The old man--her grandfather, as she called him--sat in his arm-chair, looking on and coughing. John Lax paid no attention to him at all.
"Good-by, grandad," she said, kissing him. "You will not see me any more, because they are going to kill me. You will find your inhaler in its place; but I am afraid you will have to manage for the future without any help. No one helps anybody in this beautiful Present. They are going to kill me. Do you understand? Poor old man! Good-by!"
She kissed him again and walked away with John Lax through the Picture Gallery, and so into the College Gardens, and by the north postern into the House of Life.
When she was gone the old man looked about him feebly. Then he began to understand what had happened. His grandchild, the nurse and stay of his feebleness, was gone from him. She was going to be killed.
He was reckoned a very stupid old man always. To keep the cases in the Museum free from dust was all that he could do. But the revival of the Past acted upon him as it had acted upon the others: it took him out of his torpor and quickened his perceptions.
"Killed?" he cried. "My grandchild to be killed?"
He was not so stupid as not to know that there were possible protectors for her, if he could find them in time. Then he seized his stick and hurried as fast as his tottering limbs would carry him to the nearest field, where he knew the sailor, named John, or Jack, Carera, was employed for the time among the peas and beans.
"Jack Carera!" he cried, looking wildly about him and flourishing with his stick. "Jack! they are going to kill her! Jack--Jack Carera!--I say," he repeated. "Where is Jack Carera? Call him, somebody. They are going to kill her! They have taken my child a prisoner to the House of Life. I say Jack--Jack! Where is he? Where is he?"
The men were working in gangs. Nobody paid the least heed to the old man. They looked up, saw an old man--his hat blown off, his long white hair waving in the wind--brandishing wildly his stick, and shrieking for Jack. Then they went on with their work; it was no business of theirs. Docile, meek, and unquestioning are the People.
By accident, however, Jack was within hearing, and presently ran across the field.