“Gideon Lasher! Could he have been a brother of the Lasher who——”
RoBards did not start. He nodded idly. It all seemed so far off, so long ago as hardly to concern themselves at all. They had almost forgotten what the word Lasher meant to them.
And when on his way to the railroad station he met Mrs. Lasher he found her so old and worn-witted that she, too, had almost no nerves to feel sorrow with. She almost giggled:
“They tell me my boy Gideon’s dead. Yes, sir; he went and got himself kilt, up yonder in Elmiry. Funny place to get kilt, way up north yonder! I can’t say as I’ve had much luck with my fambly. Jud—you remember him likely, sir?—he never came home from sea. Went a-whalin’, and ne’er a word or sign of him sence I don’t know when. My daughter Aletty—she’s in town up to some mischief, I s’pose. Well, it’s the way of the world, ain’t it? Them as has, gets; them as hasn’t, doosn’t.”
War or no war, RoBards found cases to try. There was a mysterious prosperity hard to account for in many businesses. Cases poured in on RoBards. Fees were high. However the tide of battle rolled in the South, the trades of life went on somehow, and petty quarrels over lands and wills and patent rights were fought out as earnestly as ever.
One evening as he set out for the Kensico train, he bought a paper, and found the name he had been looking for every day in the list.
He was benumbed by the blow and all the way home sat with his elbows on his knees and sagged like a bankrupt in the courts. He could hardly understand what it would mean if his namesake boy should no more be visible upon the earth. He hardly dared to grieve as a father must mourn for a lost son; for he thought of Patty and the necessity for carrying to her the news.
In his heart there was always a great wish that he might never come to her without bringing some gift of flowers, jewels, or at least good cheer. And he was always bringing her sorrow!
But that was marriage and it could not be escaped. He must try to be a little glad that evil tidings should be carried to her by one who loved her and would share her grief.
She was scraping lint for wounded soldiers when he came in as usual with the paper that he always brought home from his office. But there was a look about him, about the way he held the paper that shook her as if the house were a tocsin smitten with a sledge. Their colloquy was brief: