Noll walked into the house, and the door was shut behind him with a triumphant slam. He followed the grim old lady into the little sitting-room, and as he went the memory of the queenly figure of the little child Betty as she walked into the dingy room and kissed the jealousy out of this old woman’s heart, came back to him like the fragrance of her sweetness, so that for a while he could not speak what he would have said.
“It was only the other day,” she said, “that you were boys together.... To me it is only yesterday that he was a—little one—in my—arms.” Her eyes filled with tears. “But it is all gone.... This passing of youth is as strange as death....” And she added after awhile: “I think he—was glad—to come back.”
Something of the light of triumph came stealing back to the old tear-stained face.
“And Julia?” he asked.
“I’ve sent her out to get tickets for the theatre,” she said drily. “They will want amusing badly to-night—and the tuning of the fiddles would always rouse my Netherby.... But you’d better go up and see him, Noll—you used to know the way.”
Noll made a pause to take breath at the top of the stairs (how he and Betty had raced up those steps!). He pushed open the attic door.
In the midst of the smudgy dusk that filled the room, his head in his hands, elbows on knees, sat the dim figure of Netherby Gomme, sobbing pitifully.
Noll shut the door softly, and went up to the bowed man:
“Good God, Netherby!” said he—“what’s this?”
He gripped his hand upon the other’s shoulder, affectionately.