|HURRYING down through the grounds, and vaulting over the low boundary
fence, Dearing approached the gate of the Barry cottage just as Dora
came out. Pretty as she had been in girlhood, she was rarely beautiful
as a fully developed woman. And to-day, as ever, Dearing stood before
her in absolute awe of her rare, exquisite, and appealing personality.
“She's had another attack, Wynn!” Dora said, with a brave effort to
steady her faltering voice. “I really thought she was dying, and I
suppose I screamed. She looked so bad for a few moments! Her face turned
purple, and she lost consciousness. She came to herself a moment ago,
and is still awake. Will you see her?”
He went to the sick woman's room on tiptoe. Seated in a chair at the
head of the bed, and waving a palm-leaf fan to and fro, to keep the
flies from his grandmother's face, was Lionel, his great, serious eyes,
so like his mother's, filled with anxiety. He rose as Dearing entered,
and moved round to the other side of the bed, but he still waved the fan
and stood staring anxiously.
“I thought I was gone that time, Doctor Wynn,” Mrs. Barry said, with a
wan smile, as he took her hand to test her pulse.
“Well, you certainly are far from it now,” he laughed, reassuringly. “I
believe it would take a regiment of soldiers to put you out of business.
That was only a fainting spell brought on by too close confinement to
the house. You must get out more; that's all you need. Now, take a good
nap and you will be all right.” He nodded and smiled reassuringly at
Dora, who stood at the foot of the bed. She followed him from the room,
seeing that he wished to speak to her.
“She is all right now,” he told her. “She is doing very well. It is only
a sluggish liver, due to lack of exercise. Let her sleep as long as she
will now, and I'll send you a tonic which will brace her up. There is
nothing really to fear. She has a splendid constitution in all other
respects.”
Dora sank into a chair as if utterly overcome with relief, and he stood
looking at her in blended admiration and sympathy.
Aside from her beauty of face and form, there was a ripeness of
intellect and character in her face, which had come to her from the
years of isolated suffering which she had undergone.
“You are so kind to me, Wynn,” she said, with a faint, sad smile. “You
have always been the best friend we ever had.”
“Why, what are you talking about?” Dearing said, lightly and with a
flush. “Any other jack-leg country doctor would have taken care of you
fully as well.”
“You have done hundreds of thoughtful things,” she cried. “You have left
nothing undone that could possibly help us. Oh, you are _too_ good! You
haven't allowed my poor mother to pay you one penny for your services
in all these years. She has tried and tried to make you take it till she
has almost given up in despair.”
“I haven't done anything really worth while, Dora,” he said, lightly.
“You see, you live right at hand, too, and it is no trouble at all to
jump over your fence and mine. I couldn't take money from a next-door
neighbor under those circumstances. You just wait until you really need
a doctor, and then I'll send in a bill as long as my arm.”
“You can't help being good,” Dora said, feelingly, her wonderful violet
eyes filling. “Your great heart simply went out to us in our trouble,
and you have determined to help us in every way possible. Mother thinks
all the world of you, and Lionel actually believes you are some sort of
god.”
“Well, he's badly fooled, I tell you!” Dearing laughed. “But speaking of
him, I must lecture you good and hard. You are not treating the child at
all right. He oughtn't to be cooped up here in this little yard like he
is. It is too small. A growing boy like that needs room, and plenty of
it.”
“Oh, you don't understand!” Dora sighed, while a look of deepest pain
tortured her mobile face. “I couldn't bear to have him running around
a neighborhood as--as heartless as this one is. He is so observant,
and has such an inquiring mind, and people are so--so cruel, so utterly
unforgiving. But you are trying to change the subject. You think I have
no money with which to pay a doctor's bill.” She laughed suddenly and
mysteriously as she went on: “I believe I'll let you into a secret. I'll
show you something. Come into the parlor.”
She led him, with graceful step and bearing, through the little central
passage of the cottage to the parlor door, and they entered together.
She laughed like a merry child; it was the sweet, rippling laugh he
remembered so well as belonging to his youth and hers, as she pointed
to the easel before a window. On it was a good water-color picture of a
child at play on the grass near a stream, with a pastoral scene sketched
in the background.
“Oh,” he exclaimed, admiringly, “that's the best you've shown me! It is
very, very good.”
“That's only one of many,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “I wanted
something to occupy my mind after I gave up music, and I began these
studies merely as an experiment. I worked for a year while Lionel was
a baby just to--you know, Wynn--just to forget!” He was silent, being
unable to formulate any reply that was appropriate to the delicate
situation, and she went on simply, and still in the winsome tone which
had always appealed to him so strongly.
“Then--now comes the _best_ part--one day I happened to read the
advertisement of an Atlanta dealer who was in need of such things, and
I forwarded some sketches I had done. They were bad--oh, so bad--and he
wrote that he would not offer them to his customers, but he encouraged
me to keep on. Then I worked harder, and finally I sent him some
pictures of children--little pickaninnies, brown as chestnuts, little
white ragamuffins, babies in old-fashioned, crude, box-cradles like the
mountain people have, and he sold them. Think of that! He actually sold
them! I have not signed any of them. He has written me several times
begging that I should do so, but I have always refused. He has agreed
not to use my name at all, and I believe he has kept his word. The whole
thing has made me--_almost_ happy. Wynn, I saw your face after your
first successful operation, and didn't understand then what it meant
to you, but I do now. The day that dealer's letter came, and his money
followed by express, in a big wax-sealed envelope--well, it was the
happiest moment of my life-I sang; I talked to myself; I danced. I
told Baby all about it as I hugged him in my arms. I had, as they say,
discovered myself. Here I was, cut off from intercourse with everybody
in my home town, but God hadn't wholly forsaken me. He had given me
something to make up for what I'd lost--a way of speaking to the big
outer world.”
“I see, and I congratulate you with all my heart,” Dearing said, as he
stood watching the shifting tones in her expressive face. “I understand
you better now. I got in the habit of listening for your piano at night,
when everything was still, and I fancied I could read your various
moods. A long time ago you played too sadly; really it used to get next
to me, and make me worry about you; but of late there has been more
hope and cheerfulness in your music, and it did me a lot of good. I
understand you better now. I have always thought that creative work was
the most satisfying and uplifting occupation possible, and now I am sure
of it.”
“And I am getting better and better prices, too,” Dora said, modestly.
“My agent sends my things everywhere, even to far-off New York and
Boston. I don't do them so fast now, for I try harder and I think they
are better. Now, you will send me your bill, won't you?”
“I shall certainly be hoping that somebody will get really sick under
this roof,” he laughed, evasively, “for I'd like to get a whack at your
roll of cash, but so far my dealings have been only with your mother,
and she doesn't make it interesting. She was good to me when I was a
boy. I used to crawl over the back fence when she was making jelly and
jam in the kitchen, and I collected some fees then that did me more
good than any I have since received. She performed the first surgical
operation on me, too, that I ever had. I was barefoot, and while trying
to hide from some other boys I stuck a rusty nail through my big toe.
She heard me yelling and came to my assistance. She extracted the nail,
washed out my wound, filled it with turpentine--the only household
antiseptic used in that day--and bound it up for me. I have always
believed that she saved me from lockjaw.”
“The opportunity to earn money means more to me than you might think,
Wynn,” she said, her eyes lighting up. “Do you know what my dream of
dreams is? It is to be able to go to Paris, and take Lionel and my
mother. She has always wanted to go, because papa was buried there. Do
you know, I feel that away off in a free, art-loving country like France
I could rear my child to manhood without his ever knowing about his--his
history. It seems to me that God has given me this talent for that
particular purpose. The only trouble is the delay. You see, it may be
years before I can save enough, and then it might be too late.”
“I see, I understand,” Dearing said, gravely; “and you'd never come back
to old Stafford again, I suppose?”
“Oh no,” she answered; “all this would have to be laid aside forever.”
“I shouldn't like to see you go,” he said. “I have--you see, I have
become attached to Lionel--he and I are great chums. But if you have
decided, and wish it so very much, why not? Look here, Dora, I have
money lying idle in the bank. I have absolutely no need for it, and--”
“Oh no!” she cried. “It is lovely of you to offer it, but I couldn't
think of taking it. I couldn't--I really-couldn't!”
“Not from your big brother?” he asked, his pleading eyes on her.
“No, not even from you, you dear boy. It is _my_ problem, Wynn, and I
must work it out alone--all alone.”
They had gone back to the porch, and the sight of the extensive grounds
around his house prompted him to say:
“I know now why you don't realize Lionel's need for more fresh air. You
have that absorbing occupation, and it keeps you from putting yourself
in the boy's place, as you might otherwise do.”
“Do you think so?” she asked, quite gravely. “It may be true, Wynn,
and yet what am I to do? I really can't bear to have him running about,
meeting other children. I could never answer his questions--never,
never! Some one would have to watch him, and mother and I both shrink
from going out in--in public.”
“I was thinking of that, too,” Dearing replied, “and that is why a
certain plan occurred to me. There is that big lot of mine right over
the fence. Nothing could possibly happen to him there. It is quiet, and
there are many things he could amuse himself with. It is really like
a little farm, you know. We have chickens, ducks, turkeys, puppies,
kittens, pigs, and horses, and even a cow and a calf about the barn,
to say nothing of the pigeons that nest in the hay-loft. To a child,
judging by my own memory of boyhood, it would be a regular paradise.”
“You don't mean that you would allow--that you would--” There was a
catch in the young mother's voice; a tinge of anxious pallor crept into
her appealing face. “Oh, Wynn, you are too kind! You are thinking only
of helping me. There is your uncle and your sister--I could not bear to
trust my darling where he might not be--wanted.”
“I know my uncle and sister better than you do,” Dearing said. “Margaret
has never seen Lionel that I know of, but she would love to make him
happy. As for my uncle, he greatly admires the little fellow, and would
be delighted to have him come and romp over the place to his heart's
content.”
“Oh, how you tempt me!” Dora cried, covering her face with her shapely
hands. “Of all things, I can think of nothing right now that I'd like
better than that. I have been trying to forget Lionel's confinement in
this little yard and house--trying to convince myself that he is wholly
happy only with mother and me, but it is no use. It is really pitiful to
think of. He has a wonderful imagination, and he sometimes sits here on
the porch and tries to picture to himself what the inside of a big house
like yours is. He thinks you all must be kings and princes like those in
the fairy-tales we read to him. He asked me one day if we'd ever have a
home like yours, and when I told him I didn't think so, he answered,
'Then God isn't so very good, after all, is He?' I tried to get him to
explain what he meant, but he only shook his head and went to play in
the yard.”
At this moment the boy himself came from his grandmother's room, along
the passage, and out to them.
“She is still asleep,” he announced, gravely. “I drew the netting over
her face, so that the flies won't wake her.”
“That's right--that's a good boy.” Dearing rested his strong hand on the
golden head and looked down into the child's face, and then he laughed
as he caught the boy's arm and taught him how to contract his muscles.
“You'll be able to protect yourself, young man,” he said. “You have a
splendid arm and fist already. I'd hate to have those knuckles try to
knock a fly off my nose and miss the fly. Say, kid, do you see that big
lot of mine beyond the fence? Well, you are going to play over there
from morning to night: climb the trees, build houses out of that pile of
old bricks. I'm going to have a swing put up for you to the highest limb
of that big oak, and I'll make you a see-saw and a flying-jinny, and you
may feed my puppies and cats.”
The boy's eyes danced as he stared eagerly. Dora was looking away, her
handkerchief pressed to her face.
Dearing saw a wave of emotion pass through her, but she remained silent.
“But I couldn't go over there!” Lionel sighed. “You are very kind, but
my mother always wants me to stay at home.”
“She is going to let you come, because I asked it as a special favor to
me,” Dearing answered. “I'm the doctor, you know, and my orders go on
this ranch.”
Wonderingly, the boy leaned across his mother's lap, and put his arm
around her neck.
“Is he joking, mother dear?” he inquired, and he held his breath in
visible suspense. “Does he really mean that I may play over there?”
“Would you like it, darling boy?” Dora asked. There was a tremolo in
her voice, and she kept her handkerchief to her eyes. The child started,
looked suspiciously at Dearing, and then, leaning toward his mother,
he firmly uncovered her face. He saw traces of tears, and stood erect.
There was a fierce, angry flare in his eyes, his lower lip quivered, as
he turned upon Dearing and blurted out:
“She is crying! What did you say to her?”
“Oh, I see!” Dearing jested. “You want to have it out with me, do you?
Well, you pick your weapons, old chap, and I'll be your man. I won't
take a dare from you or anybody else.”
Dora's arms enfolded her child and pressed his hot cheek passionately to
hers. “Yes, I was crying, my baby,” she gulped, “but it is because I
am so happy. It is very good of Doctor Wynn to ask you to go. Would you
like it?”
“If you wished me to,” the boy replied, slowly, as he still uneasily
studied her face.
“I should like it very much,” Dora said--“very, very much! You could
have such a splendid time over there.”
“Would you love me just the same--_just exactly_ the same--if I went?”
the boy asked, anxiously.
“Just exactly the same.” Dora laughed as she caught Dearing's glance,
and remarked to him, in an undertone: “He is such a strange child!
Mother says she has never seen one so peculiarly sensitive and concerned
over trifles. He often comes in from his play for nothing else than to
ask me if I still love him. The slightest change in my manner or tone of
voice always brings out that one question. It is the last thing at night
and the first thing in the morning. If I am at all impatient with him,
when I am absorbed in my work, he will come and sit on the floor at my
feet, and nothing will satisfy him till I have taken him in my arms and
said over and over again that I love him.”
“It is his nature,” Dearing said, as he was turning to leave. “Well,
remember, my boy, that my gate is not locked, and if you don't come
over in my big lot, I'll come and ride you there on my back, like a
two-legged horse; and I might get scared and kick up my heels and dump
you over on your head.”