XIII
The Baptist minister, a young dervish in a white lawn tie, being most available, came and did his duty and went away. He was young and fearfully conscientious and kindhearted; upright and passionately desirous of doing good: so much so that he was a bore. But he had soldiered after a fashion and he liked and respected Dr. Mahon, refusing to believe that simply because Dr. Mahon was Episcopal he was going to hell as soon as he died.
He wished them luck and fled busily away, answering his own obscure compulsions. They watched his busy energetic backside until he was out of sight, then Gilligan silently helped Mahon down the steps and across the lawn to his favorite seat beneath the tree. The new Mrs. Mahon walked silently beside them. Silence was her wont, but not Gilligan’s. Yet he had spoken no word to her. Walking near him she put out her hand and touched his arm: he turned to her a face so bleak, so reft that she knew a sharp revulsion, a sickness with everything. (Dick, Dick. How well you got out of this mess!) She looked quickly away, across the garden, beyond the spire where pigeons crooned the afternoon away, unemphatic as sleep, biting her lips. Married, and she had never felt so alone.
Gilligan settled Mahon in his chair with his impersonal half-reckless care. Mahon said:
“Well, Joe, I’m married at last.”
“Yes,” answered Gilligan. His careless spontaneity was gone. Even Mahon noticed it in his dim oblivious way. “I say, Joe.”
“What is it, Loot?”
Mahon was silent and his wife took her customary chair, leaning back and staring up into the tree. He said at last: “Carry on, Joe.”
“Not now, Loot. I don’t feel so many. Think I’ll take a walk,” he answered, feeling Mrs. Mahon’s eyes on him. He met her gaze harshly, combatively.
“Joe,” she said quietly, bitterly.
Gilligan saw her pallid face, her dark unhappy eyes, her mouth like a tired scar and he knew shame. His own bleak face softened.
“All right, Loot,” he said, quietly matching her tone, with a trace of his old ambiguous unseriousness. “What’ll it be? Bust up a few more minor empires, huh?”
Just a trace, but it was there. Mrs. Mahon looked at him again with gratitude and that old grave happiness which he knew so well, unsmiling but content, which had been missing for so long, so long; and it was as though she had laid her firm strong hand on him. He looked quickly away from her face, sad and happy, not bitter any more.
“Carry on, Joe.”