Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/305

Rh 'Yes,' said Lavinia, 'but they seem to have come to take a different view of them. He talked to me a long time, and all about her. He told me things.'

'What kind of things? Not trumpery stuff, I hope, about "communicating"—about his seeing or hearing her?'

'Oh no, he doesn't go in for that; he leaves it to the old couple, who, I believe, cling to their mediums, keep up their sittings and their rappings, and find in it all a comfort, an amusement, that he doesn't grudge them and that he regards as harmless. I mean anecdotes—memories of his own. I mean things she said to him and that they did together—places they went to. His mind is full of them.'

I turned it over. 'Do you think he's decidedly mad?'

She shook her head with her bleached patience. 'Oh no, it's too beautiful!'

'Then are you taking it up? I mean the preposterous theory'

'It is a theory,' she broke in, 'but it isn't necessarily preposterous. Any theory has to suppose something,' she sagely pursued, 'and it depends at any rate on what it's a theory of. It's wonderful to see this one work.'

'Wonderful always to see the growth of a legend!' I laughed. 'This is a rare chance to watch one in formation. They're all three in good faith building it up. Isn't that what you made out from him?'

Her tired face fairly lighted. 'Yes—you understand it; and you put it better than I. It's the gradual effect of brooding over the past; the past, that way, grows and grows. They make it and make it. They've persuaded each other—the parents—of so many things that they've at last also persuaded him. It has been contagious.'

'It's you who put it well,' I returned. 'It's the oddest thing I ever heard of, but it is, in its way, a reality. Only we mustn't speak of it to others.'