"Where is she?" he asked, briefly, with a slight prickling of the scalp.
In solemn procession, in their night-gowns, they led him to her side; and the peace of the perfumed night as they passed through the garden was broken with explanations and mutual recriminations and expressions of unavailing regret. Rover rose as they approached and looked up into his master's eyes, wagging his tail in eager welcome.
"Here she is," he seemed to say. "It's all right.Ilooked after her."
The father's eyes grew dim as he patted the dog's fine head and lifted the naked body of his youngest daughter in his arms. Her little body was cold, and she shivered as she awoke and looked at him. Then she gazed down into the conscience-stricken faces of her sisters and memory returned. It drew from her one of her rare spontaneous remarks.
"Don't yike simple yives," announced Genevieve Maud, with considerable firmness. "Don't yant to play any more."
"You shall not, my babykins," promised her father, huskily. "No more simple life for Genevieve Maud, you may be sure."
Later, after the hot bath and the supper which both her father and the trained nurse had supervised, Genevieve Maud was tucked cozily away in the little brass crib which had earlier drawn out the stern disapproval of her sisters. Her round face shone with cold cream. A silver mug, full of milk, stood beside her crib, on her suggestion that she might become "firsty" during the night. Finding the occasion one of unlimited indulgence and concession, she had demanded and secured the privilege of wearing her best night-gown—one resplendent with a large pink bow. In her hand she clasped a fat cookie.
Helen Adeline and Grace Margaret surveyed this sybaritic scene from the outer darkness of the hall.
"Look at her poor, perishin' body full of comforts," sighed Helen Adeline, dismally. Then, with concentrated bitterness, "I s'pose we'll never dare to eventhink'bout her soul again!"
Captain Arthur Hamilton, of the ——th Infantry, moved on his narrow cot, groaned partly from irritation and partly from pain, muttered a few inaudible words, and looked with strong disapproval toward the opening of the hospital tent in which he lay. Through it came the soft breezes of the Cuban night, a glimpse of brilliantly starred horizon-line, and the cheerful voice of Private Kelly, raised in song. The words came distinctly to the helpless officer's reluctant ears.
"'Oh, Liza, de-ar Liza,'" carolled Kelly, in buoyant response to the beauty of the evening.
Captain Hamilton muttered again as he suppressed a seductive desire to throw something at the Irishman's head, silhouetted against the sky as he limped past the entrance. Six weeks had elapsed since the battle of San Juan, in which Hamilton and Kelly had been among the many grievously hurt. Kelly, witness this needless service of song, was already convalescent. He could wander from tent to tent in well-meaning but futile efforts to cheer less fortunate mates. Baker was around again, too, Hamilton remembered, and Barnard and Hallenbeck and Lee, and—oh, hosts of others. He ran over their names as he had done countless times before in the long days and nights which had passed since he had been "out of it all," as he put it to himself. He alone, of his fellow officers in the regiment, still lay chained to his wretched cot, a very log of helplessness, in which a fiery spirit flamed and consumed. His was not a nature that took gracefully to inactivity; and of late it had been borne in upon him with a cold, sickening sense of fear, new, like his helplessness, that inactivity must be his portion for a long, long time to come. At first the thought had touched his consciousness only at wide intervals, but now it was becoming a constant, lurking horror, always with him, or just within reach, ready to spring.
He was "out of it all," not for weeks or even for months, but very possibly for all time. The doctor's reticence told him this; so did his own sick heart; so did the dutiful cheerfulness of his men and his brother officers. They overdid it, he realized, and the efforts they so conscientiously made showed how deep their sympathy must be, and how tragic the cause of it. His lips twisted sardonically as he remembered their optimistic predictions of his immediate recovery and the tributes they paid to his courage in the field. It was true he had distinguished himself in action (by chance, he assured himself and them), and he had figured as a hero in the subsequent reports of the battle. But the other fellows would hardly have bothered to have a trifle like that mentioned, he told himself, if the little glowing badge of fame he carried off the field had not been now his sole possession. He had given more than his life for it. He had sacrificed his career, his place in the active ranks, his perfect, athletic body. His life would have been a simple gift in comparison. Why couldn't it have been taken? he wondered for the hundredth time. Why could not he, like others, have died gloriously and been laid away with the flag wrapped round him? But that, he reflected, bitterly, would have been too much luck. Instead, he must drag on and on and on, of no use to himself or to any one else.
Again and again he contemplated the dreary outlook, checking off mentally the details of the past, the depressing experiences to come, the hopelessness of it all; and as his mind swung wearily round the small circle he despised himself for the futility of the whole mental process, and for his inability to fix his thoughts on things other than his own misfortune. A man paralyzed; a thing dead from the waist down—that was what he had become. He groaned again as the realization gnawed at his soul, and at the sound a white-capped nurse rose from a table where she had been sitting and came to his bedside with a smile of professional cheerfulness. She had a tired, worn face, and faded blue eyes, which looked as if they had seen too much of human suffering. But an indomitable spirit gazed out of them, and spoke, too, in her alert step and in the fine poise of her head and shoulders.
"Your mail has come," she told him, "and there seem to be some nice letters—fat ones. One, from Russia, has a gold crown on the envelope. Perhaps I had better leave you alone while you read it."
Hamilton smiled grimly as he held out a languid hand. He liked Miss Foster. She was a good sort, and she had stood by the boys nobly through the awful days after the fight. He liked her humor, too, though he sometimes had suspicions as to its spontaneity. Then his eye fell on the top envelope of the little package she had given him, and at the sight of the handwriting he caught his breath, and the blood rushed suddenly to his face. He closed his eyes for a moment in an effort to pull himself together. Did he still care, after ten years, and like that! But possibly, very probably, it was merely a manifestation of his wretched weakness, which could not endure even a pleasant surprise without these absurd physical effects. He remembered, with a more cheerful grin, that he had hardly thought of her at all during the past year. Preparations for war and his small part in them had absorbed him heart and soul. He opened the letter without further self-analysis, and read with deepening interest the closely written lines on the thin foreign paper, whose left-hand corner held a duplicate of the gold crown on the envelope.
"DEAR OLD FRIEND,—You have forgotten me, no doubt, in all these years. Ten, is it not? But I have not forgotten you, nor my other friends in America, exile though I am and oblivious though I may have seemed. I do not know quite why I have not come home for a visit long before this. Indeed, I have planned to do so from year to year, but a full life and many varied interests have deferred the journey one way or another. I have three boys—nine, seven, and five—and it would be difficult to bring them with me and impossible to leave them behind. So, you see—
"But my heart often longs for my native land, and in one tower of this old castle I have a great room full of souvenirs of home. It is the spot I love best in my new country. Here I read my mail and write my letters and follow American news in the newspapers friends send me. Here, with my boys tumbling over each other before the fireplace, I read of the ascent of San Juan Hill, and of you, my friend, and your splendid courage, and your injury.
"No doubt by the time this letter reaches you you will be well again, and in no need of my sympathy. But you will let me tell you how proud of you I am.
"I read the newspaper accounts to my boys, who were greatly interested and impressed when they learned that mamma knew the hero. I was much amused by the youngest, Charlie—too small, I thought, to understand it all. But he stood before me with his hands on my knees and his big brown eyes on my face; and when I finished reading he asked many questions about the war and about you. He is the most American of my children, and loves to hear of his mother's country. After the others had gone he cuddled down in my lap and demanded the 'story' repeated in full; and when I described again the magnificent way in which you saved your men, he said, firmly, 'I amhisboy.'
"I thought you might be interested in this unsought, spontaneous tribute, and my purpose in writing is to pass it on to you—though I admit it has taken me a long time to get 'round to it!
"You will forgive this rambling letter, and you will believe me, now as ever,
"Sincerely your friend,
Hamilton slowly refolded the letter and returned it to its envelope, letting the solace of its sweet friendliness sink into his sore heart the while. She had not wholly forgotten him, then, this beautiful woman he had loved and who had given him a gracious and charmingcamaraderiein return for the devotion of his life. He had not been senseless enough to misconstrue her feeling, so he had never spoken; and she, after two brilliant Washington seasons, had married a great Russian noble and sailed away without suspecting, he felt sure, what she was to him. He had recovered, as men do, but he had not loved again, nor had he married. He wondered if she knew. Very probably; for the newspapers which devoted so much space to his achievements had added detailed biographical sketches, over which he had winced from instinctive distaste of such intimate discussion of his personal affairs. The earlier reports (evidently the ones she had read) had published misleading accounts of his injuries. They were serious, but not dangerous, according to these authorities. It was only recently that rumors of his true condition had begun to creep into print. The Princess had not read these. Hamilton was glad of that.
He recalled dreamily the different passages of her letter, the remainder of his mail lying neglected on his bed. That boy—her boy—hisboy. He smiled to himself, at first with amusement, then with a sudden tenderness that pleasantly softened his stern lips. He was weak enough, frightened enough, lonely enough, to grasp with an actual pitiful throb of the heart this tiny hand stretched out to him across the sea. He liked that boy—hisboy. He must be a fine fellow. He wondered idly how he looked. "Three boys—nine, seven, five"—yes, Charlie was five and had great brown eyes. Like his mother's, the stricken man remembered. She had brown eyes—and such brown eyes. Such kind, friendly, womanly brown eyes—true mirrors of the strong soul that looked from them. Something hot and wet stung the surface of Hamilton's cheek. He touched it unsuspectingly, and then swore alone in deep, frank self-disgust.
"Well, of all the sentimental idiots!" he muttered. "My nerves are in a nice way, when I bawl like a baby because some one sends me a friendly letter. Guess I'll answer it."
Miss Foster brought him pen, ink, and paper, and he began, writing with some difficulty, as he lay flat on his back.
"MY DEAR PRINCESS,—Your letter has just reached me, and you cannot, I am sure, imagine the cheer and comfort it brought. I am still lingering unwillingly on the sick-list, but there is some talk now of shipping me north on theReliefnext week, when I hope to give a better account of myself. In the mean time, and after, I shall think much of you and the boys, especially of the youngest and his flattering adoption of me. I am already insufferably proud of that, and rather sentimental as well, as you will see by the fact that I want his photograph! Will you send it to me, in care of the Morton Trust Company, New York? I do not yet know just where I shall be.
"There is a pleasant revelation of well-being and happiness between the lines of your letter. Believe me, I rejoice in both.
"Faithfully yours,
As he read it over the letter seemed curt and unsatisfactory, but he was already exhausted and had not the strength to make another effort. So he wearily sealed and addressed it, and gave it to Miss Foster for the next mail. Her tired eyes widened a little as she artlessly read the inscription.
During the seemingly endless days and nights that followed, Hamilton battled manfully but despairingly with his sick soul. Wherever he looked there was blackness, lightened once or twice, and for an instant only, by a sudden passing memory of a little child. It would be too much to say that the memory comforted him. Nothing could do that, yet. All he dared hope for was for the strength to go through his ordeal with something approaching manliness and dignity. The visits of his friends were a strain to him, as well as to them, and it was sadly easy to see how the sense of his hopeless case depressed them. He could imagine the long breath they drew as they left his tent and found themselves again in the rich, warm, healthy world. He did not blame them. In their places, he would no doubt have felt just the same. But he was inevitably driven more and more into himself, and in his dogged efforts to get away from self-centred thought he turned with a sturdy determination to fancies about remote things, and especially to imaginings of the boy—the little fellow who loved him, and who, thank God, was not as yet "sorry for him!" Oddly enough, the mother seemed to have taken her place in the background of Hamilton's thoughts. It was her son who appealed to him—the innocent man-child, half American, half Russian, entering so happily and unconsciously on the enhanced uncertainties of life in the tragic land of his birth.
During the trying, stormy voyage north on the great hospital ship, Hamilton had strange, half-waking visions of a curly headed lad with brown eyes, tumbling over a bear-skin rug in front of a great fireplace, or standing at his mother's knee looking into her face as she talked of America and of an American soldier. He began to fancy that the vision held at bay the other crowding horrors which lay in wait. If he could keep his mind on that he was safe. He was glad the mother and son could not, in their turn, picture him—as he was.
When the photographs arrived, soon after he reached New York, the helpless officer opened the bulky package with eager ringers. There were two "cabinets," both of the child. One showed him at the tender age of two, a plump, dimpled, beautiful baby, airily clad in an embroidered towel. The second was apparently quite recent. A five-year-old boy, in black velvet and a bewildering expanse of lace collar, looked straight out of the picture with tragic dark eyes, whose direct glance was so like his mother's that ten years seemed suddenly obliterated as Hamilton returned their gaze. With these was a little letter on a child's note-paper, in printed characters which reeled drunkenly down the page from left to right. Hamilton read it with a chuckle.
"DEAR CAPTAIN HAMILTON,—I love you very much. I love you becos you fought in the war. I have your picture. I have put a candle befront of your picture. The candle is burning. I love you very much. Your boy,
Accompanying this epistolary masterpiece was a brief note from the writer's mother, explaining that the "picture" of Captain Hamilton, of whose possession her infant boasted, had been cut from an illustrated newspaper and pasted on stiff card-board in gratification of the child's whim.
"He insists on burning a candle before it," she wrote, "evidently from some dim association with tapers and altars and the rest. As it is all a new manifestation of his character, we are indulging him freely. Certainly it can do him no harm to love and admire a brave man. Besides, to have a candle burned for you! Is not that a new flutter of glory?"
Hamilton, still in the grasp of a dumb depression he would voice to no one, was a little amused and more touched. In his hideous loneliness and terror the pretty incident, one he would have smiled at and forgotten a year ago, took on an interest out of all proportion to its importance. He felt a sudden, unaccountable sense of pleasant companionship. The child became a loved personality—the one human, close, vital thing in a world over which there seemed to hang a thick black fog through which Hamilton vaguely, wretchedly groped. He himself did not know why the child interested him so keenly, nor did he try to analyze the fact. He was merely grateful for it, and for the other fact that he cherished no sentimental feeling for the boy's mother. That had passed out of his life as everything else had seemingly passed which belonged to the old order of things. He had always been a calm, reserved, self-absorbed, unemotional type of man, glorying a little, perhaps, in his lack of dependence on human kind. In his need he had turned to his fellows and turned in vain. Now that a precious thing had come to him unsought, he did not intend to lose it.
Through his physicians he pulled various journalistic wires, resulting in the suppression, in the newspapers, of the hopeless facts of his case. He did not intend, he decided, to have his boy think of him as tied to an invalid's couch. Then, knowing something of human nature, and of the evanescent character of childish fancies, he ordered shipped to Russia a variety of American mechanical toys, calculated to swell the proud bosom of the small boy who received them. This shameless bid for continued favor met with immediate success. An ecstatic, incoherent little shriek of delight came from the land of the czar in the form of another letter; and the candle, which quite possibly would have burned low or even gone out, blazed up cheerily again.
That was the beginning of an intercourse which interested and diverted Hamilton for months. He spared no pains to adapt his letters to the interest and comprehension of his small correspondent, and he derived a quite incredible amount of satisfaction from the childish scrawls which came to him in reply. They were wholly babyish documents, about the donkey, the nurse, the toys, and games of the small boy's daily life. Usually they were written in his own printed letters. Sometimes they were dictated to his mother, who faithfully reported every weighty word that fell from the infant's lips. But always they were full of the hero-worship of the little child for the big, strong, American fighting-man; and in every letter, sometimes in the beginning, sometimes at the end, occasionally in both places, as the enthusiasm of the writer waxed, was the satisfying assurance, "I am your boy." Hamilton's eyes raced over the little pages till he found that line, and there rested contentedly.
As the months passed, the healing influence of time wrought its effects. Hamilton, shut in though he was, adapted himself to the narrow world of an invalid's room and its few interests. With the wealth he had fortunately inherited he brought to his side leading specialists who might possibly help him, and went through alternate ecstatic hopes and abysmal fears as the great men came and departed. Very quietly, too, he helped others less fortunate, financially, than himself. The nurses and physicians in the hospital where he lay learned to like and admire him, and other patients, convalescents or newcomers who were able to move about, sought his cheerful rooms and brought into them a whiff of the outside world. Through it all, winding in and out of the neutral-colored weeks like a scarlet thread of life and hope, came the childish letters from Russia, and each week a thick letter went back, artfully designed to keep alive the love and interest of an imaginative little boy.
At the end of six months young Charles fell from his donkey and broke his left arm, but this trivial incident was not allowed to interfere with the gratifying regularity with which his letters arrived. It was, however, interesting, as throwing a high light on the place his American hero held in the child's fancy. His mother touched on this in her letter describing the accident.
"The arm had to be set at once," she wrote, "and of course it was very painful. But I told Charlie you would be greatly disappointed if your boy were not brave and did not obey the doctor. He saw the force of this immediately, and did not shed a tear, though his dear little face was white and drawn with pain."
Master Charlie himself discussed the same pleasant incident in the first letter he dictated after the episode.
"I did not cry," he mentioned, with natural satisfaction. "Mamma cried, and Sonya cried. Men do not cry. Do they? You did not cry when you were hurt, did you? I am going to be just like you."
Hamilton laughed over the letter, his pale cheek flushing a little at the same time. Hehadcried, once or twice; he recalled it now with shame. He must try to do better, remembering that he loomed large as a heroic model for the young.
He was still reading the little letter when Dr. Van Buren, his classmate at the Point, his one intimate since then, and his physician now, entered the room, greeted him curtly, and stood at the window for a moment, drumming his fingers fiercely against the pane. Hamilton knew the symptoms; Van Buren was nervous and worried about something. He dropped the small envelope into his lap and looked up.
"Well?" he said, tersely.
Van Buren did not answer for a moment. Then he turned, crossed the room abruptly, and sat down near the reclining-chair in which the officer spent his days. The physician's face was strained and pale. His glance, usually direct, shifted and fell under his friend's inquiring gaze.
"Well?" repeated the latter, compellingly. "I suppose you fellows have been talking me over again. What's the outcome?"
Van Buren cleared his throat.
"Yes, we—we have, old man," he began, rather huskily—"in there, you know." He indicated the direction of the consulting-room as he spoke. "We don't like the recent symptoms."
Unconsciously, Hamilton straightened his shoulders.
"Out with it. Don't mince matters, Frank. Do you think life is so precious a thing to me that I can't part with it if I've got to?"
Van Buren writhed in his chair.
"It isn't that," he said, "life or death. It's wor—I mean, it's different. It's—it's these." He laid his hand on the officer's helpless legs, stretched out stiffly under a gay red afghan. "God!" he broke out, suddenly, "I don't know how you'll take it, old chap; and there's no sense in trying to break a thing like this gently. We're afraid—we think—they'll—have to come off!"
Under the shock of it Hamilton set his teeth.
"Why?" he asked, quietly.
"Because—well, because they're no good. They're dead. They're a constant menace to you. A scratch or injury of any kind—they've got to go—that's all, Arthur. But we've been talking it over and we can fix you up so you can get about and be much better off than you are now." He leaned forward as he spoke, and his words came quickly and eagerly. The worst was over; he was ready to picture the other side. Hamilton stopped him with a gesture.
"Suppose I decline to let them go?" he asked, grimly.
Van Buren stared at him.
"You can't!" he stammered.
"Why not?"
"Because—why, because your life depends on their coming off!"
Hamilton's lips set.
"Mylife!" he repeated. "My precious, glad, young life! So full of happiness! So useful!" He dropped the savagely bitter tone suddenly. "No, Frank," he said, quietly, "I won't go through life as the half of a man. I'll let the thing take its course; or if that will be too slow and too—horrible, I'll help the hobbling beast on its way. I think I'd be justified. It's too much to ask—you know it—to be hoisted through life as a remnant."
Van Buren rose, moved his chair nearer to Hamilton's, and sat down close to his friend's side. All nervousness had left him. He was again cool, scientific, professional; but with it all there was the deep sympathy and understanding of a friend.
"No, you won't," he said, firmly; "you won't do anything of the kind, and I'll tell you why you won't. Because it isn't in your make-up to play the coward. That's why. You've got to go through with it and take what comes, and do it all like the strong chap you are. If you think there won't be anything left in life, you are mistaken. You can be of a lot of use; you can do a lot of good. You will have time and inclination and money. You will be able to get around, not as quickly, but as surely. With a good man-servant you'll be entirely independent of drafts on charity or pity. Money has some beautiful uses. If you were a poor devil who hadn't a cent in the world and would be dependent on the grudging service of others, I should wish you to accept and bear, perhaps, but I could not urge you to. Now, your life is helpful to others. You can give and aid and bless. You can be a greater hero than the man who went up San Juan Hill, and there are those who will feel it."
"That is, my money is needed, and because I've got it I should drag out years of misery while I spread little financial poultices on other people's ills," returned Hamilton. "No, thanks; it's not enough good. They can have the money just the same. That can be amputated with profit to all concerned. I'll leave it to hospitals and homes for the helpless, especially for fractional humanity—needy remnants. But I decline absolutely, once and for all, to accept the noble future you have outlined. I grant you it would be heroic. But have you ever heard of great heroism with no stimulus to arouse it?"
He raised his hand as he spoke, and brought it down with a gesture of finality. As it fell, it dropped on the little letter. Mechanically, his fingers closed on it.
His boy! His brave little boy who had not flinched or cried, because he meant to be just like Captain Hamilton. What wouldhethink when the truth came to him years hence, as it must do. What would she think now, the mother who was glad that her son should "love and admire a brave man"? The small missive was a stimulus.
Hamilton turned to Van Buren again, checking with a little shake of the head the impetuous speech that rushed to that gentleman's lips.
"Just wait one moment," he said, thoughtfully. He leaned back and shut his eyes, and as he did so the familiar scene of months past came suddenly before them—the quaint old foreign room, the great fireplace with its blazing logs, the mother, the curly haired boy. His life had been a lonely one, always, Hamilton reflected. Few, pathetically few, so far as he knew, would be affected by its continuance or its end. But themannerof its end—that was a different matter. That might touch individuals far and wide by its tragic example to other desperate souls. Still, he was not their keeper. As for Charlie—
Ah,Charlie!Charlie, with his childish but utter hero-worship; Charlie, with his lighted candle; Charlie, with his small-boy love and trust—Charlie would be told some little story and Charlie would soon forget. But—what would Charlie think of him some day when the truth was out—Charlie who at five could set his teeth and bear pain stoically because his hero did! Because he was "His Boy!" Hamilton's mind returned to that problem again and again and lingered there. No, he could not disappoint Charlie. Besides, Van Buren was right. There was work, creditable work to do. And to be plucky, even if only to keep a brave little chap's ideal intact, to maintain its helpful activity, was something worthy of a stanch man. Would he wish his boy to go under when the strain against the right thing was crushing?
He laid the letter down gently, deliberately, turned to his friend, and smiled as Van Buren had not seen him smile since their ingenuous boyhood days. There was that sweetness in the smile which homage to woman makes us dub "feminine," and something of it, too, in the way he laid his hand on his chum's shoulder.
"All right, old sawbones," he said, slowly. "You may do whatever has to be done. I'll face the music. Unbuilding one man may build up another."
Miss Clarkson looked at the small boy, and the small boy looked back at Miss Clarkson with round, unwinking eyes. In the woman's glance were sympathy and a puzzled wonder; the child's gaze expressed only a calm and complete detachment. Subtly, but unmistakably, he succeeded in conveying the impression that he regarded this human object before him because it was in his line of vision, but that he found no interest in it, nor good reason for assuming an interest he did not feel: that if, indeed, he was conscious of any emotion at all, it was in the nature of a vaguely dawning desire that the object should remove itself, should cease to shut off the view from the one window of the tenement room that was his home. But it really did not matter much. Already, in his seven years of life, the small boy had decided that nothing really mattered much, and his dark, grim little face, with its deep-cut, unchildish lines, bore witness to the unwavering strength of this conviction. If the object preferred to stay—He settled himself more firmly on the rickety chair he occupied, crossed his feet with infinite care, and continued to regard the object with eyes that held the invariable expression with which they met the incidents of life, whether these incidents were the receiving of a banana from Miss Clarkson's hands, or, as had happened half an hour before, the spectacle of his dead mother being carried down-stairs.
It was not a stupid look; it was at once intent, unsympathetic, impersonal. Under it, now, its object experienced a moment of actual embarrassment. Miss Clarkson was not accustomed to the indifferent gaze of human eyes, and in her philanthropic work among the tenements she had been somewhat conspicuously successful with children. They seemed always to like her, to accept her; and if her undoubted charm of face, of dress, and of smile failed to win them, Miss Clarkson was not above resorting to the aid of little gifts, of toys, even to the pernicious power of pennies. She did good, but she did it in her own way. She was young, she was rich, she was independent. She helped the poor because she pitied them, and wished to aid them, but her methods were unique, and were followed none the less serenely when, as frequently happened, they conflicted with all the accepted notions of organized philanthropy.
She had come to this room almost daily, Miss Clarkson remembered, since she had discovered the destitute Russian woman and her child there a month ago. The mother was dying of consumption; the child was neglected and hungry—yet both had an unmistakable air of birth, of breeding; and the mother's French was as perfect as the exquisitely finished manner that drew from Anne Clarkson, in the wretched tenement room, her utmost deference and courtesy. The child, too, had glints of polish. Punctiliously he opened doors, placed chairs, bowed; punctiliously he stood when the lady stood, sat when the lady sat, met her requests for small services with composure and appreciation. And (here was the rub) each time she came, bringing in her generous wake the comforts that lightened his mother's dreary journey into another world, he received her with the air of one courteously greeting a stranger, or, at best, of one seeking an elusive memory as one surveys a half-familiar face.
Doggedly Anne Clarkson had persisted in her attentions to them both. The mother was grateful—there was no doubt of that. Under the ministrations of the nurse Miss Clarkson supplied, under the influence of food, of medicines, and of care, she brightened out of the apathy in which her new friend had found her. But to the last she retained something of her son's unresponsiveness, and an uncommunicativeness which tagged his as hereditary. She never spoke of herself, of her friends, or of her home. She made no last requests, left no last messages. Once, as she looked at her boy, her eyeballs exuded a film of moisture. Miss Clarkson interpreted this phenomenon rightly, and quietly said:
"I will see that he is well cared for." The sick woman gave her a long look, and then nodded.
"You will," she answered. "You are not of those who promise and do not perform. You are very good—you have been very good to us. Your reward should come. It does not always come to those who are good, but it should come to you. You should marry and have children, and leave this terrible country, and be happy."
The words impressed Miss Clarkson, because, as she reminded herself now, they were almost the last her protegee uttered. She considered them excessively unmodern, and strongly out of place on the lips of one whose romance had ended in disillusionment.
Well, it was over. The mother was gone. But the child remained, and his future—his immediate future, at least—must be decided here and now. With a restless movement Anne Clarkson leaned toward him. In her abstraction she had shifted her glance from him for a few moments, and he had taken advantage of the interval to survey dispassionately the toes of the new shoes she had given to him. He glanced up now, and met her look with the singular unresponsiveness which seemed his note.
"We're going away, Ivan," she said, speaking with that artificial cheerfulness practised so universally upon the helpless and the young. "Mother has gone, you know, and we can't stay here any more. We're going to the country, to a beautiful place where there are flowers, and birds, and dogs, and other little boys and girls. So get your cap, dear."
Ivan looked unimpressed, but he rose with instant obedience and crossed the room to its solitary closet. His little figure looked very trim in the new suit she had bought for him; she noticed how well he carried himself. His preparations for departure were humorously simple. He took his cap from its peg, put it on his head, and opened the door for her to precede him in the utter abandonment of his "home." Earlier in the day Miss Clarkson had presented to pleased neighbors the furniture and clothing of the dead woman, taking the precaution to have it fumigated in an empty room in the building. On the same impulse she had given to an old bedridden Irishwoman a few little articles that had soothed the Russian's last days: a small night-lamp, a bed-tray, and the like. Ivan's outfit, consisting solely of the things she herself had given him, had been packed in his mother's one small foreign trunk, whose contents until then, Miss Clarkson, observed, was an ikon, quaintly framed. Of letters, of souvenirs, of any clue of any kind to the identity of mother and son, there was none. She felt sure that the names they had given her were assumed.
Stiffly erect, Ivan waited beside the open door. Miss Clarkson gave a methodical last look around the dismantled room, and walked out of it, the child following. At the top of the stairs she turned her head sharply, a sudden curiosity uppermost in her mind. Was he glancing back? she wondered. Was he showing any emotion? Did he feel any? He seemed so horribly mature—hemustunderstand something of what this departure meant. Did he, by chance, need comforting? But Ivan was close by her side, his sombre black eyes looking straight before him, his new shoes creaking freshly as he descended the rickety steps. Miss Clarkson sighed. If only he were pretty, she reflected. There were always sentimental women ready and willing to adopt a handsome child. But even Ivan's mother would have declared him not pretty. He was merely small, and dark, and foreign, and reserved, and horribly self-contained. His black hair was perfectly straight, his lips made a straight line in his face. He had no dimples, no curls, none of the appealing graces and charms of childhood. He was seven—seven decades, she almost thought, with a sudden throb of pity for him. But he had one quality of childhood—helplessness. To that, at least, the Community to which she had finally decided to intrust him would surely respond. She took his small hand in hers as they reached the street, and after an instinctive movement of withdrawal, like the startled fluttering of a bird, he suffered it to remain there. Together they walked to the nearest corner, and stood awaiting the coming of a trolley-car, the heat of an August sun blazing upon them, the stifling odors of the tenement quarter filling their nostrils. Rude, half-naked little boys jeered at them, and made invidious remarks about Ivan's new clothes; a small girl smiled shyly at him; a wretched yellow dog snapped at his heels. To these varying attentions the child gave the same quietly observant glance, a glance without rancor as without interest. Miss Clarkson experienced a sense of utter helplessness as she watched him.
"Did you know the little girl, Ivan?" she asked, in English.
"Yes, madam."
"Do you like her?"
"No, madam."
"Why not? She seemed a nice little girl."
There was no response. She tried again.
"Are you tired, dear?"
"No, madam."
"Are you glad you are going into the country and away from the hot, dirty city?"
"No, madam."
"Would you rather stay here?"
"No, madam."
The quality of the negative was the same in all.
Miss Clarkson gave him up. When they entered the car she sank into a depressed silence, which endured until they reached the Grand Central Station. There, after she had sent off several telegrams and bought their tickets, and established herself and her charge comfortably side by side on the end seat in a drawing-room car, she again essayed sprightly conversation adapted to the understanding of the young.
"Do you know the country, Ivan?" she asked, ingratiatingly. "Have you ever been there to see the grass and the cows and the blue skies?"
"No, madam."
"You will like them very much. All little boys and girls like the country, and are very happy there."
"Yes, madam."
"Do you like to play?"
"No, madam."
"Do you like to—to—look at picture-books?"
"No, madam."
"What do you like to do?"
There was no reply. Miss Clarkson groaned inwardly. Was he only a little monosyllabic machine? The infant regarded with calm eyes the sweep of the New York landscape across which the train was passing. His patron opened the new novel with which she had happily provided herself, plunged into its pages, and let herself rest by forgetting him for a while. He sat by her side motionless, observant, continuing to exude infinite patience.
"He ought to be planted on the Egyptian sands," reflected Miss Clarkson once, as she glanced at him. "He'd make a dear little brother to the Sphinx." She stopped a train-boy passing through the car and bought him a small box of chocolates, which he ate uninterruptedly, somewhat as the tiny hand of a clock marks the seconds. Later she presented him with a copy of a picture-paper. He surveyed its illustrations with studious intentness for five minutes, and then laid the paper on the seat beside him. Miss Clarkson again fled to sanctuary in her novel, wondering how long pure negation could enlist interest.
At the small station where they left the train the tension of the situation was slightly lessened. A plump little woman, with a round pink face, keen, very direct blue eyes, and live gray hair, deftly tooled a fat pony up to the asphalt, and greeted them with cheerful informality.
"Get in," she said, briskly, after a brief handshake with Miss Clarkson. "There's plenty of room in the phaeton. We pack five in sometimes. I was sorely tempted to bring two of the children; they begged to come to meet the new boy; but it seemed best not to rush him in the beginning, don't you know, so I left Josephine squalling behind the wood-pile, and Augustus Adolphus strangling manfully on a glass of lemonade intended to comfort him."
She laughed as she spoke, but her blue eyes surveyed the boy appraisingly as she tucked him into the space between herself and Miss Clarkson. He had stood cap in hand during the meeting between the ladies; now he replaced his cap upon his head, fixed his black eyes on the restless tail of the fat pony, and remained submerged under the encroaching summer garments of both women. Mrs. Eltner, presiding genius of the Lotus Brotherhood Colony, exchanged an eloquent glance with Miss Clarkson as she started the pony along the winding ribbon of the country road. The New-Yorker's heart lightened. She had infinite faith in the plump, capable hands that held the reins; she believed them equal to anything, even to the perplexing task of guiding the infant career of Ivanovitch. Mrs. Eltner prattled on.
"Well," she quoted, in answer to Miss Clarkson's question, "they are so well that Fraulein von Hoffman is in despair over them. She has some new theories she's anxious to try when they're ill, but throughout the year she hasn't had one chance. Every blessed child is flamboyantly robust. Goodness! Why shouldn't they be? In the sunshine from eight in the morning until six at night. They have their lessons in a little roofed summer-house in the open air, their meals in another, and they almost sleep in the open air. There are ten of them now—counting your boy"—she nodded toward the unconscious Ivan—"four girls and six boys. None of the parents interferes with them. They sleep in the dormitory with Fraulein, she teaches them a few hours a day, and the rest of the time we leave them alone. Fraulein assures me that the influence on their developing souls is wonderful." Mrs. Eltner laughed comfortably. "It's all an experiment," she went on, more seriously. "Who can tell how it will end? But one thing is certain: we have taken these poor waifs from the New York streets, and we have at least made them healthy and happy to begin with. The rest must come later."
"An achievement," agreed Miss Clarkson. "I hope you will be as successful with my small charge. He is not healthy, and I doubt if he has ever known a moment of happiness. Possibly he can never take it in. I don't know—he puzzles me."
Her friend nodded, and they drove on in silence. It was almost sunset when the fat pony turned into an open gate leading to a big white colonial house, whose wide verandas held hammocks, easy-chairs, and one fat little girl asleep on a door-mat. On the sweeping lawn before the house an old man lounged comfortably in a garden-chair, surveying with quiet approval the efforts of a pretty girl in a wide sunbonnet who was weeding a flower-bed near him. Through the open window of a distant room came the sound of a piano. At the left of the house a solitary peacock strutted, his spreading tail alive in the sun's last rays. The effect of the place was deliriously "homey." With eyes slightly distended, Ivan surveyed the monstrous fowl, turning his head to follow its progress as the phaeton rolled around the drive and stopped before the wide front door. The two women again exchanged glances.
"Absolutely the first evidence of human interest," remarked Miss Clarkson, with hushed solemnity. The other smiled with quiet confidence. "It will come," she predicted; "it will come all right. We do wonders with them here."
As they entered the wide hall a picturesque group disintegrated suddenly. A slender German woman, tall, gray-haired, slightly bent, detached herself from an encircling mass of childish hands and arms and legs, gave a hurried greeting to Miss Clarkson, of whom she rather disapproved, and turned eyes alight with interest on the new claimant for her ministrations. Cap in hand, Ivan looked up at her. Mrs. Eltner introduced them briefly.
"Your new little boy, Fraulein," she said, "Ivan Ivanovitch. He speaks English and French and Russian. He is going to love his new teacher and his new little friends, and be very happy here."
Fraulein von Hoffman bent down and kissed the chilling surface ofIvan's pale cheek.
"But yes," she cried, "of a certainty he shall be happy. We are all happy here—all, all. He shall have his place, his lessons, his little duties—but, ach, he is so young! He is the youngest of us. Still, he must have his duty." She checked her rapid English for a courteous explanation to Miss Clarkson.
"Each has his duties," she told that lady, while the line of children lent polite interest to her words, drinking them in, apparently, with open mouths. "Each of us must be useful to the community in some way, however small. That is our principle. Yes. Little Josephine waters every day the flowers in the dining-room, and they bloom gratefully for little Josephine—ach, how they bloom! Augustus Adolphus keeps the wood-box filled. It is Henry's task to water the garden plants, and Henry never forgets. So, too, it is with the others. But Ivan—Ivan is very young. He is but seven, you say. Yes, yes, what shall one do at seven?"
Her rapid, broken English ceased again as she surveyed the child, her blond brows knit in deep reflection. Then her thin face lit suddenly.
"Ach," she cried, enthusiastically, "an inspiration I have! He is too young to work as yet, this little Ivan, but he shall have his task, like the rest. He shall be our little sunbeam. He shall laugh and play and make us happy."
With a common hysterical impulse Miss Clarkson and Mrs. Eltner turned their heads to avoid each other's eyes, the former making a desperate effort at self-control as she gazed severely through a window near her. It was not funny, this thing, she reminded herself sternly; it was too ghastly to be funny, but there was no question that the selection of Ivan Ivanovitch as the joyous, all-pervasive sunbeam of the community at Locust Hall was slightly incongruous. When she could trust herself she glanced at him. He stood as he had stood before, his small, old, unchildish face turned up to the German, his black eyes fixed unwaveringly upon her gray ones. Under the glance Fraulein's expression changed. For an instant there was a look of bewilderment on her face, of a doubt of the wisdom of her choice of a mission for this unusual new-comer, but it disappeared as quickly as it had come. With recovered serenity she addressed him and those around him.
"But he need not begin to-night," she added, kindly, "not when he is tired. He shall eat, he shall rest, he shall sleep. Then to-morrow he shall take his place among us and be the little sunbeam. Yes, yes—think how far the sunbeam has to travel!" she murmured, inspirationally.
Miss Clarkson knelt down before the boy and gathered him into her arms. The act was spontaneous and sincere, but as she did it she realized that in the eyes of the German, and even in those of Mrs. Eltner, it seemed theatrical. It was one of the things Fraulein von Hoffman disapproved in her—this tendency to moments of emotion.
"Good-night, Ivan," she said. "I am going to stay until morning, so I shall see you then. Sleep well. I am sure you will be a happy little boy in this pleasant home."
The unfathomable eyes of Ivan Ivanovitch looked back into hers.
"Good-night, madam," he said, quietly. Then, as she was about to turn away, his small face took on for an instant the dawn of an expression. "Good-night, madam," he said again, more faintly.
Slight as the change had been, Miss Clarkson caught it. She swayed toward him.
"Are you homesick, Ivan?" she asked, caressingly, almost lovingly."Would you like me to take you up-stairs and put you to bed?"
Fraulein von Hoffman broke in upon her speech.
"But they shall all go!" she cried. "It is their time. He will not be alone. Josephine shall take him by the hand; Augustus Adolphus shall lead the way. It will be a little procession—ach, yes! And he shall have his supper in the nursery."
A chubby, confident little girl of nine detached herself from the group near them and grasped the hand of Ivan Ivanovitch firmly within her own. He regarded her stoically for an instant; then his eyes returned to Miss Clarkson's, who had risen, and was watching him closely. There was a faint flicker in them as he replied to her question.
"No, madam," he said, gravely. "Thank you, madam. Good-night, madam."
He bowed deeply, drawing the reluctant figure of the startled Josephine into the salute as he did so. A sturdy German boy of eleven, with snapping brown eyes, placed himself before the children, his feet beating time, his head very high. "Forward, march!" he cried, in clear, boyish tones. The triumphant Josephine obeyed the command, dragging her charge after her. Thus convoyed, one companion leading, another pulling, the rest following with many happy giggles, Ivan Ivanovitch marched up-stairs to bed. His life as the community's sunbeam had begun.
The next morning Fraulein von Hoffman met Miss Clarkson in the hall, and turned upon her the regard of a worried gray eye. Miss Clarkson returned the look, her heart sinking as she did so.
"It is that child," the German began. "He is of an interest—and ach, ja! of a discouragement," she added, with a gusty sigh. "Already I can see it—what it will be. He speaks not; he plays not. He gazes always from the window, and when one speaks, he says, 'Yes, madam'—only that. This morning I looked to see him bright and happy, but it is not so. Is it that his little heart breaks for his mother? Is it—that he is always thus?"
Miss Clarkson shook her head and then nodded, forming thereby unconsciously the sign of the cross. The combination seemed to answer the German's questions. Fraulein von Hoffman nodded also, slowly, and with comprehension.
"I don't know what you can do with him," said the American, frankly."He's like that all the time. I asked his mother, and she admitted it.I brought him here because I hoped the other children might brightenhim up, and I knew you could arouse him if any one could."
The tribute, rare from Miss Clarkson, cheered Fraulein von Hoffman. Her face cleared. She began to regain her self-confidence.
"Ach, well," she said, comfortably, "we will see. We will do our best—yes, of a certainty. And we will see." She strolled away after this oracular utterance, and Miss Clarkson went to breakfast. Thus neither witnessed a scene taking place at that moment on the lawn near the front veranda. Standing there with his back against a pillar, surrounded by the other children of the community, was Ivan Ivanovitch. In the foreground, facing him, stood Augustus Adolphus, addressing the new-comer in firm accents, and emphasizing his remarks by waving a grimy forefinger before Ivan Ivanovitch's uninterested face. The high, positive tones of Augustus Adolphus filled the air.
"Well, then, why don't you do it?" he was asking, fiercely. "Yougotto do it! Youhaveto! Fraulein says so. The rest of us has to do ours. I filled my wood-boxes already, and Josie watered the flowers. We did it early so we could watch you being a sunbeam, and now you ain't being one. Why ain't you? Yougotto! Why don't you begin?" The continued unresponsiveness of Ivan Ivanovitch irritated him at this point, and he turned excitedly to the others for support.
"'Ain't he got to?" he cried. "'Ain't he got to be a sunbeam? Fraulein said he should begin this morning. Well, then, why don't he begin?"
A childish buzz of corroboration answered him. It was plain that the assignment of Ivan's mission, publicly made as it had been the night before, had deeply impressed the children of the community. They closed around the two boys. The small Josephine laid a propelling hand upon Ivan's shoulder and tried to push him forward, with a vague idea of thus accelerating his task.
"Begin now," she suggested, encouragingly. "Do it, and have it over.That's the way I do."
In response to this maiden appeal the lips of Ivan Ivanovitch parted.
"I do not know how to do it," he announced, distinctly. "How shall I do it?"
Augustus Adolphus broke in again. "Aw, say, go on," he urged. "Yougotto do it! Whydon'tyou, then?"
Ivan Ivanovitch turned upon him an eye in which the habitual expression of patience was merely intensified.
"I do not know how to do it," he said again, speaking slowly and painstakingly. "You tell me how; then I will do it."
Under the force of this counter-charge, Augustus Adolphus fell back.
"I—I—don't know, neither," he muttered, feebly. "I thought you knew.Yougotto know, 'cause you got to do it."
The eyes of the small Russian swept the little group, and lingered on the round face of Josephine.
"You tell me," he said to her. "Then I will do it."
Josephine rose to the occasion.
"Why, why," she began, doubtfully, "Iknow what it is. You be a sunbeam, you know. I know what a sunbeam is. It's a little piece of the sun. It is long and bright. It comes through the window and falls on the floor. Sometimes it falls on us. Sometimes it falls on flowers."
Offered this choice, Ivan at once expressed his preference.
"I will fall on flowers," he announced, with decision.
The brown eyes of Augustus Adolphus glittered as he suddenly grasped the possibilities of the situation.
"No, you won't, neither!" he cried, excitedly. "You got to do itall!You better begin now. You can fall through that window; it's open." He indicated, as he spoke, a low French window leading from the living-room on to the broad veranda. "He's got to!" he cried, again. "'Ain't he got to?" With a unanimous cry the meeting declared that he had got to. Some of the children knew better; others did not; but all knew Augustus Adolphus Schmidtt.
Without a word, Ivan turned, walked up the steps of the veranda, entered the wide hall, swung to the left, crossed the living-room, approached the window, and fell out, head first. There was something deeply impressive in the silence and swiftness of his action, something deliriously stimulating to the spectators in the thud of his small body on the unyielding wood. A long sigh of happiness was exhaled by the group of children. Certainly this was a new duty—a strange one, but worthy, no doubt, since it emanated from Fraulein, and beyond question interesting as a spectacle. Augustus Adolphus resolved in that instant to attend to his personal tasks at an early hour each day, that he might have uninterrupted leisure for getting new falls out of Ivan's. That infant had now found his feet, and was methodically brushing the dust from his clothes. There was a rapidly developing lump over one eye, but his expression remained unchanged. Josephine approached him with happy gurgles. Her heart was filled with womanly sympathy, but her soul remained undaunted. She was of the Spartan stuff that sends sons to the war, and holds a reception for them if they return—from victory—on their shields. She cooed in conscious imitation of Fraulein's best manner. "Now, you can fall on flowers."
Her victim followed her unresistingly to the spot she indicated, and, having arrived, cast himself violently upon a bed of blazing nasturtiums. The enthusiastic and approving group of children closed around him as he rose. Even Augustus Adolphus, as he surveyed the wreck that remained, yielded to Ivan's loyal devotion to his role the tribute of an envious sigh.
"Now you can fall on us," he suggested, joyfully. Before the words had left his innocent lips, Ivan had made his choice. The next instant the air was full of arms, legs, caps, and hair.
"Lemme go!" shrieked Augustus Adolphus, battling wildly with the unsuspected and terrible force that had suddenly assailed him. "Lemme go, I tell you!"
The reply of Ivan came through set teeth as he planted one heel firmly in the left ear of the recumbent youth. "I have to fall on you," he explained, mildly, suiting the action to the word. "First I fall on you; then I let you go."
There was no question in the minds of the spectators that this was the most brilliant and successfully performed of the strange and interesting tasks of Ivan. They clustered around to tell him so, while Augustus Adolphus sought the dormitory for needed repairs. One of the rules of the community was that the children should settle their little disputes among themselves. Fortunately, perhaps, for Augustus Adolphus he found the dormitory empty, and was able to remove from his person the most obvious evidences of one hoisted by his own petard. In the mean time Ivan Ivanovitch was experiencing a new sensation—the pleasurable emotion caused by the praise of one's kind. But he did not show that it was pleasant—he merely gazed and listened.
"I think your new duties is nice," Josephine informed him, as she gazed upon him with eyes humid with approval. "You have to do it every day," she added, gluttonously.
Ivan assented, but in his heart there lay a doubt. Seeking for light, he approached Fraulein von Hoffman that afternoon as she dozed and knitted under a sheltering tree.
He stopped before her and fixed her with his serious gaze.
"Does a sunbeam fall through windows?" he inquired, politely.
Fraulein von Hoffman regarded him with a drowsy lack of interest.
"But yes, surely, sometimes," she admitted.
"Does it fall always through the window—every day?"
"But yes, surely, if it is in the right place."
The community's sunbeam sighed.
"Does it fall on flowers and on boys and girls?" he persisted.
"But yes, it falls on everything that is near."
A look of pained surprise dawned upon the features of Ivan Ivanovitch.
"Always?" he asked, quickly. "Always—it falls oneverythingthat is near?"
Fraulein von Hoffman placidly counted her stitches, confirming with a sigh her suspicion that in dozing she had dropped three.
"Not always," she murmured, absently. "But no. Only when the sun is shining."
Ivan carried this gleam of comfort with him when he went away, and it is very possible that he longed for a darkened world. But if, indeed, his daily task was difficult, as it frequently proved to be as the days passed, there were compensations—in the school games, in the companionships of his new friends, in the kindness of those around him. Even Augustus Adolphus was good to him at times. Unquestioningly, inscrutably, Ivan absorbed atmosphere, and did his share of the community's work as he saw it.
The theories of the community were consistently carried out. In the summer, after their few hours of study, the children were left to themselves. Together they worked out the problems of their little world; together they discussed, often with an uncanny insight, the grown-ups around them. Sometimes the tasks of the others were forgotten; frequently, in the stress of work and play, Augustus Adolphus's wood-box remained unfulfilled; Josephine's flowers were unwatered. But the mission of Ivan as a busy and strenuous sunbeam was regularly and consistently carried out—all the children saw to that. Regularly, that is, save on dark days. Here he drew the line.
"Fraulein says it only falls on things when the sun shines," he explained, tersely, and he fulfilled his mission accordingly. Fraulein wondered where he had accumulated the choice collection of bumps and bruises that adorned his person; but he never told, and apparently nobody else knew. Mrs. Eltner marvelled darkly over the destruction of her favorite nasturtium-bed. Daily the stifled howls of Augustus Adolphus continued to rend the ambient air when the sunbeam fell on him; but he forbore to complain, suffering heroically this unpleasant feature of the programme, that the rest might not be curtailed. Once, indeed, he had rebelled.
"Why don't you fall on some one else?" he had demanded, sulkily. "You don't have to fall on me all the time."
The reply of the sunbeam was convincing in its simple truth.
"I do," he explained. "Fraulein has said so. It must fall always on the same place if it is there."
Augustus Adolphus was silenced. He was indeed there, always. It was unfortunate, but seemed inevitable, that he should contribute his share to the daily entertainment so deeply enjoyed by all.
It was, very appropriately, at Thanksgiving-time that Ivan's mission as an active sunbeam ended. He was engaged in his usual profound meditation in the presence of Miss Clarkson, who had come to see him, and who was at the moment digesting the information she had received, that not once in his months at Locust Hall had he been seen to smile. True, he seemed well and contented. His thin little figure was fast taking on plumpness; he was brown, bright-eyed. Studying him, Miss Clarkson observed a small bruise on his chin, another on his intellectual brow.
"How did you get those, Ivan?" she asked.
For some reason Ivan suddenly decided to tell her.
"I fell through the window. This one I got yesterday"—he touched it—"this one I got Monday; this one I got last week." He revealed another that she had not discovered, lurking behind his left ear.
"But surely you didn't fall through the window as often as that!" gasped Miss Clarkson. The small boy surveyed her wearily.
"But yes," he murmured, in unconscious imitation of Praulein. "I must fall through the window every day when the sun shines."
Miss Clarkson held him off at arm's-length and stared at him.
"In Heaven's name,why?" she demanded.
Ivan explained patiently. Miss Clarkson listened, asked a few questions, gave way to a moment of uncontrollable emotion. Then she called together the other children, and again heard the story. It came disjointedly from each in turn, but most fluently, most picturesquely, most convincingly, from the lips of Augustus Adolphus Schmidtt and the fair Josephine. When they had finished their artless recital, Miss Clarkson sought Fraulein von Hoffman. That afternoon, beside the big open fire in the children's winter play-room, Fraulein von Hoffman addressed her young charges in words brief but pointed, and as she talked the mission of Ivan at Locust Hall took on a new significance, clear to the dullest mind.
"You were very cruel to Ivan—ach, most cruel! And he is not to fall any more, anywhere, on anything, you understand," explained the German, clearly. "He has no tasks any more. He is but to be happy, and you should love him and take care of him, because he is so small. That is all."
Ivan exhaled a sigh of deep contentment. Then he looked around him. The great logs on the andirons were blazing merrily. In the hands of Josephine a corn-popper waved above them, the corn inside burning unobserved as she lent her ears to Fraulein's earnest words. Ten apples, suspended on strings, swung from the mantel, spinning slowly as they roasted. It was a restful and agreeable scene to the eyes of little Ivan.
Josephine felt called upon to defend her friends.
"We didn't mean to be cruel," she explained, earnestly, answering the one of Fraulein's charges which had most impressed her. "We love Ivan. We love him lots. We like to see him to be a sunbeam, an' we thought he liked to be one. He never said he didn't."
The faces of his little companions were all around him. Ivan surveyed them in turn. They loved him—lots. Had not Josephine just said so? And only yesterday Augustus Adolphus had played marbles with him. It was very good to be loved, to have a home, and not to be a little sunbeam any longer. Then his eyes met those of Miss Clarkson, fixed upon him sympathetically.
"Would you like to go away, Ivan?" she asked, quietly. "Would you be happier somewhere else?"
The eyes of Ivan widened with sudden fear. To have this and to lose it!—now, if ever, he must speak! "Ohno," he cried, earnestly; "no,no, madam!"
Reassured, she smiled at him, and as she did so something in her look, in the atmosphere, in the moment, opened the boy's closed heart. He drew a long breath and smiled back at her—a shy, hesitant, unaccustomed smile, but one very charming on his serious little face. Miss Clarkson's heart leaped in sudden triumph. It was his first smile, and it was for her.
"I like it here," he said. "I like it very much, madam."
Miss Clarkson had moments of wisdom.
"Then you shall stay, my boy," she said. "You shall stay as long as you wish. But, remember, you must not be a sunbeam any more."
Ivan responded in one word—a simple, effective word, much used by his associates in response to pleasing announcements of holidays and vacations, but thus far a stranger on his lips. He threw back his head and straightened his shoulders.
"Hurray!" he cried, with deep fervor. This was enough for Augustus Adolphus and the fair Josephine. "Hurray!" they shrieked, in jubilant duet—"Hurray! Hurray!"
The others joined in. "Hur-ray!" cried the nine small companions of Ivan. He looked at them for a moment, his thin mouth twitching. They were glad, too, then, that he was to stay! He walked straight to Miss Clarkson, buried his face in her lap, and burst into tears. For a moment she held him close, smoothing his black head with a tender hand. Almost immediately he straightened himself and returned to the side of Josephine, shy, shamefaced, but smiling again—a new Ivan.
"What did you cry for?" demanded that young lady, obtusely. "Because you feel bad?"
Augustus Adolphus replied for his friend, with an insight beyond his years.
"You let him alone," he said, severely. "He don't never cry when he feels bad;heonly cries when he feels good!"