Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/336

 pull. Garnier, this boy's father, was a business acquaintance of mine, and quite a level-headed man. We got together, away from his wife. She was just crazy over her son's death. From one day to the next she looked twenty years older. And the way she cursed us all for ever coming to Bayonne—not that I cared. She was out of her mind, anyhow. All the same, the things she said … and poor Flora in her coffin.…"

He drew a long breath, and cast his dead cigar from him with a vivid gesture of disgust.

"The up-shot was, that Garnier got busy the right way. He furnished the political pull, and I furnished the money. We stopped fooling with the police and went straight to the Préfet, and they passed the order down quick from one office to another, to have that inquest settled at once, with no more noise. When that hit the police who'd been bothering us, they curled up and dropped off. I bribed a reporter and the editor of the local newspaper, and when the music-teacher brought Marise back to the funeral, the whole mess was buried."

In the momentary silence which followed, as he drew breath again. Cousin Hetty's self-control gave way. He could feel that she was shaking uncontrollably and hear that her teeth were chattering.

He was startled, having forgotten that she was there, forgotten that this was anything but one of the sick, silent evocations which blackened so many hours for him.

"Great Scott! Hetty, you're freezing to death," he cried, helping her roughly to her feet. "Why under the sun didn't you say you were getting cold?"

She did not intimate that she was shaken by anything but a physical chill. Stiff and bent, clinging to his great arm, unable to stop the nervous chattering of her teeth, she hobbled back to the house beside him.

The light from the fire on the hearth set them miles apart, as she had known it would. His face closed shut. He would never mention all this to her again. He was irritated that