroking Isabel's hair with futile caresses.
At last the glazing eyes opened, and Alice Granger said faintly:
"Tom, not alone."
"Not alone?" he cried in anguish. "Always alone without you, Alice."
She only smiled—and then she fell asleep.
It was a strange wedding journey. Between the half-crazed father and the exhausted wife, Jap was taxed to the uttermost. Isabel, for once helpless, lay white and silent in the compartment, too weak to do more than cling to her one tower of strength, while Tom Granger rent Jap's sympathetic heart with his unreasoning grief. At length nature demanded her own; from sheer exhaustion they slept. Jap left them alone and stood out on the platform between the coaches.
"Is my life always to hold grief?" he queried of his soul. A throb of fear tore at his consciousness. Isabel's death-white face arose before him.
"No!" he cried fiercely, "there is a God. He will not take all from me."
He went back into the car and, kneeling beside his sleeping wife, prayed madly to his God for mercy.
The grasses were green along the tracks, and the blue violets lifted their rain-washed faces as the familiar stations loomed in sight near the journey's end. At the last station below Bloomtown, Bill and Dr. Hall entered the sleeper.
"We have everything arranged," Dr. Hall said to Jap, while Bill fought with his tears. "Isabel Granger has gone through too much to stand the harrowing experience of a funeral. The carriages are waiting, and it has all been attended to at the cemetery. We'll just have a short service out there, and I want you to keep her in the carriage with you. Bill and I did things with a high hand, but it had to be so. I wouldn't risk having the girl look into her mother's grave. She couldn't stand it."
The platform was crowded with friends, and Tom Granger was responding to sympathetic greetings with tears he did not try to hold. Jap half carried Isabel to the nearest carriage, and Dr. Hall took his place with them. Bill had hurried to meet Mabelle, who tactfully drew Tom Granger into the second carriage, in which the minister sat waiting. In a dream the well known landmarks of Bloomtown passed before Jap's eyes. There was the quick jolt that marked the crossing of the railroad tracks, and then the cool green of the cemetery came into view.
While the brief service was read, Jap held Isabel tight to his aching breast. His eyes wandered away beyond the yellow mound of earth, and in the hazy distance he saw his City of Hope. The young grass smiled above the mounds that held the empty shells of those he had loved, the first in all the world who had loved him. On Flossy's straight white shaft he read "I Hope." That was all.
After the slow cortège had moved its way back to town, Mabelle left the carriage and approached her brother. Bill, with his face frankly tear-stained, was beside her. The coachman had descended from his box, and was opening the door.
"Let me take her—let me take your sweetheart to our cottage," she pleaded. Leaning past him, she took one of Isabel's black-gloved hands. "Dear, I am Jappie's sister. I want to have you with me until you are better."
Tom Granger sat up and leaned out of the carriage, so that all could hear him.
"Jap is coming home with us," he said. "He is my son. He was married to Isabel just before her mother left us."
And it was thus that after well-nigh three years of waiting Bloomtown celebrated the long-expected happiness of her best loved son.