“I didn’t want to make you unhappy, too,” Gavan said at last in a weakened voice. His tears were over first and he faintly smiled as he met Robbie’s alarmed, beseeching eyes. Robbie had been scrambling over them, scratching, whining, licking their hands and cheeks in an exasperation of shut-out pity.
“I’m not nearly so unhappy as when you don’t say anything and I know that you are keeping things back,” Eppie choked, pushing Robbie away blindly. “I’d much rather be unhappy if you are.”
It was Gavan, one arm around the rejected Robbie, who had to dry her tears, trying to console her with: “Perhaps I did imagine more than there actually is. One can’t help imagining—at this distance.” He smiled at her, as he had smiled at Robbie, and holding her hand, he went on: “She is so gentle, and so lonely, and so unhappy. I could help her out there. Here, I am so helpless.”
“Make her come here!” Eppie cried. “Write at once and make her come. Send a wire, Gavan. Couldn’t she be here very soon, if you wired that she must—must come? I wouldn’t bear it if I were you.”
“She can’t come. She must stay with my father.”
All the barriers were down now, so that Eppie could insist: “She would rather be with you. You want her most.”
“Yes, I want her most. But he needs her most,” said Gavan. “He is extravagant and weak and bad. He drinks and he gambles, and if she left him he would probably soon ruin himself—and us; for my mother has no money. She could not leave him if she would. And though he is often very cruel to her, he wants her with him.” Gavan spoke with all his quiet, but he had flushed as if from a still anger. “Money is an odious thing, Eppie. That’s what I want to do, as soon as I can: make money for her.” He added presently: “I pray for strength to help her.”
There was a long silence after this. Gavan lay back on the heather, his hat tilted over his tired eyes. Eppie sat above him, staring out at the empty blue. Her longing, her pity, her revolt from this suffering,—for herself and for him,—her vague but vehement desires, flew out—out; she almost seemed to see them, like strong, bright birds flying so far at last that the blue engulfed them. The idea hurt her. She turned away from the dissolving vastness before which it was impossible to think or feel, turned her head to look down at the long, white form beside her, exhausted and inert. Darling Gavan. How he suffered. His poor mother, too. She saw Gavan’s mother in a sort of padlocked palanquin under a burning sky, surrounded by dazzling deserts, a Blue-beard, bristling with swords, reeling in a drunken sentinelship round her prison. Considering Gavan, with his hidden face, the thought of his last words came more distinctly to her. A long time had passed, and his breast was rising quietly, almost as if he slept. Conjecture grew as to the odd form of action in which he evidently trusted. “Do you pray a great deal, Gavan?” she asked.
He nodded under the hat.
“Do you feel as if there was a God—quite near you—who listened?”