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By Root 2536 0

to know what we’re ...” she trailed off. I must be out of my mind, she said to herself. Dying! And she began to think with astonishment and disgust of the way they had all been talking—herself most of all. How can we bear to chatter along in normal tones of voice! she thought; how can we even use ordinary words, or say words at all! And now, picking his poor troubled soul to pieces, like so many hens squabbling over—she thought of a worm, and covered her face in sickness. She heard her mother say, “Why, Andrew, how perfectly extraordinary!” and then she heard Andrew question her, had she had any special feeling about what kind of a person or thing it was, that is, was it quiet or active, or young or old, or disturbed or calm, or was it anything: and her mother answered that she had had no particular impression except that there was someone in the house besides themselves, not the children either, somebody mature, some sort of intruder; but that when nobody had troubled to investigate, she had decided that it must be an hallucination—all the more so because, as she’d said, she thought she’d actually heard someone, whereas with her poor old ears (she laughed gracefully) that was simply out of the question, of course. Oh, I do wish they’d leave him in peace, she said to herself. A thing so wonderful. Such a proof! Why can’t we just keep a reverent silence! But Andrew was asking his mother, had she, a little later than that, still felt even so that there was somebody? or not. And she said that indeed she had had such an impression. Where? Why she couldn’t say where, except that the impression was even stronger than before, but, of course, by then she realized it was an hallucination. But they felt it too! Why how perfectly uncanny!

“Mary thinks it was Jay,” Andrew told her.

“Why, I ...”

“So does Aunt Hannah.”

“Why how—how perfectly extraordinary, Andrew!”

“She thinks he was worried about ...”

“Oh, Andrew!” Mary cried. “Andrew Please let’s don’t talk about it any more! Do you mind?”

He looked at her as if he had been slapped. “Why, Mary, of course not!” He explained to his mother: “Mary’d rather we didn’t discuss it any more.”

“Oh, it’s not that, Andrew. It just—means so much more than anything we can say about it or even think about it. I’d give anything just to sit quiet and think about it a little while! Don’t you see? It’s as if we were driving him away when he wants so much to be here among us, with us, and can’t.”

“I’m awfully sorry, Mary. Just awfully sorry. Yes, of course I do see. It’s a kind of sacrilege.”

So they sat quietly and in the silence they began to listen again. At first there was nothing, but after a few minutes Hannah whispered, “He’s there,” and Andrew whispered, “Where?” and Mary said quietly, “With the children,” and quietly and quickly left the room.

When she came through the door of the children’s room she could feel his presence as strongly throughout the room as if she had opened a furnace door: the presence of his strength, of virility, of helplessness, and of pure calm. She fell down on her knees in the middle of the floor and whispered, “Jay. My dear. My dear one. You’re all right now, darling. You’re not troubled any more, are you, my darling? Not any more. Not ever any more, dearest. I can feel how it is with you. I know, my dearest. It’s terrible to go. You don’t want to. Of course you don’t. But you’ve got to. And you know they’re going to be all right. Everything is going to be all right, my darling. God take you. God keep you, my own beloved. God make His light shine upon you.” And even while she whispered, his presence became faint, and in a moment of terrible dread she cried out “Jay!” and hurried to her daughter’s crib. “Stay with me one minute,” she whispered, “just one minute, my dearest”; and in some force he did return; she felt him with her, watching his child. Catherine was sleeping with all her might and her thumb was deep in her mouth; she was scowling fiercely. “Mercy, child,” Mary whispered, smiling, and touched her hot forehead to smooth it, and she growled. “God