THE LITTLE BLIND GOD OPENS HIS EYES
While Phyllis was having, as she said in her letters, a pleasant
amphibious summer, the rest of the Wyndhams were staying in town for
the first time in their lives. New York is not as bad a place during
the heated months as people think it who fly from the first touch of
the mounting sun. Except for the noise, even Mrs. Wyndham did not find
it uncomfortable, and the noises could be forgotten while she rested
and read in their little dining-room, the depth of the apartment away
from them.
Jessamy and Barbara discovered that there was much to be enjoyed in
early rising for walks in the park; still more, in trips for which they
had started betimes to take a car at the Bridge and go down to the sea,
bowling along at a tremendous rate after they had passed the crowded
Brooklyn streets, and getting cool and invigorated as the swift flight
of the car blew their hair back from their faces with a wind salt from
the ocean.
Nor were the long sails up the wonderful Hudson less than a revelation
of delight, especially to artistic Jessamy, whose soul reveled in
beauty such as the whole world can hardly equal--beauty they had
heretofore missed, because it lay so near to them and they had wandered
away in summer to fashionable resorts.
Ruth took her vacation like a dissecting-map, she said, in little
bits, which, fitted together, would make a whole of more than two
weeks;--she filled the place that would have been Phyllis's in the
excursions of that summer. And Tom, graduated now into a full-fledged
Doctor of Medicine, with a degree and a diploma, and everything ready
for a large practice, except his contract with an undertaker, as he
himself declared--Tom was the escort and cicerone on every trip, with
Nixie, his hair clipped for the summer, to complete the party when
its destination was one that allowed the presence of little dogs.
Jessamy, watching the course of affairs, with double eagerness for
Bab's happiness and Phyllis's return, sometimes was almost completely
discouraged by the behavior of her trying sister. Since the theatricals
Tom had been turning with constantly increasing evidences of liking
to Babbie, and Jessamy began to feel quite certain that his dawning
fancy for Phyllis, nipped timely in the bud, would blossom into real
love for wayward Bab, if that young person would allow it to do so. But
Barbara behaved in such a way that Jessamy wondered that Tom could be
patient with her, and, much more, that he could find attraction in her
thorniness.
"She is Barbie, not Babbie, mama," Jessamy said, with tears of
impatience in her eyes, one night when the four young people had
returned from an afternoon at Glen Island. Now that Phyllis was writing
so cheerfully, and the choice she had made seemed to be turning out
well, for her at least, Jessamy had told her mother Phyllis's motive in
going, for she longed to have her unselfish little cousin held at her
true worth by all who were dearest to her.
"You have not the slightest idea of how Bab behaved to Tom to-day, and
he was a perfect saint in patience and kindness," Jessamy continued.
"She is driving away her own happiness in spite of Phyllis's sacrifice
for her. You know it would have been lovely for Tom and Phyllis to have
cared for each other, and now Bab is going to offend him beyond pardon,
and we shall lose the dear boy altogether. I feel so sorry for Tom I
can hardly keep from saying: 'Oh, Tom dear, just please marry me, and
let that naughty girl go!'"
"That would be a singular performance on the part of my dignified elder
daughter," laughed her mother, "and rather a useless one, because, you
see, Tom doesn't want to marry you. Perhaps he will never want to marry
Babbie, so try not to worry, Jessamy. I should be glad when the day
comes that I must give one of you up, if it could be into the hands of
as trustworthy a man as Tom; but I am in no hurry to meet the day, so
let matters take their course, Jessamy, my dear."
"They aren't taking their course," sighed Jessamy. "And you are
forgetting, mama, that Bab is so dreadful because she really likes
Tom so very much. Of course he may never want to marry her; that is
what bothers me. I should think it would be a miracle if he did. She
has made up her mind to be true to her name, and has put a barbed wire
fence all around herself. I wish I could get her straightened out, and
bring Phyllis home, and all be happy again."
"Let matters take their course, Jessamy," said her mother again.
"Barbara is very young; I really believe, on the whole, I am glad not
to see my baby with a lover--even Tom."
Jessamy had not exaggerated Barbara's freakishness toward unoffending
Tom. There were days when she treated him quite tolerantly, sometimes
even let him get glimpses of the sweet, sunny Barbara he had first
known; but most of the time she was sharp of tongue, uncertain in
disposition, unjust, and actually pert. The receipt of a small service
from Tom was enough to plunge her into saucy, school-girl sarcasm that
was so unlike herself, so unworthy of her, that Jessamy held her breath
lest she not only offended, but, worst of all, disgusted Tom; and for
disgust Jessamy had heard there was no cure.
The pitiable part of it was that poor little Babbie evidently hated
herself for being so wayward and naughty, and Jessamy often saw her
turn away to hide her tears after an especially vicious attack on Tom,
to which she was apparently impelled by a force stronger than her will
and judgment.
For a long time Tom bore this treatment with dignified patience,
struggling hard to keep his promise to Phyllis and regain the little
Bab he knew and cared for. Then Jessamy saw that he was letting Babbie
severely alone, studying her with pained surprise in his honest eyes,
and she hoped that the study might give him a clue to the cause of
Bab's transformation. For, she thought, she is exactly like _Beatrice_
herself; and when _Benedick_ suspected that she snubbed him because she
cared for him, he began to care for her. But Tom was far too modest and
inexperienced to construe the little active verb, with its moods, which
he was studying, by any such rule. He decided that Barbara had found
him a nuisance, and wanted to drop his acquaintance; so, hurt to the
core, he silently acquiesced in her decision, and the Wyndhams knew him
and Nixie but rarely.
As weeks went by, and Tom's sole visit had been to herself when Jessamy
and Barbara were known to be out at lectures which they were attending,
Mrs. Wyndham began to share Jessamy's feeling that if something were
not done a possession more precious than the wealth they had lost
might drift away from her girls forever. Mrs. Wyndham was thoroughly
unworldly; it would be horrible to her even to think of making a
marriage for her children from ambitious motives; but she realized
how rarely in a long life one finds a true friend; and she began to
feel that it would not do to sit passive while Babbie drove Tom away.
Besides, it was dreadful to know that the poor boy was feeling that his
friends were changed to him, who had never been less than devoted to
all of them in the hard days at the "Blackboard," and ever since.
That night Mrs. Wyndham went into Bab's room in the dark to find her
crouching, a forlorn little heap of misery, in her chair, sobbing under
her breath lest Jessamy hear in the next room. Her mother gathered her
up in her arms, and sat down in the rocking-chair, Babbie half in, half
off her lap, and rocked and cuddled her without a word. For a while Bab
cried tempestuously, but after a time the clasp of the arms which had
always soothed her childish griefs quieted her; indeed, Babbie's grief
might be of a sentimental nature, but she was a child still.
When she was calm enough to listen Mrs. Wyndham said: "Now, my little
Babbie, you are unhappy because you have been a saucy little Bab, and
have driven away with cruel injustice the best friend you and Jessamy
and Phyllis have, except one another. It is a pity, but it is something
to set right, not to cry over. We will send a note of apology to Tom,
and we will tell him--I will write it--that Babbie is dreadfully
contrite over her whimsies of the summer, but that they arose from
little private worries of her own, which she was unjust enough to
visit upon him. And Tom will come, and Barbara will be kind and
cordial, first because she has absolutely no right to treat Tom rudely;
secondly, because she will have too much regard for her dignity as a
young woman, not a capricious child, to give way to her impulses."
"It's too late, mama," moaned Bab. "Tom asked me what was wrong, and I
told him nothing, but that I was tired of seeing the same faces all the
time. And then he stopped coming. And, Madrina," she added, starting
up with sudden resolution to be honest, "I have acted as I have just
because he liked Phyllis, and I was afraid--oh, I was afraid he would
think she thought I liked him--too much, you know, and so had gone
away!"
"What a foolish Babbie!" said her mother, stroking her hair. "Tom does
not care more for Phyllis than for you. He was beginning to turn to
her, but she slipped away in the beginning, and Tom has found my little
Babbie more than he realized, now that he has been thrown with her
more. Tom would never dream Phyllis, or any one else, suspected you
of liking him too well; he is not a coxcomb, but a straightforward,
honest young fellow, who loved us all. He is hurt and angry that one
of us could be so capriciously unjust to him. You have no right--no
moral right, Barbara--to let this go on another day. And if our dearest
Phyllis hoped to further your happiness in going away, you surely can
do no less than love her better than ever, and return her goodness to
Tom."
"I'll do my best to behave better, Madrina, if you can get Tom back;
but I'm afraid I shall be bad again when I see him," said Barbara,
contritely.
Mrs. Wyndham smiled in the security of the darkness. "You must behave
well for your own sake, Babbie. You know what every one will say
if they see you treating Tom abominably, without cause. And if we
apologize successfully to him this time, we can never do so again."
Mrs. Wyndham wrote a most affectionate note to injured Tom, and Barbara
inclosed a note of three lines of her own in brief, but humbly contrite
apology. It was probably the latter which produced the desired result,
for Tom and Nixie appeared that evening, and Bab sang and played
his favorite airs, and peace once more reigned on the banks of the
Hudson. But the old, free, unconscious days seemed gone forever; and
Jessamy, and even her mother, saw with regret that it was only by a
mighty effort that Bab kept up the cool politeness into which her good
intentions had degenerated. Tom came much less often. It looked as
though matters were settling into the frigid decorum hardest to break
up, and more hopeless than quarrels. Thanksgiving came and passed with
Phyllis's sacrifice no nearer its reward than at first.
On the top floor of the house where "The Land of Canaan" apartment made
the third, lived a family whose youngest member, a girl of eleven,
frequently held what Bab called "overflow meetings" with her dolls on
the steps; for the family was large--as was the doll family, for that
matter--and little Margery was forced to the street, the playground of
city children, by lack of space.
A friendship had sprung up between her and the Wyndhams, especially
Bab, born of mutual admiration for Jumeau babies with spasmodic joints,
and the little girl's unspeakable worship for an older one. Tom was
included in Margery's favor, both for his own and Nixie's sake; once,
indeed, when the child had a sore throat, Tom cured her, and henceforth
he was brevetted "my doctor," a distinction he valued. Margery was a
quaint child, given to the companionship of books and people beyond her
age, and with the contradicting childishness and maturity of an only
child in a family of adults. She was a welcome and frequent visitor to
the Wyndhams', petted and read to by Jessamy and her mother, spoiled
and played with by Bab, for whom she cherished a dumb devotion not
unlike Nixie's own.
As weeks went on, Margery's sharp eyes discovered the estrangement and
increasing coolness between "her doctor" and her dearest Bab; and after
long puzzling over it, and tentative attempts to sift the matter, she
set her nimble wits to work to remedy it.
Simple methods did not appeal to the queer little girl; but at last she
hit upon a plan that suited her childish love for melodrama and latent
longing to be a heroine. It was a gray December day, and Margery, left
alone with the servant, recognized her opportunity. Bab--alone too,
with Violet, as it chanced--was startled by a violent peal of the bell.
Answering the summons herself, she faced the Hortons' maid, white under
her Irish freckles, who stood wringing her hands on the door-mat, and
who cried at the sight of her: "Oh, Miss Wyndham dear, come up for the
love of hiven! I do be alone with Margery, an' she took that bad she'll
be dead agen her mother comes back."
"Dead! Margery!" gasped Bab, and flew up the stairs, outstripping
honest Norah in her alarm. There was cause for alarm to the eyes of
inexperienced Bab, as she looked at the little figure stretched on the
bed, her face swollen out of all likeness to pretty Margery, or even
to human features. A crimson face, with cheeks, eyelids, lips puffed
and distorted, lay on the pillow, crimson hands as shapely as tomatoes
picked the quilt, while hollow groans issued from the purpling mouth.
"Oh, dear, darling little Margery," cried Bab, in an agony of terror,
"what has happened? What can be the matter? Run, run, Norah, for Doctor
Gilbert; I'll stay with her. It must be poison; oh, what has she eaten?"
"Nothin', miss, but her lunch wid the rest of 'em," began Norah, while
Margery moaned:
"Not Doctor Gilbert. I want my Doctor Tom."
"Oh, darling, Doctor Gilbert is so much older and wiser," Bab pleaded,
kneeling by the bed; but Margery only burst into plaintive sobs. "I
want my doctor; I shouldn't think you'd be cruel now," she sighed.
"Then call Doctor Leighton, Norah," said Bab, blushing at this betrayal
of Margery's observation. "Only hurry, hurry!"
It seemed hours before Tom came, though Norah met him in the street
and returned with him in half of one. Bab spent the minutes bathing
the still swelling face, soothing the poor little patient, and trying
to keep her own nerves under control. Margery grew every moment more
ill. Would Tom never come?
At last he did come, and as he entered the room the relief was so
great that Bab forgot to incase herself in the disguise she had worn
so long. Her eyes were so full of love and joy as she raised them to
Tom that he stopped short in amazement at the revelation, and a great
flood of happiness rushed over him, too great for any circumstances to
check. "Oh, Tom, I'm so glad you have come; now it will be all right,"
she said, in a low voice of utter trust. "Dear little Margery is
dreadfully ill, but you will save her. I have done nothing but bathe
her, for fear of making some mistake."
Tom did not answer; he walked straight to the bed without looking at
Barbara. His heart was throbbing so joyously that he had hard work to
force his thoughts to duty.
"Margery, what have you eaten?" he demanded, having felt the child's
pulse and looked closely under the almost closed eyelids.
"Nothing," murmured Margery.
"Margery, remember that I am a doctor, and know when I am told the
truth. You must tell me what you have taken," said Tom, sternly.
Bab crept close to Tom, oblivious to everything else in hearing this
hint, confirming her own fear of poison. Tom put one hand over the two
little ones clasped imploringly on his shoulder, trying to remember
only Margery, and to forget that this was Bab coming to him thus
voluntarily.
"I always tell the truth," said Margery, replying to his question with
all the indignation her strength allowed. "I haven't eaten anything;
but I didn't say I hadn't taken anything. I took quinine; but it's much
worse than before. I wouldn't tell you if I wasn't dying."
"Quinine! Ah, that's it! And worse than before, you say? Have you
suffered like this before from quinine?" asked Tom, comfortingly
patting Bab's head, which had dropped on his shoulder at the word
"dying."
"Once, but not so much. I didn't think it would be so awful when I took
it, though I did think I'd feel very badly. The doctor said I had an
idiotsinkersy in me about taking quinine," groaned Margery.
"Did you take it purposely?" asked Tom, amazed, as he handed a
prescription to Norah and bade her hasten to get it filled. "That was
certainly an 'idiotsinkersy.' Why have you done such a thing? Do you
like to be ill, Margery?"
"No; but--oh, my mama won't like to find me dead!" And Margery burst
into open wailing, in which Bab joined.
"You are not going to die," said Tom. "Bab dearest, don't feel so
dreadfully; Margery will come out all right. But why, in the name of
all that's wonderful, have you deliberately taken what you knew would
make you ill, little lass?"
"For your sake," said suffering Margery, as impressively as her swollen
features permitted.
"For my sake!" echoed Tom, dumfounded.
"I knew if I was awfully ill Miss Bab would be nice to you, and so I
took the quinine," murmured Margery.
"You dreadful child!" cried Bab, indignantly, springing away from Tom's
side.
Margery turned away without a word, hiding her swollen face, her tears,
and her wounded heart in the pillow.
"Bab doesn't mean that, Margery," said Tom, gently. "You are giving her
greater pain than her physical suffering, Bab; you know she adores you.
Be just to the poor mite, and remember her motives were good, even if
you don't like her methods," he whispered hastily.
Bab knelt contritely, and took the queer, forlorn little figure in
her arms. "No, of course I didn't mean that," she said. "Forgive me,
Margery. What made you think of such a very strange thing to do?"
"The Bible says you ought to lay down your life for your friends,
doesn't it?" sobbed Margery, drying her eyes on the ruffle of her
nightgown sleeve in default of a handkerchief.
"It says you can't prove greater love than by dying for them--yes,"
said Bab.
[Illustration: "'I KNEW THAT IF I WAS AWFULLY ILL MISS BAB WOULD BE
NICE TO YOU,' MURMURED MARGERY."]
"Well, then, I thought I ought to be willing just to be sick for you,
when all the books say how every one forgives every one else, and
foes make up, around sickbeds, and things. I couldn't bear to see how
you and my doctor were getting worse foes all the time, so I took the
quinine, though I knew I had an idiotsinkersy in me that made it poison
to me, and I'd be dreadfully sick. I thought you'd make up around my
bed, and love me, and say how I'd saved you, and how you'd never forget
me. And you are friends around my bed, and I'm fearfully sick; but you
only say I'm dreadful. Oh, why don't my mama come back and take care of
me?" And Margery wailed anew over the ingratitude of humankind.
What could Bab say? Or how could she do less than express--even if Tom
were there--her gratitude to this martyr to her welfare?
"Dear little Margery, you are not dreadful. I am dreadful to have
called you so, even though I didn't mean it. I was annoyed for a
moment; that was all. You are a dear, devoted little friend. Please
forgive me, for you know I love you dearly," she said, kissing the wet,
shapeless little face.
"And my doctor?" stipulated Margery, before according pardon.
"I think we shall be better friends. I won't be horrid any more,"
whispered Barbara.
And then Margery gave the kiss of peace.
Mrs. Wyndham had come in, and hearing from Violet whither Tom and
Barbara had gone, and why, hastened up-stairs, hoping to be of use.
In a few moments more Mrs. Horton returned, and Tom escorted Bab
downstairs, leaving Margery, much better, to the competent care of the
two mothers.
Barbara let herself into her own apartment with her key, and for a
few moments an awkward silence prevailed, broken at last by Tom.
"I think I shall adopt a Margery rampant, with a quinine capsule in
the quartering, for my coat of arms," he said. "I've an idea our queer
little friend, with a constitutional idiosyncrasy against that drug,
has done me a great service. She has proved that you do not quite hate
me, do you, Babbie?"
"No, Tom; but you--you like Phyllis," stammered Bab.
"Like her! I love her--the unselfish, dear, good girl!" cried Tom.
"Have you been jealous of Phyllis? Then you love me, Barbara. You
couldn't be jealous unless you did! I did imagine once that of all the
dear Wyndhams, Phyllis might be dearest; but it was a mistake. I saw
straight after she was gone. I never loved her--not that way, Bab; I
only fancied that I might. But I do love Phyllis so much that I want
her for my cousin. Will you make her my cousin, Babbie?"
"She is much nicer than I," said Bab, very low, without raising her
eyes, and clinging to her last moment of freedom.
"Bab, don't waste any more time; you have treated me badly enough,
heaven knows, and I haven't enjoyed it. Tell me you love me, this
instant," said Tom, in a tone which Barbara might have resented had not
her recent fright and humiliation subdued her.
"I love you, Tom," she repeated meekly, and straightway forgot all
doubt, all fear, in perfect happiness.
When Jessamy came home she nearly dropped in the doorway; for there was
Bab throned in the window, looking radiantly pretty with the depth of
joy and womanly sweetness the events of the afternoon had called into
her face, and beside her, on a low stool, sat Tom, looking entirely
blissful and unusually humble.
He sprang up as he saw Jessamy. "Come to your brother, Jessamy!" he
cried. "Bab has promised to marry me."
"I have promised not to marry him," said Bab. "I have told him I will
not so much as hear it spoken of for ages. As though I wanted to marry
yet!"
But Jessamy waited to hear no more. She threw herself at Bab in some
mysterious way, and hugged and kissed her sister--with a kiss for Tom,
too--in almost hysterical rapture.
"It was pretty rough on me to be treated as I have been lately," said
Tom, as they tried to settle down to sanity. "But I ought to have
known what it meant; for the very first time I ever saw Bab, she threw
herself at my feet, for me to pick up, or leave, as I chose."
"Why, Thomas Leighton!" cried Bab, indignantly.
"Fact, and you know it," affirmed Tom. "Never mind, Babbie; 'some falls
are means the happier to rise,' you know. That fall of yours on the
'Blackboard' steps was one of them; for, my heart, aren't we happy!"