“Later.
Go on with your food as if nothing happened.”
“I’m not very hungry now, sir.”
The meal ended with wine brought from the rocket.
Hathaway arose.
“A toast to all of you; it’s good to be with friends again.
And to my wife and children, without whom I couldn’t have survived alone.
It is only through their kindness in caring for me that I’ve lived on, waiting for your arrival.”
He moved his wineglass toward his family, who looked back self-consciously, lowering their eyes at last as everyone drank.
Hathaway drank down his wine..He did not cry out as he fell forward onto the table and slipped to the ground.
Several men eased him to rest.
The doctor bent to him and listened.
Wilder touched the doctor’s shoulder.
The doctor looked up and shook his head.
Wilder knelt and took the old man’s hand.
“Wilder?” Hathaway’s voice was barely audible.
“I spoiled the breakfast.”
“Nonsense.”
“Say good-by to Alice and the children for me.”
“Just a moment, I’ll call them.”
“No, no, don’t!” gasped Hathaway.
“They wouldn’t understand.
I wouldn’t want them to understand!
Don’t!”
Wilder did not move.
Hathaway was dead.
Wilder waited for a long time.
Then he arose and walked away from the stunned group around Hathaway.
He went to Alice Hathaway, looked into her face, and said,
“Do you know what has just happened?”
“Something about my husband?”
“He’s just passed away; his heart,” said Wilder, watching her.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“He didn’t want us to feel badly.
He told us it would happen one day and he didn’t want us to cry.
He didn’t teach us how, you know. He didn’t want us to know.
He said it was the worst thing that could happen to a man to know how to be lonely and know how to be sad and then to cry.
So we’re not to know what crying is, or being sad.”
Wilder glanced at her hands, the soft warm hands and the fine manicured nails and the tapered wrists.
He saw her slender, smooth white neck and her intelligent eyes.
Finally he said,
“Mr. Hathaway did a fine job on you and your children.”
“He would have liked to hear you say that.
He was so proud of us.
After a while he even forgot that he had made us.
At the end he loved and took us as his real wife and children.
And, in a way, we are.”
“You gave him a good deal of comfort.”
“Yes, for years on end we sat and talked.