The Lie was coming, too! Suddenly an awful thought flashed across Russy’s little, weary brain. What if the Lie would always come, too? What if he could never get away from it? What if it slept with him, walked with him, talked with him, lived with him,—oh, always!
But Russy stiffened again with dogged courage. “I had to!” he thought. “I had to,—I had to,—I had to! When he said things about Her,—when it’s your mother,—you have to.”
A great time went by, measureless by clock-ticks and aching little heart-beats. It seemed to be weeks and months to Russy. Then he began to feel a slow relief creeping over his misery, and he said to himself the Lie must have “dropped off.” There was not a sound of it in the room. It grew so still and beautiful that Russy laughed to himself in his relief. He wanted to leap to his feet and dance about the room, but he thought of the sharp corners and hard edges of things in time. Instead, he nestled among the cushions of the window-seat and laughed on softly. Perhaps it was all over,—perhaps it wasn’t asleep, but had gone away—to Barney Toole’s, perhaps, where they regularly “put up” Lies,—and would never come back! Russy gasped for joy. Perhaps when you’d never shaken hands with a Lie but once in your life, and that time you had to, and you’d borne it, anyway, for what seemed like weeks and months,—perhaps then they went away and left you in peace! Perhaps you’d had punishment enough then.
Very late Russy’s mother came up-stairs. She was very tired, and her pretty young face in the frame of soft down about her opera-cloak looked a little cross. Russy’s father plodded behind more heavily.
“The boy’s room, Ellen?—just this once?” he pleaded in her ear. “It will take but a minute.”
“I am so tired, Carter! Well, if I must— Why, he isn’t in the bed!”
The light from the hall streamed in, showing it tumbled and tossed as if two had slept in it. But no one was in it now. The mother’s little cry of surprise sharpened to anxiety.
“Where is he, Carter? Why don’t you speak? He isn’t here in bed, I tell you! Russy isn’t here!”
“He has rolled out,—no, he hasn’t rolled out. I’ll light up—there he is, Ellen! There’s the little chap on the window-seat!”
“And the window is open!” she cried, sharply. She darted across to the little figure and gathered it up into her arms. She had never been frightened about Russy before. Perhaps it was the fright that brought her to her own.