If you don't wake by one they're to call you, for I want you to see
Mabel's entrance. I've managed my hat and cloak, and seen the
child--he's quiet and not in pain, thank God. Have your breakfast, and
then come to the box-office; I'll leave a seat for you there. Or come
behind and see me, if you will, for I am terribly nervous and would
like it. So glad you're getting your sleep. MARGAEET.
P.S. Don't worry about the nerves; I ALWAYS am nervous.
Duncan looked at the note for three silent minutes, sitting on the edge
of his bed.
"I'm sorry. She--she wanted me. I wish I'd waked!" he said slowly,
aloud.
And ten minutes later, during a hurried dressing, he read the note
again, and said, aloud again:
"'Have breakfast'! I wonder if she had HERS?"
He entered the theatre so late, for all his hurry, that the first act
was over and the second well begun, and was barely in his seat before
the now familiar opening words of Mabel Vane's part fell clearly on the
silence of the darkened house.
For a moment Duncan thought, with a great pang of relief, that some one
else was filling his stepmother's place; but he recognized her in
another minute, in spite of rouge and powder and the piquant dress she
wore. His heart stirred with something like pride. She was beautiful in
her flowered hat and the caped coat that showed a foam of lacy frills
at the throat; and she was sure of herself, he realized in a moment,
and of her audience. She made a fresh and appealing figure of the
plucky little country bride, and the old lines fell with delicious
naturalness from her lips.
Duncan's heart hardly beat until the fall of the curtain; tears came to
his eyes; and when Margaret shared the applause of the house with the
gracious Peg, he found himself shaking with a violent nervous reaction.
He was still deeply stirred when he went behind the scenes after the
play. His stepmother presently came up from her dressing-room, dressed
in street clothes and anxious to hurry to the hospital and have news of
the little boy.
Duncan called a taxicab, for which she thanked him absently and with
worried eyes; and presently, with her and with the child's father, he
found himself speeding toward the hospital. It was a silent trip.
Margaret kept her ungloved fingers upon Penrose's hand, and said only a
cheerful word of encouragement now and then.
Duncan waited in the cab, when they went into the big building. She was
gone almost half an hour. Darkness came, and a sharp rain began to fall.
He was half drowsy when she suddenly ran down the long steps and jumped
in beside him. Her face was radiant, in spite of the signs of tears
about her eyes.
"He took the ether like a little soldier!" she said, as the motor-car
slowly wheeled up the wet street. "Mary held his hand all the while.
Everything went splendidly, and he came out of it at about four. Mary
sang him off to sleep, sitting beside him, and she's still there--he
hasn't stirred! Dr. Thorpe is more than well satisfied; he said the
little fellow had nerves of iron! And the other doctor isn't even going
to come in again! And Thorpe says it is LARGELY because he could have
his mother!"
But the exhilaration did not last. Presently she leaned her head back
against the seat, and Duncan saw how marked was the pallor of her face,
now that the rouge was gone. There was fatigue in the droop of her
mouth, and in the deep lines etched under her eyes.
"It's after six, Duncan," she said, without opening her eyes, "so I
can't sleep, as I hoped! We'll have to dine, and then go straight to
the theatre!"
"You're tired," said the boy, abruptly. She opened her eyes at the
tone, and forced a smile.
"No--or, yes, I am, a little. My head's been aching. I wish to-night
was over." Suddenly she sighed. "It's been a strain, hasn't it?" she
said. "I knew it would be, but I didn't realize how hard! I just wanted
to do something for them, you know, and this was all I could think of.
And I've been wishing your father had been here; I don't know what he
will say. I don't stop to think--when it's the people I love--" she
said artlessly. "I dread--" she began again, but left the sentence
unfinished, after all, and looked out of the window. "I suspect you're
tired, too!" she went on brightly, after a moment. "I shan't forget
what a comfort it's been to have you with me through this queer
experience, Duncan. I know what it has cost you, my dear."
"Comfort!" echoed Duncan. He tried to laugh, but the laugh broke itself
off gruffly. He found himself catching her hand, putting his free arm
boyishly about her shoulders. "I'm not fit to speak to you, Margaret!"
he said huskily. "You're--you're the best woman I ever knew! I want you
to know I'm sorry--sorry for it all--everything! And as for Dad, why,
he'll think what I think--that you're the only person in the world
who'd do all this for another woman's kid!"
Mrs. Coppered had tried to laugh, too, as she faced him. But the tears
came too quickly. She put her wet face against his rough overcoat and
for a moment gave herself up to the luxury of tears.
"Carey," said his wife, on a certain brilliant Sunday morning a month
later, when he had been at home nearly a month. She put her head in at
the library door. "Carey, will you do me a favor?"
He looked up to smile at her, in her gray gown and flowered hat, and
she came in to take the seat opposite him at the broad table.
"I will. Where are you going?"
"Duncan and I are going to church, and you're to meet us at the
Gregorys' for lunch," she reminded him.
"Yes'm. And what do you two kids want? What's the favor?"
"Oh!" She became serious. "You remember what I told you of our New York
trip a month ago, Carey? The Penroses, you know?"
"I do."
"Well, Carey, I've discovered that it has been worrying Duncan ever
since you got home, because he thinks I'm keeping it from you."
"Thinks you haven't told me, eh?"
"Yes. Don't laugh that way, Carey! Yes. And he asked me in the sweetest
little way, a day or two ago, if I wouldn't tell you all about it."
"What did you do--box his young ears?"
"No." Margaret's eyes laughed, but she shook her head reprovingly. "I
thought it was so DEAR of him to feel that way, yet never give you even
a hint, that I--"
"Well?" smiled her husband, as she paused.
"Well," hesitated Mrs. Coppered. And then in a little burst she added:
"I said, 'Duncan, if you ask me to I WILL tell him!'"
"And what do you think you gain by THAT, Sapphira?" said Carey, much
amused.
"Why, don't you see? Don't you see it means EVERYTHING to him to have
stood by me in this, and now to clear it all up between us! Don't you
see that it makes him one of us, in a way? He's done his adored father
a real service--"
"And his adored mother, too?"
His tone brought the happy tears to her eyes.
"And the favor?" he said presently.
"Oh! Well, you see, I'm supposed to be 'fessing up the whole horrible
business, Carey, and in a day or two I want you to thank him, just in
some general way,--you'll know how!--for looking out for me so well
while you were away. Will you?"
"I will," he promised slowly.
"He's coming downstairs--so good-by!" said she. She came around the
table to kiss him, and, suddenly smitten with a sense of youth and
well-being and the glory of the spring morning, she added a little
wistfully:
"I wonder what I've done to be so happy, Carey--I wonder what I've ever
done to be so loved?"
"I wonder!" said Carey, smiling.