IN THE VALLEY.
“No, dear. I shall not wear myself out,” said Mrs. Carruth, gently,
though firmly. “I want you to go back to the house to look after the
maids and Jean——”
“Oh, I don’t want to go back! Please, please let me sleep in the
Bee-hive, mother. Please, please do,” begged Jean, clasping her arms
about her mother’s waist. Constance interrupted:
“Yes, mother, do. I will go back if you are determined not to, for I
dare say the maids would be panic-stricken if left alone; but Jean might
just as well remain here with you,” for into Constance’s active brain
had sprung an idea which she wished to carry out, and she knew she could
count upon Jean’s co-operation.
“But you and the maids would be quite alone in the house,” demurred Mrs.
Carruth.
“And do you think Jean would be big and valiant enough to protect me
from prowlers?” smiled Constance. “It would be a hard-pressed burglar
who would venture forth this night, I’m thinking.”
Just then a sound overhead caused Mrs. Carruth to raise her hand to
enjoin silence, and Mammy was heard to say soothingly:
“Dar, dar, honey, jis’ let me raise an’ ease yo’ up a leetle, so’s yo’
hits de sof’est fedders in de baid,” and quickly upon the softer, more
soothing tones followed: “Yit what in de name o’ man ever done teken yo’
out of dis house yistiddy’s mo’n I can tell. Ef yo’d done taken heed ter
ma’ wo’ds yo’ wouldn’ never come ter dis hyer pass.”
Then followed a series of groans from the patient.
“Mammy is getting worn out and consequently irritable,” said Mrs.
Carruth. “Yes, you may remain, Jean, but Constance must go back, and I
must go to Charles. If Mammy has much more to tax her strength and mind
she will be ill, and she is in no mood to care for Charles now; she will
do more harm than good. Good-night, darling. Don’t worry about me I will
’phone over to the house if I need anything in the night.” And Mrs.
Carruth hurried upstairs.
“Come into the Bee-hive, Jean,” whispered Constance. The little girl
followed.
“Now, dear,” said Constance, earnestly, “you and I have got to take
matters into our own hands. Can I trust you, Jean?” Constance dropped
upon a chair, and placing both arms about the little sister looked
straight into her eyes.
The look was returned as steadfastly, and the fine little head poised in
a manner which would have delighted an artist’s soul, as Jean asked:
“Don’t you know you can, Connie?”
“Yes, I do! And here is the situation: Before we came over here I tried
to ’phone over to mother, but even our wire is out of order. I dare say
every wire is, and that the trouble is in the central office, owing to
this storm. I did not tell mother because it would only alarm her, and
she may not have occasion to use the ’phone at all; I earnestly hope she
will not until it is repaired. I shall go home, but I shall not go to
bed. You stay here in the Bee-hive, but don’t undress, Jean; roll this
warm rug around you and cuddle down on the couch. I know you will drop
asleep, but I know you will not sleep so soundly that you will be lost
to the world altogether. I shall be on the couch in the library and can
see this window from there. If Charles grows worse, or you think mother
is worn out and needs me, will you flash the electric light three times?
I shall know what it means and come straight over.” Constance spoke very
quietly, but very earnestly.
“I’ll do it. I may go to sleep, but somehow I know I shall wake up if I
am needed, Connie. Even if I am only fourteen years old I can be a
little woman, as mother so often says I am.”
“I know you can, dear, and you are, Jean; even if in many ways you are
younger than most girls of your age. I don’t think any of us have grown
up quite so fast as the girls around us. Mother says we have not, and
she does not wish us to, because there are so many more years in which
we must be old than in which we can be young; but I reckon we can rise
to a situation when occasion demands, and, somehow, I feel that we will
both be needed to-night. Dear old Charles, he is pretty sick, I know, or
mother would not look so anxious, and _such_ a night as this is. Why,
Jean, we could not get a message to Dr. Black however badly we might
need him. We must depend entirely upon ourselves.”
“I wonder Champion did not come over.”
“He ’phoned mother this morning, but before she got all his message the
connection broke, and, I dare say, the roads have been almost
impassable.”
“Impassable roads would never keep him from coming,” cried the
“Champion’s” champion. “There must have been something worse than the
roads. I don’t know what, but I know it was something,” insisted Jean.
“Yes, I am sure there must have been, he is always so thoughtful for
us,” replied Constance, a soft light springing into her eyes as she
recalled Hadyn’s unvarying kindness from the first moment she knew him.
“Now, good-night, honey. I hope you won’t need me at all, but I know you
will be on the lookout if you do.”
A moment later Constance was struggling back to the house through the
blinding storm and snowdrifts. As she entered the back door the front
one opened to admit a snow-covered, panting figure, and Hadyn confronted
her.
“Great Scott! Where have you come from?” he demanded.
“I might ask the same question,” panted Constance, divesting herself of
her cloak, and shaking it to free it from the snow which covered it.
“Get out of your coat, quick, and give it to Lilly to hang in the
kitchen until it is dry. What under the sun possessed you to try to come
here to-night, you madman?”
“Under the sun? Nay, lady, neither sun nor moon. I fear you are
wandering. Is it a case of blizzard-madness?” answered Hadyn, as he
slipped off his big ulster and cap and gave them to the maid.
“Now, come along in here and tell me all the little mother couldn’t tell
me. Where is she, and where is my little sister?”
“Lilly, please bring some more logs for the library fire. Come in here,
Hadyn, and I’ll tell you all about it. Mother and Jean are over With
Charles and Mammy, and I’m here to mount guard over the house and maids,
who, luckily, are storm-bound.”
“But why on earth aren’t you all here? The little mother and Jean have
no business to be anywhere else on such a villainous night. Let me go
right over after them,” and Hadyn turned toward the door.
“Stop! Wait! Listen to me!”
“Oh, of course, Mademoiselle la General,” laughed Hadyn, as Constance
laid a detaining hand upon his arm. “I’m listening.”
“Then sit down to do it and hear the whole story. When you really know
all about it you can help me; but you might as well whistle to the wind
out yonder as to hope to get mother back here to-night. Yes, Lilly, put
the logs in the basket, and you and Rose please stay in the kitchen
until eleven. I will be out to speak to you when Mr. Stuyvesant goes.”
“When he _does_,” said Hadyn, under his breath, then louder: “It must be
rather satisfying to have such a flower-garden right indoors when it is
whooping things up so outside,” and he nodded toward the maid just
leaving the room. “If you could only have a ‘Violet’ and a ‘Pansy,’ and
one or two other blossoms, you’d have a whole greenhouse.”
Constance laughed outright as she answered:
“We’ve had wood nymphs, and some of the months—May and June, for
instance—and several jewels, to say nothing of a few royalties, so
nothing will surprise us now; but Mammy seems equal to all of them put
together. And apropos of Mammy, let me tell you all about her and
Charles.”
They sat down before the blazing logs while Constance told of the
experiences of the past twenty-four hours. Hadyn listened with a
troubled face.
“I’d no idea it was so serious,” he said, when she finished, “but I am
mighty glad I came over to-night. And now you are to heed what _I_ say:
you may sit here with me until eleven if you will. I’ll be right glad of
your company. _Then_ you are going upstairs to bed—_yes_, you are, too.
Now, it is no use ‘argifyin’,’ to quote Mammy. I’ll stay here in the
library snug, warm, and as comfortable as any man could wish to be. I
shall see Jean’s light if she signals, and I’ll be good—yes, honest I
will. You doubt it, I know, and you think I will sneak over yonder and
be more bother than I am worth; but I give you my word I won’t. I’ll do
exactly as you would do if you were here alone.”
Constance raised her eyes to his, and little guessed how hard it was for
the man who looked into their pure, trustful depths to refrain from
holding out his arms to the girl who had grown so dear to him during the
past three and a half years.
“I’ll take you at your word,” she answered.
“Good. Now sit down and toast your toes before this blaze. By Jove, is
there anything like blazing logs and soft lamplight? They spell
_h-o-m-e_, don’t they?” and Hadyn glanced around the cosy room as though
to him, at least, it held the sweetest elements of home a man could ask
for.
Softly the little clock ticked the moments and hours away as they sat
there together, talking over a hundred little happenings of the past
years, now and then glancing over to the Bee-hive. But all was quiet. A
dim light shone in Mammy’s bedroom, and in the Bee-hive Jean’s shaded
electric light cast a faint halo upon the snow which continued to whirl
by the window, although the wind had died down a little and the storm
seemed less violent. Shortly after ten Constance went out to the kitchen
to see that the storm-bound maids were comfortable. Cots had been placed
in the laundry for them, and they were probably far better off than they
would have been in their own home.
“Now, are you sure _you_ will be comfortable?” she asked Hadyn when she
returned to the library. He glanced about the room, at the cheerful fire
and the divan, with its numberless pillows, and smiled significantly.
“Only trouble is, I may be _too_ comfortable,” he said. “But you need
not worry,” as a slight shade of doubt crossed Constance’s face. “I
won’t go to the Land o’ Nod. But _you_ must, so good-night, little girl.
Go on upstairs and sleep well. I know just what that room looks like; I
shall never forget the night you gave it up to me. If I had known it a
little sooner, I should not have let you do so, although the memory of
it has been one of the sweetest ones of my life. Good-night.”
“Good-night, Hadyn, and—thank you a thousand times.”
If Haydn held the slender fingers an extra moment, and looked earnestly
into the beautiful eyes raised to his, he was hardly to be blamed.
Turning to the book shelves, he selected a book and went back to his
chair before the fire. Eleven and twelve were struck by the clock on the
mantle shelf, but all was quiet in the little cottage at the foot of the
garden. Then came three single strokes in succession; twelve-thirty,
one, one-thirty. Hadyn remembered no more. His wild struggle through the
storm earlier in the evening, the silent house, the warmth, the
luxurious depth of the Morris chair had all conspired against his
resolutions, and three o’clock was striking when he started wide awake
with a sense of calamity at hand and the deepest contrition in his
heart—an hour and a half blotted out as though they had never been!