WHAT THE CRICKET HEARD
Two hours later Donald stumbled, like a strong man physically played
out, up the path to the cottage.
Ethel saw him coming, and ran part way down the steps to meet him. With
her arms around his neck, she half-sobbed out the words in a choked
voice, "Oh, Don. Do you know what has happened? Could you see from your
boat? Little Donny? Smiles? Could you see, Don?"
He nodded, dumbly; but his sister kept on, "She couldn't swim, but yet
she jumped, instantly, to save him. You see, she thought that she was
alone, she didn't know about that boy. Oh, Donald, we must do something
for him, something splendid. He saved my baby's life."
Ethel was crying now, and the man forgot his own misery in comforting
her.
"But why didn't you come, Donald? You didn't know...."
"Yes, I knew that everything ... was all right. Rose waved to me and
called. I ... I _couldn't_ come, Ethel. I can't make you understand."
With the light of understanding breaking in upon her mind, and bringing
a flood of sympathy with it, his sister once more drew close and
encircled his neck with her arms.
"Where ... where is she?" he asked, as though the words were wrung from
him against his will.
"Smiles has gone for a little walk with ... Dr. Bentley, dear," answered
Ethel in a manner which she strove to make commonplace. She felt his
frame quiver, and, with a motion that was almost rough, he shook off her
comforting arms, and mounted the steps, holding to the rail as he did
so. He went directly indoors, and to his room, with the instinct of a
wounded creature to seek its cave or burrow. Save for a cold, cheerless
patch of moonlight on the floor it was dark, and he felt no desire to
turn on the lights. For a while he sat, silent and motionless, on the
edge of the bed. But he could not stand the closed-in solitude. The
place seemed filled with the fragrant presence of the girl who was not
there; would never be there. He wanted to smoke, and went to the bureau
to fumble blindly for a pipe which he remembered he had left on it. His
hand touched something small and glazed, and he drew it sharply away.
The something was the little rose jar. Smiles' first gift to him, which
had travelled far since that morning on the mountain side, five years
before.
The thoughts which would not be stilled repossessed his mind, and drove
him out-of-doors again,--through a side door, so that he would not have
to speak to his father and Ethel, whose voices he heard in low
conversation on the front porch. They ceased for a moment, as though
the speakers had heard the sound of his footsteps, and paused to listen.
The night was still, so still that the chirp of a cricket under the
piazza sounded loudly. It was a cheerful little note, and Donald hated
it for its cheer, and started hastily away toward the beach.
High above, to the south, the moon was sailing through a sea of clouds,
in silent majesty. Moonlit nights he had seen aplenty since that one in
the Cumberlands, four summers previous, when he had climbed the
mountain, impatient to see once more the strange, smiling child who had
so stirred his imagination. In the old days he had loved the soft and
majestic radiance. Now he hated it. Had he not lived long in war-ridden
France, where every clear night illumined by that orb, which once had
been the glory of those who loved, had meant merely the advent of the
Hunnish fiends, whose winging visits brought death and devastation to
the sleeping towns below?
He had fled from the darkness of his room, but now he craved the
darkness again, for, perchance, it might blot out the memory of other
nights, beautiful as golden dreams, or hideous as nightmares, when the
moon had shone as it did now.
As he made a quick turn about a rocky obstruction in his rapid path, he
came almost full upon two others, a man and a woman. On the yielding
sand his footfalls had made no sound, and they were unaware of his
sudden approach. Donald stopped, and stepped hastily back out of sight;
but not before he had seen the man's arms gather the slender form of the
girl in close embrace, and seen her lift her sweet young
face--tear-bejeweled, but smiling with the tenderness of love--for his
kiss.
With the rocks put between him and the two, Donald stood for a moment
with clenched fists pressed brutally against his eyes as though to grind
out the picture recorded there. Then, with blind but nervous strides, he
fled from the spot which, at the one time, held such happiness and such
despair.
It was close to midnight when his steps bore him instinctively back to
the unlighted house; but this time the exercise and the cool night air
had failed to bring relief to his heart. He could not face the idea of
tossing for hours on a sleepless bed, and so passed the front door and
seated himself within the dark shadows of a corner of the piazza.
"Chirr-r-p, chirr-r-p, chirr-r-p," began a pleasantly shrill little
voice beneath him. Over and over it repeated the sound, until the man's
feverish imagination had made it into "cheer-up," and he cursed the
cricket for its silly advice. So busy was his mind with introspection
that he did not hear the door open gently, and the first intimation that
he was not alone was brought to him by the sound of a light footstep
directly behind him. He turned his head, and saw a dim, ethereally white
figure,--Rose.
"I thought that you would never come, Donald," she whispered, as she
sank down close by his side on Muriel's little stool, and laid her cool
hand on his fevered one. "I have been watching from my window for an
hour. I couldn't go to sleep until I had told you something."
With an effort he answered evenly, "I ... I think that I know what it
is, Rose."
"You know? But how ...?"
"I saw you ... and Philip, on the beach," he replied, dully.
"You saw ... Oh! And you heard what ...?"
"No. I went away at once, of course. But I did not need to hear. I ... I
am glad if you are happy, Smiles."
She was silent for a long moment; then whispered with a note of joy in
her low voice that wrung his heart, "Yes, I am very happy, Donald."
"Philip is a splendid fellow."
"You wanted me to ... to marry him, Don?"
"I _wanted_ you to?" He barely succeeded in checking, unspoken, the
burning words on his tongue; but this time his voice betrayed him, and,
if he had not been resolutely keeping his face turned away from her, he
might have seen, even in that dim light, an odd change come into the
expression of her lovely face, and seen a wonderfully tender and
somewhat mischievous smile touch her lips. All that he did know,
however, was that she gave a low, happy laugh, which was like a
knife-thrust to his soul.
"Don," she said at length, "I have told no one else of my great secret
yet, for I wanted to tell you, first of all. I couldn't go to sleep
without telling you, for you have been such a dear confidant and father
confessor to me that it seems as though I must tell you everything. I
... I've just got to tell you what has happened. May I?"
The man barely smothered a groan. Must he hear this girl, in her
simplicity, talk on and on about the man she loved, and had promised to
marry? It struck him, too, as strange that she should be willing to lay
bare anything so sacred in a woman's life, but then she was her natural
self, and quite different from most girls, in her attitude toward him.
But Rose was speaking quietly, and as though to herself, "Philip has
been so sweet and good to me while you were away. You remember that you,
yourself, told me that you meant him to take your place as my unofficial
protector, and that I should go to him with my perplexities. It would
have been better for me if I had followed your advice closer, but now I
can laugh at spilt milk."
Rose had already confessed to Donald about her "investment" and been by
him cross-examined into an admission of her little charities, which, in
their aggregate, had so nearly wiped out her bank account. She could
laugh about them now, for she had won to her goal, and already begun to
earn a livelihood, but she had carefully hidden in her heart the story
of the bitter struggle in which she had engaged to make both ends meet
during the last few months of her course, when her mysterious refusals
to accept any invitations from Ethel, Miss Merriman or Philip for her
free afternoons and evenings, had left them wondering what on earth she
was doing. No one guessed that they were spent in earning the few sadly
needed dollars which her pride forbade her to borrow from any of them.
"Now I can laugh at spilt milk," Smiles' words echoed in Donald's brain,
and hurt. He knew that Philip was fairly well-to-do, and, of course,
Rose would want for nothing when she married him. This was the thought
which brought the poignant stab.
"It was not strange that I began ... that he became very dear to me, was
it, Donald?"
The man shook his head dumbly. He could not answer her in words.
"Perhaps I should not say it; but some time ago I began to guess that
... that he loved me. Not that he said a word, Donald, that is, not
until to-day,--and then he didn't say it," she laughed a little. "He
_wrote_ it and he ... he asked me to marry him. He said, besides, that
he had spoken to you, first, and that you had given your brotherly
consent. It was a very sweet letter, Don; the first real love letter
that I ever received, think of that!"
Only by clinching his teeth and gripping the arms of the chair could the
man repress a groan.
"It was after he had ... had saved my life that ..." She stopped, and
broke into her thought with the words, "Oh, Donald, I can never, never
forget to-night, and the awful feeling that I had when little Don went
into the water. You see, you were far away, and I didn't know about that
brave boy on the beach, so I thought that I had got to save him if I
could, and I didn't know _how_ I could. And then those black, cold waves
going over my head! I was quite sure that I was going to die, and I
almost hoped so for ... for I couldn't find Donny."
She leaned her head against his knee and cried a little; but, when he
tried to speak, and tell her what had been in his heart, she interrupted
hastily with, "Oh, please, let's not speak of it, ever again. I know how
you felt, too.
"It was after that that Philip asked me for my answer. I knew what it
was going to be, but ..."
Donald could not stand it any longer. "I know. You love him, you are
going to marry him, Smiles. It's all right, he is a splendid fellow,
dear," he repeated mechanically.
"Yes, he is, and I do love him," she replied quietly; but she could not
contain her secret any longer and added, "But a girl can't marry her
_brother_, Donald."
"Her brother? Please, Rose, don't joke."
"It's true!"
"You! Philip's sister? It's impossible, unbelievable!" Yet a surge of
mad, uncontrollable joy swept over him, and his heart burst into song.
"Unbelievable, yes. But it's _so_, Donald, although I can hardly credit
it yet, myself."
"But how? Tell me how you found out. What happened?"
"Don't, you're hurting my hand, Donald. I'll tell you all about it as
soon as I can, but please don't ask so many questions all at once, and
please tell me first that you are glad, that my great secret makes you
happy, as it does me."
"Happy? Oh, great heavens! But you? Are you really pleased? You said
that you loved him!"
"And so I did, and do ... dearly. But, you see, Donald, although I have
cared for him for a long, long while, there was something about my
affection that I could not explain, even to myself. It was ... was
different, somehow, from what ... from what I felt it must be for the
man whom I might marry. Now I know that it was the subconscious call of
the blood, the love of a sister for a brother, and never anything else."
Lifted and swayed by a great happiness and reborn hope, Donald laughed
aloud.
"Oh, you're a strange little girl, Smiles. I had not realized that you
were fully grown up until to-night; but now I know that you are a
woman,--a child no longer. My little Rose would never have tried to be
so dramatic, nor would she have tried to analyze her love, and label it
the call of kin, rather than that of a mate. I used to think that you
were a clear crystal in which I might see reflected your very heart and
soul, but now you have become a woman and therefore a mystery. Oh,
woman, what do you know about love? Not the kind that Philip inspired in
you; but the name which burns unquenchable--which purifies and
strengthens, or consumes the one who ..." he stopped, surprised at his
own rush of words,--and abashed.
The hand, which she had slipped unconsciously into his, trembled and
thrilled him.
"Perhaps ... I do ... know it, Donald," came the words, barely audible.
"Smiles! It isn't possible that you ... that I ... Oh, my dear one,
don't say anything to make me hope anew, after what I have endured
to-night unless ..."
"Do you really care, Don? In that _other_ way, I mean."
He stood unsteadily up; things had become unreal and he could not speak.
Smiles, still holding his hand, rose also. The top of her head came just
below the level of his eyes; the moonlight across it set her wavy hair
to shimmering. She could not lift her eyes to his, but with a brave, low
voice, she went on, when she saw that he would not answer.
"All this past week I have been the most brazen of girls, and
deliberately given you a hundred chances to tell me, if it were so. I
was quite sure that it couldn't be, and besides, you told Philip...."
"I know; but I thought ... you see he told me that he loved you, and
that he was sure that you cared for him."
"I did, just as I do now. Oh, man, you have been so blind, or so noble.
Have I got to _ask_ you to marry me?"
For the barest instant she looked up at him, and he saw that the smile
he loved was whimsical as well as madly appealing.
"No," almost shouted Donald. "I won't hear of such a thing as your being
one of these 'new women.' You're a siren out of the olden days of mystic
legend, and I have kept my ears stopped up against your witching song,
which I was afraid to hear. But now I want to hear it, day and night,
through eternity. Wait, not yet. First ... Smiles, will you marry me?"
"Oh, what an anticlimax! Why did you have to become so practical and
unromantic, after such a splendid start," she laughed happily. "No lover
is supposed to ask that question with such brutal bluntness. Come, I
will teach you the romance of love."
It was dark on the veranda. The moon had suddenly slipped out of sight
behind one of the laggards in the retreating cloud army; but Donald
needed no earthly light in order to realize that Rose was holding out
her arms to him, as simply and frankly as she had five years before.
"Chir-r-r-p, chir-r-r-p, chir-r-r-p," thrilled the cricket underneath
the porch.