"Who was it?"
"Professor Brooks. I didn't care to write about it, when you were coming home so soon."
"And he..?"
"Yes; it is cancer."
She heard the quick sound in his throat as the breath stopped an instant; then there was silence, and he sat and looked before him, a stone figure, grey and motionless. After a little while she raised herself, and slipped her arm about him.
"Does it shake you so, dear? I knew it was that, and I thought... I thought you had guessed too."
He looked round slowly, pale as ashes.
"I had suspected; but to know is different. Does he think..?"
"He wants to see you. I told him you were coming, and he made an appointment for to-morrow. He refused to tell me any details; and even the fact itself he told me only because he saw I knew."
Again they were silent. When next she spoke, her voice was lower, and a little tremulous.
"There is one thing I have to say to you, and I want you to remember it all your life. You have been to me, without knowing it, the consolation for a bitter grief. It is the way of a mother, I suppose, to create out of her brain the dream son that her soul desires, and to find, when she is old and weary, that the son she has created out of her body is different; better, may be, but to her a stranger. It is not for me to reproach the fates because they have given my boy artistic genius and the limitations that sometimes go with it; and perhaps he is all the dearer to me because his nature is to mine so new and strange and wonderful. But you, who have no blood of mine, have been the other son, the child of my secret hope; and I shall go more lightly to meet death because I have seen the desire of my sight, a son that I can trust."
For all answer he slipped down and knelt beside her, his head against her breast.
"I can trust you." She lingered passionately on the words. "I can trust you; and Theo will be safe. If I had not found you, I should have had to die — think of it! — and leave him alone..."
Jack lifted up his head suddenly, and she saw how white he was.
"And aren't you leaving me alone? Theo — Theo will have me; and what shall I have? What else have I got in the world but you? What sort of life have you ever had? And now, — when I might have begun to give you a little peace and happiness ------ It's unjust! It's unjust. Oh, there, don't let us talk about it, for God's sake!"
He pulled his hand away from hers and went out hastily. She heard the house-door slammed and hurried footsteps on the garden path; then everything was still, and she leaned back on her pillows, panting for breath. Jack's sudden break-down had set her heart throbbing with affright; it was so unlike him.
He, for his part, lay face downwards on the grass under the laburnum tree. At last he gathered himself up, tramped to and fro in the garden for a while, and came in at the verandah door with his everyday face.
"Mother," he said, "I'm going to tie up the jasmine; and I asked Eliza to make some tea and help you get to bed. You mustn't overtire yourself."
The next day he called on Professor Brooks, and heard the details of the sentence with an unmoved face. She might live a year, or even more, the professor said, or perhaps only a few months; one could not tell much beforehand with internal cancer. He was not inclined to advise an operation; it might prolong her life a little, but only for a few months at the most; and the other way would be more merciful. "If she were my mother," he added gently, "I should not wish an operation."
There was no tremor in Jack's voice. "Then you think she will suffer very much?" he asked. The professor hesitated.
"It depends... Perhaps not so much as in many cases, if it goes quickly; but cancer is always cancer, and it may..."
He stopped, with a sense of wonder at the stolid face. "Is that callousness," he asked himself, "or self-control?" Then he saw the little sweat beads break out on Jack's forehead, and thought: "Poor lad!"
The next week brought Theo, like embodied sunshine; a creature ignorant of death and grief. Helen had written to him at Paris, telling him that she had been ill and was "not quite strong enough to get about"; so he was prepared to be met at the station by Jack only, and to find her on the sofa when they reached the house. He came in with his unshadowed face, his violin, his aureole of yellow curls; and knelt down to hug and kiss her rapturously and to litter the sofa with the presents he had brought.
"Why, mummy, what do you mean by falling ill the minute we go away? Is it to provide Jack with an opportunity to try his hand at doctoring? That's carrying maternal devotion a bit too far. And to grow so thin, too! You must hurry up and get well before the bright weather goes; we want to take you boating, you know. Wait, I've got something outside that 'll make you well to look at."
He ran out into the passage, then came back with a huge sheaf of white Annunciation lilies filling both arms, and heaped them all over the sofa.
"Did you ever see such glorious ones? I stopped at Havre on the way, and the peasants were bringing them in to market for the Madonna's images in church, so I got a bar-rowful for my special Madonna."
"And carried that load all the way from Havre? And the violin too?"
"Well, mummy, people carry lilies and musical instruments in heaven, don't they? And the water was like heaven to-day, with white sea-birds instead of seraphim, and shiny fishes wriggling and jumping for sheer delight, like the souls of the good people after they die. Why, Jack, how seedy you look! Too much dissecting, is it?"
Jack was standing still, looking out into the blossoming garden, and wondering how much more of this a man could bear. He turned with his wooden face.
"Oh, I'm all right, thanks. Don't you think the lilies should go in water?"
"Yes; they'll want a big bath-tub, won't they? Mummy, you look sweeter than ever; you ought always to be half buried in lilies."
As he stooped to lift them Helen caught his arm and drew him down beside her, resting her cheek against his.
"Kochanku moj!" Her eyes shone with a light which only Theo's presence waked in them; her voice had a deeper tone in her native speech. And Jack, the outsider, looked on without bitterness or jealousy, but with an aching heart. He had grown accustomed to this, years ago; yet the pain of it was always new. It was a thing inevitable, that must be accepted and endured in silence. To the end his uttermost devotion would be a lesser joy to her than the touch of this bright creature's wings; yet he was loved as much as any one could ever be who was not Theo and not of Polish blood. "She sees Poland in him," he thought once more; "and he cares as much for Poland as I for El Dorado."
Theo ran off laughing, his arms full of lilies, and the black kitten, dusted from ear to tail with golden pollen, purring on his shoulder. The door closed behind him, and the light faded out of Helen's eyes.
"Jack, how can we ever tell him? It is sacrilege to throw a cloud on him; he is Baldur the Beautiful."
Jack was stooping to smooth her pillow and gather up the fallen lily petals. He spoke with his face turned away.
"You had better let me tell him, mother; it may be less of a shock to him that way, and Professor Brooks wants you kept quiet."
There was a kind of struggle in her face... "No, dear!" she said at latst. "We will neither of us tell him. Let him have this one summer without a cloud. Remember, he comes out next autumn, and it might shake his nerves and spoil his playing; and the first concerts mean so much. There's no reason why he should know; I... I don't have the pain very often yet; and he goes back to Germany in September; he won't find out before then..."