If You Touch Them They Vanish.

by Gouverneur Morris.

I

Old Martha wondered if the Poor Boy would have a smile for her. He had had so many in the old days, the baby days, the growing-up days, the college days, the "world so new and all" days. There were some which she would always remember. The smile he smiled one Christmas morning, when he put the grand fur coat around her shoulders, and the kiss on her cheek. The smile he smiled that day when they met in front of the photographer's, and he took her in and had their photograph taken together: she sitting and glaring with embarra.s.sment at the camera, he standing, his hand on her shoulder, smiling--down on her.

To save her life she could not recall a harsh word in his mouth, a harsh look in his eyes. In the growing-up days he had been sick a great deal; but the trustees and the doctors had put their trust in old Martha, and she had pulled him through. When the pain was too great, her Poor Boy was always for hiding his face. It was thus that he gathered strength to turn to her once more, smiling. It was Martha who spoke stories of princesses and banshees and heroes and witch-wolves through the long nights when he could not sleep. It was old Martha who drew the tub of red-hot water that brought him to life, when the doctor said he was dead.

If he had been her own, she could not have loved him more.

How many hundred cold nights she had left her warm bed, to return, blue with cold, after seeing that he was well covered! How she had dreaded the pa.s.sing of time that brought him nearer and nearer to manhood, in whose multiple interests and cares old tendernesses and understandings are so often forgotten. But wherever he went, whatever he did, he had always an eye of his mind upon Martha's feelings in the matter. She was old, Irish, unlettered, but as a royal d.u.c.h.ess so was she deferred to in the Poor Boy's great house upon the avenue.

Old Martha had seats for the play whenever she wanted them. And very handsome she looked, with her red cheeks and her white hair, and her thick black silk. One winter, when she had a dreadful cold, the Poor Boy took her to Palm Beach in his car, and introduced all his smart friends to her. But it was as if they had always known her, for the Poor Boy, who talked a great deal, never talked for long without celebrating "my nurse."

"Oh," he might say, "I, too, have known what it is to have a mother."

Or coming home late from some gay party, the sparkle still in his eyes, he might say to the old woman herself:

"I love people, but I love you more."

Of the Poor Boy who gave her so much she had never asked but one thing.

One simple kindly act in the future. She had made him promise her that; take his oath to it, indeed; cross his tender heart. She had made him promise that when at last she lay dead, he would come to her and close her eyes.

He would keep his word; not a doubt of it. But he would do more. He would see to it that in Woodlawn, where his young father and mother lay, old Martha should lie, too, and that the ablest sculptor of the time should mark her grave for the ages.

The Poor Boy had the intuition of a woman, and the tenderness; he had the imagination of a poet and the simplicity of a child. Everybody loved him--the slim, well-knit, swift body, carrying the beautiful round head; the face, so handsome, so gentle, and so daring. He was not cast in a heroic mould, but he was so vivid that in groups of taller, stronger men it was the Poor Boy whom you saw first. Half the girls did, anyway, and most of the wives, and all the old grandmothers. The most ambitious girls forgot that he was princely rich, and wanted him for himself alone. But the "world-so-new-and-all" was cram-jammed with flowers, and the Poor Boy was dazzled, and did not more than half make up his mind which was the loveliest.

Old Martha was a firm believer in love at first sight (otherwise she might never have been a wet-nurse), and often, when the Poor Boy came home from some great gathering of people, she would ask him, "Did it happen to yez?" And he knew what she meant, and teased her a little sometimes, saying that he wasn't "just quite sure." (And he wasn't--always.)

One day the world crashed about old Martha's ears. The Poor Boy stood up in the court and said, "Not guilty," in his clear, ringing voice. But they didn't believe her child, her angel, and when they sent him to prison she tore her white hair, and beat her head against the wall of her bedroom until she fell senseless. And indeed it was true that Justice, the light woman, had again been brought to bed of a miscarriage. But who was to believe that, when Justice's whole family and her doctor gave out that the child was clean-run and full time? If any believed there were not many. The Poor Boy was a poor boy, indeed, and it seemed to him (trying so very hard not to go mad) that his life was all over.

As a matter of fact, it was getting ready at last to begin.

II

One day old Martha received the following letter:

"MARTHA, DEARIE: I didn't do it. But only you believe that, and I.

You will go to Joyous Guard, for love of me, and put the cottage in order. I shall live there when I come out, and you shall take care of me. But are you too old? Can you do the cooking and the housework for us two? It's I that will split the wood and carry the coals. If the work is too heavy, dearie, you must choose some one to help you. Some one who will never come where I am, whom I shall never have to look in the face. For it's you only that I can look in the face now, or bear to have look in mine. My more than mother, G.o.d bless you, and believe me always, with all my love, your

"POOR BOY."

"Choose some one to help her!" Old Martha snorted. "Not if I was dead in my coffin and him wantin' only me," she said, "I'd rise up and boil my lamb's eggs for him."

But it was not alone that she sped northward to that great valley in the mountains, which the Poor Boy had called Joyous Guard, after Launcelot's domain. She took with her the Poor Boy's butler, a man of rare executive ability, and a young architect for whom the Poor Boy had had belief and affection. These three camped out in the cottage, and sent forth electric messages to plumbers, and upholsterers, and cabinet-makers. If her boy was to live in a tiny stone cottage, old Martha would see to it that that cottage should be a gem. She could spend what she pleased. She had been paid no wages since the Poor Boy's coming of age. Bonds with gilt edges were given to her on that day, deeds to two houses in which gentlefolk lived, and at all the stores where the Poor Boy had credit she had credit, just as his own mother would have had. She was a rich woman in her own right. And the young architect knew that, and in his heart was amazed at always finding her on the floor in a lake of lather, crooning as she scrubbed.

"Martha," he said once, "you're a bird. I wish I'd met you when _I_ was a baby."

And she answered:

"Don't be thrackin' mud into the study." And then, "Mister Cotter," she said, "if ye have a heart in your body, put it into the furnace flue. It was always a bad egg for drawin', and betimes the snow will lie six feet deep in the valley."

"I'll put my heart and soul in that flue, Martha, for your sake, and we'll put it to the ordeal by fire. But who's to feed the furnace?"

"Who's to feed the furnace!" she put back her head and laughed. "Who but love, young man? Love will feed the furnace, press the trousers, and clean the boots. There will be no one to care for him but me. Mind that. No one but old Martha. Twenty year I've shed be the knowledge.

It's no mere woman ye behold, Mister Cotter, 't is an army!"

"By Jove," he said, "I believe you."

And he pa.s.sed out with his measuring-stick into the bright sunlight. And there stood, drawing deep breaths of the racy September air, and filling his eyes almost to overflowing with the magic beauty of the valley.

It spread away southward from the base of the cliff upon which he stood, melting at last into blue distance; an open valley studded with groups of astounding trees which were all scarlet and gold. Mountains, deep-green, purple, pale-violet, framed the valley, and through its midst was flung a bright blue necklace of long lakes and serpentine rivers. In the nearest and largest lake, towering castles of white cloud came continuously and went. Very far off, browsing among lily pads, Mr.

Cotter could see a cow moose and her calf. And, high over his head, there pa.s.sed presently a string of black duck. He could hear the strong beating of their wings.

Mr. Cotter was a practical man.

"Why the h.e.l.l did he do it?" he mused. "He might have married, and wanted a real house in this paradise, and told me to go as far as I liked. He'd have asked us all up to stay--and now, my G.o.d! all it can ever be is a cage for a jail-bird."

When at last the cottage was in exquisite order, old Martha sent the others away and stayed on alone. In her room she had an elaborate calendar. To each day was tacked the name of its patron saint.

The old woman was religious, but every night she drew her pencil through the name of a saint, and the days pa.s.sed, and the Poor Boy's term in prison drew swiftly to an end.

"Monday week," she said. "Next Monday." "Day after to-morrow."

"To-morrow." "O Father of mine in heaven; O saints; O Mother heart--to-day!"

III

Old Martha wondered if the Poor Boy would have a smile for her. She imagined that he would look sick and broken, and that if he smiled at all it would be the bitter smile of the wronged. She imagined that he would wear ready-made clothes supplied by the prison authorities; and that he would no longer walk erect, upon swift feet, but bowed over, with dragging steps.

When he came at last what profoundly shocked her was none of this; but that to the superficial eye he had not changed at all. His hair, perhaps, was a little shorter than she remembered; his face was not exactly pale; it was more as if he had sat up too late, and was having an off day. As for the smile for which she hoped and longed, it began when he saw her running toward him, very swiftly for a heavy old woman, and it ended on her cheek.

"My old dear!" he said.

He took her hand and swung it as children do, and walked beside her into the cottage.

The spickness and spanness of it smote him between the eyes; the imagination and the taste which had changed it from a hunting-lodge into a gentleman's house, and the tact which had done away with the photographs of friends, and all things that could remind him of old days. He pa.s.sed the whole house in review from top to bottom, and grat.i.tude to the old servant grew very warm in the tired heart.

They stepped out from the living-room to the edge of the cliff and looked down the great valley.