I shall obey, and wait for the interview. It's like waiting to be shot at dawn!
CHAPTER XXXII
I persuaded Brian to tell Father Beckett. I wasn't worthy. But the dear old man came straight to me, transfigured, to make me go with him to his wife, even before he had finished reading the letter.
"You must come," he said—and when Father Beckett says "must," in a certain tone, one does. It's then that the resemblance, more in expression than feature, between him and his son shines out like a light. "It will save mother the trouble of asking for you," he went on, dragging me joyously with him, his arm round my waist. "She'd do that, first thing, sure! Why, do you suppose we forget Jim's as much to you as to us? Haven't you shown us that, every day since we met?"
What answer could I give? I gave none.
Mother Beckett had been lying down for the afternoon nap which by my orders she takes every day. She'd just waked, and was sitting up on the lounge, when her husband softly opened the door to peep in. The only light was firelight, leaping in an open grate.
"Come in, come in!" she greeted us in her silver tinkle of a voice. "Oh, you didn't disturb me. I was awake. I thought I'd ring for tea. But I didn't after all. I'd had such a beautiful dream, I hated to come out of it."
"I bet it was a dream about Jim!" said Father Beckett. He drew me into the room, and the little lady pulled me down beside her on the wide, cushiony lounge. Her husband's special arm-chair was close by, but he didn't subside into it as usual at this cosy hour of the afternoon. Instead, he knelt stiffly down on one knee, and took the tiny, ringed hand held out to him. "You wouldn't think a dream beautiful, unless Jim was in it!"
"Yes I would, if you were in it, dear," she reproached him. "Or Molly. But Jim was in this dream. I saw him as plainly as I see you both. He walked in at the door, the way he used to do at home, saying: 'Hello, Mother, I've been looking for you everywhere!' You know, Father how you and Jimmy used to feel injured if you called me and I couldn't be found in a minute. In this dream though, we didn't seem to be back home. I wasn't sure where we were: only—I was sure——" She stopped, with a catch in her voice. But Father Beckett took up the sentence where she let it drop. "Sure of Jim?"