A LONG SLEEP.
The song of the "Comet's" motor broke the stillness of the afternoon
some ten days later as he cheerfully pushed upward on the Indian Head
road. Mr. Campbell was at the wheel and beside him sat Billie, glancing
up at him from time to time with eyes full of loving devotion. On the
back seat was Phoebe, silently contented beside Richard Hook, and the
other occupant was Alberdina Schoenbachler, that absurd little hat
perched atop her big smiling face.
There had been many days of anxiety and suspense for the people at
Sunrise Camp. It was impossible not to feel deeply interested in the
strange things that were transpiring in the little cabin on Indian Head.
The two young surgeons had arrived; a tent had been pitched alongside
the cabin, and one morning early the operation was performed. Since
that time the patient had lain in a stupor. And now Dr. Hume had sent
Mrs. Lupo, tamed and domestic, to take Alberdina's place at the camp,
and Alberdina was to come at once to the cabin. Mrs. Lupo could give no
reason; that was all the message stated, except that the patient was
doing well.
The doctor went down the path to meet them, when the car stopped under
the brow of the hill. He shook hands with Richard Hook, patted Phoebe on
the cheek, and said:
"Hang on to your faith, little girl. It's a wonderful reservoir to draw
on."
Then he grasped hands with Mr. Campbell, whom he had met several times
now and liked immensely, nodded to Alberdina, and drawing Billie's arm
through his, marched on ahead.
"Anybody might think my little girl was a consulting physician,"
remarked Mr. Campbell, amused at the earnest conversation the young girl
and the great surgeon had plunged into,--and proud, too, that it should
be so.
"Oh, they have lots of secrets from us, Mr. Campbell," replied Richard
Hook. "Miss Billie is confidential adviser to the doctor. I don't
believe he takes a step without consulting her first."
"Wise man," answered Billie's father. "He'll get some good sound advice,
if not entirely professional."
In the meantime, Billie was saying:
"Oh, doctor, what has happened? Is he conscious? Has he spoken? Does he
recognize anyone?"
"How could he, child, when there is no one for him to recognize?
Recollect that in coming to, the man has taken up the thread of his life
of eighteen or twenty years ago. I would not trust him to see Phoebe at
this point. Only the faces of strangers are safe for him for the time
being."
"And the stranger never came back who inquired about him that day?"
"No. I told him two weeks would be safer. There is no doubt the man was
a personage of some sort. His companion said, 'Yes, Excellency,' as they
went down the path. I suppose he's got some kind of a title."
"Did he seem excited?" asked Billie.
"I could hardly say excited. He appeared a good deal moved by the story
of Phoebe and her father. He asked me if any money was needed."
"Of course you said 'no'?" observed Billie.
"I did. It's my turn now. His turn may come later. I explained to him
that any excitement or sudden recognition immediately after the
operation might prove fatal or disastrous, and he took himself off. But
I consider that Phoebe's father is practically identified."
"Is he conscious?" asked Billie with subdued excitement.
"Not only conscious, but, my dear child, what do you think? Speaking
German; not English."
Billie gasped.
"That's why you wanted Alberdina."
"Yes, I needed someone who could speak with him, and a servant would be
excellent; better, really, than an educated German. Just now the man's
mind is in terrible confusion. He is back in another country somewhere,
but he is holding his own, and if he can get over the shock which must
come when he links his past with his present, I believe we need have no
fear for his reason; but it will be a pretty ticklish moment."
The doctor looked down into Billie's eager, earnest face, and his eyes
were filled with admiration.
"Oh, doctor," she exclaimed, "you are so wonderful. Next to Papa, the
most wonderful man I have ever met. Richard and I----"
"What!" interrupted the doctor, smiling, "do you mean to say that that
young whipper snapper, with his Gypsy notions and his clever tongue, has
already photographed himself on your mind? I should never have bathed
and bound his wounds if I had guessed it."
"You know you would," laughed Billie, blushing a little. "But he's only
a comrade."
The doctor looked into her eyes again.
"That's what they all should be, Miss Billie," he said. "Comrades. And
if I were only fifteen years younger, I should be looking for just such
a comrade as you."
"But I am your comrade," protested the young girl. "Just as much as
Richard's. I'm proud to be. It's the greatest honor that's ever been
paid to me."
"Oh, to be young again," sighed the doctor with a humorous lift to his
eyebrows. "Oh, to be young, like young Richard, there. But I must
remember that I am a very busy middle-aged person with an extremely
interesting patient to pull through. I trust he'll thank me for the
job."
"Don't you honestly believe he is some distinguished person?"
"I couldn't say, little comrade, but I could guess that he's no ordinary
one."
They had reached the cabin now. The others had come up, and they all
stood outside talking in low voices. After a brief word with Alberdina,
Dr. Hume conducted her into the little room where the Motor Maids and
their friends had once found refuge. From the doorway, Billie could see
the silver candlesticks on the mantel shelf. Mrs. Lupo had kept them
brightly polished and they lent a strange charm and refinement to the
bare apartment. Phoebe crept in and knelt outside her father's door.
"Now, Alberdina," said the doctor as a last caution, "you understand
that you are not to speak unless the gentleman inside asks you a
question in German. Answer him in three words if you can. Then come out
quietly. If he calls, you may go back."
Alberdina laid aside her comedy hat and followed the doctor into the
sick room. The others gathered noiselessly outside the window and
listened. There was a long silence. Then the man on the bed spoke in a
low, weak voice. It was only a mumble of sounds to Billie and Richard,
but Mr. Campbell understood German and listened intently.
Alberdina replied not in three words but in a long voluble speech.
They held their breath.
"Come out," called the doctor softly.
The sick man had begun to speak again. He seemed to be giving orders.
At the door Phoebe was weeping softly. Her father, restored to himself,
was a stranger who spoke in a foreign tongue. Billie was fairly shaking
with excitement.
"Do you suppose he's forgotten English?" she whispered to Richard, who
made the most absurd reply that had nothing whatever to do with Phoebe's
father and lost memories.
"I think the doctor had better take you in hand," said Billie.
"I have an incurable disease," answered the young man, not in the least
ashamed.
Mr. Campbell had joined the doctor and Alberdina at the other end of
the house where their voices could not be heard in the sick room. The
young surgeons were also in the group. When Billie and Richard came up,
the German girl was saying:
"I cannot from the German English mag. He is a German already yet?"
"Of course," answered the doctor impatiently, "but what did he ask you?"
Alberdina broke into German.
"No, no. In English."
"He very sig yet ees----"
The doctor gave poor Alberdina a withering glance.
"I think I can tell you most of the conversation, Doctor," put in Mr.
Campbell. "The patient asked Alberdina if she were one of the maids at
the palace. She answered at great length that she was laundress at
Sunrise Camp. 'This was not a palace,' she explained, 'but a hut.'
"'I have been in an accident?'" the sick man asked, as Mr. Campbell
translated it.
"When Alberdina acquiesced, he told her to call Franz or Karl.
"Seeing her shake her head, he said:
"'The Baron von Metz is here?'
"'No,' answered Alberdina.
"'None of the household?'"
Then he gave her orders to telegraph the Baron von Metz at an address in
Dresden and sign it A. J. Mr. Campbell had failed to catch the telegram,
although he distinctly heard the second telegram to a "Miss Phoebe
Jones," at an address in England. It said she was not to worry. He had
been detained by illness. Twice he made the blundering maid repeat the
telegram, and finally exhausted with the mental effort, dropped into
unconsciousness.
Was it not strange and terrible to take up the thread of one's life
where it had been so ruthlessly snapped off some two decades ago?
Richard and Billie, seated on a rock out of hearing distance of the
cabin, discussed the anomaly together.
"It's like Rip Van Winkle," Billie observed, "only worse because there
have been so many inventions."
"Yes, there are motor cars, for instance. They were only on trial then;
and flying machines."
"And hobble skirts," added Billie with an inward laugh, remembering
Nancy's.
"It's very interesting," said Richard, "a good deal like missing the
middle act of a drama."
"Don't you imagine that Phoebe's father belonged to a noble family?
Perhaps he was a younger son, and fell in love with a pretty English
girl named Phoebe Jones. They eloped to America and hid themselves in
the mountains, and the old Archduke or Prince or Baron who was the
father perhaps gave it out that his son was insane. They always do that,
you know."
"Very romantic," said Richard, "but why has he been speaking only
English all these years?"
"Don't ask me anything so scientific, please."
"It would go hard with me," pursued Richard, "if I got a blow on the
head over my English-language bump, because I wouldn't have any other to
take its place."
Having arranged the history of the sick man to their own satisfaction,
and as a matter of fact, to the doctor's and Mr. Campbell's also, they
returned to Sunrise Camp, leaving Alberdina and Phoebe behind them.
Poor Phoebe had watched Billie and Richard together from the doorstep of
the cabin. Then she had folded her hands with a gesture of resignation
and closed her eyes. Something had hurt her. She still felt the pain and
not all her faith nor prayers could ease it.
That night the campers gathered around the fire and discussed the
mystery of the "Prince in Exile," as they had named Phoebe's father.
They told stories of similar cases, of men with double identities who
had been lost for years, of men who had made new lives for themselves
and even earned fortunes.
"I knew he was a prince the first time I saw him," Mary exclaimed.
"And now Phoebe will be a princess and perhaps very rich," observed
Elinor.
"Think of stepping from a cabin to a palace," went on Amy Swinnerton.
"From being a barefooted girl selling blackberries on the mountain to
being a noble lady with a retinue of servants."
And so they all talked and discussed and enjoyed themselves immensely
until a motor horn interrupted them. A car had evidently stopped in
front and someone now hurried over to the group around the fire.
"Well, children," called Dr. Hume, "I daresay you'll be interested in
the news I am bringing you."
"Wasn't I right?" cried Billie.
"He was a prince?"
"Or a duke, perhaps?"
"Even a baron is pretty good."
There was a long pause.
"You are wonderful guessers," said the doctor. "He lived in a palace."
"I knew it," cried Mary.
"Would it disappoint you very much if I were to tell you that the
gentleman without a memory who lived in a palace was not a prince, nor a
duke, nor a baron, but at one time a clergyman?"
"Oh!" they exclaimed in varying tones of surprise and disappointment.
"Then how the palace?" asked Maggie Hook.
"The Rev. Archibald Jones, a highly educated English gentleman of no
means to speak of, was tutor in a noble family in Germany."
"But his wife? She was a princess?" cried Mary, almost weeping.
"Every woman is a princess, my dear young lady," replied the gallant
doctor.
"But a real one, Doctor? One who lived in a palace?"
"She lived in the palace, yes. She was attached to the household as
English governess. The tutor and the governess met, as well they might
even in a grand castle, and being in the same boat as regards teaching
and birth, they fell in love. The lady was very beautiful, I
understand."
"And then?" demanded the chorus.
"Then they came to America where the field was larger even than in a
palace with the _noblesse_. The young wife fell sick and the young
husband, having saved a bit of money, brought her up into the mountains.
The night Phoebe was born he tried to take a short cut down the
mountainside to get a doctor who was stopping at a hotel now in
ruins----"
Percy bowed his head.
"I recognize the spot," he said.
"And the young tutor husband not of the nobility fell and hit his head
against a rock. He was brought back insensible by an old Indian
grandfather of Mrs. Lupo. The beautiful young wife only lived a few
days, and when the father was better and the baby stronger the Indian
took them and their belongings across the valley to Indian Head, where
they have lived ever since."
"Poor things," exclaimed Miss Campbell. "What a pitiful, sad story!"
"And the wife's name was Phoebe Jones?" asked Billie.
"Wrong again," replied the doctor. "Would you have a Jones marry a
Jones?"
"Then who, pray, was Miss Phoebe Jones?"
"Aunt of the Rev. Archibald. For some reason he remembered the name and
I suppose gave it to the child."
"Then who was the German gentleman who recognized Phoebe?"
"Now you are getting down to real romance," replied the doctor.
"He was the young noble for whom the Rev. Archibald acted as tutor."
Here the doctor spoke slowly and impressively. "He loved the English
governess and when she married the poor tutor, his noble heart was
broken and never has been mended."
"And he never married another?" piped up Mary's small voice.
"Oh yes, my dear. The nobility always marries. Singleness is against the
rules. He married and has a family of six."
"And is that the end of the story?" asked Billie.
"No, there is a sequel. It seems that when the Rev. and Mrs. Archibald
Jones disappeared from the stage of life without explanation only one
person, after a decade or more, still clung to the belief that they were
not dead. None other than Miss Phoebe Jones herself, spinster, living in
Surrey, England. She recently died leaving her property to her nephew,
his wife or possible heirs. It seems that the gentlemen who just now
dropped me at your door----"
"The disappointed lover?"
"Yes. The broken-hearted noble with a wife and six children, knew about
this will because the lawyers in trying to trace Mr. Jones and his wife
had got into communication with him."
"And so they won't be poor," said Nancy. "I'm glad of that. Phoebe
looked beautiful in good clothes."
Everybody laughed, and then the doctor remarked:
"And so the story has a plain ending, after all. Phoebe is not a
princess and you are all disappointed."
"No, no, no," they protested, but the doctor knew better.