"Fine!" I exclaimed automatically, in an unnatural voice, like a pistol shot. "They are out in the garden there," and Dibdin nodded. I felt certain that his mind also was seeing the analogy to a funeral. And now my brain seemed to be shaking off its dull lethargy. From somewhere in Maeterlinck the haunting memory of a phrase came glimmering through my consciousness, like a dim light through a fog, to the effect that if Socrates and Christ had been in the palace of Agamemnon, the tragedies of the house of Atreus could not have happened. I longed for a little wisdom to deal with the situation.
"Would you like," I turned to Pendleton, "to see the children?"
"The children," he repeated dazedly. "Yes—yes—I'd like to see them. But—just a moment. The children," he repeated piteously, "but no Laura!"
Sharp, sharp was the stab at my heart when he spoke her name. But either he is a supreme master in deceit or I am the dullest of simpletons. For the struggle through clouds of memory that his features expressed seemed real to me.
"I told you she was dead!" snapped Dibdin gruffly, without turning to him.
"You told me? Ah, yes." And he sighed heavily. "Of course you told me." And his chin sank weightily to his breast. We remained thus silent for a space. Then—
"Come," I said, standing up. "I'll take you to the children."
He rose ponderously, his great frame limp and leaden, and followed me somberly. He seemed sincere enough in his grief, I must own that. Dibdin did not move.
I led him into the garden toward the spot where the children were huddled about Alicia. She was talking to them in low tones and they were listening in dead silence. Never again, I hope, shall I experience that sense of going to my own execution that I experienced at that instant. Execution—no! I could have walked to a gibbet or a guillotine smiling, I am quite sure. What is my life to me? I was walking rather to the execution of those four young souls under the gnarled old apple tree.
Alicia, too! By Heaven! Like a lightning stroke that fact crashed into my soul. He would take Alicia also. No—no! He had no claim upon her, thank God!