“Yes,” Baird groaned; “loving and innocent. Go on—go on! It breaks my heart—it breaks my heart!”
Remembering that he had said “You might have been my brother,” Latimer caught his breath in a groan too. He understood. He had forgotten—forgotten. But now he must go on.
“At home she had been always a bright, happy, tender thing. She loved us and we loved her. She was full of delicate gifts. We are poor people; we denied ourselves that we might send her to Boston to develop her talent. She went away, radiant and full of innocent gratitude. For some time she was very happy. I was making every effort to save money to take her abroad that she might work in the studios there. She had always been a delicate little creature—and when it seemed that her health began to fail, we feared the old terrible New England scourge of consumption. It always took such bright things as she was. When she came home for a visit her brightness seemed gone. She drooped and could not eat or sleep. We could not bear to realise it. I thought that if I could take her to France or Italy she might be saved. I thought of her day and night—day and night.”
He paused, and the great knot in his throat worked convulsively in the bondage of his shabby collar. He began again when he recovered his voice.
“I thought too much,” he said. “I don’t know how it was. But just at that time there was a miserable story going on at the mills—I used to see the poor girl day by day—and hear the women talk. You know how that class of woman talks and gives you details and enlarges on them? The girl was about Margery’s age. I don’t know how it was; but one day, as I was standing listening to a gossipping married woman in one of their squalid, respectable parlours, and she was declaiming and denouncing and pouring forth anecdotes, suddenly—quite suddenly—I felt as if something had struck me. I turned sick and white and had to sit down. Oh, God! what an afternoon that was! and how long it seemed before I got back home.”
He stopped again. This time he wiped sweat from his forehead before he continued, hoarsely:
“I cannot go over it—I cannot describe the steps by which I was led to—horrid fear. For two weeks I did not sleep a single night. I thought I was going mad. I laid awake making desperate plans—to resort to in case—in case——!”
His forehead was wet again, and he stopped to touch it with his handkerchief.
“One day I told my mother I was going to Boston to see Margery—to talk over the possibility of our going abroad together with the money I had worked for and saved. I had done newspaper work—I had written religious essays—I had taught. I went to her.”
It was Baird who broke the thread of his speech now. He had been standing before a window, his back to the room. He turned about.