Miss Felicia kept her promise to Ruth. Before that young woman, indeed,
tired out with anxiety, had opened her beautiful eyes the next morning
and pushed back her beautiful hair from her beautiful face--and it was
still beautiful, despite all the storms it had met and weathered, the
energetic, old lady had presented herself at the front door of Mrs.
Hicks's Boarding Hotel (it was but a step from MacFarlane's) and had
sent her name to the young man in the third floor back.
A stout person, with a head of adjustable hair held in place by a
band of black velvet skewered by a gold pin, the whole surmounted by a
flaring mob-cap of various hues and dyes, looked Miss Felicia all over
and replied in a dubious tone:
“He's had a bad mash-up, and I don't think--”
“I am quite aware of it, my dear madam, or I would not be here. Now,
please show me the way to Mr. Breen's room--my brother was here last
night and--”
“Oh, the bald-headed gentleman?” exclaimed Mrs. Hicks. “Such a dear,
kind man; and it was as much as I could do to get him to bed and he a--”
But Miss Felicia was already inside the sitting-room, her critical eyes
noting its bare, forbidding furnishing and appointment--she had not
yet let down her skirts, the floor not being inviting. As each article
passed in review--the unsteady rocking-chairs upholstered in haircloth
and protected by stringy tidies, the disconsolate, almost bottomless
lounge, fly-specked brass clock and mantel ornaments, she could not
but recall the palatial entrance, drawing-room, and boudoir into which
Parkins had ushered her on that memorable afternoon when she had paid
a visit to Mrs. Arthur Breen--(her “last visit” the old lady would
say with a sly grimace at Holker, who had never forgiven “that pirate,
Breen,” for robbing Gilbert of his house).
“And this is what this idiot has got in exchange,” she said to herself
as she peered into the dining-room beyond, with its bespattered
table-cloth flanked by cheap china plates and ivory napkin rings--the
castors mounting guard at either end.
The entrance of the lady with the transferable hair cut short her
revery.
“Mr. Breen says come up, ma'am,” she said in a subdued voice. It was
astonishing how little time it took for Miss Felicia's personality to
have its effect.
Up the uncarpeted stairs marched the great lady, down an equally bare
hall lined on either side by bedroom doors, some marked by unblacked
shoes others by tin trays holding fragments of late or early breakfasts,
the flaring cap obsequiously pointing the way until the two had reached
a door at the end of the corridor.
“Now I won't bother you any more,” said Miss Felicia. “Thank you very
much. Are you in here Mr. Breen?” she called in a cheery voice as
she pushed open the door, and advanced to his bedside:--“Oh, you poor
fellow! Oh, I AM so sorry!”
The boy lay on a cot-bed pushed close to the wall. His face was like
chalk; his eyes deep set in his head; his scalp one criss-cross of
bandages, and his right hand and wrist a misshapen lump of cotton
wadding and splints.
“No, don't move. Why, you did not look as bad as this yesterday,” she
added in sympathetic tones, patting his free hand with her own,
her glance wandering over the cramped little room with its meagre
appointments.
Jack smiled faintly and a light gleamed in his eyes. The memory of
yesterday evidently brought no regrets.
“I dared not look any other way,” he answered faintly; “I was so afraid
of alarming Miss Ruth.” Then after a pause in which the smile and
the gleam flickered over his pain-tortured face, he added in a more
determined voice: “I am glad I went, though the doctor was furious. He
says it was the worst thing I could have done--and thought I ought to
have had sense enough to--But don't let's talk any more about it, Miss
Felicia. It was so good of you to come. Mr. Grayson has just left. You'd
think he was a woman, he is so gentle and tender. But I'll be around in
a day or two, and as soon as I can get on my feet and look less like a
scarecrow than I do, I am coming over to see you and Miss Ruth and--yes,
and UNCLE PETER--” Miss Felicia arched her eyebrows: “Oh, you needn't
look!--that's what I am going to call him after this; we settled all
that last night.”
A smile overspread Miss Felicia's face. “Uncle Peter, is it? And I
suppose you will be calling me Aunt Felicia next?”
Jack turned his eyes: “That was just what I was trying to screw up my
courage to do. Please let me, won't you?” Again Miss Felicia lifted her
eyebrows, but she did not say she would.
“And Ruth--what do you intend to call that young lady? Of course,
without her permission, as that seems to be the fashion.” And the old
lady's eyes danced in restrained merriment.
The sufferer's face became suddenly grave; for an instant he did not
answer, then he said slowly:
“But what can I call her except Miss Ruth?”
Miss Felicia laughed. Nothing was so delicious as a love affair which
she could see into. This boy's heart was an open book. Besides, this
kind of talk would take his mind from his miseries.
“Oh, but I am not so sure of that,” she rejoined, in an encouraging
tone.
A light broke out in Jack's eyes: “You mean that she WOULD let me call
her--call her Ruth?”
“I don't mean anything of the kind, you foolish fellow. You have got to
ask her yourself; but there's no telling what she would not do for you
now, she's so grateful to you for saving her father's life.”
“But I did not,” he exclaimed, an expression as of acute pain crossing
his brows. “I only helped him along. But she must not be grateful. I
don't like the word. Gratitude hasn't got anything to do with--” he did
not finish the sentence.
“But you DID save his life, and you know it, and I just love you for
it,” she insisted, ignoring his criticism as she again smoothed his
hand. “You did a fine, noble act, and I am proud of you and I came to
tell you so.” Then she added suddenly: “You received my message last
night, didn't you? Now, don't tell me that that good-for-nothing Peter
forgot it.”
“No, he gave it to me, and it was so kind of you.”
“Well, then I forgive him. And now,” here she made a little salaam with
both her hands--“now you have Ruth's message.”
“I have what?” he asked in astonishment.
“Ruth's message.” She still kept her face straight although her lips
quivered with merriment.
Jack tried to lift his head: “What is her message?” he asked with
expectant eyes--perhaps she had sent him a letter!
Miss Felicia tapped her bosom with her forefinger.
“ME!” she cried, “I am her message. She was so worried last night when
she found out how ill you were that I promised her to come and comfort
you; that is why it is ME. And now, don't you think you ought to get
down on your knees and thank her? Why, you don't seem a bit pleased!”
“And she sent you to me--because--because--she was GRATEFUL that I saved
her father's life?” he asked in a bewildered tone.
“Of course--why shouldn't she be; is there anything else you can give
her she would value as much as her father's life, you conceited young
Jackanapes?”
She had the pin through the butterfly now and was watching it squirm;
not maliciously--she was never malicious. He would get over the prick,
she knew. It might help him in the end, really.
“No, I suppose not,” he replied simply, as he sank back on his pillow
and turned his bruised face toward the wall.
For some moments he lay in deep thought. The last half-hour in the arbor
under the palms came back to him; the tones of Ruth's voice; the casual
way in which she returned his devouring glance. She didn't love him;
never had loved him; wouldn't ever love him. Anybody could carry
another fellow out on his back; was done every day by firemen and
life-savers,--everybody, in fact, who happened to be around when their
services were most needed. Grateful! Of course the rescued people and
their friends were grateful until they forgot all about it, as they were
sure to do the next day, or week, or month. Gratitude was not what he
wanted. It was love. That was the way he felt; that was the way he would
always feel. He who loved every hair on Ruth's beautiful head, loved her
wonderful hands, loved her darling feet, loved the very ground on which
she walked “Gratitude!” eh! That was the word his uncle had used the
day he slammed the door of his private office in his face. “Common
gratitude, damn you, Jack, ought to put more sense in your head,” as
though one ought to have been “grateful” for a seat at a gambling
table and two rooms in a house supported by its profits. Garry had said
“gratitude,” too, and so had Corinne, and all the rest of them. Peter
had never talked gratitude; dear Peter, who had done more for him than
anybody in the world except his own father. Peter wanted his love if he
wanted anything, and that was what he was going to give him--big, broad,
all-absorbing LOVE. And he did love him. Even his wrinkled hands, so
soft and white, and his glistening head, and his dabs of gray whiskers,
and his sweet, firm, human mouth were precious to him. Peter--his
friend, his father, his comrade! Could he ever insult him by such a
mean, cowardly feeling as gratitude? And was the woman he loved as he
loved nothing else in life--was she--was Ruth going to belittle their
relations with the same substitute? It was a big pin, that which Miss
Felicia had impaled him on, and it is no wonder the poor fluttering
wings were nigh exhausted in the struggle!
Relief came at last.
“And now what shall I tell her?” asked Miss Felicia. “She worries more
over you than she does over her father; she can get hold of him any
minute, but you won't be presentable for a week. Come, what shall I tell
her?”
Jack shifted his shoulders so that he could move the easier and with
less pain, and raised himself on his well elbow. There was no use of his
hoping any more; she had evidently sent Miss Felicia to end the matter
with one of her polite phrases,--a weapon which she, of all women, knew
so well how to use.
“Give Miss Ruth my kindest regards,” he said in a low voice, still husky
from the effects of the smoke and the strain of the last half-hour--“and
say how thankful I am for her gratitude, and--No,--don't tell her
anything of the kind. I don't know what you are to tell her.” The words
seemed to die in his throat.
“But she will ask me, and I have got to say something. Come,--out with
it.” Her eyes were still on his face; not a beat of his wings or a
squirm of his body had she missed.
“Well just say how glad I am she is at home again and that her father
is getting on so well, and tell her I will be up and around in a day
or two, and that I am not a bit worse off for going to the station
yesterday.”
“Anything else?”
“No,--unless you can think of something.”
“And if I do shall I add it?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,--then I know exactly what to do,--it will be something like this:
'Please, Ruth, take care of your precious self, and don't be worried
about me or anything else, and remember that every minute I am away from
you is misery, for I love you to distraction and--'”
“Oh, Miss Felicia!”
“No--none of your protests, sir!” she laughed. “That is just what I
am going to tell her. And now don't you dare to move till Peter comes
back,” and with a toss of her aristocratic head the dear lady left the
room, closing the door behind her.
And so our poor butterfly was left flat against the wall--all his
flights ended. No more roaming over honeysuckles, drinking in the honey
of Ruth's talk; no more soaring up into the blue, the sunshine of hope
dazzling his wings. It made no difference what Miss Felicia might say
to Ruth. It was what she had said to HIM which made him realize the
absurdity of all his hopes. Everything that he had longed for, worked
for, dreamed about, was over now--the long walks in the garden, her dear
hand in his, even the song of the choir boys, and the burst of joyous
music as they passed out of the church door only to enter their own for
life. All this was gone--never to return--never had existed, in fact,
except in his own wild imagination. And once more the disheartened boy
turned his tired pain-racked face toward the bare wall.
Miss Felicia tripped downstairs with an untroubled air, extended two
fingers to Mrs. Hicks, and without more ado passed out into the morning
air. No thought of the torment she had inflicted affected the dear
woman. What were pins made for except to curb the ambitious wings of
flighty young men who were soaring higher than was good for them. She
would let him know that Ruth was a prize not to be too easily won,
especially by penniless young gentlemen, however brave and heroic they
might be.
Hardly had she crossed the dreary village street encumbered with piles
of half-melted snow and mud, than she espied Peter picking his way
toward her, his silk hat brushed to a turn, his gray surtout buttoned
close, showing but the edge of his white silk muffler, his carefully
rolled umbrella serving as a divining rod the better to detect the
water holes. No one who met him and looked into his fresh, rosy face,
or caught the merry twinkle of his eyes, would ever have supposed he had
been pouring liniment over broken arms and bandaged fingers until
two o'clock in the morning of the night before. It had only been when
Bolton's sister had discovered an empty “cell,” as Jack called the
bedroom next to his, that he had abandoned his intention of camping out
on Jack's disheartened lounge, and had retired like a gentleman carrying
with him all his toilet articles, ready to be set out in the morning.
Long before that time he had captured everybody in the place: from Mrs.
Hicks, who never dreamed that such a well of tenderness over suffering
could exist in an old fellow's heart, down to the freckled-faced boy who
came for his muddy shoes and who, after a moment's talk with Peter as to
how they should be polished, retired later in the firm belief that they
belonged to “a gent way up in G,” as he expressed it, he never having
waited on “the likes of him before.” As to Bolton, he thought he was
the “best ever,” and as to his prim, patient sister who had closed her
school to be near her brother--she declared to Mrs. Hicks five minutes
after she had laid her eyes on him, that Mr. Breen's uncle was “just too
dear for anything,”--to which the lady with the movable hair and mob-cap
not only agreed, but added the remark of her own, “that folks like him
was a sight better than the kind she was a-gettin'.”
All these happenings of the night and early hours of this bright,
beautiful morning--and it was bright and sunny overhead despite the old
fellow's precautionary umbrella--had helped turn out the spick and span
gentleman who was now making his way carefully over the unpaved road
which stood for Corklesville's principal street.
Miss Felicia saw him first.
“Oh! there you are!” she cried before he could raise his eyes. “Did you
ever see anything so disgraceful as this crossing--not a plank--nothing.
No--get out of my way, Peter; you will just upset me, and I would rather
help myself.”
In reply Peter, promptly ignoring her protest, stepped in front of her,
poked into several fraudulent solidities covering unfathomable depths,
found one hard enough to bear the weight of Miss Felicia's dainty
shoe--it was about as long as a baby's hand--and holding out his own
said, in his most courtly manner:
“Be very careful now, my dear: put your foot on mine; so! now give me
your hand and jump. There--that's it.” To see Peter help a lady across
a muddy street, Holker Morris always said, was a lesson in all the finer
virtues. Sir Walter was a bungler beside him. But then Miss Felicia
could also have passed muster as the gay gallant's companion.
And just here the Scribe remarks, parenthetically, that there is nothing
that shows a woman's refinement more clearly than the way she crosses a
street.
Miss Felicia, for instance, would no more have soiled the toes of her
shoes in a puddle than a milk-white pussy would have dampened its feet
in the splash of an overturned bowl: a calm survey up and down; a taking
in of the dry and wet spots; a careful gathering up of her skirts,
and over skimmed the slender, willowy old lady with a one--two--and
three--followed by a stamp of her absurd feet and the shaking out of
ruffle and pleat. When a woman strides through mud without a shiver
because she has plenty of dry shoes and good ones at home, there are
other parts of her make-up, inside and out, that may want a looking
after.
Miss Felicia safely landed on the dry and comparatively clean sidewalk,
Peter put the question he had been framing in his mind since he first
caught sight of that lady picking her way among the puddles.
“Well, how is he now?”
“His head, or his heart?” she asked with a knowing smile, dropping her
still spotless skirts. “Both are broken; the last into smithereens. It
is hopeless. He will never be any better. Oh, Peter, what a mess you
have made of things!”
“What have I done?” he laughed.
“Got these two people dead in love with each other,--both of them--Ruth
is just as bad--and no more chance of their ever being married than you
or I. Perfectly silly, Peter, and I have always told you so--and now you
will have to take the consequences.”
“Beautiful--beautiful!” chuckled Peter; “everything is coming my way. I
was sure of Jack, for he told me so, but Ruth puzzled me. Did she tell
you she loved him?”
“No, stupid, of course she did not. But have I not a pair of eyes in my
head? What do you suppose I got up for this morning at such an unearthly
hour and went over to--Oh, such an awful place!--to see that idiot? Just
to tell him I was sorry? Not a bit of it! I went to find out what was
going on, and now I know; and what is to become of it all nobody can
tell. Here is her father with every penny he has in the world in this
work--so Holker tells me--and here are a lot of damages for dead men and
Heaven knows what else; and there is Jack Breen with not a penny to his
name except his month's wages; and here is Ruth who can marry anybody
she chooses, bewitched by that boy--and I grant you she has every reason
for he is as brave as he can be, and what is better he is a gentleman.
And there lies Henry MacFarlane blind as a bat as to what is going on!
Oh!--really, Peter, there cannot be anything more absurd.”
During the outbreak Peter stood leaning on his umbrella, a smile playing
over his smooth-shaven face, his eyes snapping as if at some inwardly
suppressed fun. These were the kind of outbursts Peter loved. It was
only when Felicia was about to come over to your way of thinking that
she talked like this. It was her way of hearing the other side.
“Dreadful!--dreadful!” sighed Peter, looking the picture of woe. “Love
in a garret--everybody in rags,--one meal a day--awful situation!
Something's got to be done at once. I'll begin by taking up a collection
this very day. In the meantime, Felicia, I'll just keep on to Jack's and
see how his arm's getting on and his head. As to his heart,--I'll talk
to Ruth and see--”
“Are you crazy, Peter? You will do nothing of the kind. If you do, I
will--”
But Peter, his hat in the air, was now out of hearing. When he reached
the mud line he turned, drew his umbrella as if from an imaginary
scabbard, made a military salute, and, with a suppressed gurgle in his
throat, kept on to Jack's room.
Somehow the sunshine had crept into the old fellow's veins this morning.
None of Miss Felicia's pins for him!
Ruth, from her place by the sitting-room window, had seen the two
talking and had opened the front door, before Miss Felicia's hand
touched the bell. She had already subjected Peter to a running fire
of questions while he was taking his coffee and thus had the latest
intelligence down to the moment when Peter turned low Jack's light and
had tucked him in. He was asleep when Peter had peered into his cramped
room early this morning, and the bulletin therefore could go no further.
“And how is he, aunty?” Ruth asked in a breathless tone before the front
door could be closed.
“Getting on splendidly, my dear. Slept pretty well. It is a dreadful
place for any one to be in, but I suppose he is accustomed to it by this
time.”
“And is he no worse for coming to meet us, Aunt Felicia?” Ruth asked,
her voice betraying her anxiety. She had relieved the old lady of her
cloak now, and had passed one arm around her slender waist.
“No, he doesn't seem to be, dearie. Tired, of course--and it may keep
him in bed a day or two longer, but it won't make any difference in his
getting well. He will be out in a week or so.”
Ruth paused for a moment and then asked in a hesitating way, all her
sympathy in her eyes:
“And I don't suppose there is anybody to look after him, is there?”
“Oh, yes, plenty: Mrs. Hicks seems a kind, motherly person, and then Mr.
Bolton's sister runs in and out.” It was marvellous how little interest
the dear woman took in the condition of the patient. Again the girl
paused. She was sorry now she had not braved everything and gone with
her.
“And did he send me any message, aunty?” This came quite as a matter of
form--merely to learn all the details.
“Oh, yes,--I forgot: he told me to tell you how glad he was to hear your
father was getting well,” replied Miss Felicia searching the mantel for
a book she had placed there.
Ruth bit her lips and a certain dull feeling crept about her heart.
Jack, with his broken arm and bruised head rose before her. Then another
figure supplanted it.
“And what sort of a girl is that Miss Bolton?” There was no
curiosity--merely for information. “Uncle Peter was so full of her
brother and how badly he had been hurt he hardly mentioned her name”
“I did not see her very well; she was just coming out of her brother's
room, and the hall was dark. Oh, here's my book--I knew I had left it
here.”
“Pretty?” continued Ruth, in a slightly anxious tone.
“No,--I should say not,” replied the old lady, moving to the door.
“Then you don't think there is anything I can do?” Ruth called after
her.
“Not now.”
Ruth picked up Miss Felicia's wrap from the chair where that lady had
thrown it, mounted the stairs, peered from between the pots of geraniums
screening a view of the street with the Hicks Hotel dominating one
corner, wondered which window along the desolate front gave Jack light
and air, and with whispered instructions to the nurse to be sure and let
her know when her father awoke, shut herself in her room.
As for the horrible old ogre who had made all the trouble, nipping off
buds, skewering butterflies and otherwise disporting herself after the
manner of busybodies who are eternally and forever poking their thin,
pointed noses into what doesn't concern them, no hot, scalding tears,
the Scribe regrets to say, dimmed her knowing eyes, nor did any unbidden
sigh leap from her old heart. Foolish young people ought to thank her
really for what she had done--what she would still try to do--and they
would when they were a year older.
Poor, meddling Miss Felicia! Have you forgotten that night thirty years
ago when you stood in a darkened room facing a straight, soldierly
looking man, and listened to the slow dropping of words that scalded
your heart like molten metal? Have you forgotten, too, the look on
his handsome face when he uttered his protest at the persistent
intermeddling of another, and the square of his broad shoulders as he
disappeared through the open door never to return again?