His Family by Ernest Poole (popular ebook readers txt) 📕

“I wouldn’t,” said Allan gently. “You’ve done a good deal for Johnny Geer.”

“He has done a good deal for this family! Can Deborah see him?”

“I wish she could.”

“Better stretch a point for her, hadn’t you? She’s been a kind of a mother to John.”

“I know. But she can’t leave her bed.”

“Then you won’t tell her?”

“I think she knows. She talked to me about him last night.”

“That’s it, a mother!” Roger cried. “She was watching! We were blind!” He came back to his chair and dropped into it.

“Does John know this himself?” he asked.

“He suspects it, I think,” said Allan.

“Then go and tell him, will you, that he’s going to get well. And after you’ve done it I’ll see him myself. I’ve got something in mind I want to think out.”

After Allan had left the room, Roger sat thinking about John. He thought of John’s birth and his drunken mother, the accident and his struggle for life, through babyhood and childhood, through ignorance and filth and pain, through din and clamor and hunger, fear; of the long fierce fight which John had made not to be “put away” in some big institution, of his battle to keep up his head, to be somebody, make a career for himself. He thought of John’s becoming one of Deborah’s big family, only one of thousands, but it seemed now to Roger that John had stood out from them all, as the figure best embodying that great fierce hunger for a full life, and as the link connecting, the one who slowly year by year had emerged from her greater family and come into her small one. And last of all he thought of John as his own companion, his only one, in the immense adventure on which he was so soon to embark.

A few moments later he stood by John’s bed.

“Pretty hard, Johnny?” he gently asked.

“Oh, not so bad as it might be, I guess⁠—”

“You’ll soon feel better, they tell me, boy.” John shut his eyes.

“Yes,” he muttered.

“Can you stand my talking, just a minute?”

“Sure I can,” John whispered. “I’m not suffering any now. He’s given me something to put me to sleep. What is it you want to talk about? Business?”

“Not exactly, partner. It’s about the family. You’ve got so you’re almost one of us. I guess you know us pretty well.”

“I guess I do. It’s meant a lot to me, Mr. Gale⁠—”

“But I’ll tell you what you don’t know, John,” Roger went on slowly. “I had a son in the family once, and he died when he was three months old. That was a long time ago⁠—and I never had another, you see⁠—to take his place⁠—till you came along.” There fell a breathless silence. “And I’ve been thinking lately,” Roger added steadily. “I haven’t long to live, you know. And I’ve been wondering whether⁠—you’d like to come into the family⁠—take my name. Do you understand?”

John said nothing. His eyes were still closed. But presently, groping over the bed, he found Roger’s hand and clutched it tight. After this, from time to time his throat contracted sharply. Tears welled from under his eyelids. Then gradually, as the merciful drug which Allan had given did its work, his clutch relaxed and he began breathing deep and hard. But still for some time longer Roger sat quietly by his side.

The next night he was there again. Death had come to the huddled form on the bed, but there had been no relaxing. With the head thrown rigidly far back and all the features tense and hard, it was a fighting figure still, a figure of stern protest against the world’s injustice. But Roger was not thinking of this, but of the discovery he had made, that in their talk of the night before John had understood him⁠—completely. For upon a piece of paper which Allan had given the lad that day, these words had been painfully inscribed:

“This is my last will and testament. I am in my right mind⁠—I know what I am doing⁠—though nobody else does⁠—nobody is here. To my partner Roger Gale I leave my share in our business. And to my teacher Deborah Baird I leave my crutches for her school.”

After John had gone away the house was very quiet. Only from the room upstairs there could be heard occasionally the faint clear cry of Deborah’s child. And once again to Roger came a season of repose. He was far from unhappy. His disease, although progressing fast, gave him barely any pain; it rather made its presence felt by the manner in which it affected his mind. His inner life grew uneven. At times his thoughts were as in a fog, again they were amazingly clear and vistas opened far ahead. He could not control his thinking.

This bothered him at the office, in the work he still had to do. For some months he had been considering an offer from one of his rivals, a modern concern which wished to buy out his business together with that of three other firms and consolidate them all into one corporation. And Roger was selling, and it was hard; for the whole idea of bargaining was more distasteful than ever now. He had to keep reminding himself of Edith and her children.

At last it was over, his books were closed, and there was nothing left to be done. Nor did he care to linger. These rooms had meant but little to him; they had been but a place of transition from the old office far downtown, so full of memories of his youth, to the big corporation looming ahead, the huge impersonal clipping mill into which his business was to merge. And it came to his mind that New York was like that⁠—no settled calm abiding place cherishing its memories, but only a town of transition, a great turbulent city of change, restlessly shaking off its past, tearing down and building anew, building higher, higher, higher, rearing to the very