he came over to her chair and stroked her shining hair with a loving
hand.
"Did they tell you, dear?" he asked.
"Yes," whispered Barbara.
"I have dreamed so often that my baby could walk and I could see. He
said that the dream should come true if he could make it so."
"Did he say anything about your eyes?" asked Barbara, in astonishment.
[Sidenote: Hopeful]
"Yes. He thinks there may be a chance there, too. If you are willing,
I am to go to the city with him sometime and see a friend of his who is
a great specialist."
"Oh, Daddy," cried Barbara. "I'm afraid--for you."
He drew a chair up near hers and sat down. The old hand, in which the
pulses moved so slowly, clasped the younger one, warm with life.
"Barbara," he said; "I have never seen my baby."
"I know, Daddy."
"I want to see you, dear."
"And I want you to."
"Then, will you let me go?"
"Perhaps, but it must be--afterward, you know."
"Why?"
"Because, when you see me, I want to be strong and well. I want to be
able to walk. You mustn't see the crutches, Daddy--they are ugly
things."
"Nothing could be ugly that belongs to you. I made a little song this
afternoon, while you and Miriam were talking and I was out alone."
"Tell me."
[Sidenote: In a Beautiful Garden]
"Once there was a man who had a garden. When he was a child he had
played in it, in his youth and early manhood he had worked in it and
found pleasure in seeing things grow, but he did not really know what a
beautiful garden it was until another walked in it with him and found it
fair.
"Together they watched it from Springtime to harvest, finding new beauty
in it every day. One night at twilight she whispered to him that some
day a perfect flower of their very own was to bloom in the garden. They
watched and waited and prayed for it together, but, before it blossomed,
the man went blind.
"In the darkness, he could not see the garden, but she was still there,
bringing divine consolation with her touch, and whispering to him always
of the perfect flower so soon to be their own.
"When it blossomed, the man could not see it, but the one who walked
beside him told him that it was as pure and fair as they had prayed it
might be. They enjoyed it together for a year, and he saw it through her
eyes.
"Then she went to God's Garden, and he was left desolate and alone. He
cared for nothing and for a time even forgot the flower that she had
left. Weeds grew among the flowers, nettles and thistles took possession
of the walks, and strange vines choked with their tendrils everything
that dared to bloom.
[Sidenote: A Perfect Flower]
"One day, he went out into the intolerable loneliness and desolation,
and, groping blindly, he found among the nettles and thistles and weeds
the one perfect white blossom. It was cool and soft to his hot hand, it
was exquisitely fragrant, and, more than all, it was part of her.
Gradually, it eased his pain. He took out the weeds and thistles as best
he could, but there was little he could do, for he had left it too long.
"The years went by, but the flower did not fade. Seeking, he always
found it; weary, it always refreshed him; starving, it fed his soul.
Blind, it gave him sight; weak, it gave him courage; hurt, it brought
him balm. At last he lived only because of it, for, in some mysterious
way, it seemed to need him, too, and sometimes it even seemed divinely
to restore the lost.
"Flower of the Dusk," he said, leaning to Barbara; "what should I have
been without you? How could I have borne it all?"
[Sidenote: Strength for the Burden]
"God suits the burden to the bearer, I think," she answered, softly. "If
you have much to bear, it is because you are strong enough to do it
nobly and well. Only the weak are allowed to shirk, and shift their load
to the shoulders of the strong."
"I know, but, Barbara--suppose----"
"There is nothing to suppose, Daddy. Whatever happened would be the best
that could happen. I'm not afraid."
Her voice rang clear and strong. Insensibly, he caught some of her own
fine courage and his soul rallied greatly to meet hers. From her height
she had summoned him as with a bugle-call, and he had answered.
"The ways of the Everlasting are not our ways," he said, "but I will not
be afraid. No, I will not let myself be afraid."
X
In the Garden
[Sidenote: A Summer Evening]
The subtle, far-reaching fragrance of a Summer night came through the
open window. A cool wind from the hills had set the maple branches to
murmuring and hushed the incoming tide as it swept up to the waiting
shore. Out in the illimitable darkness of the East, grey surges throbbed
like the beating of a troubled heart, but the shore knew only the drowsy
croon of a sea that has gone to sleep.
Golden lilies swung their censers softly, and the exquisite incense
perfumed the dusk. Fairy lamp-bearers starred the night with glimmering
radiance, faintly seen afar. A cricket chirped just outside the window
and a ghostly white moth circled around the evening lamp.
Roger sat by the table, with Keats's letters to his beloved Fanny open
before him. The letter to Constance, so strangely brought back after all
the intervening years, lay beside the book. The ink was faded and the
paper was yellow, but his father's love, for a woman not his mother,
stared the son full in the face and was not to be denied.
Was this all, or--? His thought refused to go further. Constance North
had died, by her own hand, four days after the letter was written. What
might not have happened in four days? In one day, Columbus found a
world. In another, electricity was discovered. In one day, one hour,
even, some immeasurable force moving according to unseen law might sway
the sun and set all the stars to reeling madly through the unutterable
midnights of the universe. And in four days? Ah, what had happened in
those four days?
[Sidenote: A Recurring Question]
The question had haunted him since the night he read the letter, when he
was reading to Barbara and had unwittingly come upon it. Constance was
dead and Laurence Austin was dead, but their love lived on. The grave
was closed against it, and in neither heaven nor hell could it find an
abiding-place. Ghostly and forbidding, it had sent Constance to haunt
Miriam's troubled sleep, it had filled Ambrose North's soul with cruel
doubt and foreboding, and had now come back to Roger and Barbara, to ask
eternal questions of the one, and stir the heart of the other to new
depths of pain.
He had not seen Barbara since that night and she had sent no message. No
beacon light in the window across the way said "come." The sword that
had lain, keen-edged and cruel, between Constance and her lover, had, by
a single swift stroke, changed everything between her daughter and his
son.
Not that Barbara herself was less beautiful or less dear. Roger had
missed her more than he realised. When her lovely, changing face had
come between his eyes and the musty pages of his law books, while the
disturbing Bascom pup cavorted merrily around the office, unheard and
unheeded, Roger had ascribed it to the letter that had forced them
apart.
* * * * *
The woollen slippers muffled Miss Mattie's step so that Roger did not
hear her enter the room. Preoccupied and absorbed, he was staring
vacantly out of the window, when a strong, capable hand swooped down
beside him, gathering up the book and the letter.
[Sidenote: Tremendous Power]
"I don't know what it is about your readin', Roger," complained his
mother, "that makes you blind and deaf and dumb and practically
paralysed. Your pa was the same way. Reckon I'll read a piece myself and
see what it is that's so affectin'. It ain't a very big book, but it
seems to have tremendous power."
She sat down and began to read aloud, in a curiously unsympathetic voice
which grated abominably upon her unwilling listener:
"'Ask yourself, my Love, whether you are not very cruel to have so
entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the
letter you must write immediately and do all you can to console me in
it--make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me--write the
softest words and kiss them, that I may at least touch my lips where
yours have been. For myself, I know not how to express my devotion to so
fair a form; I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than
fair. I almost wish we were butterflies and lived but three summer
days--three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty
common years could ever contain.'
"Ain't that wonderful, Roger? Wants to get drunk on poppies and kiss the
writin' and thinks after that he'll be made into a butterfly. Your pa
couldn't have been far from bein' a butterfly when he bought this book.
There ain't no sense in it. And this--why, it's your pa's writin',
Roger! I ain't seen it for years."
Miss Mattie leaned forward in her chair and brought the letter to
Constance close to the light. She read it through, calmly, without haste
or excitement. Roger's hands gripped the arms of his chair and his face
turned ashen. His whole body was tense.
[Sidenote: A Moment's Pain]
Then, as swiftly as it had come, the moment passed. Miss Mattie took off
her spectacles and leaned back in her chair with great weariness
evident in every line of her figure.
[Sidenote: Crazy as a Loon]
"Roger," she said, sadly, "there's no use in tryin' to conceal it from
you any longer. Your pa was crazy--as crazy as a loon. What with buyin'
books so steady and readin' of 'em so continual, his mind got unhinged.
I've always suspected it, and now I know.
"Your pa gets this book, and reads all this stuff that's been written
about 'Fanny,' and he don't see no reason why he shouldn't duplicate it
and maybe get it printed. I knew he set great store by books, but it
comes to me as a shock that he was allowin' to write 'em. Some of the
time he sees he's crazy himself. Didn't you see, there where he says, 'I
hope you do not blame me because I went mad'? 'Mad' is the refined word
for crazy.
"Then he goes on about eatin' husks and bein' starved. That's what I
told him when he insisted on havin' oatmeal cooked for his breakfast
every mornin'. I told him humans couldn't expect to live on horse-feed,
but, la sakes! He never paid no attention to me. I could set and talk by
the hour just as I'm talkin' to you and he wasn't listenin' any more'n
you be."
"I am listening, Mother," he assured her, in a forced voice. He could
not say with what joyful relief.
"Maybe," she went on, "I'd 'a' been more gentle with your pa if I'd
realised just what condition his mind was in. There's a book in the
attic full of just such writin' as this. I found it once when I was
cleaning, but I never paid no more attention to it. I surmised it was
somethin' he was copyin' out of another book that he'd borrowed from the
minister, but I see now. The Lord tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. If
I'd 'a' knowed what it was then, maybe I couldn't have bore it as I can
now."
Seizing his opportunity, Roger put the book and the letter aside. Miss
Mattie slipped out of its wrapper the paper which Roger had brought to
her from the post-office that same night, and began to read. Roger sat
back in his chair with his eyes closed, meditating upon the theory of
Chance, and wondering if, after all, there was a single controlling
purpose behind the extraordinary things that happened.
[Sidenote: Inner Turmoil]
Miss Mattie wiped her spectacles twice and changed her position three
times. Then she got another chair and moved the lamp closer. At last she
clucked sharply with her false teeth--always the outward evidence of
inner turmoil or displeasure.
"What's the matter, Mother?"
"I can't see with these glasses," she said, fretfully. "I can see a lot
better without 'em than I can with 'em."
"Have you wiped them?"
"Yes, I've wiped 'em till it's a wonder the polish ain't all wore off
the glass."
"Put them up close to your eyes instead of wearing them so far down on
your nose."
"I've tried that, but the closer they get to my eyes, the more I can't
see. The further away they are, the better 't is. When I have 'em off,
I can see pretty good."
"Then why don't you take them off?"
"That sounds just like your pa. Do you suppose, after payin' seven
dollars and ninety cents for these glasses, and more'n twice as much for
my gold-bowed ones, that I ain't goin' to use 'em and get the benefit of
'em? Your pa never had no notion of economy. They're just as good as
they ever was, and I reckon I'll wear 'em out, if I live."
"But, Mother, your eyes may have changed. They probably have."
[Sidenote: Miss Mattie's Eyes]
Miss Mattie went to the kitchen and brought back a small, cracked
mirror. She studied the offending orbs by the light, very carefully,
both with and without her spectacles.
"No, they ain't," she announced, finally. "They're the same size and
shape and colour that they've always been, and the specs are the same.
Your pa bought 'em for me soon after you commenced readin' out of a
reader, and they're just as good as they ever was. It must be the oil.
I've noticed that it gets poorer every time the price goes up." She
pushed the paper aside with a sigh. "I was readin' such a nice story,
too."
"Shan't I read it to you, Mother?"
"Why, I don't know. Do you want to?"
"Surely, if you want me to."
"Then you'd better begin a new story, because I'm more'n half-way
through this one."
"I'll begin right where you left off, Mother. It doesn't make a particle
of difference to me."
"But you won't get the sense of it. I'd like for you to enjoy it while
you're readin'."
"Don't worry about my enjoying it--you know I've always been fond of
books. If there's anything I don't understand, I can ask you."
"All right. Begin right here in _True Gold, or Pretty Crystal's Love_.
This is the place: 'With a terrible scream, Crystal sprang toward the
fire escape, carrying her mother and her little sister in her arms.'"
[Sidenote: Two Sighs]
For nearly two hours, Roger read, in a deep, mellow voice, of the
adventures of poor, persecuted Crystal, who was only sixteen, and
engaged to a floor-walker in 'one of the great city's finest emporiums
of trade.' He and his mother both sighed when he came to the end of the
installment, but for vastly different reasons.
"Ain't it lovely, Roger?"
"It's what you might call 'different,'" he temporised, with a smile.
"Just think of that poor little thing havin' her house set afire by a
rival suitor just after she had paid off the mortgage by savin' out of
her week's wages! Do you suppose he will ever win her?"
"I shouldn't think it likely."
"No, you wouldn't, but the endin' of those stories is always what you
wouldn't expect. It's what makes 'em so interestin' and, as you say,
'different.'"
Roger did not answer. He merely yawned and tapped impatiently on the
table with his fingers.
[Sidenote: Nine o'Clock]
"What time is it?" she asked, adjusting her spectacles carefully upon
the ever-useful and unfailing wart.
"A little after nine."
"Sakes alive! It's time I was abed. I've got to get up early in the
mornin' and set my bread. Good-night."
"Good-night, Mother."
"Don't set up long. Oil is terrible high."
"All right, Mother."
Miss Mattie went upstairs and closed her door with a resounding bang.
Roger heard her strike a match on a bit of sandpaper tacked on the wall
near the match-safe, and close the green blinds that served the purpose
of the more modern window-shades. Soon, a deep, regular sound suggestive
of comfortable slumber echoed and re-echoed overhead. Then, and then
only, he dared to go out.
[Sidenote: A Light in the Window]
He sat on the narrow front porch for a few minutes, deeply breathing the
cool air and enjoying the beauty of the night. Across the way, the
little grey house seemed lonely and forlorn. The upper windows were
dark, but downstairs Barbara's lamp still shone.
"Sewing, probably," mused Roger. "Poor little thing."
As he watched, the lamp was put out. Then a white shadow moved painfully
toward the window, bent, and struck a match. Star-like, Barbara's
signal-light flamed out into the gloom, with its eager message.
"She wants me," he said to himself. The joy was inextricably mingled
with pain. "She wants me," he thought, "and I must not go."
"Why?" asked his heart, and his conscience replied, miserably,
"Because."
For ten or fifteen minutes he argued with himself, vainly. Every
objection that came forward was reasoned down by a trained mind, versed
in the intricacies of the law. The deprivations of the fathers need not
always descend unto the children. At last he went over, wondering
whether his father had not more than once, and at the same hour, taken
the same path.
[Sidenote: Two Hours of Life]
Barbara was out in the garden, dreaming. For the first time in years,
when she had work to do, she had laid it aside before eleven o'clock.
But, in two hours, she could have made little progress with her
embroidery, and she chose to take for herself two hours of life, out of
what might prove to be the last night she had to live.
When Roger opened the gate, Barbara took her crutches and rose out of
her low chair.
"Don't," he said. "I'm coming to you."
She had brought out another chair, with great difficulty, in
anticipation of his coming. Her own was near the moonflower that climbed
over the tiny veranda and was now in full bloom. The white, half-open
trumpets, delicately fragrant, had more than once reminded him of
Barbara herself.
"What a brute I'd be," thought Roger, with a pang, "if I had
disappointed her."
"I'm so glad," said Barbara, giving him a cool, soft little hand. "I
began to be afraid you couldn't come."
"I couldn't, just at first, but afterward it was all right. How are
you?"
"I'm well, thank you, but I'm going to be made better to-morrow. That's
why I wanted to see you to-night--it may be for the last time."
Her words struck him with chill foreboding. "What do you mean?"
"To-morrow, some doctors are coming down from the city, with two nurses
and a few other things. They're going to see if I can't do without
these." She indicated the crutches with an inclination of her golden
head.
"Barbara," he gasped. "You mustn't. It's impossible."
"Nothing is impossible any more," she returned, serenely.
"That isn't what I meant. You mustn't be hurt."
[Sidenote: A Wonderful World]
"I'm not going to be hurt--much. It's all to be done while I'm asleep.
Miss Wynne, a lady from the hotel, brought Doctor Conrad to see me.
Afterward, he came again by himself, and he says he is very sure that it
will come out all right. And when I'm straight and strong and can walk,
he's going to try to have father made to see. A fairy godmother came in
and waved her wand," went on Barbara, lightly, "and the poor became rich
at once. Now the lame are to walk and the blind to see. Is it not a
wonderful world?"
"Barbara!" cried Roger; "I can't bear it. I don't want you changed--I
want you just as you are."
"Such impediments as are placed in the path of progress!" she returned.
Her eyes were laughing, but her voice had in it a little note of
tenderness. "Will you do something for me?"
"Anything--everything."
"It's only this," said Barbara, gently. "If it should turn out the
other way, will you keep father from being lonely? Miss Wynne has
promised that he shall never want for anything, and, at the most, it
couldn't be long until he was with me again, but, in the meantime, would
you, Roger? Would you try to take my place?"
"Nobody in the world could ever take your place, but I'd try--God knows
I'd try. Barbara, I couldn't bear it, if----"
"Hush. There isn't any 'if.' It's all coming right to-morrow."
[Sidenote: Beauty of a Saint]
The full moon had swung slowly up out of the sea, and the misty, silvery
light touched Barbara lovingly. Her slender hands, crossed in her lap,
seemed like those of a little child. Her deep blue eyes were lovelier
than ever in the enchanted light--they had the calmness of deep waters
at dawn, untroubled by wind or tide. Around her face her golden hair
shimmered and shone like a halo. She had the unearthly beauty of a
saint.
"Afterward?" he asked, with a little choke in his voice.
"I'll be in plaster for a long time, and, after that, I'll have to learn
to walk."
"And then?"
"Work," she said, joyously. "Think of having all the rest of your life
to work in, with no crutches! And if Daddy can see me--" she stopped,
but he caught the wistfulness in her tone. "The first thing," she
continued, "I'm going down to the sea. I have a fancy to go alone."
"Have you never been?"
"I've never been outside this house and garden but once or twice. Have
you forgotten?"
All the things he might have done came to Roger, remorsefully, and too
late. He might have taken Barbara out for a drive almost any time during
the last eight years. She could have been lifted into a low carriage
easily enough and she had never even been to the sea. A swift, pitying
tenderness made his heart ache.
"Nobody ever thought of it," said Barbara, soothingly, as though she had
read his thought, "and, besides, I've been too busy, except Sundays. But
sometimes, when I've heard the shore singing as the tide came in, and
seen the gulls fly past my window, and smelled the salt mist--oh, I've
wanted it so."
"I'd have taken you, if I hadn't been such a brute as to forget."
[Sidenote: More than the Sea]
"You've brought me more than the sea, Roger. Think of all the books
you've carried back and forth so patiently all these years. You've done
more for me than anybody in the world, in some ways. You've given me the
magic carpet of the _Arabian Nights_, only it was a book, instead of a
rug. Through your kindness, I've travelled over most of the world, I've
met many of the really great people face to face, I've lived in all ages
and all countries, and I've learned to know the world as it is now. What
more could one person do for another than you have done for me?"
"Barbara?" It was Miriam's voice, calling softly from an upper window.
"You mustn't stay up late. Remember to-morrow."
"All right, Aunty." Her answer carried with it no hint of impatience. "I
forgot that we weren't in the house," she added, to Roger, in a low
tone.
"Must I go?" To-night, for some reason, he could not bear even the
thought of leaving her.
"Not just yet. I've been thinking," she continued, in a swift whisper,
"about my mother and--your father. Of course we can't understand--we
only know that they cared. And, in a way, it makes you and me something
like brother and sister, doesn't it?"
"Perhaps it does. I hadn't thought of that."
[Sidenote: The Barrier Broken]
All at once, the barrier that seemed to have been between them crashed
down and was forgotten. Mysteriously, Roger was very sure that those
four days had held no wrong--no betrayal of another's trust. His father
would not have done anything which was not absolutely right. The thought
made him straighten himself proudly. And the mother of the girl who
leaned toward him, with her beautiful soul shining in her deep eyes,
could have been nothing less than an angel.
"To-morrow"--began Roger.
[Sidenote: "To-morrow is Mine"]
"To-morrow was made for me. God is giving me a day to be made straight
in. To-morrow is mine, but--will you come and stay with father? Keep him
away from the house and with you, until--afterward?"
"I will, gladly."
Barbara rose and Roger picked up her crutches. "You'll never have to do
that for me again," she said, as she took them, "but there'll be lots of
other things. Will you take in the chairs, please?"
A lump was in his throat and he could not speak. When he came out, after
having made a brief but valiant effort to recover his self-control,
Barbara was standing at the foot of the steps, leaning on her crutches,
with the moon shining full upon her face.
Roger went to her. "Barbara," he said, huskily, "my father loved your
mother. For the sake of that, and for to-morrow, will you kiss me
to-night?"
Smiling, Barbara lifted her face and gave him her lips as simply and
sweetly as a child. "Good-night," she said, softly, but he could not
answer, for, at the touch, the white fire burned in his blood and the
white magic of life's Maytime went, singing, through his soul.
XI
Barbara's "To-morrow"
The shimmering white silence of noon lay upon the land. Bees hummed in
the clover, gorgeous butterflies floated drowsily over the meadows, and
far in the blue distance a meadow-lark scattered his golden notes like
rain upon the fields.
[Sidenote: A Cold Shadow]