"She can't care for me," he said, with a deep, burning resentment.
"She can't ever have cared a rap, or she wouldn't be able to—"
Sylvia would not allow him to go on. "You must not say such a thing, Arnold. You know Judith's only reason is—she feels if she—if she had children and they were—"
He interrupted her with an ugly hardness. "Oh, I know what her reason is, all right. It's the latest fad. Any magazine article can tell you all about it. And I don't take any stock in it, I tell you. It's just insanity to try to guess at every last obligation you may possibly have! You've got to live your life, and have some nerve about it! If Judith and I love each other, what is it to anybody else if we get married? Maybe we wouldn't have any children. Maybe they'd be all right—how could they be anything else with Judith for their mother? And anyhow, leave that to them! Let them take care of themselves! We've had to do it for ourselves! What the devil did my father do for me, I'd like to know, that I should die to keep my children unborn? My mother was a country girl from up here in the mountains. Since I've been staying here winters, I've met some of her people. Her aunt told me that my father was as drunk as a lord on his wedding night—What did he think of his son? Why should I think of mine?"
He was so evidently talking wildly, desperately, that Sylvia made no attempt to stop him, divining with an aching pity what lay under his dreadful words. But when he said again, "It's simply that Judith doesn't care enough about me to stick by me, now I'm down and out. She can't bear me in her narrow little good world!" Judith's sister could keep her silence no more.
"Look here, Arnold, I haven't meant to tell you, but I can't have you thinking that. Listen! You know Judith, how splendid and self-controlled she is. She went all through the sorrow of Mother's death without once breaking down, not once. But the night before I started to come here, in the middle of the night, I heard such a sound from Judith's room! It frightened me, so I could hardly get my breath! It was Judith crying, crying terribly, so that she couldn't keep it back any more. I never knew her to cry before. I didn't dare go into her room—Mother would—but I didn't dare. And yet I couldn't leave her there alone in such awful trouble. I stood by the door in the dark—oh, Arnold, I don't know how long—and heard her—When it began to be light she was quiet, and I went back to bed; and after a while I tiptoed in. She had gone to sleep at last. Arnold, there under her cheek was that old baseball cap of yours … all wet, all wet with her tears, Judith's tears."
Before she had finished she was sorry she had spoken. Arnold's face was suffused with purple. He put his hand up to his collar and wrenched at it, clenched his fists, and finally, flinging his riding-crop far from him, hid his face in his hands and burst into tears. "Isn't it damnable!" he said over and over. "Isn't it damnable!"
Sylvia had nothing more to say. It seemed indeed damnable to her. She wondered again at Judith's invincible force of will. That alone was the obstacle—no, it was something back of Judith's will, something which even Arnold recognized; for now, to her astonishment, he looked up, his face smeared like a weeping child's, and said in a low tone, "You know, of course, that Judith's right."
The testimony was wrung out of him. But it came. The moment was one never to be forgotten.
Out of her passionate pity was born strength that was not to be denied. She took his hand in hers, his dry, sick man's hand. "Arnold, you asked me to give you a reason why you should get the best you can out of yourself. I'll give you a reason. Judith is a reason. Austin is a reason. I'm a reason. I am never going to let you go. Judith can't be the one to help you get through the best you can, even though it may not be so very well—poor, poor Judith, who would die to be able to help you! Mother wasn't allowed to. She wanted to, I see that now. But I can. I'm not a thousandth part as strong or as good as they; but if we hang together! All my life is going to be settled for me in a few hours. I don't know how it's going to be. But however it is, you will always be in my life. For as long as you live," she caught her breath at the realization of how little that phrase meant, "for as long as you live, you are going to be what you wanted to be, what you ought to have been, my brother—my mother's son."
He clung to her hand, he clung to it with such a grip that her fingers ached—and she blessed the pain for what it meant.