“Yes,” Mrs. Wilbur answered soothingly, “I will help people to explode, and I will see that he—”
“No, you cannot do anything for him now.”
Later he raised himself enough to say querulously, “Why did you marry Wilbur?”
She smiled sadly.
“But it will be your money, not Wilbur’s. And perhaps,” an amused and slightly wicked smile crept over his face, “there will not always be a Wilbur.” That seemed to be his hope in leaving her this money.
Then he had been content to lie without speaking, his hand resting in hers. A few hours later, when he had died, she fancied that the face, instead of looking at her emptily, spoke again frankly. “There are few great things in this troublesome life. Don’t live to be old and miss them.” She kissed the white cheek and left him to sleep undistracted and appeased.
Her anxiety for her child made her leave immediately after the funeral. A few days later she received an account of the will. The only item she found much interest in was a legacy to Molly Parker—a thousand a year to add to her tiny income. “Dear old uncle,” she thought, “he knew she would like it best just this way from his hand, not mine.”
Every thought now centred on the little Sebastian; her child seemed a refuge, the remnant of her former life. He bound her to her husband, to the pledges she had made, and she could not contemplate a future without that bond. All her rebellion over the child’s coming maddened her. How futile she had been! Through him, she was responsible to a world that had some elements of gracious affection in it. So she passed the days in a hush, where every breath from the feeble little body sounded separately in her ears and sent a twinge of pain and reproach into her whole being. She could not cry over it—that was not her way; she could see people and carry about a cold, impassive face. Her hardness frightened Molly Parker.
“Don’t you care?” she exclaimed impulsively, bluntly.
“Care?” The word echoed back as if sounded from her whole tense being. “It is most myself that is going.” But her husband was puzzled to find her so “unfeeling.”