Nearing the End
"Old Mr. Potter has had a stroke."
Georgina called the news up to Richard as she paused at the foot of the
Green Stairs on her way to the net-mender's house.
"Belle sent a note over a little while ago and I'm taking the answer
back. Come and go with me."
Richard, who had been trundling Captain Kidd around on his forefeet in
the role of wheelbarrow, dropped the dog's hind legs which he had been
using as handles and came jumping down the steps, two at a time to do her
bidding.
"Belle's gone over to take care of things," Georgina explained, with an
important air as they walked along. "There's a man to help nurse him, but
she'll stay on to the end." Her tone and words were Tippy's own as she
made this announcement.
"End of what?" asked Richard. "And what's a stroke?"
Half an hour earlier Georgina could not have answered his question, but
she explained now with the air of one who has had a lifetime of
experience. It was Mrs. Triplett's fund she was drawing on, however, and
old Jeremy's. Belle's note had started them to comparing reminiscences,
and out of their conversation Georgina had gathered many gruesome facts.
"You may be going about as well and hearty as usual, and suddenly it'll
strike you to earth like lightning, and it may leave you powerless to
move for weeks and sometimes even years. You may know all that's going on
around you but not be able to speak or make a sign. Mr. Potter isn't as
bad as that, but he's speechless. With him the end may come any time, yet
he may linger on for nobody knows how long."
Richard had often passed the net-mender's cottage in the machine, and
stared in at the old man plying his twine-shuttle in front of the door.
The fact that he was Emmett's father and ignorant of the secret which
Richard shared, made an object of intense interest out of an otherwise
unattractive and commonplace old man. Now that interest grew vast and
overshadowing as the children approached the house.
Belle, stepping to the front door when she heard the gate click, motioned
for them to go around to the back. As they passed an open side window,
each looked in, involuntarily attracted by the sight of a bed drawn up
close to it. Then they glanced at each other, startled and awed by what
they saw, and bumped into each other in their haste to get by as quickly
as possible.
On the bed lay a rigid form, stretched out under a white counterpane. All
that showed of the face above the bushy whiskers was as waxen looking as
if death had already touched it, but the sunken eyes half open, showed
that they were still in the mysterious hold of what old Jeremy called a
"living death." It was a sight which neither of them could put out of
their minds for days afterward.
Belle met them at the back door, solemn, unsmiling, her hushed tones
adding to the air of mystery which seemed to shroud the house. As she
finished reading the note a neighbor came in the back way and Belle asked
the children to wait a few minutes. They dropped down on the grass while
Belle, leaning against the pump, answered Mrs. Brown's questions in low
tones.
She had been up all night, she told Mrs. Brown. Yes, she was going to
stay on till the call came, no matter whether it was a week or a year.
Mrs. Brown spoke in a hoarse whisper which broke now and then, letting
her natural voice through with startling effect.
"It's certainly noble of you," she declared. "There's not many who would
put themselves out to do for an old person who hadn't any claim on them
the way you are doing for him. There'll surely be stars in _your_
crown."
Later, as the children trudged back home, sobered by all they had seen
and heard, Georgina broke the silence.
"Well, I think we ought to put Belle's name on the very top line of our
club book. She ought to be an honary member--the very honaryest one of
all."
"Why?" asked Richard. "You heard all Mrs. Brown said. Seems to me what
she's doing to give old Mr. Potter a good time is the very noblest----"
There was an amazed look on Richard's face as he interrupted with the
exclamation:
"Gee-minee! You don't call what that old man's having a good time, do
you?"
"Well, it's good to what it would be if Belle wasn't taking care of him.
And if she does as Mrs. Brown says, 'carries some comfort into the valley
of the shadow for him, making his last days bright,' isn't that the very
biggest rainbow anybody could make?"
"Ye-es," admitted Richard in a doubtful tone. "Maybe it is if you put it
that way."
They walked a few blocks more in silence, then he said:
"I think _Dan_ ought to be an honary member."
It was Georgina's turn to ask why.
"Aw, you know why! Taking the blame on himself the way he did and
everything."
"But he made just as bad times for Uncle Darcy and Aunt Elspeth as he
made good times for Mr. Potter and Emmett. I don't think he has any right
to belong at all."
They argued the question hotly for a few minutes, coming nearer to a
quarrel than they had ever been before, and only dropping it as they
crossed to a side street which led into the dunes.
"Let's turn here and go home this way," suggested Richard. "Let's go look
at the place where we buried the pouch and see if the sand has shifted
any."
Nothing was changed, however, except that the holes they had dug were
filled to the level now, and the sand stretched an unbroken surface as
before the day of their digging.
"Cousin James says that if ever the gold comes to the top we can have it,
because he paid the woman. But if it ever does I won't be here to see it.
I've got to go home in eight more days."
He stood kicking his toes into the sand as he added dolefully, "Here it
is the end of the summer and we've only played at being pirates. We've
never gone after the real stuff in dead earnest, one single time."
"I know," admitted Georgina. "First we had to wait so long for your
portrait to be finished and then you went off on the yacht, and all in
between times things have happened so fast there never was any time. But
we found something just as good as pirate stuff--that note in the rifle
was worth more to Uncle Darcy than a chest of gold."
"And Captain Kidd was as good as a real pirate," said Richard,
brightening at the thought, "for he brought home a bag of real gold, and
was the one who started us after the wild-cat woman. I guess Uncle Darcy
would rather know what she told him than have a chest of ducats and
pearls."
"We can go next summer," suggested Georgina.
"Maybe I won't be here next summer. Dad always wants to try new places on
his vacation. He and Aunt Letty like to move. But I'd like to stay here
always. I hate to go away until I find out the end of things. I wish I
could stay until the letter is found and Dan comes home."
"You may be a grown-up man before either of those things happen,"
remarked Georgina sagely.
"Then I'll know I'll be here to see 'm," was the triumphant answer,
"because when I'm a man I'm coming back here to live all the rest of my
life. It's the nicest place there is."
"If anything happens sooner I'll write and tell you," promised Georgina.
Something happened the very next morning, however, and Georgina kept part
of her promise though not in writing, when she came running up the Green
Stairs, excited and eager. Her news was so tremendously important that
the words tumbled over each other in her haste to tell it. She could
hardly make herself understood. The gist of it was that a long night
letter had just arrived from her father, saying that he had landed in San
Francisco and was taking the first homeward bound train. He would stop in
Washington for a couple of days to attend to some business, and then was
coming home for a long visit. And--this was the sentence Georgina saved
till last to electrify Richard with:
"_Am bringing Dan with me._"
"He didn't say where he found him or anything else about it," added
Georgina, "only 'prepare his family for the surprise.' So Barby went
straight down there to Fishburn Court and she's telling Aunt Elspeth and
Uncle Darcy now, so they'll have time to get used to the news before he
walks in on them."
They sat down on the top step with the dog between them.
"They must know it by this time," remarked Georgina. "Oh, don't you wish
you could see what's happening, and how glad everybody is? Uncle Darcy
will want to start right out with his bell and ring it till it cracks,
telling the whole town."
"But he won't do it," said Richard. "He promised he wouldn't."
"Anyhow till Belle says he can," amended Georgina. "I'm sure she'll say
so when 'the call' comes, but nobody knows when that will be. It may be
soon and it may not be for years."
They sat there on the steps a long time, talking quietly, but with the
holiday feeling that one has when waiting for a procession to pass by.
The very air seemed full of that sense of expectancy, of waiting for
something to happen.