“The question is now,” continued Mrs. Ashton, “What shall we be expected to do for them? They will leave the St. Hilaire the 1st of January; Mr. Dean has manipulated things so far as that for them, and he wants them to put Mr. Lawton into a partly endowed sanatorium of which he himself is a trustee, as all the physicians say he must be kept out of turmoil. The Cub, as they call the boy, is rather out of health, so that a year on a school-ship would be a good place for him. They say if he went into an office at once, as Mr. Dean expected, it would probably kill him.
“Brooke, of course, will have to take up her painting, teach, and paint bonbon boxes for Cuyler and Gaillard, or menus for us. We can all use influence to get her work of that sort, and it will help out for a time until we get sick of her style probably. Lucy swears that Brooke shall live with her; we shall see. I think that there will be something a year from some little investment they have, with which Mrs. Lawton might board in some cheap place, not of course in New York, but Brooklyn or up in the Bronx.”
“Don’t, pray don’t suggest boarding in those dreadful places for that sweet, sensitive woman; it would be like putting lilies-of-the-valley in a saucepan,” cried Mrs. Parks with warm-hearted energy; “it’s too awful! I would be only too glad to have her live with me, if she could put up with the whirl of it, and Brooke too. I often wish that I had an elder sister in the house with whom I could talk things over comfortably and not have them spread over the face of the earth. The hard part of this is that whatever is done the family will be split to kindlings, and it’s no joke parting a mother and son!” For be it said that since the arrival of the belated and beruffled little man in the Easter-egg crib, though Mrs. Parks’s social ambition had rather increased than diminished, the cold-heartedness that is often a part of a social career was altogether lacking.
“Besides, suppose that Mr. Lawton comes back to himself suddenly, for you know they say that it sometimes happens when this aphasia (I’m always possessed to call it aspasia, after the snake that bit Cleopatra) lifts—how will he feel to find himself in an institution and his family scattered?”
“I don’t see that it concerns us,” said Mrs. Ashton, shrugging her shoulders. “If he had only died at once and been done with it, they would all have been comfortable, for my brother says that he carried a simply fabulous life insurance, and that the keeping it up was what made him so economical.”
It was the last week in December, Christmas week. Brooke and her mother sat opposite each other in the den in a silence that was keeping the brain of each more active than the most rapid speech. Although Adam Lawton had not spoken, the tension that had drawn his face had relaxed, and sensation was slowly returning to his foot, though his right hand was still quite useless. But while he took no apparent notice of what passed about him, his wife felt that his eyes dwelt upon her and followed her when she was in range, and only that morning he had feebly retained the hand she had laid within his upturned left palm. Recovery to a certain extent was possible, the physician proclaimed, with no further jars, and care and quietness; but how to secure this? Quiet is not always the inexpensive thing it seems. But with this new-born hope, everything else seemed unimportant to her.
The apparent worst had been carefully explained to them and accepted several days ago, but there had been yet more, for when Brooke had that morning gone to the safety box, where some jewels of her mother’s,—a necklace and other things seldom worn,—and some dozen railroad bonds, the little property that came to her from the Brookes, with some shares of an industrial stock, a birthday gift to Brooke at twenty-one, were stored, the box was empty!
Thoughts would come that must not find words even between themselves as they sat there. They both believed in Adam Lawton’s honour and that if he could speak he would explain; and finally, as the tension tightened into agony, Brooke went over to her mother, and kneeling by her said, “Don’t try to think it out now, mother; some day we shall know, and now it is how to live and work until that day comes.”