Claire had far more in common with her dead father than with the gentle woman behind her. In looks, in build, in spirit she was essentially her father’s child. Never before had the dead man’s qualities had reason to display themselves in her. But now it was different. In her realisation of her sudden responsibilities, the flood-tide of the reckless gambling spirit of her parent poured forth. Her brother Jim, in the same spirit, had fared forth to the uttermost ends of the earth on a bare—almost ridiculous—chance to help them in their need. He had achieved. And only the merciless waves had robbed him and them of the full fruits of his gambler’s adventure. Could she sit down under the misfortune that had robbed them of a well-loved brother and the fortune he had won for them? No. For all the fall day was closing, with their fortunes at a lesser ebb than the dawn had found them, their need was still urgent. And the spirit of her father was awake and burning strongly in her as she contemplated its reality.
She turned abruptly into the darkening room. Her gaze took in the figure of her mother still bowed under her load of grief. Then it passed to the thick packet of notes lying where she had left them on the table. They represented the limits of their worldly fortune. They were all that stood between them and the starvation Booker had originally designed for them. Her eyes lit, and her spirit suddenly buoyed.
But she turned away and passed quickly into the lean-to sleeping room that was hers. What was her purpose was of little concern. Her woman’s mind was working swiftly, almost feverishly. She stood for a while contemplating the trifling wardrobe of gowns hanging under a cotton curtain. She examined each garment quickly, urgently. Then, with a gesture that was half impatient, she permitted the curtain to fall back over them and she moved across to the small mirror before which she was accustomed to brush her hair.
Here she stood for a while studying the features it reflected. The message it passed her was for her ears alone. Maybe it told her some of those things which everybody but she was fully aware of. Maybe she only obtained a measure of reassurance. Whatever happened in those long, silent moments she turned away at last, and something seemed to have transformed her. Her eyes were alight. Her shapely lips were firmly set, and she passed into the living-room beyond. Her whole manner was that of one whose mind is irrevocably made up.
She came to her mother’s side and laid a gentle hand on her bowed shoulder.
“Mum, dear,” she said deliberately, “we’re going to move right into Beacon. It’ll set you crazy and me too, to stop around out here. There’s things this place won’t ever let us forget, an’ we’ve got to forget. Maybe we’re mostly feeling dead now. That’s the way grief hits us. But we’re both alive and need to go right on living. If Jim was here he’d decide for us the thing we need to do. He isn’t. So—so I’ve got to think for us both and push it through. We got eight thousand dollars to feed, an’ clothe, an’ shelter us. Maybe it would do for a while. But after—what then?”
The mother looked up. It was the questioning of one incapable of anything else.
“What do you mean, Claire? What’re you going to do?”
There was no inspiration, there was even no interest in the questions.
“Do? Do?” Claire’s reiteration was thrilling with live purpose and something like leaping excitement. “Do? Why, do as father would have done. Do as he did time and again.”