BILLIE AND THE DOCTOR.
Several things had to be done before any steps could be taken to find
Phoebe's father. First Alberdina must be roundly scolded for her
carelessness about the clothes and then placated with a ten dollar bill
to compensate her for her loss. There must be lunch prepared for hungry
travelers, and Phoebe, herself, must be given food and made to rest. In
the meantime they questioned her concerning her father's movements. He
had left the cabin with his zither the morning of the day before and had
not been seen since, except when he had appeared at the camp and cut
Alberdina's bonds.
"Has he ever stayed away before at night?" asked Dr. Hume.
"No, never. When he is not weaving baskets or carving, he is very
restless and often is away for hours, but he always comes back before
bed time. He never forgets me. That is why I am so uneasy now," she went
on, clasping and unclasping her hands in the agony of her uncertainty.
"Phoebe," said the doctor, "what is it that gives you strength to do
your day's work, even if it means walking across a mountain in the hot
sun carrying a heavy basket?"
Phoebe lowered her eyes and a flush spread over her sunburned face.
"I forgot," she said. "I was so unhappy that I forgot. It has helped me,
oh, so many times when we have had no money. Many times we have been
snowed in on the mountain without food and it has always come. It saved
us from the Lupos. I was lonesome and it brought me friends." She
glanced at the girls busily preparing lunch and at Ben and Percy talking
in low voices on the porch.
"Don't you think it will help you now?"
"It has left me. I can't find it," replied poor Phoebe. "It is because I
am so frightened. It never comes if you are frightened."
"My child," said the good doctor, "you are worn out. You must have lunch
and take a good rest. In the meantime we will do everything we can to
find your father. Perhaps he has lost his way and is wandering in the
woods somewhere."
"No," said Phoebe, shaking her head miserably, "he never loses his way.
He knows the trails better than I do myself."
The doctor himself brought Phoebe a tray of lunch. She was ravenously
hungry.
"The poor little thing hasn't eaten for hours," he thought, glancing at
her covertly, as he returned with a basin of water, a soft towel and
Miss Campbell's private bottle of eau de cologne. When she had finished
eating, he made her stretch out on the divan while he gave her face and
hands and wrists an aromatic bath. Never before had Phoebe been
ministered to and waited on. She smiled at the doctor with dumb
gratitude.
"When people are hungry and tired and discouraged, they have a pretty
hard time holding on to their faith, Phoebe," he said. "Even when they
haven't anything to worry about, it's hard enough. You go to sleep now
and I promise you we will start on the search for your father at once."
Phoebe raised her eyes gratefully to his. In those clear brown depths
she read strength, gentleness and sympathy. She felt she was looking
into the face of an angel with a shiny bald head and shaggy red-gray
eyebrows.
"I believe God sent you," she said, and in a few moments dropped off
into a deep exhausted sleep.
After luncheon or dinner, whatever that meal might be called in camp,
Percy got out his motor cycle and proceeded to the Antler's Inn to ask
for news of Phoebe's father. Ben took the trail to Indian Head and
Billie and Dr. Hume went down to the village in the motor car to drum up
a search party or find guides to help them scour the mountains. In
neither attempt were they in the least successful.
On the way down the mountain, Billie decided to unburden herself of
something that had been on her mind for a long time.
"You have never seen Phoebe's father, have you, Dr. Hume?"
The doctor shook his head.
"Have you ever heard of a case like his? I mean forgetting one's past."
"Oh, yes. I have seen a number of cases. The patient usually loses his
memory altogether in time and goes insane."
"But he's not insane, doctor. He's not even going insane. Really and
truly, except about always trying to find a physician, his brain is as
clear as anybody's."
The doctor smiled. He liked this earnest, enthusiastic girl who was
always doing things for other people and modestly disclaiming credit.
There was something masculine in her disregard for small things and the
largeness of her views.
"A very nice man has instilled her with extremely big ideas about life,"
he reflected. "She is furthermore a wholesome, healthy young creature
with a high order of intelligence and a very warm, tender heart."
So much engaged was he in his diagnosis of Billie's character that he
had almost forgotten the subject of the conversation when she spoke up
again rather timidly.
"What I'm driving at is this, doctor, and I've been thinking about it
for days. Don't you think you could operate on Phoebe's father, put a
silver plate on his skull or lift whatever's pressing on his memory
bump? Don't you think you could undertake it, doctor? I know you are a
famous surgeon. Papa wrote that to me long ago, but I knew it before he
told me. I could tell just from seeing and being with you that you were
a great man."
The doctor laughed over these artless compliments.
"Are you a mind reader, Miss Billie?"
"But you will undertake it, doctor?" she urged.
"We must first catch our man, my child, and then have a look at him. A
good many things would have to be considered: whether he would consent
himself; whether he would be able to stand the shock of a serious
operation, and whether he may not have some disease an operation
wouldn't help; paralysis or softening of the brain."
"At any rate, you will undertake it?" cried Billie joyfully.
"Do you wish it so much?" he asked, watching her face as she guided the
car down the steep road.
"I do, I do! Think what it would mean to Phoebe to have this mystery
cleared; think what it would mean to him, too!"
"I was thinking of it," answered the doctor gravely. "That's just the
point. Suppose Phoebe's father would not thank me for bringing his past
back? Suppose, after all, he would be happier in this state than with
his memory restored. Do you realize that a man like that, a man of
education and refinement, I mean, must have had some very good reason
for hiding himself away in these mountains? That he may have been flying
from something?"
The enthusiasm died out of Billie's face.
"Oh, Dr. Hume," she began, "I hadn't thought of that. Indeed, I couldn't
connect anything of the sort with Phoebe and her father. They are not a
bit like that."
"You never can tell. The people who have given way to some wild impulse
that will cause them everlasting regret are not always bad people by any
means. His reasons for hiding himself and his wife in a cabin in these
mountains of course may have been entirely innocent; or he may have
hoped to find oblivion and forgetfulness up here out of the world. If I
give him back his memory, providing of course I can do it, I may give
him the very thing he is running away from."
"Don't you think he has been punished enough and that Phoebe ought to
have a chance?" argued Billie.
"Is there anything to prevent Phoebe's having a chance without knowing
her father's past?" asked the doctor.
"Nothing, except there would always be that mystery hanging over her.
Don't you think it would be very unpleasant not to know who you were or
even your father's name?"
"I am a living example to the contrary," said the doctor with a laugh.
"My father and mother were really my adopted parents. They took me out
of an orphan asylum when I was a little lad about five years old. I
remember it vividly. Afterwards they had other children, but they
always treated me like a beloved eldest son. I never knew any difference
and I never bothered my head about my real parents. Whoever they were,
they had died or shuffled me off on an institution. My adopted mother
was the finest woman I have ever known and if Hume isn't my real name,
it doesn't matter. I shall do everything I can to make it an honored
one."
"You are a wonderful man, doctor," exclaimed Billie, quite overcome by
this bit of confidence about his past. "It was because you were so fine
that they were good to you. Perhaps God picked you out from all the
other orphans to have a good home because he saw what fine material
there was in you."
"No indeed, my dear young lady," laughed the doctor. "It was just a
matter of chance. The little orphans were like the two women sitting in
the market place. The one was taken and the other left. If they chose me
for anything, it was solely and entirely because I had brown eyes."
"You may say what you please," protested Billie. "They looked deeper
than that, I am certain."
"Simply luck, Miss Billie. I have always been lucky. The fellows at
college called me 'Lucky Bill.' But to return to the original subject of
the discussion: I don't want to disappoint an unselfish, fine young
woman like you,--you see I can pay compliments, too,----" he added,
watching the flush of pleasure mount to Billie's face; "I don't want to
make any promises about this man I can't carry out, but I promise this
much: I will do what I can."
"Thank you a thousand times, Dr. Hume," said Billie gratefully. "I would
just like to shake hands with you if I could, but you see I have to
guide the 'Comet.' It will be a wonderful thing to give a man back his
senses after eighteen years."
"Maybe so; maybe not," answered the doctor as the car turned into the
village street.
They stopped in front of the only hostelry in the place, a cheap
two-story wooden house with a horse trough in front of it. Here usually
could be found several guides for camping trips and driving parties, and
here Dr. Hume looked for help in rescuing Phoebe's father.
The owner of the house, a thin sallow-faced man with pale shifting eyes
came out to speak to them.
"You ain't meanin' it's old crazy Frenchy you're after?" he asked. "I
don't wonder he's lost if it's him."
"That's the man," answered Dr. Hume, "but I don't understand what you
mean."
"I guess he's got wind he's suspected of settin' Razor Back Mountain on
fire and he's vamoosed. He ought to be shut up anyhow. He's a dangerous
character runnin' around the country."
Billie was shocked and angry.
"He is not," she burst out. "I know Mr.--Mr. French quite well----"
The man broke into a loud rasping laugh.
"Mr. French!" he repeated.
"He's incapable of setting a mountain on fire and he is as gentle and
courteous as possible."
There was another laugh. This time it came from within the house and
Billie and the doctor recognized the voice of Mr. Lupo.
"You're a friend of Lupo, I see," remarked the doctor looking very hard
at the man.
"I guess that's none of your affair," answered the other angrily. "And
nothin' agin' him nor me either, for the matter o' that."
The doctor lifted his eyebrows.
"I'd like to hire two or three guides. Are there any about?"
"There ain't no guides connected with this here establishment goin' to
go huntin' for crazy Frenchy," announced the man roughly, "if that's
what you're wantin' with them. Most of 'em is fightin' the flames
anyhow."
The doctor sat silently for a moment looking at the mountaineer, whose
eyes shifted uneasily under his steady gaze.
"I would advise you and your friend, Lupo, not to meddle too much in
this affair," he said, as the inn keeper with a snarling laugh shuffled
back into the house.
Billy turned the automobile and they went slowly down the street.
"If we were in the Kentucky or the Virginia mountains, I should call
this a feud," remarked the doctor, "but up here there is something more
than a revenge for a quarrel two generations old that creates a
situation of this kind. That man has got some ugly reason for
withholding his guides. He's a sinister looking wretch, and no man with
a shifting pair of eyes can be trusted around the corner."
"But what are we to do?" asked Billie.
"If we can't get guides,--we'll just go alone," answered Dr. Hume. "I
think we'll have to find your Mr. French, Miss Billie, seeing that a lot
of cut-throats are trying to keep us from doing it."