CHAPTER XVIITHE PARTING PLEDGE AND PASSING DAYS
"Doctor Mac," began Smiles timidly, at length. "I'm sorry for what I said to you this afternoon, and I want to take it back. I guess when you're angry you don't see things as they are, and I'm sure that you were only being very, very kind to me when you ... you bought those baskets. I love you for it, really I do, and if ... if you want me to keep the money, and it would hurt your feelings if I...."
"Of course I want you to keep it, dear. Yesterday you took me for a foster-brother, and I hope that you will always let me do for you as I would for a real flesh-and-blood sister."
"I promise, and I will always do the same for you if I can, dear Don," she whispered softly, adding, "but somehow to-night—oh please don't laugh at me now—somehow to-night I feel more like ... like a mother, than a sister to you."
"And I truly think you are—a spiritual mother, little woman. I need you much more than you need me, I guess."
"Do you know," he went on, after a moment, "I am beginning to believe that I was wrong this afternoon when I said that ... that Judd lied aboutadding to the money he received for your baskets. Of course I have no way of making sure, unless you have kept accounts, but I actually begin to think that he did."
"Iknowit," she replied promptly; but with a troubled voice. "Judd has been very wicked, but he doesn't lie. I think that he meant it the way ... the way you did, too; but he's different and I mean to give it all back to him." There was another pause, and then Smiles said gently, "Donald, it makes my heart ache like, to tell you this, but I've got to now. I want that you should go away early to-morrow morning."
"What?" he burst out angrily, springing to his feet. "And have him believe that I ran away from him again? No, how can you ask it, Rose?"
"It isn't that. We know, andheknows now, that you're not afraid of him. But this mountain is his home, and, if you stay here, there is sure to be more trouble, and I couldn't bear that, Don. Even if one of you wasn't ... wasn't hurt in the body, wicked thoughts would hurt your souls. I know it is so, and youmustgo ... but, oh, how I am going to miss you."
For a moment Donald stood tense; then his body relaxed weakly and he answered, "Yes, you are right, Smiles. Itisup to me to go; but I know that some day these clouds are going to be lifted somehow, and we shall see each other again and be happy together."
"I know it, too," she answered, with a sob catching her breath. As she spoke, the clouds, which had been covering the moon for some time, broke, letting the cool, white light flood the mountain side like a promise, and her face lit up with the old wondrous smile. "Of course we will," she cried. "Why, I mean to be your own special nurse some day, and help you always. Good-night, dear Don."
She turned and ran quickly into the cabin, so that he should not see the tears which followed the smile.
"Rose war right erbout yo'r goin',—I reckon she air allus right," came Big Jerry's voice. "Yo' hev got ter go; but I'm ergoin' ter miss ye powerful, likewise, lad."
"But I'll see you again, too, before long. I've got some of my sense back, and I mean to write Judd that I am engaged to a girl in the city—not that I want his friendship after what has happened, however—and I will be down here again, for a few days at least, when the atmosphere has cleared—perhaps early this winter."
"Taint likely yo'll ever see me ergin on earth, son," Jerry said heavily. "Reckon I'm most done fer."
"Your heart? Is it very bad?" queried Donald.
"I allows hit's nigh ter bustin'," was the steady response. "But mebbe I'll last some while yet—I hopes so, fer leetle Smiles' sake. I haint blind ter what hes happened, an' I knows thet the time air comin' when she's es plumb sartain ter fly erwayfrom this hyar mountain es a homein' dove; fer she hes heard the call uv her city blood, an' hit haint ter be denied. But I reckon she haint ready ter leave the old nest yet, so I aims ter stay on erwhile longer ... fer her, though hit haint goin' ter be in no wise easy fer ter do."
The younger man knew not what answer to make to this affecting declaration; but the necessity of a reply was forestalled, for Big Jerry stepped closer and continued earnestly, "Since yo' wished fer ter be a son ter me, I air ergoin' ter treat ye es sich, an' tell ye something thet I've done fer the leetle gal, an' thet she don't yet know erbout.
"Back in the spring when I seen thet her mind war made up ter be a nurse, an' I knowed thet my own time war comin', I sold the timber rights ter these hyar woods ter a city lumber company fer a thousand dollars. They haint ergoin' ter cut fer some years yet, an' by thet time I won't be hyar ter grieve, an' Smiles won't neither.
"Thet money, an' a leetle more what I hev saved, air ter be hern ... hit's in er savin' bank down ter the city now. But thet haint all I wants ye ter know. The reverend drawed a last will an' testiment fer me, leavin' this hyar land ter her—she haint blood kin of mine, yo' know, nor adopted by law-an' I reckons hit will be val'able some day, fer a city stranger told me oncet thet thar's coal on hit. So my leetle gal haint ergoin' ter start her new life penniless, an' ... an' now I wants ter name ye terbe her guardeen till she air growed up. I hopes yo'll accept ther charge, fer I trusts ye, son."
"Accept? Indeed I will, and it makes me mighty happy to realize that I mean something to both of you. I've been playing that she was my sister, but now she will really be as much to me as though she were."
The two men clasped hands again in full understanding, and as a symbol of a trust bestowed and accepted.
At sunrise the following morning Donald once more turned his face toward the valley, whence he had climbed lightheartedly less than two days previous. He had come with a beloved companion. He went alone, save for crowding memories—some bright, but far more black as storm-clouds and shot with malignant flashes of lightning.
His vacation—a travesty on the name—was ended; the castle which his dreams had built on this remote mountain was a shattered ruin. Yet, through the dark series of crowding events, ran a fine thread of gleaming gold, and Donald felt that it had not been broken by his departure. No, it was spun by Destiny to stretch on and on into the unseen future, at once for him a guide-line to a higher manhood, and a tie binding his life to that of the girl whose pathway—starting so far removed from his—had so strangely converged with it.
To continue his hunting trip in another location, with Mike no longer his companion in it, was unthinkable. The empty spaces made the void in his heart unbearable, and he at once returned to Boston and joined his family at their summer home, to their amazement and delight.
But the man now returned to them after little more than a week's absence was vastly different from the one who had left. All marked the alteration in him, and over and over in family council tried, vainly, to account for it, for Donald had withheld far more than he told of his experiences, and minimized what he did tell.
But he knew, as well as they, that a new chord had been struck within him, and by its vibrations his whole life was being tuned anew. Something of the old boyishness and impetuosity was gone, a new purposefulness—not of the will but rather of the spirit—had supplanted it and engendered an unwonted serenity. Was it born of the words of the strange mountain prophet, or the impelling appeal of the no-less-strange mountain child, whose mysterious smile, though seen less frequently than on his first visit, still cast a spell over his senses, even in memory? He could not say.
Whatever uncertainties had disturbed his heart before, when his thoughts had turned upon her, none now remained. The die was cast. Smiles had made her place in his life, and would always occupy it, but merely as a dear charge and comrade. Half-child,half-woman, she still appealed to him in both capacities as perhaps none other ever had; yet he could now admit that fact frankly, and at the same time tell himself that there was, there could be, nothing else.
With the mists of uncertainty dispelled, and his mind purged of the passions which had, so unexpectedly, possessed it, Donald's life returned to its old ruts. His work absorbed him as before, he accepted Marion as more fully a part of his life than she had previously been, and, in so doing, found an unexpected contentment. If, at times, he still felt that she was not all that he might desire, at least she was of his class and he understood her thoroughly.
"My work furnishes enough of romance for me," he sometimes thought. "And, if I want to remain a civilized human being, I had better stick to the life in which I was brought up. I never suspected how much of a 'cave man' I was until I got into the heart of the primitive. Whew! Supposing I had killed Judd that afternoon! There were a few moments when it would have been a pleasure to have done it. Or supposing he had killed me! He wanted to, right enough. Puck was right."
And so, while the months passed, Fortune smiled on the brilliant young physician, and daily laid new tributes of wealth, honor and affection at his feet.
In the mountain cabin it was otherwise.
Changes, born of the travail of tragic happenings,cast their ever-lengthening shadows over Smiles' life, blotting out the golden sunlight of childhood, and overlaying it with the deeper tones of womanhood.
Judd, her companion since baby days, she no longer called "friend," and he, for his part, steadily avoided her and the cabin which had once been a second home to him. Big Jerry, uncomplaining ever, day by day grew more feeble and pain-wracked, and so became more and more a dear burden to her. Only Mr. Talmadge, of her real intimates, remained unchanged in his relations with her, unless it was that in his deep and understanding sympathy he brought her greater spiritual and mental comfort than ever. The other neighbors were kind always, in their rough, well-meaning way; but he was her chief guide and comforter, and in him, and the books which Donald conscientiously sent to her every few weeks, she found the strength to carry forward.
So, in the never-ending tasks which her daily life provided, and which she performed with distress in her heart, but a smile on her lips, Rose saw the weeks come and go, bringing in their slow-moving, but inexorable, train, autumn, fall and another winter.
CHAPTER XVIIITHE ADDED BURDEN
It was mid-winter. The twilight sky—cold and pale, more green than blue—brought the thought of new-made ice. Stripped long since of their verdure, the wooded Cumberlands lay, like naked, shivering giants, across whose mighty recumbent torsos the biting winds swept relentlessly.
In contrast with the desolation without, inside Big Jerry's cabin all was as bright, warm and homelike as a merry fire, the soft glow of the evening lamp and the presence of the heart of the spot—the girl herself—could make it.
Thankful for the blessings of the cheery home and her grandfather's presence in it still, and softly humming an old ballad which he loved, Rose was busily engaged in preparing an early supper, when she was interrupted by the sound of a low, uncertain knock on the door.
She opened it, wonderingly, and the firelight leaped out into the night and disclosed the unshaven face and gaunt form of Judd.
Save on rare occasions, and then at a distance, she had not seen him since that fateful day on the mountain's summit, when his passionate love and hate,intermingled, had driven him to commit the great offence against the unwritten laws of the feudal clan, by attacking one upon whom the sacred mantle of hospitality had been placed, by which act he had incurred Jerry's enmity, and made himself love's outlaw.
The months had dealt harshly with him. Not only was his clothing frayed and soiled; but his face was so unnaturally pale that the deep-set eyes beneath their lowering black brows seemed to burn like embers, and there were many new lines on his countenance not graven there by wind and weather.
Shocked at the change in him, and suddenly filled with womanly compassion which sounded the knell of anger, Rose called, gently, "Judd! Why, Judd! Come in."
He shook his head. "I reckon I haint welcome in this hyar cabin, Smiles, an' taint on my own ercount thet I comes ter ye."
"Why, what is the trouble?" was her startled inquiry.
"Hit ... hit air leetle Lou. I erlows she's sick er somethin'."
"Lou? Tell me quick, Judd. What is the matter with her?"
"I don't rightly know." The answer was made with obvious distress. "She haint been her sunshiny self fer quite some time, an' ter-night ... wall, she air actin' so sorter ... queer, thet I got skeered."
"I'll go over home with you at once," said Rose, as she hastily caught up and drew a shawl about her head and shoulders. "Grandpap," she called softly through the door to the old man's bedroom, "I'm ergoin' out fer er leetle time. One of ther neighbors air sick. Don't fret, fer I'll be back right soon, dear."
There was a brief, rumbled reply; and, closing the door behind her on the warm comfort within, the girl joined the mountaineer in the crispy evening, now almost dark. She shivered a little, and he marked the involuntary act, and drew back a step.
In silence they walked rapidly up the narrow path, slippery from a recent fall of light snow. Once Rose slipped, and instantly Judd's sinewy arm was about her waist, steadying her. Then, as she regained her balance and started forward, it tightened and drew her suddenly to him in a passionate, crushing embrace. She made no effort to struggle free, or voice her heart's protest against this outrage, but stood with her body rigid and unyielding within the circle of his arm until he slowly released her, mumbling, "I reckon I air plumb ershamed of myself, Smiles. I didn't go fer ter do hit, an' I knows thet I haint deservin' ter tetch so much es ther hem of yo'r skirt."
She did not answer, and neither spoke again until his cabin was reached.
When the door was opened, Smiles caught sight of the child sitting motionless on a stool near thefireplace. Her lips were parted and in her eyes was an odd look of semi-vacuity.
"Lou!" cried Rose, pausing in alarmed astonishment.
A light of recognition sprang into the child's eyes, she stood up a trifle unsteadily, and said, with a low throaty laugh of delight, "Hit air my Smiles. I awful glad ter see...." She started toward her friend; but her course suddenly veered to the left, waveringly, and her wandering gaze fell upon the now sadly battered doll lying in one corner. "To see ye, Mike," was the ending of her sentence, as she trotted to Donald's gift and began to cuddle it.
"Yo' haint erbeen ter see Lou fer er long, long ..." The piping voice trailed off into silence.
"Why, Lou, sweetheart. What is the matter? Don't you know your own Smiles?" pleaded the deeply distressed girl, as she gathered the child to her breast.
The baby's hands dropped the doll unceremoniously and sought her friend's cheeks. Looking up with big eyes into the face drawn close to her own, she replied in a strangely slow, hesitant manner. "In course I remembers ye, Smiles. Yo' air the nurse what lives with ... with thet thar doctor man ... in the big city, whar air monkeys thet ... clumb sticks an' ... an' doll babies what close thar eyes ... an' say ... an' say ... My head hurts me, Smiles, hit do."
She lay still in the loving arms for an instant, andthen wriggled free and, sliding to the floor, picked up and began to rock the doll again, the while crooning a wordless lullaby.
With anxiety growing akin to terror, Smiles felt the irregular pulse, as Donald had taught her how to do, and pressed her hand to the pale cheek and forehead.
"Sheissick, Judd, and I'm kind of frightened, too. You can't take care of her here, and I mean to take her home with me, right now. I reckon you had better go down to the village and get Dr. Johnston, quick."
The man had started, with words of protest trembling on his lips; but, as his look turned on his little sister, as she now leaned drowsily against the girl's knees, he stifled them unspoken, while a spasm of pain crossed his worn face. With a dull nod of acquiescence he held out his arms to receive the child, whom Rose had lifted and wrapped in a blanket from her little bed that had been brought in near the fire.
The return journey was quickly and silently made, and, delivering the slight bundle to Smiles when her cabin was reached, Judd set off into the night, concern lending wings to his feet.
"Grandpap, hit's Smiles back ergin'," called the girl softly. "An' I've brought leetle Lou Amos. She haint feelin' right well, an' I allows I hev got ter take keer of her here."
The old man uttered a low growl of protest, which caused Rose to run to him and tenderly lay her hand on his lips, with the words, "Hush, grandpap. Thebaby haint in nowise ter blame fer ... fer what Judd done. In course we hev got ter keer fer her."
Big Jerry nodded an abashed assent, and said no more.
Smiles undressed her new charge, who struck uncertain terror to her heart by drowsily talking on and on, in snatches of unrelated sentences running the gamut of her limited experiences and with the childish words often failing, half formed. She put the baby in her own bed, and, after the belated supper had been eaten and cleared away, and the old man made as comfortable as possible for the night, Smiles lay down beside the baby, whose silence and more regular breathing indicated that she was at last asleep.
The morrow's sun was well above the valley horizon before Judd returned with the country doctor, and again the former refused to enter the cabin. While the physician remained, he paced back and forth, back and forth, with weary, nervous strides; but even in his stress of mind he unconsciously kept out of view from the window in Big Jerry's room.
At last Rose and Dr. Johnston reappeared, and, breathing hard, Judd hastened to join them.
"It's brain fever, the doctor says, Judd," said Smiles at once. "He's left some medicine for me to give her, and you know that I'll nurse her for you like she was my own baby."
"Air hit ... air hitbad, doctor?" asked the mountaineer, with a catch in his voice.
"Well, of course it ain't an ... er ... exactly easy thing to cure, but I reckon she'll get well of it. By the way, Amos, how long has she been a-goin' on like that?"
"I kaint rightly say, doctor. She hes acted kind er strange-like fer quite er spell, now thet I comes ter think on hit; but I didn't pay no pertickler attention to hit ontil er day er two back," answered the man contritely.
"Hmmm," said the doctor. "Oh, I guess we can pull her through all right, and I will get up here as often as I can. Well, I reckon I'll be stepping along back."
But little Lou did not fulfil the country practitioner's optimistic prophecy. The change in her condition, as day after day crept by, growing longer and colder, was almost imperceptible; but it was steadily for the worse. The mountain winter closed in with unusual rigors, and Smiles' cabin continued to be a hospital where she passed her hours ministering equally to the keen-minded, but bodily tortured old man—whose heart pained constantly and with growing severity, and whose breathing became daily more labored—and the child whose mind steadily became more clouded and her physical functions more weak.
Like a gaunt, miserable dog which had been driven from his home, Judd haunted the cabin. When shestole out one morning, to speak with him about Lou, Smiles cried, "Oh, if Doctor Mac were only here now!Hewould know what to do, I'm sure."
Judd's hands, blue with cold, clenched so violently that the knuckles grew a bloodless white, and the look of pain, lying deep down in his eyes, changed to a flash of burning hate.
"Don't never speak thet man's name ter me, gal."
The words were spoken in a harsh voice and he strode abruptly away.
At more and more infrequent intervals, the village doctor made his toilsome way up the slippery mountain side, sat regarding the little patient with a hopelessly puzzled look, and finally departed, shaking his head; but he never failed to leave behind him another bottle of obnoxious medicine on the chance that if one did not produce an improvement, another might. Even to the girl it was all too apparent, however, that he was aiming blindly into the dark.
There came a time when the child spoke scarcely at all, save to moan piteously something about the pain in her head; her emaciated legs barely carried her on her uncertain course; her vague, sweet eyes turned inward more and more; and it was with the greatest difficulty, and only by the exercise of infinite patience that Smiles could feed her. The little mountain blossom was wilting and fading slowly away.
On the afternoon of the first day of January Dr. Johnston spent a long time at the cabin, strivingagainst the impossible to solve the problem which confronted him like an appalling mystery, far too deep to be pierced by the feeble ray of science at his command.
At last he arose with a gesture of finality, and announced to the anxiously waiting girl, "I reckon I'm done. I won't go so fur as to say that a city specialist might not be able to help her; but hanged ifIcan. The trouble is too much for me, and I guess Lou is just a-goin' to die."
Sudden tears welled into Smiles' luminous eyes, and ran unheeded down her cheeks, now unnaturally thin and wan.
"Hit haint so," she cried in a choked voice. "Lou haint ergoin' ter die, Dr. Johnston!"
Suddenly she stopped, as her thoughts flew backward on the wings of memory. Her eyes grew larger, a strange light came into them. Then, speaking slowly, almost as though the words were impelled by a will other than her own, she added with a tone of absolute certainty:
"Yo' allowsyo'don't know what the trouble air, butIdoes."
The doctor was startled and looked as though he thought that he was about to have another patient on his hands.
"Hit air a brain tumor thet she hes got, I knows it, an' I knows one of the few doctor men in this hyar country what kin cure hit. He airergoin'ter cure hit fer me, an' leetle Lou haintergoin'ter die."
Uncertain what to make of this outburst, the doctor departed rather hastily. Smiles caught up her shawl and ran immediately to Judd's lonely, cheerless abode, which she entered without a thought of knocking. She found the man sitting dejectedly before a feeble fire.
He sprang up, voiceless terror apparent in the look which he turned upon her white face, but, without pausing for any preliminaries, Rose said, "The doctor, he's been ter see our little Lou again, Judd. He allows thet he can't do anything more for her, and thet she has got ter die."
The man—whose whole world was now centred in the child to whom he had, for a year, been father and mother as well as brother—sank down on his chair and buried his face in his hands.
"I knowed hit," he muttered in a dead voice.
"Hit haint so," cried the girl, who had by this time wholly relapsed into the mountain speech, as she frequently did still, when laboring under the stress of emotion. "Hit haint so, Judd. We kin save her. We hevgotter save her."
"Thar haint no way." The words were tuned to despair.
"Tharaira way. Thar's one man who kin save Lou's life fer ye, an' we must get him ter do hit.".
She had mentioned no name, but Judd sprang swiftly erect, fists clenched and shaking above his head. "Do yo' think thet I'd be beholden terthetman, after what I done ter him? Do yo' think thetI'd accept even my sister's life et his hands? I hates him like I does the devil what, I reckon, air ergoin' ter git my soul!"
"Judd!" cried the girl, "yo' don't know what yo'r ersayin'. Hit's blasphemy. Ef Doctor Mac kin save Lou's life—an' hekin—yo'd be a murderer,—yes, a murderer uv yo'r own flesh an' blood, ter forbid him."
Spent by the force of his previous passionate outburst, the man sank tremblingly back into the chair again.
"I kaint do hit, Smiles," he answered piteously. "I kaint do hit, an' hit's a foolish thought anyway. He wouldn't come hyar. Hit takes money fer ter git city doctors, an' I haint got none."
"He will come ef I asks him, an' I hev money, Judd," she said with a pleading voice.
"No, no, no. Ef Lou dies, I reckon I'll kill myself, too; but I forbids ye ter call the man I wronged, an' hates."
Slowly the girl turned away, with a compassionate glance at the bent, soul-tortured youth, went out of the cabin, and softly closed the door.
CHAPTER XIX"SMILES'" APPEAL
It was snowing when she stepped outside,—a soft, white curtain of closely woven flakes rapidly dimming the early evening glow and bringing nightshades on apace. The wind, too, was rising; its first fitful gusts drove the snow sweeping in whirling flurries across the open spaces, and then whistled off through the leafless trees.
Rose shivered. The wind greeted her boisterously. It clutched her shawl in hoydenish jest, tore one end of it free from her grasp, and ran its invisible, icy fingers down her neck.
The cabin of the nearest neighbor—Pete Andrews—was only a few rods distant; but, before the girl reached it in the face of the momentarily increasing storm, she was panting, and her face, hair and clothing were plastered with clinging flakes.
"Mis' Andrews, I hates ter ask er favor of ye such er powerful mean night; but I needs help," said Smiles, as soon as the door had been opened, letting her in, together with a whirl of snow which spread itself like a ghost on the rough floor.
"Yo' knows thet I'd do enything in ther world fer ye, Rose gal. I reckon I owes ye my life sincewhen ... when Gawd Almighty tuck my baby back ter thet garden er His'n in Paradise," answered the frail, weary-looking woman, whose eyes quickly suffused with tears.
"Hit haint repayment I'm askin' of ye, but er favor, Mis' Andrews. I wants ye ter help me save ther life of another mountin flower, what's nigh faded plum erway."
"Lou Amos?" asked the woman. She had already turned to get her own shawl.
"Yes, hit's leetle Lou. She air powerful sick, an' I wants fer ye ter stay ter-night with her an' grandpap, ef yo' will. Thar haint nothing ter do but stay with them."
"In course I'll do hit fer ye, Smiles," was the ready answer, and her lank, slouching husband nodded a silent assent, as she turned to him.
"But what air yo' reckonin' ter do? Yo' kaint go nowhar in this hyar storm. I don't recollect hits like on the mountain, no time."
The girl did not answer; but held the door open while the other stepped out, only to catch her breath and flatten herself against the cabin's wall as a sheet of mingled sleet and snow struck her. By continually assisting one another, the two made their way slowly over to Jerry's home; and, when they paused within its shelter, Rose held her companion's arm a moment, and said, "Thar haint no use tryin' ter prevent me, Mis' Andrews, cause I'm ergoin' ter do hit. I'm ergoin' down ter Fayville, an' send a telegram messagefer er city doctor thet I knows, ter come hyar an' make Lou well. Don't go fer ter tell grandpap whar I've gone er he'll worry erbout me, an' thar haint no cause ter. The storm's et my back, an' hits all down hill goin'. I hates ter tell a lie ter him, but I allows I've got ter, this one time."
In sudden terror over the mad plan, the older woman began to protest; but Rose shook off her detaining hand, and put an end to the sentence by leading the way hastily into the cabin.
"Thar's a leetle child what needs my help, an' I've got ter take keer of her fer er while, grandpap," Smiles said at once. "Mis' Andrews hes come over fer ter stay with ye and Lou, now haint thet kind uv her? I'll git back es soon es ever I kin, but don't yo' fret ef hit haint erfore yo' goes ter bed ... or even till mornin' time."
She furtively obtained a few bills from her precious store, kissed the old man's haggard, wrinkled cheek, and the white forehead of the baby who lay on the bed, almost inert save for the restless moving of her head from side to side, and the low moans which came with almost every breath, and hurried out into the storm.
In later years Rose could be induced to speak only with the greatest reluctance of that journey down the snow-swept mountain path—for the blizzard was as fierce as it was rare—and even the recollection of it brought a look of terror into her eyes.
There was flying horror abroad that night, andthe demented trees quivered and tossed their great arms so wildly that they cracked and broke, to fall crashing in the path. Yet, accomplish the five mile long, perilous descent, in the midst of lashing sleet and snow, over a slippery, tortuous path, she did. With her clothing torn by flaying branches and clutching wind, and drenched by icy water as the snow melted; with her hands and lips blue, and her feet numb; with her wavy hair pulled loose from its braids and plastered wetly against her colorless cheeks; she eventually stumbled into the rude building which contained the railroad and telegraph office at the terminus of the branch line at Fayville. Then she fell, half unconscious, into the arms of the astonished agent, who came to the door when he heard her stumble weakly against it.
"Good God, child, where did you come from?" he cried.
Smiles' lips moved faintly, and he caught an echo of the words which she had been repeating mechanically, over and over, "She haint ergoin' ter die!"
"I reckon she ain't, if human will can save her ... whoeversheis," muttered the man, as he laid the exhausted girl on a rude waiting bench, poured between her bruised lips a few drops of smuggled whiskey from a pocket flask, and then unceremoniously cut her shoe lacings and removed her sodden, icy boots.
After a moment, she sat weakly up, and—punctuated by gasps drawn by exquisite pain—managed to pant out, "I've got to send a telegram ...to-night ... now. Oh,please, Mister, don't wait for anything."
"There, there. We'll take care of your message all right. Don't worry, little woman," he answered, reassuringly. "But I ain't a-goin' ter send a tick till you're thawed out. My missus lives upstairs, an' she'll fix you up."
He half-carried, half-helped the weary girl up the narrow stairs, and, having surrendered her into the charge of a kindly and solicitous woman, hastened to rekindle the wood fire in the stove. As its iron top began to regain the ruddy glow which had scarcely faded from it, Rose crept near, holding out her bent, stiffened hands.
"Now, take it easy, little girl," cautioned the agent. "Not too close at first."
"And take off your dress and stockings, dear," said his wife. "Don't give no thought to him,—we've got three daughters of our own, most growed up."
The agent departed, with a heavy clamping of feet on the stairs, and gratefully—but with hands which were so numb that she had to give up in favor of the woman—Rose obeyed; and soon her teeth stopped their chattering, and the red blood of youth began once more to course through her veins, while her drenched, simple undergarments sent up vaporous white flags which indicated that the watery legions of the storm king were fast surrendering to their ancient enemy—Fire.
The older woman wrapped a blanket about the girl, as her husband came upstairs again with a pad of telegram blanks, and said, "Now, I'll write out the message you've got to send for you, if you want me to."
"Thank you, sir. I'm obliged to you and your missus. I reckon you can put the words better than I can, for I haint ... I have never sent one before. It's for Dr. Donald MacDonald, who lives on Commonwealth Avenue, up north in Boston city. And I want to tell him that little Lou Amos is most dying from a brain tumor. And tell him that she is nearly blind and 'comatose'...."
"That word's a new one to me, how do you spell it?" interrupted the agent, with pencil plowing through his rumpled hair.
"I ... I guess I've forgotten. Spell it like it sounds, and he'll know. And tell him that I will pay him all the money I've got, if he'll only come quick."
"How shall I sign it? It has to have your name, you know."
"Say it's from his foster-sister, Rose."
Laboriously the man wrote out the message, and the floor was littered with discarded attempts before he was satisfied; but in time the distant, slow clicking of the telegraph key below was sending not only the child's eager appeal to its destination many hundred miles north, but a message of renewed hope into the heart of Smiles.
"It will cost you more'n a dollar," said the man, as he appeared again. "But if you haven't got that much, why ..."
"I've got it right here," responded the girl, turning on him for an instant a glowing smile of gratitude for his halting offer. "I'm truly more'n obliged to you, sir ... and your wife. I reckon God meant that you should be here to-night to help save the life of a dear little child," she added simply.
"Now I'll just put on my things and be startin' back home."
"Startin' home? Well, I reckon not. You're a-goin' to stay right here to-night, and let my woman put you straight to bed. That's what you're a-goin' to do."
Smiles' protests were all in vain, and soon the weary body and mind were relaxed in the sleep which follows hard on the heels of exhaustion.
It was close on to midnight when Dr. Donald MacDonald reached his apartment after a rare theatre party with his fiancée. His day's work had been exacting, and he was doubly tired. The thought of bed held an almost irresistible appeal.
As he inserted his latch key in the lock, he heard the telephone bell in his office ringing insistently; his heart sank, and cried a rebellious answer.
Combined force of habit and the call of duty caused him to hasten to the instrument, however,without stopping to remove hat or coat, and to his ear came a small, distant voice saying, "A telegram for Dr. Donald MacDonald. Is he ready to receive it?"
"Yes ... Hold on a minute until I get a pencil.... All right, go ahead."
"It is dated from Fayville, Virginia, January 1, 1914. 8:30P.M.Are you getting it?"
"Yes, yes. Go on," cried the man, with increasing heart pulsations.
"'Dr. Donald MacDonald, Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Mass. Lou Amos dying of brain tumor almost blind and 'k-o-m-o-t-o-s-e'"—she spelt it out—"'Come at once if possible I will pay.' It is signed, 'Your foster-sister Rose.' Did you get it? Yes? Wait a moment, please, there is another one dated and addressed the same. The message reads, 'Girl came alone down mountain in howling blizzard. Case urgent. Signed, Thomas Timmins, Station Agent.' That is all."
"Thank you. Good-night," said Donald mechanically, as he replaced the receiver.
Through the partly open folding door he could dimly see that enticing bed, with his pajamas and bath robe laid across it. It seemed to him as though it were calling to his weary body with a siren's voice, or had suddenly acquired the properties of the cup of Tantalus. He hesitated, and moved a step toward it. Then the vision of Rose as he had last seen her, with the ethereal smile trembling on lips that struggledbravely to laugh, and in deep misty eyes, came between it and him.
Still clad in hat and overcoat, he seated himself at the desk and called up first the information bureau of the South Terminal Station, then his young associate, Dr. Philip Bentley, in whose charge he was accustomed to leave his regular patients when called away from the city for any length of time; and finally a house used as a semi-club by trained nurses.
When his last call was answered he asked, "Is Miss Merriman registered with you now? This is Dr. MacDonald speaking."
After a wait of several minutes, during which he felt himself nod repeatedly, a sleepy voice spoke over the wire, "This is Miss Merriman, Dr. MacDonald. I'm just off a case."
"Good. I'm lucky ... that is if you're game to take another one immediately."
"Yes, doctor. Do you want me to-night?"
"No, to-morrow ... this morning, that is, will do. I shall want you to meet me at the South Station, New York train, at seven o'clock."
"Yes, doctor. What sort of a case is it?"
"Same as the last you assisted me in—brain tumor. But we're going further this trip ... the jumping-off place in Virginia. It's up in the mountains, so take plenty of warm clothes."
"Very well, doctor." Then there came a little laugh, for these two were excellent friends now, and the query, "Another record-breaking fee?"
"I'll tell you to-morrow," he replied. "Don't forget, seven o'clock train for New York. Good-night."
"Good-night, doctor."
Donald turned away from the desk, and for a moment stood motionless.
"God bless her brave, trusting, little heart," he said half aloud.
And he was not thinking of Miss Merriman.
CHAPTER XXTHE ANSWER
More than once Rose caught herself wondering if, after that day was done, she would ever be able to smile again. In obedience to the doctor's prescription for Big Jerry, which it was ever her first duty to fill, she never looked towards him—as he sat bent over before the fire, eyes heavy with pain, breath coming in deep rasps, but lips set firmly against a word of complaint—without sending him a message of love and compassion through the intangible medium of that smile. Yet, as the weary hours dragged on with plodding feet, it seemed to her as though each new one was not an interest payment on a fund of happiness stored within her heart, but a heavy dipping into the principal itself.
Before she had taken her early morning departure back up to the mountain over the sodden, slippery path, she had received a telegram that Donald had sent off as his last act before yielding to the lure of bed, and which brought her the hope-engendering word that he would be with her as soon as swift-speeding trains could bring him.
But that was yesterday. By no possibility could he reach them before the coming evening, and surelynever had the sun taken so long to make his wintry journey across the pale blue sky.
Hour after hour Rose sat by the bedside of little Lou, and tenderly stroked her cold small hands while she hummed unanswered lullabies, each note of which was the chant of a wordless prayer. The sufferer lay so white, so utterly still, save for the periods when her every breath was a faint moan or she suddenly shook and twisted in a convulsive spasm, that time and again the girl started up with a cry of terror frozen on her lips but echoing in her heart, and bent fearfully over to press her ear close against the baby's thin breast. As often it caught the barely discernible beat of the little heart within.
The baby's eyes, now piteously crossed, had turned upward until the starlike pupils were almost out of sight. There were long periods when only the occasional twitching of the bloodless, childishly curved and parted lips, or the uneasy moving of the golden crowned head on the pillow, betrayed the fact that the spark of life still glowed faintly. Could she, by the power of will and prayer, keep that spark alight until the one on whom she pinned her faith should arrive, and fan it back to a flame by his miraculous skill? That was Smiles' one thought.
The violet shadows of evening began at last to tinge the virgin whiteness of the out-of-doors, and Rose caught herself starting eagerly, with quickened pulse, at every new forest sound. The crunching tread of Judd, who paced incessantly outside thewindow, grew almost unbearable. She counted the steps as they died away, and listened for them to return, until her nerves shrieked in protest, and it was only by an effort that she curbed their clamoring demand that she rush to the door and scream at him; bid him stand still or begone.
Through the shadows Donald was once again making his way up the now familiar mountain side. To have climbed up the footpath with Miss Merriman and their essential baggage would have been impossible, and he had, after much persuasion, finally succeeded in hiring a man in Fayville to drive them up in a springless, rickety wagon. This had necessitated their taking a much more circuitous route, and what seemed like an interminably long time.
During the railway journey from the Hub, he had told his companion all of the relevant facts, and much of the story of Rose, and the nurse's sympathetic interest in the recital had made her almost as anxious as the man himself to arrive at their destination and answer the girl's cry for aid.
Once she had voiced a doubt as to the wisdom of leaving his urgent practice and taking such a trip on so slender grounds.
"But how do you know that itisbrain tumor, doctor, or that there is either any chance of saving the child's life, or any real need of a surgeon? Atthe most you have only the conclusion of a country doctor who can hardly be competent to determine such a question."
"I have considered all that, Miss Merriman," he had replied, shortly, and then added, as though he felt that an explanation were due, "Frankly, when I made up my mind to go, I wasn't thinking of the patient so much as I was of my foster-sister. Perhaps she won't appeal to you as she has to me; but I really feel a strong responsibility for her future, and I don't want her faith in m ... in physicians to be shattered. You see, I have held up the ideal of service, regardless of reward, as our motto." He sat silently looking out of the car window for a moment, while the nurse studied his serious, purposeful face and mentally revised her previous estimate of him. Then he went on, with an apologetic laugh, "Besides—Oh, I know that it sounds utterly preposterous, but there are times when a man's groundless premonitions are more real to him than any logical conclusions of his own. This is one of those times."
The subject dropped.
Donald had, in addition to a fortnight's compensation in advance, given Miss Merriman a return ticket and sufficient money to cover all necessary disbursements, and told her that she must, of course, look to him for any additional salary. Under no circumstances, he said, was she to accept what Rose was sure to try and press upon her.
At length the plodding horse turned into the little clearing before Jerry's cabin, and, as it appeared, the watcher outside, his face twitching, slunk silently away into the forest, where his racked soul was to endure its hours of Gethsemane.
Rose heard them. She hastened to the door, and her white lips uttered a low cry which spoke the overwhelming measure of her relief.
"I justknewyou'd come!" she said, as the man, numbed with cold, swung his companion to the ground. The girl gave her a quick glance of surprise; but her eyes instantly returned to the doctor's face with an expression which Miss Merriman decided was as nearly worship as she had ever seen.
Donald did not return her greeting in words at first; but, after he had paid the driver, so liberally that the latter was left speechless, and they had entered the cabin, he held out his strong arms to her. Smiles swayed into them and pressed her face against the thick fur of his coat with an almost soundless sigh that told the whole story of anxious waiting and the end of the tension that had left its mark on her childlike face.
"This, Miss Merriman, is my little foster-sister, Rose. And Miss Merriman is a nurse who has come to help us," said he, as he released her, and passed on to greet the old giant, who had slowly pulled his shattered, towering frame from his chair, and now stood with a gaunt hand held out in welcome, while a ghost of his one-time hearty smile shadowed hislips. Big Jerry's flowing beard was now snow-white, and Donald was shocked at the change which had taken place in him.
Their greeting was brief and simple, as between men whose hearts are charged, and, as soon as he had eased him back into his seat, Donald spoke with a quick assumption of his professional bearing.
"Now, about our little patient. How is she, Rose?"
"Close to the eternal gates, I'm afraid," whispered the girl, with a catch in her voice. "Oh, Donald, we cannot let her ..." she turned abruptly and led the way to the door of her tiny bedroom. The doctor stepped inside and looked briefly, but searchingly, at the child who lay there, silent, and the semblance of Death itself. With her lips caught by her teeth, and her hands clasped tightly together to still her trembling, Rose watched him.
His next words, spoken as he stepped back into the cabin and shook himself free of his greatcoat, were brusquely non-committal. "And the doctor? Where is he?"
"The doctor? Why, he ... he isn't here; he hasn't been here for days. He doesn't even know that you were coming ... that I had sent for you."
"What? But I don't understand, child. Of course he ought to be here." Donald's voice was so sharp that it brought the tears, that were so near the surface, into Smiles' eyes, perceiving which, hehastened to add more gently, "There, there, of course you didn't know; but I can hardly hope to diagnose ... to determine what the trouble really is, or where the growth, if there is one, is located, unless I get a full history of the case from him and his own conclusions to help me."
"But ... but, Donald, he didn'thaveany conclusions. He said it was ... was brain fever, first, and then he gave up trying and told us that Lou had just got to die. Besides,Iknow the ... the history...." She stopped, with a little wail of distress.
"'Brainfever!' Then who ... the telegram certainly said 'tumor.'"
"Yes, yes.Isaid that. Oh, I can't tell you why; but I justknowthat it is, Donald, for little Lou has been exactly like you told me that baby up north was—the one you saved by a ... a miracle. Oh, don't you remember? It was in the paper."
Her sentences had become piteously incoherent; but their significance slowly dawned upon him. To Miss Merriman the conversation was somewhat of an enigma, and she stood aside, regarding Rose with an expression half bewildered, half frightened. Had this strange child summoned so famous a physician, whose moments, even, were golden, to the heart of the Cumberlands on her own initiative and on the strength of her own childish guess, merely? It was incredible, a tragic farce.
Perhaps something of similar import passed swiftlythrough the man's mind, for he placed his large hands upon the girl's slender shoulders, and, for an instant, sent a searching gaze deep into her eyes, now luminous with unshed tears, as he had first seen them. They looked up at him troubled, but frankly trusting.
"Do you mean, Rose," his words came slowly, "that you sent for me without a doctor's suggestion and advice; that you did it on your own hook?"
She nodded. "I just couldn't bear to have her die. She is all that ... that Judd has got in the world, now, and I knew that you could save her for him."
His hands felt the controlled tension of her body, and he impulsively drew her close to him. When he answered, his voice was strangely gentle.
"It's all right, little doctor. I'm glad that you did, and only hope that I can help. Now, let's all sit down here before the fire—how good it feels after that bitter ride, doesn't it, Miss Merriman?—and you will tell me all that you can about the baby's trouble—every single thing that you have noticed from the first, no matter how little it is. You see, that only by knowing exactly how the patient has acted can the surgeon even hope to guess where the trouble has its seat. Once before I told you that a nurse has got to face the truth, understandingly and bravely, and I may as well tell you about some of the difficulties which lie in the path that we must tread to-night. Your faith has been almost—sublime, dear. I wonder if it would have failed if youhad known how like a child in knowledge—a child searching in the dark—is a surgeon at such a time as this?"
"I ... I don't believe that I understand, and you kind of frightened me, Don. I thought that all you would have to do would be to ... to cut out that awful thing that is stealing away Lou's precious life. Wasn't that what you did for that other little child?"
"Yes, but ... how am I going to explain? If there is a tumor, as we think, I'll do my best to take it away; but, in order to do that, I have, of course, got to go inside of her skull right to the brain itself, and the trouble might be here, or here, or here." He touched her now profusion of curls at different cranial points. "That is the riddle which you and I must solve, and I have got to look to you for the key. The human brain is still a book of mystery to us. Some day, physicians will be able to read it with full understanding; but so far, we have, after thousands of years, barely learned how to open its covers and guess at the meaning of what lies hidden within."
Rose had edged close to Miss Merriman on the rough bench before the fire, and, with the older woman's arm about her, now sat, wide-eyed and wondering, while Donald talked. As he kept his gaze fixed on the glowing heart of the fire, he seemed, in time, to be musing aloud rather than consciously explaining.
"This much we have learned, however; that certain parts of the brain control all the different actionsor functions of the body—I've called it a telegraph station once before...." he paused, and both thought of little Mike in his last home under the snow ... "with different keys, each sending its message over a separate wire. So you see that, if we can learn exactly what the message has been, I mean by that just how certain parts of the body have been affected—Miss Merriman would call them the 'localizing symptoms'—we can often tell almost exactly which key is being disarranged by the pressure of a foreign growth, such as a tumor. Do you think that you can understand that, Rose?"
She nodded slowly.
"That is the first, the great and most difficult thing for us to do. The rest depends, in part, upon the mechanical skill of the surgeon, but far more upon Fate, for there are certain kinds of growths which may be removed with a fair chance of success—it is only that, at present—and others ... but we won't consider the others. Lou is young, and in one way that is in our favor. If thereisa tumor, there is less likelihood of infiltration," he added, glancing at the nurse.
Rose opened her lips as though to ask a question, and then decided not to, but her expression caused Donald to say, "Come child, don't look so frightened."
"But I didn't know ... it's so ... so terrible. How can any one live if his head is cut open like that?"
"It sounds desperate, doesn't it," he answered,lightly, "But with our anesthetics, which put the patient quietly to sleep, and our new, specially made instruments, the trained and careful surgeon can perform the operation quite easily—as far as the mechanical part goes, I mean. But, you can see how all-important it is for you to tell me just how Lou has been affected. I know what a good memory you have; make it count to-night."
With her breathing quickened, and eyes shining from pent-up excitement, Rose began. Simply and painstakingly she recounted everything which she had observed about the baby's strange behavior from that painful night when she had brought her from Judd's lonely cabin, through the long days in which she had steadily weakened and failed, to the time when the invisible hand of Death seemed to have begun to pluck at the thread of life itself.
Donald listened intently, without a word of interruption, until she suddenly broke off her recital with the words, "Oh, I can't think of anything more, truly I can't; and I'm so afraid ... afraid that it hasn't been enough to help."
Miss Merriman's encircling arm closed comfortingly about the girl, and she patted the head which turned and burrowed into her shoulder, but she said nothing, waiting for the man to speak. He mused for a moment, and then his words came with the crisp incisiveness of a lawyer in cross-examination.
"As she lost control of her legs and began to waver and stumble when she tried to walk, did she seem toturn, or fall, to one side more than to the other? Think!"
The anxiety deepened in Smiles' eyes; but she answered without hesitation, "No, I don't think so. It was more as though her little body was plumb tuckered out."
"And her hearing? Did that fail?"
"No, not until just toward the last, anyway. Even when she couldn't seem to answer me, somehow I was quite sure that she understood, when I spoke, or sang, to her. She would kinder smile, but, oh, it was such a pitiful smile that it 'most broke my heart."
"She seemed to understand, eh?" He paused, and the room was very still, except for Big Jerry's stentorian breathing. "Can you say quite certainly—don't be afraid to answer just exactly what you think—can you say, then, that, aside from the general weakness of all the powers of her little body and mind, the headache and occasional sickness, the most noticeable thing in all her strange behavior was that she wasn't able to talk clearly, and this increased until she wholly lost the power of speech which happened before she became as ... as I see her now?"
"Yes, doctor."
Donald turned abruptly to the nurse. "Barring the use of technical phraseology, and a possible expression of his own, probably valueless, conclusions, could any doctor, such as is likely to be practising in Fayville, have given me any more information, or told it better?"
"No, doctor."
At these unexpected words of praise the girl's smile appeared mistily for a moment, and then quivered away.
There was silence again in the cabin, while the man turned his thoughtful gaze back to the fire, which had now turned to glowing orange embers. A far-off look, alien to his keen, masterful face crept into it. Finally he seemed to shake off his new mood, and spoke with a queer laugh.
"I told you on the train that I was the victim of an uncanny premonition. I guess that Horatio was right about there being many things outside the ken of our limited philosophy. What psychic whisper from a world whose existence we men of 'common sense'"—he spoke the words sarcastically—"are loath to credit; what inspiration, born of the memory of that story of the case of the Bentley Moors' child in New York, which I told her in words of one syllable six months ago, was it that brought the light of truth to this girl's mind, when the village doctor utterly failed to catch so much as a glimmer of it?"
"Then you think, doctor ...?" began Miss Merriman.
"My diagnosis coincides with Smiles',—a tumorous growth on the brain, probably upon the third left frontal convolution ... right here," he said in explanation, as he touched his forehead between the left eyebrow and the hair. "Rose, you have done excellently. Now we, too, will do what we can, andwe shall need your help in full measure to-night. I know that it is going to be bitterly hard for you, perhaps the hardest thing that you will ever be called upon to do in all your life; you've got to be a woman, and a brave one. I'd spare you if I could, but...."
"But I don't want to be spared, Donald," she interrupted, eagerly.
"I know, and I trust you more than I could any grown-up woman here in the mountains. It's hardly necessary to tell you again, that a nurse is a soldier, and must be not only brave, but obedient. If we decide to ... to go ahead I will be, not your friend, but your superior officer for a while, and, if my orders seem harsh and even cruel, you must not hesitate, or feel hurt. You understand that, don't you, dear?"
"Yes, doctor. I understand."
She spoke bravely, but her voice trembled a little.
"Good. Before I make my final examination, Miss Merriman and I have got to change our clothes. She will use your room and I the loft; but first let us bring Lou's bed out here by the fire."
It was done.
"Now," he continued, "while we are getting ready, there are a number of things which you have got to do, and you will have to work fast. First, make grandfather comfortable in his room, and build up this fire. Then heat up as much water as the big kettle will hold, and see that a smaller one is scoured absolutely clean. Start some water heating in that,too. Finally, undress Lou completely, and wrap her in a blanket. Can you remember all that?"
"Yes, Donald ... yes, doctor."
Donald smiled, and added, "One thing more. Partly fill a pillow-case with sand, or dirt, if it is possible to get any. Perhaps the ground in the wood-house isn't frozen so hard but that you can get it."
She nodded wonderingly.
In a quarter of an hour her duties were completed and Miss Merriman and Donald had appeared, clad in their spotless white garments of service. Rose, likewise, was in her play uniform, which was now considerably too small for her, and her appearance in it would have caused a smile if it had not been more provocative of tears.
Six months earlier the doctor and nurse, assisted by others of the most skilled and highly trained that the metropolis afforded, had prepared to perform the same desperate service in humanity's cause, within the perfectly appointed operating room of a modern city hospital. How different was the setting now!
In the rude, but homey room of the mountain cabin, lighted only by old-fashioned lamps and lanterns and the pulsating blaze of the fire in the cavernous fireplace, whose colorful gleam touched with gold the scoured copper of pot and kettle, the three workers, in the immaculate garments of a city sickroom, bent intently over the naked form of the nearly insensible child, to whose alabaster body the leaping flames imparted a simulated glow of warm tones.
The general examination was brief, and made in silence. Then Donald drew the covering over the little body as a sculptor might the cloth over his statue, and straightened up with a look in his gray eyes that was new to Rose.
He spoke in curt sentences. "Of course the case is far more desperate than our last, Miss Merriman. It's the proverbial 'one chance in a thousand.' On that single thread hangs the child's life."
Suddenly he startled Rose by giving a short, mirthless laugh, and, turning away, he began to speak in an undertone, as though unconscious of the presence of the other two, for, despite his previous calm, the thought of what was in prospect had keyed up his nerves to a pitch where they quivered like the E string of a violin.
"Good God, what a colossal nerve a man is sometimes called upon to have in this world. Of course she'll die in twenty-four hours if Idon'toperate; but only a fool—or a genius—would tacklethisoperation under such impossible conditions. Practically none of the things here that science says are necessary. 'A fool, or a genius.'"—He suddenly smote his hands together, and said, "I hope that I'm a fool for to-night. God takes care of them ... and drunkards. I wish I had a strong slug of Judd's white whiskey, it might steady my nerves.
"WhereisJudd?" he snapped out, aloud, turning to Rose.