CHAPTER XXII"Love, hope, fear, faith—these make humanity!"
"Love, hope, fear, faith—these make humanity!"
The trip to New York was always marked in later years, to Joan, by the most trivial occurrences.
The passing to and fro to the baggage car where Cuff, a crumpled and quivering mass, seemed to ask her what it all meant; the sense of eagerness to get to The Gap before it was too late; the determination not to frighten any one she meant to telegraph from New York; she would leave her trunks in the station and take a bag to a little hotel where she and Pat had stayed the night before they fled from New York. So far, all was clear.
So she planned; forgot, and planned again. Between these wanderings and the care of Cuff there were long hours of forgetfulness and a sound of rushing water—or was it the train plunging through the dark?
Once in New York, with Cuff trotting behind, Joan seemed to gather strength—but not clear vision. She went to the small hotel and secured a room. She meant to telegraph and buy her ticket South—but instead she fed Cuff, took a little food herself, and fell asleep. It was late when she awakened to a realization of acute suffering that seemed confused and spasmodic. It was like being partially conscious. She was frightened and tried to fix upon some direct and immediate means of securing help for herself. She did not want to call assistance from the office, so she got up and dressed and half staggered downstairs. It needed all her effort to hold to one thought long enough to accomplish anything.
First there was Cuff. She must get Cuff, quiet his nervousness, and feed him. Then with that in mind she took food herself—as much as she could swallow. It was while she wasforcing herself to this task that Doctor Martin came, like an actual presence, to her consciousness.
Why had she not thought of him before?
"Uncle Davey!" she murmured and her eyes filled with tears. Of course! She would take a cab to Doctor Martin's office and then everything would be solved. He would take care of her; send word to The Gap; protect Aunt Doris and Nancy from shock. She began to laugh quietly, tremblingly—she was safe at last. Safe!
It was after ten o'clock when she paid her taxi driver in front of Martin's office and dismissed him. Gathering Cuff in one aching arm and clutching her bag she slowly, painfully mounted the steps without noticing the sign bearing a new name.
If anything were needed to prove how detached Joan had been for the past year or two it was this ignorance concerning the arrangement between Martin and his nephew. Had she not been on the border of delirium she would have recalled certain things which would have guided her; as it was she felt, dazedly, for the bell, pressed the button, and to the maid who responded she faintly said:
"I—I want the doctor." She looked, indeed, as if this were shockingly true.
"It's past office hours," stammered the girl, a little scared; "but perhaps if you come in——"
Joan staggered in and, seeing a door open at the end of the hall, reached it, entered, and sank down in a chair with the astonished eyes of Clive Cameron upon her!
He was ready for his rounds—was on the way, then, to his hospital; it was Martin's pet institution and Cameron's first care in the morning.
"I'm—tired," Joan informed him. "Please take care of—Cuff!"
And then everything went black and quiet.
Never in all his life had Cameron had anything so surprising happen to him. He looked at the girl, whom he managed to carry to the couch; he turned to the dog whose faithful eyes rather steadied him, then he applied all the remediesthat one does at such times. Eventually Joan revived, but she stared vacantly at the face above her and did not attempt to speak.
Presently Cameron called in his nurse.
"I think it is brain fever," he explained to the cool, capable woman who asked naturally:
"Who is she?"
"The Lord knows."
"Where did she come from? Where does she belong?"
"The Lord knows. She just came in with the dog and then dropped after asking me to care for—for Cuff—yes, that's what she called him—then she went off."
"It's a duck of a dog," the nurse remarked as one does make inane remarks at a critical time. Then:
"Have you looked in her bag?"
"Certainly not!"
"We had better." And they did.
There was a trunk key, seventy-five dollars, and a letter signed "Syl," and frivolously dilating upon a man named John and loads of love to Miss Lamb!
"Well!" said the nurse, "and as one might expect, no heading, date, or any sensible clue—and the envelope missing. We must label this patient, I suppose, as Miss Lamb. The articles of clothing are unmarked. Queer all around!"
"We must get her into the hospital at once," Cameron replied. The doctor in him was getting into action.
"Can we manage her in my car?"
"Yes, Doctor."
"Then get busy. Call her Miss Lamb when you have to answer questions. We can find out about her later. Where's that dog?"
Cuff was making himself invisible. He was under the couch.
"Have him fed and taken care of, Miss Brown—tell the maid."
Joan leaned against Cameron on the way to the hospital while Miss Brown kept a finger on her pulse. The girl's body acted mechanically, but the brain was clogged.
Day by day in the white, quiet hospital room the battle for her life went on; day by day outside effort was made to trace her and find her friends.
"You wise-looking brute," Cameron often thought as he regarded Cuff at the day's end; "why can't you tell what you know?"
But Cuff simply wagged his stump and slunk off. Life was becoming too puzzling for him.
Cameron studied advertisements and certain columns in the papers, but no one seemed to have missed the pretty young creature in the Martin Sanatorium.
"It's the very devil of a case!" Cameron declared, and set about erecting some sort of foundation upon which "Miss Lamb" might repose without causing too much unhealthy curiosity.
Eventually, Joan was simply a bad case of Doctor Cameron's. One from out of town. Her folks trusted him, but were too distant to visit the girl.
Cameron considered telegraphing for Martin, who was at The Gap, but he knew that sooner or later he must rely upon himself alone, and so he began with "Miss Lamb."
The days and weeks dragged on. There were ups and downs, hopes and discouragements, but through them all Joan looked dazedly at Cameron, and if she ever showed intelligence it was when he spoke to her in a perfectly new set of tones that were being incorporated into his voice and which seemed to disturb her. To all questions, as to names, the girl in the dim room returned a dull stare and silence, but there were times when she deliriously rambled intimate confidences. When these times occurred, Cameron, if he chanced to be present, ordered the nurse from the room and listened alone. He was relieved to hear that the patient rarely spoke when he was not with her.
Joan dwelt upon her failure—her longing to go to Pat.
These items Cameron recorded in a small red book, for his memory was none too good and he was busy to a dangerous degree.
Then, again, the sick girl depicted the night of the storm—the shock and consequent flight.
"But," she pleaded piteously, holding the strong hand that anchored her to life, "he won! he won, and it is always going to be all right. Oh! if he could only know!"
There would be a pause always ending in: "I want Pat."
"Where is—Pat?" Cameron ventured.
"Home!" And then, weakly, but with a wrenching pathos, Joan sang—"I'll get to—Scotland—no!home—before you!"
"Come, come, now!" Cameron pressed the thin form down. "You know you've got to live—for Pat."
"Yes—for Pat." And then Joan would sleep.
It was a day in late May that Cameron noticed a change in his case. She was weaker, but steadier. She seemed to connect him with something in the recent past, and that encouraged him. All her previous conscious moments had been like detached flashes.
"What was it you said I must live for?" she asked Cameron. "I've forgotten."
"For everything," he replied, throwing off his coat and gripping the promising moment. "You're not the kind to slink out. Besides, you've got to tell me about your folks. Give them a chance to prove themselves and set things straight." Cameron watched the struggle on the thin face. "And there is—Pat!" he added.
Joan looked amazed and then quivered.
"Yes, Pat, of course!"
There was a long pause, the consciousness was seeking something to which it might cling. Something forever eluding it.
A day or two later Cameron brought the dog into the sick room. Joan turned as she heard steps.
"Cuff!" she cried and then, as the dog leaped on to her, she sobbed and murmured over and over: "Pat's little Cuff; Pat's little Cuff."
Her way on ahead was safer after that—safer but more secretive.
As Joan got control of her thoughts she became moresilent and watchful. She questioned the nurse and found out where she was and how long she had been there; she smiled with her old touch of humour when she was called Miss Lamb but gave thanks that she had a name not her own!
She regarded Cameron with deep gratitude, but drove him to a corner by insisting that he tell her how much she owed him.
Cameron, having her purse under lock and key, at home, told her she owed the hospital fifty dollars.
At that Joan laughed, and the sound gave Cameron more hope than he had known for some time, but it seemed to mark, also, Joan's complete self-control.
Often she lay for hours with closed eyes and wondered with a bit of self-pity why she had not been discovered? Had she so completely dropped from the lives of those she loved that they had forgotten her? She did not know, for some time to come, of the letters to her that were returned to The Gap! She was never to know, fully, the anguish that Doris Fletcher was enduring in her mistaken determination not to hamper the girl who was testing her strength.
While David Martin rated her for ingratitude and carelessness; while Nancy's face set in resentment and disapproval, Doris smiled and insisted that she would not judge until Joan explained.
"Of course," she added, "if anything were really wrong Joan or Patricia would write. They are probably away on business—and at the worst they will soon let me know when to expect them. Joan was always a poor correspondent."
"Would you like to have me go to Chicago?" Martin asked.
"David, would you go if—it were your boy?" Doris hung on his answer.
"I jolly well wouldn't! I'd let the scamp learn the whole lesson."
"Very well, then I do not want you to go to Chicago!"
Joan, slowly recovering, could hardly have explained to herself why she was so secretive, but more and more she determinednot to go to The Gap and open her heart to Doris until she was able to command the situation. Since she had, for some reason, dropped from their lives, she would wait. Meanwhile, her heart ached with the pity of it all.
She wondered how the name of Lamb had ever been attached to her, and finally she decided to ask Cameron about it.
It was Cameron's custom, now, to delay his call upon Joan until late afternoon. When he was on his way to dinner he took a half hour or more to sit beside her bed and indulge in various emotions.
So long as Joan had been a desperate case she had no individuality at all, except scientifically.
She was bathed, and eventually her hair was cut, not shaved—the nurse put in a plea at the cutting point—and she was fed and made to sleep; but gradually, as she emerged from the shadowy boundary, she assumed different proportions.
Cameron concluded that her reticence, now her brain was growing clearer, came from a determined effort to cover her tracks and perhaps those of a man—unworthy, undoubtedly, and Cameron believed this man to be the "Pat" to whom his patient had so frantically referred in her raving.
There had evidently been a strenuous scene in which Pat had figured and through which he and the girl had emerged rather deplorably.
Cameron also arrived at the conclusion that the young woman in his care must be made to take a keener interest in life than she seemed to be taking, or her recovery would be slower than it ought to be, according to physical indications. The growing silence worried him; he wished that he could gain her confidence, not in order to gratify curiosity, but to enable him to be of real service.
One afternoon he called at the hospital reinforced with a box of roses.
The flowers had an immediate effect upon Joan. She buried her face in them and closed her eyes, and then Cameron saw large, slow tears escaping the close-shut lids. He welcomed these. Presently Joan asked:
"How is—is—Cuff?"
"Oh! he's ripping," Cameron replied; "after seeing you he seemed to size up the situation and come to terms."
"How—how did you happen to know his name?" This had been a burning curiosity for the past week.
"You happened to mention it when you keeled over in my office. Cuff was apparently your one responsibility. We found your name in a letter—Miss Lamb."
The roses hid the quivering face while a new and hurting question for the first time entered in. Then:
"Did—did I go to your office? I thought I—was brought here from——"
"You were brought here, all right," Cameron felt his way slowly along the opening path; "Miss Brown and I had rather a vigorous trip with you—in my automobile."
"Cuff belonged to—to Pat!" Joan remarked, irrelevantly. She was forcing her thought back to the blank period lying between the hotel and the hospital. Gradually it brightened and a smothered sob found place in the roses.
"So that is why they have left me alone!" Joan reflected; "but oh! how frightened they must be!"
"I rather imagine Pat must be fairly well used up wondering about you," Cameron was saying as if the whole matter were an everyday affair, but rather annoying; "queer things happen in a big city. We've done our best to locate your friends; I think some of the officials I have consulted have their doubts as to my mental condition. I kept under cover as well as I could until you were well enough to act for yourself."
"Thank you—oh! thank you." This very faintly and brokenly.
"You see, you are one of the cases that prove that an impossibility is—possible. Truth-stronger-than-fiction idea. But if you would like me to communicate with Pat, I'll be glad to help you."
"No—I will wait now." Joan drew her lips close.
Cameron controlled his features while he listened, but he never referred to Pat again.
"I've sometimes thought," Cameron spoke calmly, "that you might have been looking for my uncle, Doctor Martin, when you stumbled into his old office. I could not flatter myself that you were bent upon obtaining my services."
At this Joan astonished Cameron almost as much as if she had sat up in her coffin.
She rose, as though propelled by a spring, she stared at him and then, as slowly, sank back, still holding him with her eyes that seemed preternaturally large.
"Oh! come now!" Cameron exclaimed. "What's up?" He took her hand and bent over her and to his amaze discovered that she was laughing! He touched the bell. Things were bewildering him—Miss Brown always managed trying situations by reducing them to normal. She responded at once; cool, serene, and capable.
"Nerves?" she asked. And then took command. She raised Joan and settled the pillows into new lines; she removed the roses almost sternly—she disliked the nuisance of flowers in a sick room.
"There, now!" she whispered to Joan, "take this drink and go to sleep like a good girl."
In the face of this sound common sense laughing was out of the question. Joan pretended sleep rather than risk another: "There, now!"
But her recovery was rapid after that day. Like a veil withdrawn she reflected upon the past as if it were, not a story that was told, but a preface to the real story that her life must be.
The folly, the irresponsibility, no longer dismayed her, but gave her reasons and arguments.
She wanted to live at last! She wanted to go home and separate herself forever from the cheap, theatrical thing she had believed was freedom! She saw the folly of it all; she seemed an old woman regarding the dangerous passage of a younger one.
She realized her own selfishness in her demand for self-expression. What had she expressed while others fixed their faithful eyes on duty?
Nancy shone high and clear in those dull hospital days. Nancy who demanded so little, but who trod, with divine patience, the truer course.
"Well, Nan shall have her own!" Joan thought, and gripped her thin hands under the bedclothes. "I'll strive for Nan as I never have for myself."
Out of the débris of the feverish past Joan held alone to Patricia. Strange, it seemed to her, that the dead girl should have grown to such importance, but so it was. Patricia was the real, the sacred thing, and she planned the home-bringing of the dear body and the placing of it on the hillside in The Gap.
And through the convalescing days Cameron had his place, like a fixed star.
Often worn by the day's silent remorse and earnest promise as to the future, Joan looked to that hour when Cameron, calm, serious but cheerful, sat by her bedside—a strong link between the folly of the past and the hope of the times on ahead.
Vaguely she recalled the blurred weeks of fever and pain, and always his quiet voice and cool touch held part.
"And to think," Joan could but smile, "that he does not know me—but I know who he is just as I knew about——" She could not name Raymond yet—she could only think kindly of him when she held to the days before that last, tragic night.
And Cameron, meanwhile, was drawing wrong conclusions. Not that they changed his personal attitude toward the girl whose life he had helped save. To him she was a human creature whose faith in her future must be restored as her body was in the process of being. Cameron believed in stepping-stones and was utterly opposed to waste of any kind.
"She's paid her debt and his, too, I wager," Cameron often muttered; "that's the devil of it all, and she'll go on and perhaps down—if she doesn't get a start up. If I could only get hold of her folks—it would help!"
But Joan held him at bay when he ventured on that line.
"When I am quite well," she said with gentle dignity, "I am going home and do my own explaining."
"Are you considering—them?" Cameron frowned at her.
"I am—as I never have before!"
To this silence was the only reply.
Presently Joan made her first big stride toward complete recovery. She forsook her bed during the day and, in pink gown and dainty cap—procured by Miss Brown—she passed from a "case" to an individual.
The twilight hour now became something of a function and Cameron dropped his professional manner with his outdoor trappings and appeared, often, as a tired but very humanly interesting young man.
He talked of safe, ordinary things, he brought books and flowers, and while Miss Brown kept a rigid appearance, she inwardly sniffed—or the equivalent.
And then came the Sunday before Joan was to leave the hospital. It happened to be Easter, and a woman was singing in the little chapel down the hall. The room doors were open and the sweet words and melody floated in to the silent listeners—Joan pictured them as she sat and felt her tears roll down her cheeks.
"Some—are going out!" she thought, "and others, like me, must go on. And here we all are with walls between, but our doors open to:
"He weaves the shining garmentsUnceasingly and stillAlong the quiet watersIn niches of the hills."
The words seemed to paint, in the narrow room, the dim Gap. The sound of the river was in Joan's ears and she knew that the niches of the safe hills where her loved ones waited, were full of the spring blossoms.
No leaf that dawns to petal,But hints the Angel-plan.
Joan looked up and saw Cameron at the doorway. He almost filled it, and his eyes grew troubled as he noted the thin, white, tear-wet face.
"Shall I close the door?" he asked.
"No. Please do not. I like to think that all the others, down the corridor, and I are together—listening, growing better!"
"Oh! I see." Cameron tossed aside his coat and sat down.
"I—I don't think you do," Joan smiled at him; "I think I puzzle you terribly, but some day I am going to explain everything. All my life I have been, as I am now, in a narrow little room—peeping out and never touching others any more than I am touching"—she pointed to the right and left—"my neighbours, here. But we were all listening to much the same thing then as now.
"I am going"—here Joan dashed her tears off—"I am going somehow to pull the walls down and know really!"
"Bully!" Cameron had a peculiar feeling in his throat. Then added: "I cut something out of a paper the other day that seemed to me to hold all the philosophy necessary for this tug-of-war we call life. Here it is!"
"Read it, please," Joan dropped her eyes.
"A shipwrecked sailor, buried here, bids you set sail.Full many a gallant bark, when he was lost, weathered the gale."
"Isn't that good, gripping stuff? I've caught the sense of it, and when I get to thinking—well, of such as lie in many of these little rooms, I'm glad—you're—setting sail!"
"Thank you, Doctor Cameron. I am setting sail! I thought I was before—I see the difference now. And to-morrow——"
"And to-morrow—where are you going—to-morrow?"
Cameron was ill at ease.
"To a little hotel—I will give you the address in the morning. It is from there that I will set sail."
CHAPTER XXIII"No one can travel that road for you, you must travel it for yourself."
"No one can travel that road for you, you must travel it for yourself."
David Martin came into the living room of Ridge House bringing, as it seemed, the Spring with him. He left the door open and sat down. He was in rough clothes; he was brown and rugged. He was building, with his own hands, much of the cabin at Blowing Rock. He had never been more content in his life. He often paused, as he was now doing, and thought of it.
The hard winter's work was over and Martin felt the spring in his blood as he had not felt it in many a year.
Things were going to suit him—and they had had a way of eluding him in the past. Perhaps, he thought, because he had always wanted them just his way.
Somewhere, above stairs, Doris was singing, and Nancy from another part of the house was calling out little joyous remarks.
"Two telegrams in one day, Aunt Doris. Such riches!"
Doris paused in her song long enough to reply:
"Joan may come any day, Nan, dear. It is so like her to act, once she decides."
Martin, sitting by the hearth, reflected upon the injustice of Prodigal Sons and Daughters—but he smiled.
"They don't deserve it—but it's damnably true that they get it," he mused, irrelevantly.
"Joan's room is a dream, Nan, come and see it!" called Doris, and Nancy could be heard running and laughing to inspect the Prodigal's quarters.
"It looks divine!" she ejaculated. "Push that pink dogwoodback a little, Aunt Dorrie—make it like a frame around the mirror for the dear's face."
"How's that, Nan?"
"Exactly—right. Aunt Dorrie?"
"Yes, my dear girl."
"I have the dearest plan—I feel that Ken would love it, but I hate to be the one to propose it."
From his armchair Martin smiled more broadly.
"Perhaps I can do it for you, Nan." Doris spoke abstractedly—she was, apparently, giving more thought to the decorations for the returning wanderer than to the plans of the good child who had remained at her post.
"Well, Aunt Doris, I don't want to wait until next winter to be married. Ken writes that he will have Mrs. Tweksbury safely settled in New York by the first of June——" Emily Tweksbury had fled the influenza and gone to Bermuda only to fall victim to pneumonia. Kenneth Raymond had been summoned, to what was supposed to be her death-bed, but which she indignantly refused to accept as such.
"When women are as old as I, Ken," she had whispered as he bent over her, "they consign them to death-beds too easily. Give me a month, boy, and I'll go back with you."
Kenneth had given her a month, then two weeks extra; he was bringing her back now—a frail old woman, but one in whose heart the determination to live was yet strong.
"But, darling, we'd have to give up the beautiful wedding—Mrs. Tweksbury could never stand the excitement now, or even this summer."
Doris's voice was more suggestive of attention as she now spoke. Martin waited.
"I know, Aunt Dorrie, but I am sure she would rather have me and Ken married than come to our wedding. Listen, duckie! Suppose, after Joan comes, we plan the dearest little service in the Chapel—I'm sure we could snatch Father Noble as he flits by. There would be you and Uncle David and Joan, and perhaps Clive could wrench himself away, and Mary and Uncle Jed—and," a tender pause, "and—Ken and me! We could make the Chapel beautiful withflowers from The Gap—our flowers—and then I could help Ken with Mrs. Tweksbury—for you, Aunt Dorrie, will have Joan."
Martin blinked his eyes. He never admitted a mistiness to the extent of wiping them. He listened for Doris's next words.
"Childie, it sounds enticing and just like you. I will talk it over with Uncle David."
The voices upstairs fell into a silence and Martin got up and paced the room.
A few minutes later Doris came down the stairs and, singing softly, entered the living room.
There was welcome in her eyes; the languor and helpless expression had faded from her face.
"Davey," she said, "I felt the draught—you have left the door open—I knew you were here.
"Oh! Davey, to-day the twenty-year limit seems quite the possible thing. My dear, my dear, Joan is coming home!"
Martin met Doris midway of the big room. He was startled at the change in her.
"I heard that a telegram had come. It's great news, Doris."
"Queer, isn't it, Davey, how one can brace and bear a good deal while there is the necessity, and then realize the strain only when the need is past? Joan says only 'coming home,' but I know as surely as I ever knew anything that it has been for the best and she is coming gladly to me—coming home! I could not have endured the silence much longer."
Martin put his arm around Doris and led her to the hearth. A mild little fire was crackling cheerfully, rather shyly, between the tall jars of dogwood that seemed to question the necessity of the small blaze.
"Davey, I want to talk to you. There are so many things to say if you are absent twenty-four hours. How goes the cabin?"
"Like magic. It will be livable by June or before. The men like to have me pothering around, and I've discoveredthat one never really has a house unless he helps build it. I'm going to get Bud down the minute I can put a bed up. And, Doris——"
"Yes, Davey."
"I've been eavesdropping, I've been here a half hour. I heard what Nancy said—let the child have her wish!"
"You feel that way, David? I had hoped to have everything rather splendid—to make up for what I could not do for—Merry."
"All stuff and nonsense! Give the girl her head. She knows her path and will not make mistakes. What she wants is Raymond and her own life. Nancy is simple and direct; no complications about her. Don't make any for her."
"David, her happiness and peace almost frighten me. You remember how she drooped last summer? Taking her to New York has done more than give her love and happiness. She is quite another girl, so resourceful and clear visioned."
"She's on her own trail, Doris, that's all. Things are right with Nancy. The rule holds."
"But, David, I have not told her yet——"
"Told her?—oh! I see—about the birth mix-up?"
Martin smiled—he always did when the subject was referred to. The humour and daring of it had never lost their zest.
"It is no laughing matter, Davey; as the time draws near when I must tell I am in a kind of panic. I always thought it would be easy; if it had been right why should I know this fear?"
Martin was serious enough now. He folded his arms and leaned back in his chair—he held Doris with his calm gray eyes.
"It seems to me," he spoke thoughtfully, "that you should stand by your guns. You did what you did from the highest motives; you have succeeded marvellously—why upset the kettle of fish, my dear?"
Doris's face softened.
"I think if I had committed murder," she said, "you would try to defend the deed."
"I certainly would!"
They smiled into each other's eyes at this.
"But, David, I am afraid to tell Nancy. Somehow I think the doubt would hurt her more cruelly than the real truth might have. It has always been the not knowing that mattered to Nan—unless what was to be known was a happy thing. Merry was like that, you remember."
"Then why run a risk with Nancy, Doris?"
Martin had the look in his eyes with which he scanned the face of a patient who could not be depended upon to describe his own symptoms.
"I—think—Ken should know."
"What?"
"Why—why—what there is to know!"
"Just muddle him. Nancy would be the same girl, but he'd get to puzzling over her and tagging ideas on her—and to what end, Doris? The girl has the right to her own path and you have, by the grace of God, pushed obstacles from before her, in heaven's name give her fair play and don't—flax out at this stage of the game."
"But, Davey, if in the future anything should disclose the truth, might Ken not resent?"
"I don't see why he should. When the hour struck you could call him into the family circle and share the news. By that time he'd feel secure in his own right about Nancy."
"I'm not afraid of, or for, Joan, Davey." Doris lifted her head proudly. "And, David, I want to tell you now that my coming to The Gap was more on the children's account than my own. I have always felt that here, if anywhere, the truth might be exposed. At first I was anxious; fearful yet hopeful. I know now that The Gap has no suspicions, and I am more and more confident that George Thornton has passed from our lives."
"Very good!" Martin sat up and bent forward in order to take Doris's hands in his own.
"My dear," he said, gently, "have you never thought that—Nancy is—your own?"
"Yes, Davey, I have grown to believe it. She is very likeMeredith—not in looks, but in her character and habits. She is stronger, happier than Merry, and oh! Davey, for that very reason I hesitate to touch the beautiful faith and love of the child. I do not want her disillusioned. It would kill her as it did Merry."
"Then, again I caution against risks, especially when the odds are with Nancy, not against her."
The fire burned low—a mere twinkle in the white ashes, then David asked as one does ask a useless question:
"Are those words over the fireplace, Doris?" He puckered his near-sighted eyes.
"I think so. There are carvings and paintings everywhere through the house. One of the Sisters did them. This one is so blackened by smoke that it is all but destroyed—some day I will see what can be done to restore it."
"I like the idea," Martin said. "I mean to have something over my fireplace. It sort of strikes one in the face."
Presently Doris spoke, going back past the interruption:
"Davey, the wonderful thing to me is that while believing Nancy to be Merry's child I find my heart clinging passionately to Joan. I know how you disapprove of her—but I glory in her. Through this anxious time I have been able to follow her, understand her better, even, than I have Nan. Joan has often seemed like—well, like myself set free. I might have been like Joan in many ways. And, Davey, this could not have happened had I known the real truth concerning the girls."
"No, I do not think it could. And it goes to prove my theory that two thirds of the inherited traits are common to us all. The whole business lies in the handling of them by the one third that does come down the line. The thing we know as the ancient law of inheritance. Doris, take my advice and keep your hands off."
"Oh! Davey. To keep my hands off is so easy that it doesn't seem safe or right."
David smiled, then said:
"There are times, Doris, when I fear that you should betaken by the roots and—transplanted. The old soil is used up."
"I—I do not understand, David."
"Don't try! Come, now, I want you to take a rest. Go on the porch in the sun, I'll wrap you warm. I'm going to take Nancy over to the cabin for lunch and plan her wedding with her. This afternoon you and I are going for a drive—the roads have settled somewhat and I want your advice about things to put in my garden."
As he spoke Martin was leading Doris to the piazza, gathering rugs and pillows in one arm as he went.
"I am so happy, David, so unspeakably happy." Doris sank into her pillows and smiled up at the face bending over her. "It's beautiful, all this care and love, and I have a feeling that I will be able, soon, to really live. I have had so much without paying the price."
"And you'd mess it all, would you, Doris, when you don't know what the price is?"
"No, David, I wouldn't."
Martin walked into the house and whistled to Nancy. She responded, so did the hounds and a new litter of long-eared pups.
Doris, with closed eyes, smiled and then she thought. She, too, was planning for Nancy's wedding—she saw the small altar in the Chapel flower-decked; they must have some music, perhaps Joan would sing one of her lovely, quaint songs—and then Doris slept while the sun lay on her peaceful face and the sound of the busy river soothed her.
It was like Joan to do exactly what she did.
After two deplorable days in the little hotel—days devoted to collecting her belongings and eating and sleeping—she suddenly found herself so strong that she sent the telegram to The Gap.
Having sent it, she meant to prepare carefully against shock at her appearance by buying a rather giddy hat and coat to offset her short hair and thin body. Cameron hadinsisted, at the last, that she reserve her cash for emergencies and repay him later.
Joan accepted this solution, and having arrayed herself frivolously she bought Cuff a most remarkable collar which embarrassed the dog considerably. In all the changing events of Cuff's life a collar had not figured, and it was harder to adjust himself to it than to foots of beds and meals served on plates. However, Cuff rose to the emergency and bore himself with credit.
Twice Cameron came to the hotel; twice he took Joan for a drive—"It will help you get on your feet," he explained.
"I—I don't quite see how," she faltered and, as they were driving where once she and Raymond had driven, her eyes were tear-filled. The old, dangerous, foolish past had a most depressing effect upon her.
At Cameron's second attempt to put her on her feet he succeeded, for when he paid his third call, a quaint little note greeted him at the office:
Thank you—thank you for all that you have done. I will explain everything soon, in the meantime, morally and physically, I am wobbling home.
Thank you—thank you for all that you have done. I will explain everything soon, in the meantime, morally and physically, I am wobbling home.
Cameron's jaw set as he read.
"I'll wait," was what he inwardly swore. And at that moment he was conscious that, for the first time in his career, a woman had got into his system!
When Joan reached Stone Hedgeton she feared that she and Cuff would have to overcome many obstacles before they reached The Gap, for no one was willing to travel the roads.
"There is holes in the river road mighty nigh a yard deep," one man confided. "I ain't going to risk my hoss, nor my mule, nuther!"
It was the mail man who, at last, solved the problem. He had a small car whose appearance was disreputable but whose record was marvellous.
"If you-all," he included Cuff in the general remark, "ain't sot 'bout reaching The Gap at any 'pinted time, I'llscrooge you in. There's a couple of stops to make, and I reckon I'll have to dig us-all out of holes now and then—that shovel ain't in yo' way, is it, Miss?" he asked.
For Joan and Cuff were already among the mail bags and merchandise.
"Nothing is in the way!" Joan replied, "and I'll help you dig us out."
It was just daylight when they started.
It was past noon when, stiff and rather shaken, Joan scrambled out of the old car and, followed by Cuff, noiselessly made her way over the lawn to Ridge House.
She went lightly up the steps, then stood still. Doris Fletcher lay sleeping in the full, warm glow. So quiet was she, so pale and delicate, that for a moment Joan knew a fear that had had its beginning when Patricia passed from life.
The awful uncertainty, the narrow pass over which all travel, were newly realized perils to Joan, and her breath came sharp and quick.
So this was what had happened while she was learning her lessons! She had not learned alone.
"Oh! Aunt Dorrie," she murmured. "You and I have paid and paid—but you never held me back!"
Joan sat down and waited. It was always to be so with her from now on. In that hour a great and tender patience was born that was to calm and guide her future life. She was given, then and there, to draw upon the strength and vision that do not err. And it may have been that in sleep Doris Fletcher, too, was prepared, for when suddenly she opened her eyes upon Joan she was not startled: a gladness that was almost painful overspread her face.
"My darling! You have come at last!" was what she said.
And, as on that night when she had come to plead for freedom, Joan did not, now, rush into human touch. She nodded and whispered:
"I've come as I promised to, Aunt Dorrie. It—it wasn't my chance! Not my big chance, anyhow, but I had to find out, dearie."
"My little girl!"
Joan went nearer; she bent and kissed again and again that radiant face; then, sitting on the floor by the couch, with Cuff huddled close, she touched lightly the high peaks that lay between the parting and this home-coming, but Doris, with that deep understanding, followed laboriously, silently, through the dark valleys.
"I'm rather battered and cropped, Aunt Dorrie—but here I am!"
With this Joan tossed off her hat and voluminous coat.
"Your—hair, Joan? Your beautiful hair!"
"I have been very sick, Aunt Dorrie, my hair and my fat had to go—just enough bones left to hold my soul. But I'm all right now."
"Don't be sorry for me," Joan was pleading, "I'm the gladdest thing alive to-day. I've dropped all the old husks; I've found out just what they are worth, but some of them that seem like husks, dear, are not—I've learned that, too."
"Yes, Joan—and now go on, in just your own way. For a little while I have you to myself. Nancy will take lunch at Uncle David's new bungalow."
There was a good deal of explanation necessary in dealing with Sylvia's part in the past—Doris had banked on Sylvia. The tea room was easier, but Joan slipped over that experience so glibly that Doris made a mental reservation concerning it.
Patricia was the critical test. At the mention of her name Cuff whined pathetically, and Joan bent and gathered him in her arms.
"I—I can't talk much about Pat, dearie, not now"; Joan bent her head; "she was so wonderful. Just a beautiful, lost spirit in the world—trying to find its way home. There was only one way for Pat—I shall always be glad that I could go part of it with her."
"Yes, yes—I am glad, too!" Doris whispered, for she had caught up with Joan now. She did not know all that lay in the valleys—but she felt the chill and darkness through which her child had come up to the light. Strange as itmight seem, she was thinking of that time, long ago, when she had escaped from the Park and had touched life in the open.
The hospital experience Joan could describe with a touch of humour that eventually brought a smile to Doris's face. She took for granted that it had been in Chicago, and when Joan told of flitting away from the young doctor who had saved her, Doris laughingly said:
"Joan, that was cruel. You should have explained."
"No, Aunt Dorrie, it was wise. Of course I'm going to explain to him and send him the money, but I wanted to shut the door on my silly past first. I shall only let in, hereafter, that part of it that I choose. When I saw a man looking at me, Aunt Dorrie, where before I had been seeing a doctor, there was nothing to do but scamper. He hadn't the least idea what was happening—he saw only the bag of bones that he had rescued, but I wasn't going to let him run any risks. You see, I've learned more than some girls."
And then Joan, mentally, turned her back on the past. With that power she had for holding to the thing she desired, the thing she wanted to make true, she laughed her merry, carefree laugh—she recalled only the joyous, amusing incidents and she watched with hungry, loving eyes the effect she was creating.
It was while this was going on that Mary came upon the piazza to announce luncheon. There were days when no one saw Mary, when her cabin was closed and locked; but after such absences she came to Ridge House and worked with a fervour that flavoured of apology.
She gazed long upon Joan before she spoke. It was not surprise she showed, but a slow understanding.
"Miss Joan," she said at last, "seems like you ain't got the world by the tail like you uster have."
Joan threw her head back and laughed.
"No, Mary," she presently replied, "it swung so fast that I fell off—but I'll catch hold soon."
The quiet little luncheon in the quaint dining room did much to restore the long-past relations of Joan with the family. Uncle Jed came in and chuckled with delight. Theold man lived mostly in the past now, and followed Mary like a poor crumpled shadow. What held the two together was difficult to understand—but it was the kinship of the hills, the stolid sense of familiarity.
After the meal was over Joan wandered about through the living rooms for a few moments, touching Nancy's loom, but speaking seldom of Nancy.
"I want to hear all about it from her," she explained; and Doris, with Joan's affairs chiefly in her thought, referred merely to Nancy's happiness, their perfect sympathy with it; and if Kenneth's name was mentioned, Joan did not notice it.
At last she went up to her room to rest.
"Quite as if I had never been away, Aunt Doris," she said, "and you don't mind if I take Cuff? The poor little chap has had so many changes that I fear for his nerves!"
Joan went upstairs to the west wing chamber singing a gay little song—her own voice seemed to hold her to the safe, happy present—so she sang.
She paused at the door of her room to read the words carved there long ago by Sister Constance:
And the Hills Shall Bring Peace
It was like someone speaking a welcome.
"Oh! it is all so dear," Joan murmured, "how could it ever have seemed dull!"
Flowers filled the vases, and there was a small, fragrant fire on the hearth—a mere thing of beauty, there was no need of it, for the windows were open to the gentle spring day.
Joan slipped into a loose gown and then stood in the middle of the room leisurely taking in the comfort and joy of every proof of love that she saw.
On the desk by the window lay a pile of unopened letters—she took them up. They were the letters from Doris and Nancy which had been returned from Chicago. Pitiful things that had been sohopefullysent forth only to come back like blighted hopes!
For a moment Joan contemplated throwing them all on the fire. She did not feel equal to re-living the past. It was only by laughing and singing that she could hold her own.
But on second thought she opened the first one—it was from Nancy.
"I better have all I can get to begin on," she reflected; "it will save time."
She sat down in a deep chair and presently she was aware of combating something that was being impressed upon her; she was not conscious of reading it.
"Such things do not happen—not in life——" her sane, cautious self seemed to say. For a second Joan believed her tired brain was playing her false as it had during those awful weeks in the hospital. She closed her eyes; grew calm—then tried again: