“Have you?” he said inquiringly. “Well, I’m right glad to hear it. I’m right glad to hear it, Martha.”
“Yes, dear. I always have.”
He closed his eyes, but she felt a faint pressure upon her hand from his, and sat still for a time, looking at him with fond eyes that grew frightened as the pressure upon her fingers relaxed. She was not sure, for the moment, that he was still breathing; and she looked a terrified inquiry at the grave nurse who sat on the other side of the bed. The nurse shook her head, forming with her lips the word, “Sleeping”; but Dan opened his eyes again.
“It’s curious,” he said, “the way things are. A fellow goes along, and everything seems to run all right, year after year—he can hear a little kind of grindin’ noise, maybe, sometimes, or something seems to slip, but he patches it up and doesn’t let it scare him—he keeps goin’ right along and everything seems to be workin’ about as usual—and then one thing goes wrong—and then another—and then all of a sudden the whole works pile up on top of him, and he’s down under the heap!” He took his hand again from Martha’s, and again passed it tremulously over his forehead in the old familiar gesture. “Well—maybe I could start in again if I can get over what ails me. I expect I need a good night’s rest first, though. Maybe I can sleep now.”
Martha went tiptoeing out, and through the hall to the room that had been Lena’s. Harlan was there, sitting close beside his mother. “He wants to sleep,” Martha told them, but had no sooner spoken than Dan’s renewed coughing was heard—a sound that racked the sick man’s mother. She shivered and gasped, and then, as the convulsion became fainter, went out trembling into the hall.
“Harlan,” Martha said, “why didn’t you tell me you tried to help Dan—at last?”
He rose, looking annoyed. “I didn’t do anything that was in the slightest degree a sacrifice,” he said. “I don’t want you to misunderstand it. I never helped him when I thought it would be thrown away, and I didn’t this time. He made over the new house to me, and I guess Lena’ll sign the deed; she’ll have to. In time it’ll probably be worth all I gave for it. I wasn’t going to see the name of Oliphant dragged through all the miserable notoriety of bankruptcy—and there was something besides.”
“Yes?” she said. “What was that?”
“Well, a pack of old money-vultures were after him, and after all Dan’s my brother.”
“Yes, he is!” Martha said. She began to cry bitterly, but silently; then suddenly she put her arms about him. “He’s still your brother, Harlan! We can say that yet;—he’s just in that room down the hall there—he’s not gone away—he’s still your brother, Harlan!”