And if space itself can be haunted, as memory is haunted, then some time, when the space that was Isabel’s room came to be made into the small bedrooms and “kitchenettes” already designed as its destiny, that space might well be haunted and the new occupants come to feel that some seemingly causeless depression hung about it—a wraith of the passion that filled it throughout the last night that George Minafer spent there.
Whatever remnants of the old high-handed arrogance were still within him, he did penance for his deepest sin that night—and it may be that to this day some impressionable, overworked woman in a “kitchenette,” after turning out the light will seem to see a young man kneeling in the darkness, shaking convulsively, and, with arms outstretched through the wall, clutching at the covers of a shadowy bed. It may seem to her that she hears the faint cry, over and over:
“Mother, forgive me! God, forgive me!”
Chapter XXXII
At least, it may be claimed for George that his last night in the house where he had been born was not occupied with his own disheartening future, but with sorrow for what sacrifices his pride and youth had demanded of others. And early in the morning he came downstairs and tried to help Fanny make coffee on the kitchen range.
“There was something I wanted to say to you last night, Aunt Fanny,” he said, as she finally discovered that an amber fluid, more like tea than coffee, was as near ready to be taken into the human system as it would ever be. “I think I’d better do it now.”
She set the coffee-pot back upon the stove with a little crash, and, looking at him in a desperate anxiety, began to twist her dainty apron between her fingers without any consciousness of what she was doing.
“Why—why—” she stammered; but she knew what he was going to say, and that was why she had been more and more nervous. “Hadn’t—perhaps—perhaps we’d better get the—the things moved to the little new home first, George. Let’s—”
He interrupted quietly, though at her phrase, “the little new home,” his pungent impulse was to utter one loud shout and run. “It was about this new place that I wanted to speak. I’ve been thinking it over, and I’ve decided. I want you to take all the things from mother’s room and use them and keep them for me, and I’m sure the little apartment will be just what you like; and with the extra bedroom probably you could find some woman friend to come and live there, and share the expense with you. But I’ve decided on another arrangement for myself, and so I’m not going with you. I don’t suppose you’ll mind much, and I don’t see why you should mind—particularly, that is. I’m not very lively company these days, or any days, for that matter. I can’t imagine you, or any one else, being much attached to me, so—”