“Well, Blindbeck luck still holds, anyway!” Jim smiled. “See here!” He put his hand in the greatcoat that seemed to hide from her that he was a creature of flesh and blood, and instantly she heard the rustle of notes. He opened the big pocketbook under the light, running his hand over the clean slips with joyous pride. “Don’t that talk?” he said cheerfully. “Doesn’t it sure talk?” and in spite of her resolve she shrank from the crisp, unaccustomed sound.
“Good enough, eh?” he demanded warmly—“and there’s plenty more behind! That’s only to pass the time o’ day with, so to speak. Guess it’ll do for a fairing for my old mother, that’s about all.” He snapped the elastic again and flung the book on the table, so that it slid across within Sarah’s reach. Lifting his eyes he met her gaze fixed blindly upon his face, and his brow contracted as he puzzled over that hard, unrecognising stare.
“Can’t we sit down for a spell?” he asked her coaxingly, turning back to the hearth. “I feel real unwanted, standing on my hind legs.”
“Eliza’ll be waiting on you,” Sarah said, through a stiff throat.
“She’s waited twenty years.” He laid a hand on a chair, and pulled it nearer to the warmth. It protested violently when it felt his weight, but he settled himself snugly, and did not care. The fire, as if heartened at sight of him on the hearth, changed its cold yellow for a crimson glow.
“It’s good to be home,” he said happily—“good as a Sunday-school, treat—sure!” He pulled his pipe from his pocket, and began to fill it meditatively, with quiet hands. … “Now, if it had been Geordie that had struck it rich, it would have been a real hum for you, wouldn’t it, old woman? Guess I feel real mean, for your sake, that it’s only me. Guess I could almost wish it was Geordie out and out!”
He leaned forward with the firelight on his face, looking at her with the same smile that was like a hand that he reached out.
“He was always making a song,” he said, “about what he’d do when he struck it rich. ‘I’ll be off home that slick you’ll hear the bump,’ he used to say, ‘and I’ll be planning all the way how I’ll burn the cash!’ I’d like to buy the farm for the old dad;—guess Squire’d part all right if I could pass him enough. As for the old woman, there’s just no end to what I’d do—glad rags and brooches, and help all round the house. It’d be just Heaven and Witham Gala, playing Providence to the old woman! … That’s what I want my brass for, when I strike it rich!’ ”
“A fool’s dream!” Sarah said.
“A fine fool’s dream.”
“Them as dreams over much likely never does nowt else.”
He leaned forward still further, the smile more urgent on his lips. “There was only one thing used to fret him,” he went on, “and he spent a powerful lot of time thinking about it, and wearing himself thin. ‘S’pose she don’t know me when I sail in?’ he used to say. ‘S’pose I’m that changed I might as well be any other mother’s son as well as hers? There’s a mighty pile o’ years between us—big, terrible years! I’d sure break my heart if she didn’t know me right off, even if I’d grown a face like a pump-handle and a voice like a prize macaw! But I guess I needn’t trouble,’ he used to say, ‘because mothers always know. I’ve got that slick by heart—they always know.’ ” He waited a moment, and then pressed on, with a note that was like alarm. “Say, he was right, wa’n’t he?”—he asked anxiously—“dead right? It’s a sure cinch that mothers always know?”
The force of his demand seemed almost to shake the obstinate figure so cynically aloof. It was as if he were prompting her to something that she knew as well as he, but would not admit for some reason of her own. Even after he had stopped speaking the demand seemed to persist, and she answered at last with a cold smile on her hard face.
“Nay, my lad,” she said sneeringly, “you needn’t put yourself about! Eliza’ll be fain to see you, wherever you got your brass. She’ll know you well enough, never fret, wi’ yon pack o’ cards in your hand!”
His smile died as if she had struck him—the whole laughing pleasure of him died. “I worked for it honest,” he said in reply, but his voice sounded dull and tired. Even in the dusk she might have seen the spirit go out of him, the lines in his face deepen, his head sink, his shoulders droop. The merry boy that had come into the house was gone, leaving the stern man of middle age. Sarah could not see what she had done to him, but she could feel the change. Scenes with Jim in the old days had always ended much as this. Many a time he had come to her full of affection and fun, and in a few moments she had slain them both. He had looked up at her with hurt eyes that still laughed because they couldn’t do anything else, and had held to his old cry—“I’m your lad really, Aunt Sarah—same as Geordie is!”
He sat for a few minutes staring at the floor, his pipe with its filled bowl hanging idly from his hand. He seemed to be adjusting himself to new ideas, painfully making room for them by throwing overboard the old. Then he rose to his feet with a half-sigh, half-yawn—and laughed. Sarah heard him, and started—it was so like the old-time Jim! But though she might have winced in the old days, it did not trouble her now. If she had had no tenderness for the scapegrace lad she was not likely to pity the grown, successful man. … Without looking at her again he went across to the window
