Page:Possession (1926).pdf/57

 in the heyday of his fame? And Rubinstein? They'll destroy her if they can with all their little tricks and deceits. . . . Mean they are, meaner than dirt, trying to drag her down to the rest of them. . . . The girl doesn't know it herself. . . . How good she is no one has ever told her. . . . She doesn't know the power that's in her. They'll never let her free. They'll clip her wings. They've clipped the wings of greater ones. . . ."

And then with a cascade of wicked chuckles the old man settled back to his reading. "They've never clipped my wings. They can't because I don't live in their world. They can't come close enough to catch me. They can't fly high enough. . . ."

And slowly the rocking decreased in violence until at last the chair became quite still and the skinny arm reached down to recover the heavy book. Belowstairs the last echoes of the turbulent music died away until the silence was broken only by the distant cries of children playing in the streets and the faint muttering of the old man. . ..

"It's best that she doesn't know. . . . It wouldn't help her . . . only make her miserable . . . only give them a chance to tear her to pieces, nerve by nerve. . . ."

Again the persistent rocking until at last the room grew dark, and the old man rose in response to a loud knock on the door of the stairs, stirred himself and lighted an oil lamp so that he might find his way to the tray of food that Mrs. Tolliver thrust in at the door of his cell. There was no gas in this room beneath the roof; Gramp Tolliver had been an expense for too many years. It would have cost twenty dollars to fit his room with gas lights. And in ten years he had produced nothing save the scraps of paper covered with bird track handwriting that were stowed away in the pigeonholes of the desk.

In those days there came to Grandpa Tolliver, more by some obscure instinct than by any communication with those outside