"Better not mention anything about—about her—the woman you know, Steve—before your mother, not just now. Your mother's kind of poorly the last few days. Understand, Steve?"
The answer was a nod like the silly nodding of a toy mandarin.
It was a questionable mercy, restoring the mother just then from the bliss of oblivion, but she came gradually back through a fog of daze to the full glare of fact. Her thoughts did not run forward upon the scandal, the horror of the public, the outcry of all the press; she had but one thought, her son's welfare.
"Did anybody see you, Steve?"
"No. I went to his room. I don't think anybody s-saw me—yes, maybe the man across the hall did. Yes, I guess he saw me. He was at his door when I came out. He looked as if he sus-suspected-ed me. I suppose he heard the shots. And probably he s-saw the revol-ver. I couldn't seem to let it drop—to le-let it drop."
The mother turned frantic. "They'll come here for you, Stevie. They'll find it out. You must get away—somewhere—for just now, till we can think up something to do. Father will find some way of making everything all right, won't you, Paw? He always does, you know. Don't be scared, my boy. We must keep very calm." Her hands were wavering over him in a palsy. "Where can he go, Paw? Where's the best place for him to go? I'll tell you, Steve. Is your—your car anywhere near?"
"It's outside at the door. I came back in it."
She got to her feet, and her urgency was ferocious. "Then you get right in this minute and go up to the old place—the little old house opposite the pond. Go as fast as you can. You know the place—where we lived before you were born. There's two big oak-trees st-standing there, and a pond just across the road. You go there and tell Susan—what shall he tell Susan, father? What shall he tell Susan? We'll stay here, and—and we'll bribe the elevator-boy to say you haven't come home at all, and if the po-po-lice come here we'll say we're expecting you, but we haven't seen you for ever so long. Won't we, Paw? That's what we'll say, won't we, Paw?"
The old man stood up to the lightning like an old oak. Trees do not run. They stand fast and take what the sky sends them. Old Coburn shook his white hair as a tree its leaves in a blast of wind before he spoke.
"Steve, my boy, I don't know what call you had to do this, but it's no use trying to run away and hide. They'll get you wherever you go. The telegraph and the cable and the detectives—no, it's not a bit of use. It only makes things look worse. Put on your hat and come with me. We'll go to the police before they come for you. I'll go with you, and I'll see you through."