Five minutes before, I can frankly say, I had hoped Gordon would carry his point. The theatre, that particular night, had no charm for me. Yet now that Gordon had left the matter in my hands, some mysterious impulse settled my resolve at once. Nobody need tell me that women, true women, live far from the unseen. For my resolve was taken on the instant, so suddenly and confidently that it amazed myself.
"We'll go," I said quietly. "The play sounds good; I'm sure I've heard of it before--and I want to see it, Gordon."
Three-quarters of an hour later we were seated five or six rows from the footlights, watching the haymakers gathered about the moss-grown bucket that gives its charm to the opening scene of "The Old Homestead." But the play had not proceeded far before I began to regret bitterly that we had not stayed away. When it dawned on me that the plot centred about an absent boy, a son for whom a father sought in vain, I knew that Gordon's Gethsemane was deepened by every word and act. This particular kind of anguish was realistic enough to us both, without any representation so vivid. Yet we had to sit there, uncle alternately laughing and weeping at our side, and witness the rehearsal of all we knew so well. I was sitting beside Gordon; and I covertly got a hold of his hand, pressing it silently to let him know my heart was aching too. I found myself, almost before I knew it, leaning forward in an agony of interest and suspense as the great emotions of a parent's love and loneliness were set forth in terrible reality. It was as if Gordon's heart and mine were both laid bare that night; and I found myself wondering if all this meant to any others in that crowded throng what it meant to us.
Uncle was enraptured at our fixity; he knew not the source of our deadly interest. "Didn't I tell you?" he whispered to Gordon as the tension came near its height; "ever see anything like that before? Isn't that true to life, eh?"
Gordon never spoke, his eyes looking far beyond, as fixed as though set on death itself.
"Isn't that true to life?" uncle repeated, accustomed to being answered.
"Yes, oh, God, yes--yes, it's true," I heard poor Gordon falter as he bowed forward and covered his face with his hands. Uncle, dumb with wonder now, uttered never a word. I prayed for strength.