CHAPTER XXVIII. "John Randolph!"

CHAPTER XXVIII.

"John Randolph!"

"Rege!"

The two men stood facing each other with hands held in a vice-like grasp, all unconscious of what was going on around them in the street.

"Where did you come from?"

"Where have you been?"

John laughed. "In and around Marlborough all the time, except when I went to New York for my degree."

"And never let us hear a word from you all these years!"

"You forget, Rege, your father forbade me to hold any communication with Hollywood."

Reginald's face grew grave. "Poor father. Well he's done with it all now."

"You don't mean that he is dead, Rege?"

"Yes--and little Nan."

"Oh!" The exclamation was sharp with pain.

"I think she fretted for you, John. She just seemed to pine away. Every day we missed her about the same time, and they always found her in the same place, down by the green road. Then scarlet fever came. She never spoke of getting well--didn't seem to want to. The night she died she put her arms around mother's neck and whispered. 'Tell Don me'll be waitin' at the gate.' That was all."

John wrung Reginald's hand and turned away. Reginald looked after him with misty eyes. "I used to tell mother it would break his heart. I never saw any one so wrapped up in a child!"

"And your father, Rege?" John was calm again.

"Had a fit of apoplexy soon after. I think Nan was the only thing in the world he cared for. It had never struck him that she could die. We sold Hollywood and went abroad. Mother's health broke down--she was never very strong, you know. We spent one year in Italy and one in France, but the shock had been too great. She lies in a lovely spot beside the sea."

"Not your mother too, Rege!"

Reginald's voice broke. "Yes, they are all gone. It was a great deal to happen in a few years. I am a wealthy man, John, but I am all alone in the world, except for Elise. Well," he added more lightly, "I have learned not to rebel at the inevitable. It is only what we have to expect."

"Elise!" echoed John wonderingly, after the first shock of grief was over.

"My wife," said Reginald proudly. "You must come home at once and let me show you the sweetest woman in the world."

"Not just yet, Rege I must pay a visit to Mrs. O'Flannigan, then there is the hospital, and the dispensary, and I promised to concoct a bed for a poor fellow in the last stages of heart trouble. But I will come to-night."

"Always helping somewhere, John. What a grand fellow you are!"

"We are in the world to help the world, else what were the use of living?"

"I can't do anything," said Reginald, "with this clog." He looked contemptuously at his ebony crutch as he spoke.

John laid his hand upon his arm. "Rege," he said in his old, tender way. "I think this very 'clog' as you call it, is a preparation to help those who are passing through the baptism of pain."

* * * * *

Mrs. Reginald Hawthorne welcomed her husband's friend with a winning charm. She was very pretty, very graceful and very young. Reginald idolized her. John saw that as he looked around the sumptuous home whose every fitting was a tribute to her taste. They had just finished unpacking the things they had brought from Europe.

"Strangely enough," said Reginald with a laugh, "I told Elise this morning that now I was going to start out in search of you!"

He had developed wonderfully. John saw that too. Travel and trial had brought out the good that was in him--but not the best.

The evening passed pleasantly. Mrs. Hawthorne played beautifully, and Reginald had kept ears and eyes open and talked well.

"How about the other life, Rege?" asked John when they had a few moments alone. "This one seems very fair."

"All a humbug, John. You Christians are chasing a will o' the wisp, a jack o' lantern. You remember my fad for mathematics? I have followed it up, and I find your theory a 'reductio ad absurdum.' I must have everything demonstrable and clear. This is neither."

"Yet it was a great mathematician who said, 'Omit eternity in your estimate of area and your solution is wrong.'"

Reginald shook his head. "I have nothing to do with this faith business. I go as far as I see, no further."

"God calls our wisdom foolishness, Rege. Jesus Christ put a tremendous premium upon the faith of a little child."

"Things must be tangible for me to believe in them. Reason is king with me."

"Without faith in your fellow man--and your wife--you would have a poor time of it, Rege; why should you refuse to have faith in your God? Is your will tangible, and can you demonstrate the mysterious forces of nature? You know you can't, Rege, you have to take them on trust; and if you had seen what I have, you would know that poor human reason is a pitiful thing! But I won't argue with you. Some day you will understand."

Reginald Hawthorne went back into the room where his wife was sitting. "Elise, darling, you have seen one of the grandest men in the world to-night. The only trouble is that on one subject he is a crank."

"Oh, Reginald, do you mean it! I thought he was splendid. And what a wonderful face he has!"

Reginald started. "Hah! Am I to be jealous of my old friend? But I might have known," he added sadly, "no one could care long for such a wreck as I!"

The girl wife put her arms around his neck and kissed him softly, "You foolish boy!" she whispered, "you know I shall never love any one but you!"

And Reginald Hawthorne counted himself a perfectly happy man.

“One work. Many languages. One reading experience.”