The day of warmth and song and dance changed to a cool evening. There was
a glowing sunset which faded into a clear, starry night.
Dick Travers, encased in a heavy sweater, lingered, after the light
failed, on the broad piazza facing the still purpled sky, and looked out
toward the Georgian Bay, which was hidden from sight by the ridge of hill
through which the Fox and Secret Portages cut. The mood of the afternoon
had fallen, as had the day, into calmness and restfulness. The fiddle,
which was never far from Travers, lay now beside him on the deep porch
swing, and every few moments he took it up and began an air that broke
off almost at once, either to run into another, or into silence.
"Choppy," muttered Doctor Ledyard as he sat across the hearth from his
hostess and looked now at her fair, tranquil face and then at the
cheerful fire of hemlock boughs.
"He's always happiest when he's--choppy." Helen Travers smiled. "I wonder
why I take your words as I take your pills, without question?"
"You know what's good for you."
"And so you really think there is no doubt about Dick? He can enter
college this fall?"
"As sure as any man can be. He'll always be a trifle lame probably,
though that will be less noticeable when he learns to forget the cane and
crutch periods; as for his health--it's ripping, for him!"
"How wonderful you have been; what a miracle you have performed. When I
recall----"
"Don't, Helen! It's poor business retracing a hard road unless you go
back to pick something up."
"That's why--I must go back. Doctor Ledyard, I must tell you something!
Now that Dick's semi-exile and mine are to end in the common highway, he
and--you must know why I have done many things--will you listen?"
From under Ledyard's shaggy brows his keen eyes flashed. There had been
a time when he had hoped Helen Travers would love him; he had loved
her since her husband's death, but he had never spoken, for he knew
intuitively that to do so would be to risk the only thing of which he
was, then, sure--her trusting friendship. He had not dared put that to
the test even for the greater hope. That was why he had been able to
share her lonely life in the Canadian wilds--she had never been disturbed
by a doubt of him. And this comradeship, safe and assured, was the one
luxury he permitted himself in a world where he was looked upon as a
hard, an almost cruel, man.
"I do not want you to tell anything in order to explain your actions
now, or ever. I am confident that under all circumstances you would act
wisely. You are the most normal woman I ever knew."
"Thank you. But I still must speak--more for Dick than for you. I need
your help for him."
Outside, the fiddle was repeating again and again a nocturne that Helen
particularly loved.
"Dick is not--my son!" she said quickly and softly from out the shadows.
She was rarely abrupt, and her words startled Ledyard into alertness. He
got up and drew his chair close to hers.
"What did you say?" he whispered, keeping his eyes upon her lowered face.
"I said--Dick is not my son."
"And--whose is he--may I ask?"
There was a tenseness in the question. Now that he saw the gravity of the
confession Ledyard wished beyond all else to cut quick and deep and then
bind up the wound.
"He is the child of--my husband, and--another woman."
In the hush that followed, Dick's fiddle, running now through a delicious
strain of melody, seemed like a current bearing them on.
"Perhaps you had better--tell me," Ledyard was saying, and his words
blended strangely with the tune. "Yes, I am sure you ought to tell me."
Helen Travers, sitting in her low wicker chair, did not move. Her
delicate face was resting on the tips of her clasped hands, and her long,
loose, white gown seemed to gather and hold the red glow of the fire.
"I suppose I have done Dick a bitter wrong, but at first, you know, even
you thought he could not live and so it would not have mattered, and then
I--I learned to love the helpless little chap as women of my sort do who
have to make their own lives as best they may. He clung to me so
desparately, and, you see, as he grew older I either had to accept his
belief in me or--or--take his father from him. They were such close
friends, Dick's father and he! And now--I must lay everything low, and I
am wondering what will come of it all. He is such a strange fellow; our
life apart has left him--well, so different! How will he take it?"
Whatever her own personal sorrow was, Helen Travers made no moan, exacted
no sympathy. She had come alone to the parting of the ways, and she had
thought only for the boy whom she had mothered tenderly and successfully.
Ledyard did not interrupt the gentle flow of her thoughts. There was
time; he would not startle or hurry her, although her first statement had
shocked and surprised him beyond measure.
"I've always thought of myself as like one of those poor Asiatic
hornbills," she was saying. "It seems to me that all my life long some
one has walled me up in a nice, safe nest and fed me through my longings
and desires. I cannot get to life first hand. I'm not stupid exactly, but
I am terribly limited." Helen paused, then went on more rapidly: "First
it was my father. He and I travelled after mother's death continually,
and alone. He educated me and interpreted life for me; he was a man of
the world, I suppose, but he managed to keep me most unworldly wise. Of
course I knew, abstractly, the lights and shadows; but I wonder if you
will believe me when I tell you that, until after my marriage, I never
suspected that--that certain codes of honour and dishonour had place in
the lives of those closest to me? The evil of the world was classified
and pigeon-holed for me. I even had ambition to get out of my walled-up
condition and help some mystical people, detached and far from my safe,
clean corner. Father left me more money than was good for any young
woman, and my simple impulse was to use it properly."
"You were very young?" Ledyard interrupted.
Helen Travers shook her head.
"Not very. I was twenty-four when I married. I had never had but one
intimate friend in my life, and to her I went at my father's death. It
was her brother I married--John Travers."
Ledyard nodded his head; he knew of the Traverses--the older generation.
"This thing concerning Dick occurred some three or four years before my
marriage. My wedding was a very quiet one; it was not reported, and that
accounted for Dick's mother--Elizabeth Thornton--not knowing of it.
"It seems that there had been an alliance between John Travers and--and
Dick's mother, and it had been terminated some time before he met me, by
mutual consent. There was the child--Dick. The mother took him. There was
no question of money: there was enough for them, but she had told John
that should anything arise, such as illness or disaster, she would call
upon him. They had sworn that to each other.
"Well, my own baby came a year after my marriage and died a month later.
When I was least able to bear the shock, the call came from Elizabeth
Thornton. John had to tell me. I shall never forget his face as he did
it. I realized that his chief concern was for me, and even in all the
wreck and ruin I could but honour him for his bravery and sincerity. I
think he believed I would understand, but I never did; I never shall. The
shock was more surprise than moral resentment. I could not believe at
first that such a thing could possibly happen to--one of my own. I felt
as if a plague had fallen upon me, and I shrank from every eye, from
every touch with the world.
"Doctor Ledyard, you can understand, I hope, but John Travers was not a
bad man, and that girl, Dick's mother, was good. Yes; that's the only
word to use, strange as it seems to me even after all these years. You
see, she was not a hornbill. She came in touch with life at first hand;
she took from life what she wanted; she had, what were to me, unheard-of
ideas about love and the free gift of self, and yet she never meant to
hurt any one; and she had kept herself, amid all the confusion, the
gentlest and sweetest of souls.
"When she sent for John she was dying and she did not know what to do
about the boy. She had no family--no near friend.
"I went with my husband to see her. There did not seem to be anything
else to do. I had no feeling; it was plain duty. Even with the touch of
death upon her, Elizabeth Thornton was the most beautiful woman I have
ever seen. I cannot describe the sensation she made upon me; but she was
like an innocent, pure child who had played with harmful and soiled toys
but had come wearily to the day's end, herself unsullied.
"When she knew about me she was broken-hearted. She wept and called to
little Dick, who sat in a small chair by her couch:
"'Oh! little son, we could have managed, couldn't we? We would not have
hurt any one for the world, would we, sonny?' And the boy got up and
soothed her as a man might have done, and he was only a little creature.
I think I loved him from the moment I saw him shielding that poor, dying
mother from her own folly. 'Course, mummy, course!' he repeated over and
again. Then he looked at me with the eyes of my own dead baby. Both
children were startlingly like the father. The look pleaded for mercy
from me to them--John, the mother, and the little fellow himself. And I,
who had vaguely meant to help the world some day, began--with them! Just
for a little time after Elizabeth Thornton's death I became human, or
perhaps inhuman. I resented the wrong that had been done me; I wanted to
fling John and the child away from me; but then a sense of power rallied
me. I had never tasted it before. I could cast the helpless pair from me,
or--I could save them from the world and the world's hideous pity for me.
I accepted the burden laid upon me. I think John thought I would forget,
would forgive. I cannot explain--my sort of woman is never understood
by--well, John's sort of man. I am afraid he grew to have a contempt for
me, but I lived on loving them both, but never becoming able to meet
John's hope of me. I knew he was often lonely--I have pitied him
since--but I could not help being what I was.
"I tried, but it was no use. We lived abroad for years, and little Dick
forgot--I am sure he forgot--his mother, and when I felt secure I gave
him all, all the passion and devotion of my life.
"John died abroad; I came home with my crippled boy; came home to--you.
That is all!"
Ledyard bent and laid a handful of boughs upon the fire. The room was
cold and cheerless, and the still, white figure in the chair seemed the
quiet, chill heart of it all. And yet--how she had loved and laboured for
the boy! Was she passionless or had her passion been killed while at
white heat?
"And--and I suppose Dick must know?"
"Yes. Dick must know."
There was no sternness, but there was determination in the strong, even
voice. Then:
"Helen, let me do this for you!"
For a moment the uplifted eyes faltered and fell away from the man's
face. Very faintly the words came:
"God bless you! I could not bear to see--him fail me. If he must--fail,
I cannot see him until--afterward."
The blaze rose higher, and the dark room was a background for that
deathlike form before the hearth.
Ledyard left the room silently, and a moment later Helen Travers heard
his heavy footfall on the porch outside. Presently the erratic violin
playing ceased and there seemed no sound on the face of the earth.
After what seemed hours, Pine, the guide, entered the room to replenish
the fire, and Helen told him he need not light the lamps. After his going
another aching silence followed through which, at last, stole the
consciousness that she was not alone. Some one had come into the room
from a long window opening on the piazza. Helen dared not look, for if it
were Ledyard she would know that things were very bad indeed. Then came
the slightly dragging step that she had learned to be so grateful for
after the helplessness of crippled childhood. Still she did not move, nor
deeply hope. The boy was kind, oh! so tenderly kind, he might only have
come because he must!
The red glow of the fire made the woman's form by the hearth vividly
distinct, and toward that Dick Travers went as if led by a gleam through
a new and strange experience. He knelt by her side and, for a moment,
buried his face against her clasped hands; then he looked up and she saw
only intensified love and trust upon his young face. She waited for him
to speak, her heart was choking her.
"You thought, dear, that I did not know--that I had forgotten? I wonder
if any lonely, burdened little chap could forget--what came before you
lifted the load and taught me to be a--child? Oh! she was so sweet; such
a playfellow. I realize it now even though she has faded into something
like a shadowy dream. But I recall, too, the loneliness; the fear that
she might leave me alone with no one to care for me. I can remember her
fear, too; always the fear that one of us might leave the other alone.
The recollection will always stand out in my memory. I shall never forget
her nor her sweetness. Afterward you came and my father. Only lately have
I understood all of--that part of my life and yours--but I knew he was my
father, and I wondered about you, because I could _not_ forget--my
mother!
"I learned to love you out of my great need and out of yours, too, I
realize now, and slowly, far too early, I saw that the happiest thing I
could do for you, who had given me so much, was to seem to forget and
rest only on one thought--you were my mother! Can I make you understand,
mother, what you are in my life--to-night?"
He kissed the cold hands clutching his hot ones, and with that touch the
barrier broke down forever between them. Travers took her in his arms,
but she did not burden his young strength as the earlier mother had done.
Even in her abandon, they supported each other bravely.
* * * * *
The days that followed were busy ones. Dick's tutor came from New York,
plans were laid, and there was small opportunity, just then, for the
red-rock shrine.
"You see," Dick said to Ledyard one afternoon, "I've never voiced it
before--it seemed presumptuous--but now that I'm going to have the life
of a fellow, I can choose a fellow's career. I want, more than anything
else, to be a physician."
Ledyard's eyes flashed, but he lowered his lids.
"It's a devil of a life, boy."
"I think it's the finest of all."
"No hours you can call your own; never daring to ask for the common
things a man cares for. You see, women are mostly too jealous and small
to understand a doctor's demands. They usually raise hell sooner or
later. I had a friend whose wife used to look through the keyhole of his
consulting-room door. A patient tripped over her once and it nearly cost
my friend his practice. Doctors are only half human anyway, and women
can't go halves with their husbands."
Dick laughed.
"Between a wife and a profession," he said, "give me the profession."
"Besides," Ledyard went on; "you get toughened and brutal; most of us
drink, when we don't do something worse."
"You don't."
"How do you know?"
"I do know, and I'm sure you wouldn't let any one else say that about
your associates; they're the noblest ever and you know it!"
"Well, we're bound and gagged, and that's a fact. We're not given much
leeway. We are led up to a case and forced to carry out the rules. While
we're doctors we can't be men."
Dick recalled that years later with a bitter sense of its truth!
"All the same, if the profession will have me, I'll have it and thank
God. When I think of--well, of the little cuss I was, and of you--why,
I tell you, I cannot get too soon into harness. I'd like to specialize,
too. I've even gone so far as that."
"Good Lord! In what?"
"Oh, women and children, principally--putting them straight and strong,
you know."
"Umph," grunted Ledyard. "Well, at the first you'll probably be thankful
to get any old case that needs tinkering."
Dick Travers did not see Priscilla again that summer. After a while he
went to the rocks, and once he laid sacrilegious hands on the strange god
with a longing to smash the hideous skull, but in the end he left it and,
after a time, forgot the girl he had played for, even forgot the
fantastic dance, for his thoughts were of sterner stuff.
There were guests at the Hill Place, too, for the first time that year,
and some entertainment. There were fishing, and in due season, hunting,
at which Ledyard excelled, and the family returned to the States earlier
than usual, owing to Dick's affairs.