The summer that followed the People's Bank failure was one of those uncompromising summers that arrive in May and depart only with the last leaf in October. The river dwindling to a feeble stream staggered between distant banks, and the countryside lay parched and panting beneath an unrelenting sun.
In the city Noah Wicker toiled laboriously over his first case which had been granted a rehearing, and set for November the sixth. At the Capitol, Donald Morley sat day after day, coatless, collarless, in the torrid confines of his small bedroom, furiously covering reams of paper with compact handwriting. At Thornwood Miss Lady, who had been left in command of a sinking ship, struggled heroically to bring it into port.
One day early in July, Myrtella Flathers sat just inside the screen door of the summer kitchen, armed with a fly-spanker and a countenance of impending gloom. She was evidently rehearsing a speech, for her lips moved in scornful curves, and her bristling black locks were tossed in defiance. Mike, venturing out of a shady corner and catching a glimpse of her face, thought her inaudible remarks were addressed to him and retired with guilty eyelid and drooping tail to the woodshed.
Myrtella's bitter reflections were interrupted by the appearance of Miss Lady on the vine-covered porch. She looked absurdly young in her widow's weeds, in spite of the fact that her color was gone and her eyes beginning to look too big for her face.
“They've come to stay a week!” she announced, sinking wearily on the top step and casting a desperate glance at the closed shutters of the guest room above. “And it's Friday, and Mr. Gooch will be here to supper. Do you see how we are ever going to hold out?”
“Iain't!” declared Myrtella, spanking a fly into eternity with deadly precision. “I'm sick and tired of company. There ain't been a day in the three months since the Doctor died that we ain't had his kin folks on our hands. It beats my time how half the world gits a prowlin' fit every summer, and goes pestering them that stays at home. As to these old maids that come to-day, if they had a eye in their heads they'd see you was plumb wore out. I wouldn't 'a' ast 'em to stay.”
“But I had to. They are the Doctor's cousins. They said they'd been coming to see him every summer for years, and they don't want to lose sight of the children.”
“Umph! The children wouldn't mind losing sight of them! Miss Hattie got sent to bed onct for sassing the thin one that wants special dishes and all her water boiled. I bet she'll ast you to change her mattress.”
“She has already. That's what I came out to tell you, and she wants her supper an hour earlier than ours. But that isn't what's troubling me, Myrtella, I have something much more serious than Cousin Emily to worry over.”
“You ain't no exception,” said Myrtella, somewhat defensively. “Trouble is about the only thing that rich people ain't got a monopoly on. I've had my share; it's a wonder I got a black hair left in my head!”
“Has your brother lost his good place?” Miss Lady asked.
“Phineas? No, mam. He's been at Iselin's ever since he left Mrs. Sequin's, an' to hear him tell it he's runnin' the whole 'stablishment. I must say he's doin' better 'n he ever done before, but he's as full of airs as a music-box, an' that there Maria, a paternizing me like I hadn't been payin' her rent all these years. But I kin get along without them. It's little Chick I'm a worryin' about.”
“What's the matter with Chick?”
“Matter with him?” Myrtella turned on her fiercely. “Ever' thing is the matter with him. What chanct has he got in the world? Picked out of a ash-barrel, livin' in dirt an' ignorance, drinkin' the beer that leaks outen the kegs on the freight cars, hangin' 'round the saloons an' gittin' runtier an' dumber an' more pitifuller every day he lives. My Lord! Ain't that enough the matter with him?”
Miss Lady's quick, eager sympathy leapt into her face.
“We must do something for Chick. Dr. Wyeth believes he can cure him if they can ever get him into the Children's Hospital. Why can't we—” she checked herself, and sat looking off to the hills across the river.
“Myrtella, I've got to tell you something,” she began again desperately, “I've been trying to tell you all day, but I didn't know how. You have been so good to us, all through the Doctor's illness, and before. But I'm afraid after this month we'll have to let you go.”
Myrtella had been threatening to give notice for a month, but at this announcement she looked as if she had been the victim of an unsuccessful electrocution.
“It's a question of money,” went on Miss Lady hurriedly. “You see we simply haven't any. I've kept account of every cent that comes in and goes out, just as Mr. Gooch told me to; but it doesn't balance. We'll just have to keep on cutting down expenses until it does.”
“An' you are going to begin on me,” said Myrtella furiously, “an' git in some onery nigger that'll carry home more in a basket than my wages would come to!”
“No, Myrtella; we are going to try to do the work ourselves.”
“You meanyouare! An' Miss Connie'll primp herself up an' go hiking into town after beaux, an' Miss Hattie'll set around with her nose in a book, an' you'll go on workin' an' slavin' an' wearin' yourself to the bone fer them, an' their tribe of prowlin' kin. Where's the money you got for this farm?”
“It went to pay the debts and to carry out the Doctor's wishes.”
“'Bout printin' all them books he wrote over again, an' bringin' 'em out in the same kind of covers?”
“Yes.”
“How many was there, in all?”
“Twenty.”
Myrtella compressed her lips, and with difficulty refrained from comment. However freely the Doctor's will had been discussed in public, no criticism of it was brooked in the presence of Miss Lady.
“As to your leaving,” she said, changing the subject, while Myrtella vented her wrath on the flies, “you know you have wanted to go for months. It was only your goodness that made you come out here with us after you had saved money enough to start your boarding-house. We haven't been paying you enough, I know that, and—and we haven't enough to go on even as we are.”
Myrtella wheeled in the doorway, her face purple with anger:
“If you think I'm a-goin' an' leave you children in this big house, messin' up yer own food, an' lettin' everybody run over you, you are mighty mistaken! Miss Hattie 'd be having indigestion inside a week, an' Bertie 'd git the croup, an' you'd have every female Queerington that could buy a railroad ticket comin' an' settin' down on you!”
“But what can we do, Myrtella? I tell you the money is giving out!”
“Do? I'll tell you what we can do. We can board the company! We can fill up the rooms with folks that pay for what they eat, an' there won't be any room for the free prowlers. You git the boarders an' I'll manage 'em.”
“Why, Mrs. Ivy and Gerald wanted to come that way, but I laughed at them. Besides I don't know about Gerald—”
“On account of Miss Connie?” asked Myrtella, who had been too much in charge of the family not to know its secrets. “You let him come. He's one of them men that's like vanilla extract—you git too much of him onct, you never want no more!”
“And perhaps Mr. Gooch would come.”
“Well it would go kinder hard with him to pay fer anything he's always got free. But git Miss Hattie to ast him. He'd do it fer her quicker'n anybody.”
The project, under Myrtella's able generalship, developed immediately. Mr. Gooch and the Ivys gladly availed themselves of the opportunity of fleeing from the stifling city to the cool shade of Thornwood. Two former pupils of the Doctor's, who were taking a summer course at the university, also asked if they might have a room, and at the end of a week paying guests were in possession and the family relegated to any nook or corner that was large enough to accommodate a bed.
One problem was unexpectedly solved by the appearance of Uncle Jimpson, who announced that “he had done come back home to stay.” The distinction of driving forth daily in solitary grandeur to exercise the Sequins' horses, had palled upon him, and the prospect of conducting the Queerington boarders back and forth to the station, and renewing his intimacy with old John and Mike, had proven irresistible.
Aunt Caroline had died in the early spring, and Uncle Jimpson found even the society of Myrtella a relief after his enforced loneliness. He listened with bulging eyes and sagging jaw to her accounts of the latest murders and obeyed her slightest command with a briskness that would have amazed the old Colonel.
“We's helpin' Miss Lady git a start,” he would say proudly again and again, “an' then maybe she git married some more.”
“Married!” Myrtella would flare, “yes, she orter git married to another widower with three children, and a thousand kin folks. Besides, who's she going to marry?”
“Ain't no trouble 'bout dat,” Uncle Jimpson said wisely; “you jes' let her peek over de blinds onct, an' you see what gwine happen.”
“Well, she ain't going to peek,” Myrtella said firmly. “She ain't got a thought in her head, but gittin' Miss Hattie an' Bertie educated, an' keepin' Miss Connie straight, an' carryin' out that fool will of the Doctor's.”
“Jest wait,” Uncle Jimpson smilingly insisted, “dat chile can't no more help 'cumulatin' beaux dan a flower kin bees. An' hits de king bee dat's comin' dis time, shore!”
“Where's Connie? Where's Hat?” cried Miss Lady breathlessly, bringing her foam-flecked horse to a halt in front of the porch where Mrs. Ivy was sitting in the twilight. “Don Morley has written a book and it's going to be published this month!”
“A book!” echoed Mrs. Ivy incredulously, then,
“Ah, my dear, do get off that vicious beast; I haven't had a moment's peace since Mr. Wicker sent him over!”
Miss Lady slipped to the ground and stood with her arm around Prince's neck, laughing. The thrill of her long ride, the first one in nearly two years, still surged through her, and the news just received made her heart dance for joy. Happiness, in spite of her efforts not to expect it, was beginning to shine across the troubled waters, a dim and wavering light as yet, but drawing her toward it with irresistible fascination. It was something to steer by in times of stress and storm, something to turn to tremulously, in the lonely hours of the night, when over-taxed muscles refused to relax and her tired brain ached with the pity and sorrow of the world.
During her long ride this afternoon she had dared for the first time to give rein to thoughts that had hitherto been held in check. Surely life was more than the dreary, monotonous, loveless business of the past summer! With all its problems and perplexities, it was nevertheless a mysterious, fascinating thing. She did not approve of it, nor did she altogether trust it, but she was incorrigibly in love with it—and would be to the end.
“I suppose you know that supper is over,” said Mrs. Ivy, with veiled reproach. “Were there no letters for me?”
“Oh, dear, how stupid of me. I forgot to look through the rest of the mail. Here it is.”
Mrs. Ivy sorted out her own official-looking budget, then peered closely at the two remaining envelopes.
“As I suspected,” she said with a significant lifting of her eyebrows; “two for Constance, in the same handwriting and both postmarked from the Capitol.”
“But what of it, Mrs. Ivy?”
“Mydear,” Mrs. Ivy breathed, “don't you see they are from Mr. Morley?”
“Yes; but I have one from him, too; he's telling us about his book.”
Mrs. Ivy smiled with sad superiority, “Ah, my dear, you are not a very sophisticated little chaperon. I have hesitated to speak to you before, but I really think this young man's attention to Constance should be stopped. It isn't fair to poor Gerald. You know how she has always adored my boy, ever since she was in pinafores, and I don't mind confessing to you that I've encouraged her. Of course Gerald's artistic temperament has made him susceptible to many forms of beauty, but he has really been quite devoted of late. I simply can not endure the thought of that Mr. Morley interfering with the blossoming of their childhood love.”
“But Mrs. Ivy, he—he is her cousin; he looks upon her as a child.”
“She is only a year younger than you are, my dear, and much more worldly wise. I've had my eyes open and I've seen a great deal. She is getting quite secretive, and she isn't always gracious to Gerald. Mr. Morley's back of it all, you 'II see.”
“I don't think there is any danger,” said Miss Lady critically examining the tip of Prince's nose.
“Ah, my dear girl, you have been too engrossed for the past six months to notice. Ask Mr. Wicker; he spoke to Gerald about it last spring. Ask Gerald himself, he's wretchedly unhappy. And now you are helping her to get ready to go up to the Capitol to visit, and he's sure to see her every day. I must say that I think it's wretched taste for him to pay attentions to any girl under the circumstances.”
In an instant Miss Lady had wheeled with flashing eyes:
“Donald's friends know that he hasn't done anything to be ashamed of! I don't believe he thinks of Connie in the way you mean, but if he does she has every reason to be proud of it!”
And without waiting for an answer she drew the bridle over her arm and tramped indignantly off to the stable.
Mrs. Ivy sighed, then turned to join Mr. Gooch who had just come out on the porch.
“Has it ever occurred to you,” she said as if enunciating a hitherto unuttered truth, “how reluctant youth is to learn of age? This dear little widow that the good Doctor left to our care, is making some grave mistakes.”
“I think she does fairly well,” said Mr. Gooch, settling himself comfortably; “the beef is not always good, but the fowls and the vegetables are ex-excellent.”
Mr. Gooch spoke with unusual warmth. Myrtella's cooking, together with Miss Lady's graciousness, and the sharp proprietorship that Hattie had assumed over him, were working a miracle. Even now as the sounds of music and laughter came forth from the living-room, he paused to listen. He was surprised to find that “Molly Darlings,” and “Nellie Grays,” and other musical girls he'd left behind him, still haunted the dim corridors of his argumentative mind, and gave him little thrills of pleasure.
“Ah,” purred Mrs. Ivy, continuing the conversation. “Far be it from me to criticize her. It is against my principles to entertain a critical attitude toward any one. Besides, I quite adore the dear child. I consider her a precious gift to a grateful world. But you must acknowledge, Mr. Gooch, that with all her sweetness, she doesn't always allow herself to be guided.”
“Good Lord, no,” said Mr. Gooch testily.
“She'll look you straight in the eye and smile, while you are advising her, then go straight off and do as she pleases. This matter of the Doctor's will, for instance. I spent two days arguing with her about the futility of publishing two dozen volumes that nobody will ever read.”
“But that was his dying request, Mr. Gooch. Only one who has loved and lost can know the nature of that obligation.” Mr. Gooch sniffed impatiently. Conjugal felicity was a subject that irritated him in every fiber.
“Then her charities,” he went on crustily; “she's got no money to be throwing away, yet every family on Billy-goat Hill comes to her when it gets into trouble.”
“Yes, and she doesn't hesitate to sit down in those dreadful hovels, and take those unclean babies in her arms. It has made me frightfully nervous since we came here. Gerald is so sensitive to germs.”
“What is this latest tomfoolery about a kindergarten?”
“Why, she has actually gotten Mrs. Bartrum and Mrs. Horton, and some of those other society women, to rent the hall over the grocery where the Cant-Pass-It Saloon used to be. They are going to open a kindergarten and Margery Sequin is coming home from Europe to take charge of it. I am afraid the project is built upon the sands. There is not a church member on the board!”
“Well, they needn't come to me for a contribution,” said Mr. Gooch. “I don't believe in kindergartens.”
While this conversation was taking place, quite a different one was in progress, on the up-stairs side porch which had been converted into a summer bedroom for Miss Lady and Bertie.
“Do you 'spose,” Bert was saying sleepily, “that God 'ud give me a horn 'stead of a harp when I get to heaven, if I ask him to?”
“I know He will, Bert. Take off your other shoe.”
“Why didn't He give Chick something to say?”
“He did, but Chick's throat won't let the words come through. Step out of your clothes now, hurry up, Buddikin!”
But Bert's feet were firmly planted, and his sleepy eyes fixed in philosophic musings:
“If He had all kinds of throats I don't see why He didn't give Chick a good one.”
This required elucidation, and Miss Lady attempted to make the matter clear while extricating the small boy from his clothes.
“Ain't you going to tell me a story?”
“Not to-night, Bert. I'm so tired; all the stories have run out.”
Bert crawled into his bed silently, and lay watching the shadows in the big tree outside.
“I wish Cousin Don was here,” he sighed. “He never does run out of stories. When is he coming back?”
“I don't know, dear. Shut your eyes now, and go to sleep.”
He shut his eyes obediently, but continued the conversation drowsily,
“He knows all about whales and tigers, and big ships and elephants. He's—been—clear—around—the—earth—”
But the Sandman had conquered, and Miss Lady, having slipped on a dressing-gown and loosened her hair, tiptoed to the far end of the porch and sitting on the railing gazed fixedly out into the gathering darkness. For half an hour the dim enchantments of twilight had been abroad, transforming hill and valley, and merging heaven and earth in a tender, elusive atmosphere of dreams. But her absorbed, white face, and tense hands locked about her knees, showed that she was not concerned with the beauty of the evening.
Mrs. Ivy's words had kindled a bonfire, by the light of which recent events leapt into view. Connie had been secretive, not only about her letters but about her engagements as well. She was growing daily more indifferent to Gerald Ivy, and developing a taste for reading that had been the cause of much surmising and teasing on the part of the household.
Twice during the summer Donald had come to Thornwood, and on both occasions Miss Lady had been seized with an unreasoning fear, not only of him, but of herself. She had received him under the depressing chaperonage of Mr. Gooch and Mrs. Ivy, and she remembered now how Connie had taken possession of him on both occasions. But even if Connie's transitory affections were temporarily engaged, surely Donald was not encouraging her!
A low whistle from the path below made her look down. It was Connie and she was stepping very cautiously as if trying to elude somebody.
“Miss Lady!” she called softly. “Aren't you coming down again?”
“No, I'm going to bed.”
“Don't go yet. I'm coming up. I want to tell you something.”
A moment later Connie opened the door, and closed it carefully behind her.
“Is Bertie asleep?”
“Yes.”
“It's all over!” she announced tragically. “Gerald and I have had an awful quarrel, and he swears he'll never live to see another dawn.”
“Of course he won't, I doubt if he has ever seen one. What's his trouble?”
“Everything! He wants me to sit at his feet every hour in the day and adore him, and how can I adore a man who is afraid of a bumblebee, and can't drive, and sleeps with an umbrella over his head to shut out the light? I just simply can't stand him another minute!”
“But, Connie, you were so crazy about him, you wouldn't listen to a word against him.”
“I know it. I've been a perfect little idiot.” Connie was sobbing now on Miss Lady's shoulder. “The first time I saw him he'd just gotten home from Europe. He was playing at a concert. Everybody said he was a genius, and his eyes were so wonderful, and I had never seen anybody like him. The more he snubbed me the crazier I got about him. It wasn't until Cousin Don came back that I saw him as he really is.”
Miss Lady patted the heaving shoulders, but said nothing.
“And the very minute,” Connie continued tempestuously, “that I began to feel differently, Gerald began to like me. He has worked himself up to a terrible pitch, and doesn't want me out of his sight for a minute. I feel as if I'd been living on chocolate creams for three months!”
“Connie!” Miss Lady took the tear-stained face between her hands. “I'm glad it isn't Gerald. I'm glad from the bottom of my heart, but are you sure it isn't somebody else?”
Connie's blue eyes, never very steadfast, shifted uneasily, and Miss Lady went on earnestly:
“Are you quite sure you aren't doing just what you did before, getting infatuated, and making yourself miserable over some one who doesn't care for you?”
“But he does!” burst out Connie indignantly; “he cares for me more than for anybody in the world!”
“How do you know?”
“He's told me so! There—I oughtn't to have told! I swore I wouldn't until after the trial. But you won't breathe it, Miss Lady? Promise you won't even ask me to tell you anything more?”
Miss Lady looked at her strangely.
“I know everybody is going to disapprove,” Connie went on recklessly, “and say horrid things about him. But I don't care if you will just stand by me. And you will, won't you?”
Twice Miss Lady tried to speak before the words would come, then:
“Yes,” she whispered almost breathlessly, “yes, I promise to stand by you,—and by him.”
After Connie had gone she went back to her seat on the railing and stared out into the gathering night. For the first time in her life the dark immensity terrified her. The beacon lights by which she had steered were no longer visible. The great lonely sea of life lay about her, and she had lost her course.
“Daddy!” she whispered in terror, “Daddy help me!”
But only the faint cry of a whippoorwill in the valley below answered her call. A trembling seized her and feeling her way to the bed where Bertie lay, she crept in beside him, cuddling the soft, warm little body close, and checking her sobs that they might not wake him. Long after the whippoorwill had ceased its plaint, she lay there staring into the darkness, waiting for the dawn.
The autumn sun struggled palely through the windows of the Children's Hospital, and sent a beam across the high narrow bed where Chick Flathers lay, suspiciously watching the proceedings of the attendant nurses. He was not at all sure that he had done right in coming. For two days he had been made to stay in bed, and this morning he had suffered his third bath and been deprived of his breakfast. His being there at all was merely a concession to friendship. Mis' Queerington had persuaded him. He wouldn't have come for the Other One, the fat one who smiled and talked about The Willows Awful Home. He wouldn't even come for Aunt 'Telia, but Mis' Queerington was different; she understood fellows. She had said that the doctors would fix his throat so that he could yell louder than any boy on Billy-goat Hill! All the suppressed yells of a dozen years quivered on his lips at the thought of it! “Chick, here's a orange and some cookies I brought you.” It was Aunt 'Telia who sat down by the bed and took his hand. “If you ever get well Aunt 'Tella's going to take you to the circus, or the seashore, or somewheres.”
The seashore presented no concrete idea, so Chick preferred to dwell upon the circus, but even that alluring prospect could not hold his attention while so many disturbing things were taking place about him. One nurse had felt his pulse, another had put a glass tube in his mouth, and now a third was wheeling in a curious little bed on wheels.
He turned restlessly from the black-browed, anxious face bending over him to the door where Mrs. Queerington was entering. But he knew by experience that it would be some time before she reached him. All those other sick duffers would want her to talk to them, and the nurses would stop her, and the young house-doctor would claim a flower for his buttonhole. Chick hated them all indiscriminately. It seemed an hour before her bright, reassuring face bent over him, and he heard her say:
“It won't be long, now, Chicky Boy. Dr. Wyeth will be here soon, and they will give you a ride on this funny little wagon. I wonder what Skeeter Sheeley is doing about this time? Going to school, I expect.”
This diverted Chick marvelously. The thought of Skeeter having to spend the morning in the schoolroom, made his own lot less hard.
“Is Number Seventeen prepared for the operation?” he heard some one ask, and at the same moment Aunt 'Tella's fingers closed on his like a vise.
Then the big doctor, who had brought him there, appeared at the foot of his bed.
“Ah, Mrs. Queerington!” he was saying, “the very sight of you ought to hearten up these youngsters. But you are still paler than I like to see you. Been overdoing again?”
She shook her head. “I'm all right, but what about your patient?”
The doctor stroked his chin and appeared to be interested in the ceiling. “Some rather grave complications. Very anemic. Very little to work on. Possibly an even chance. However—” he shrugged his broad shoulders. “Has he any people?”
“No, except this foster-aunt who supports him. Myrtella!”
But Myrtella had turned her back at sight of the doctor, and refused to look up.
Chick narrowly watching the two speakers at the foot of the bed, and trying vainly to understand what they were saying about him, was relieved when Dr. Wyeth handed Miss Lady a book and said lightly:
“You see that I, like everybody else, have fallen a victim to 'Khalil Samad.' I understand it is already in its tenth edition. Young Morley has a career before him, if he gets through this trial. Do you know when it is set for?”
“November the sixth.”
“So soon as that? Well, I don't know the young man, but I hope he'll be cleared. I want him to write some more books for me to read. I'm sorry Kinner has charge of the prosecution. He'd rather convict an innocent man than a guilty one. All right, my boy, I guess we are ready.”
“Don't try to get up!” admonished the nurse to Chick; “I'll lift you over.”
But Chick scorned assistance. Hadn't he only last week valiantly bucked the center in a football game between the Bean Alley Busters, and the Shanty Boat Bums, and, covered with mud and blood and glory, been carried from the field? They needn't think because he was little and thin and couldn't talk that he was a baby! He got himself on to the wheeled stretcher, but refused to lie down.
“Let him sit up then,” said Mrs. Queerington. “He likes to see where he is going, don't you, Chick? Here goes our automobile! Honk! Honk!”
The nurse wheeled him through the tall, gloomy halls, while Myrtella shambled at one side, clinging to his hand, and wiping her eyes. Miss Lady flitted along on the other, telling him about the new football that was going to be on his bed when he woke up.
Then they halted, and Myrtella bent over him wildly. “Chick!” she cried, her face suddenly contorted, “look at me just once more! Tell me you fergive me, Chicky! Oh, if they kill you—!”
The stretcher was shoved hastily into the elevator and the door closed on everybody but Chick and the nurse and the orderly.
It was about that time that Chick decided to lie down. Where were they taking him? What were they going to do with him? What did Aunt 'Tella mean by those strange words? Where had Mis' Squeerington gone? With sudden quaking terror he looked at the nurse and broke into hoarse interrogatory sounds.
“Here we are!” she cried soothingly, as the elevator came to a halt. “And here's Dr. Wyeth waiting for us.”
“Well, my little man,” said the large figure in white, taking a small cold hand in his large strong one, “we are going to put you to sleep and when you wake up, it will be all over. You are pretty game, aren't you?”
Chick, trying very hard to keep his knees from shaking the sheet, nodded emphatically.
“I thought so,” lied the doctor cheerfully, looking into the terror-stricken eyes. “I can almost always tell when a fellow's made out of the right sort of stuff. You don't wear false teeth, do you?”
Chick's sudden, toothless smile revealed the futility of this question.
“That's good. No danger of your swallowing them. Now suppose you put this funnel over your mouth and take a big breath. That's right! Another one! That's right, once more!”
Chick felt a hot, sweet air rush into his throat, and began to choke. But the doctor's voice kept saying insistently, “Once more!” “Once more, my boy!” And the doctor thought he was game.
He shut his eyes and tried not to be afraid, but fearful things were happening! His skin was leaving his body; and he was going up in the air; lights danced before his eyes and he was suddenly in a terrible hurry about something. He had never been in such a hurry before! He was leaving doctors and nurses far below, he could hear their voices growing fainter every moment. Then suddenly the lights began to dance again, and the hurry came back, and all the breath was being squeezed out of him. No, he couldn't be game any longer! He must fight! Savagely, blindly, dumbly he struggled against this awful unknown thing that was mastering him. Then, after a last agonizing effort he sank helplessly into the abyss of sleep.
Meanwhile, on the floor below, sitting on the cold bare steps beside the door of the elevator, two white-faced women waited anxiously. All was silent in the high, narrow corridor except for the footsteps of passing nurses, and the occasional sharp cry of pain, or groan of weariness from some suffering patient.
“That's him!” cried Myrtella hysterically as one of these cries reached her.
“No, no. He is sound asleep by this time. He won't know anything until it is all over.” Then as another cry brought Myrtella to her feet, Miss Lady added, “Please, Myrtella, don't be so frightened. Those cries come from the floor below.”
Myrtella shook off her hand impatiently. “How long have they been gone? Why didn't you tell me they was going to keep him hours and hours?”
“It's only been twenty minutes. I know how anxious you are, but you must try to be calm. If you aren't they won't let you go in the room when they bring him down.”
“Won't let me in the room!” Myrtella's face blazed with anger. “I'd like to see 'em stop me! Who's got a better right? The doctor? The nurse? You? There ain't none of you got the right to him I have. Ain't I his mother?”
Miss Lady looked at her with amazement, and shrank instinctively from the desperate, defiant woman.
“That's right!” cried Myrtella, almost beside herself. “Snatch your hand off my arm, shrink away from me like I was a leper! Tell everybody, tell the police that I throwed my baby in the ash barrel and abandoned it! It don't make no difference now, nothin' makes no difference but Chick. Oh, my God! How long have they been?”
“They will be down very soon now, Myrtella. Don't tear your handkerchief like that. Here, take mine.”
But Myrtella's eyes were too full of terror for tears; she sat with her hands locked about her knees swaying to and fro.
“I've never told nobody,” she went on wildly; “all these years I've kept it bottled up in my soul 'til it's eat it plumb out. I never done it to Chick! He wasn't Chick then. He was just somethin' that belonged to a devil. Then he growed to be Chick, and all my hate turned to love, and now God's gittin' even, I knowed He would! He wouldn't let him live now, just to spite me!”
“Myrtella!” Miss Lady's voice commanded indignantly. “Don't you dare say such things! Who knows but this very minute God's giving Chick back to you? Perhaps He is taking this way of showing you He forgives you. Pray to Him, Myrtella! Ask Him to do what's best for Chick, whatever it may be.”
Myrtella's head had sunken on her knees, and her coarse, work-hardened hands were clinging to Miss Lady's slender ones.
Suddenly they both started. The elevator descended creakingly and halted beside them. There was a shuffling of feet and the stretcher was wheeled past with a small, white-sheeted form lying motionless upon it.
“It's all over,” said Dr. Wyeth, following briskly. “He put up a pretty stiff fight while taking the anesthetic, but we downed him at last. The conditions were less serious than I anticipated. With care and good nursing he ought to get well right away now. Hello! Here's another patient!”
For Myrtella, glaring at him through her steel-rimmed spectacles, had dropped like a log straight across the corridor and lay unconscious with her fly-away hat crushed under one ear.
“Loosen her collar,” directed Dr. Wyeth, “and bring me some ice water. There! She'll come around in a minute.”
He knelt beside her with his hand on her pulse, looking at her curiously. Then he turned to Miss Lady:
“Queer how faces come back to you. I attended this woman twelve years ago, when I was interne in the maternity ward at the City Hospital.”
As the sixth of November approached, Donald Morley's friends for the first time became seriously apprehensive over the result of his final trial. The fact that he had engaged an unknown, inexperienced lawyer to cope with the redoubtable Kinner, was looked upon as his crowning folly. The case, which had always excited considerable local interest on account of the prominence of the families involved, now became a matter of much graver significance, concerning, as it did, the author of “Khalil Samad,” the most talked-about book of the hour.
Miss Lady, alone at Thornwood now, except for Bertie and Myrtella, fought through the days as best she could. Since Connie's confession she had seen little of her, for after a round of visits in the Blue Grass region, that restless young person had been with friends in town, and was still there when the date set for the trial arrived.
Up to this time Miss Lady had conquered in the hourly struggle she was making with her own heart. Again and again Donald had tried to see her, but on one pretext or another she had evaded him. She was puzzled, bewildered, and hopelessly wretched, and she asked herself repeatedly why her happiness should be sacrificed for that of a shallow, irresponsible butterfly. For Donald, she had no blame, he had drifted into this affair with Connie when his need was greatest, and now that his honor was involved as well as hers, there must be no turning back.
But when the second day of the trial dawned, and she came down after a sleepless night to read discouraging news reports of the previous day's proceedings, she found that something stronger than herself was taking possession of her. In vain did she try to fulfil her accustomed tasks. Every atom of her was there in the courthouse beside Donald Morley, standing trial with him. Twice she flung on her coat and hat, only to take them off again, and stand at the window impatiently watching the storm.
For the long summer had finally come to an end. After days of radiant October sunshine, when winter seemed, like the hereafter, vague and far off, a wind came rushing out of the north, stripping the trees in a single night, and leaving them surprised at their sudden nakedness. Then the sleet came, and, not content with attacking trees and shrubs, must storm the house itself, invading windows and doors, besieging every nook and corner, only to waste away at last into icy streams that went rattling noisily down the gutters.
As the morning wore on Miss Lady grew more and more restless. Suppose the preposterous should happen, and for the second time twelve honest men should pronounce an innocent man guilty? Could Connie face the ignominy of the verdict? Would her fickle, inconstant heart steady to such a test? Suppose that once again the person on whom Donald Morley depended, should fail him in a supreme hour?
For the third time Miss Lady threw on her wraps. She could no longer stand the suspense, she must go to him, in case he needed her.
“'Fore de Lawd!” exclaimed Uncle Jimpson when her intention was made known to him. “I dunno what ole John'll think of us, takin' him to de station a day lak dis! 'Sides de noon train's done went.”
“Then we'll have to drive to town. Hitch up as quickly as you can!”
“But, Miss Lady, Honey, you fergit de sleet! Ole John 'ud slide 'round de road lak a fly on a bald spot.”
“No matter! I'm going. Hurry!”
Myrtella, who was fashioning a dough man, under the personal supervision of Bert, looked up indignantly:
“You don't think you are going out in this storm without no lunch, do you?”
“I can't eat anything, I'm not hungry.”
“That's what you said at breakfast. I ain't got a bit of patience with people that get theirselves sick in bed and be a nuisance to everybody, just for the pleasure of slopping around in the slush on a day like this. I'm going to fix you some toast and a egg, while he's hitchin' up.”
“Go on with the story, 'Telia,” demanded Bertie, carefully bestowing a nose on the dough man.
“Well,” resumed Myrtella, from the stove, casting an anxious glance at Miss Lady who stood at the window impatiently tapping the pane, “everbody was a wonderin' what would be his very first words, an' Dr. Wyeth he sez, 'Don't pester him to talk, jes' let it come natural.' One day me an' the nurse, the stuck-up one I was tellin' you 'bout, was fixin' to spray out his throat, an' he look so curious at all the little rubber tubes, an' fixin's, that she sez, 'You'll know a lot when you leave here, Chick.' And what do you think he up an' answered? Just as smart an' plain as if he'd a been talkin' all his life?”
“What?” demanded Bertie as breathlessly as if he hadn't heard the story a dozen times.
“'Shucks', sez Chick, 'I knowed a lot when I come!'” Myrtella's pride in this first articulation of her offspring was so great that it rendered her oblivious to the fact that the toast was scorching.
“When will you be able to bring Chick home?” asked Miss Lady, gulping down the hot tea with a watchful eye on the stable door.
“Jes' as soon as the doctor quits foolin' with his throat every day. He's been gittin' on fine ever' since I took him back to Phineas'. Maria's gittin' right stuck on him, now she's got to give him up. Says she always knowed he was smart, but she never dreamed of the things he had bottled up in his head.”
“I haven't forgotten about your house,” said Miss Lady absently. “Dr. Wyeth knows a nice place down on Chestnut Street, and says you can make a good living letting the rooms to shop girls. It isn't right for me to keep you out here any longer.”
“Well, I ain't goin' 'til spring.” Myrtella rattled the pans with unnecessary vehemence. “Me an' Chick's goin' to stay right here 'til we git you settled. Now that Mr. Gooch has got a spell of spendin', an' is sendin' Miss Hattie to college, I guess she's settled fer a spell. Like as not Miss Connie'll be marryin' some smart-alecky, good-fer-nothin' fellow, then she'll be settled. But what's goin' to become of you and Bertie?”
Miss Lady leaned impulsively over the child's back as he knelt in a chair beside the table, and kissed the bit of neck that showed between the collar and the curls: “Bert and I?” she repeated with a little catch in her voice; “why, we'll have to take care of each other, won't we, Bert?”