"WHICH COMES LIKE A BENEDICTION"
"Tell me exactly what you think, Dr. Barton, please, and don't try to
deceive me," Betty Ashton pleaded. "I want to be told the truth at
once before mother or any one else joins us. Always I shall be
grateful to Rose for suggesting that you come here to me alone and when
no one was expecting you, so that there need be no unnecessary
suspense."
Betty Ashton was seated in a low rocking chair one morning a few days
later, with Dr. Barton standing near and carefully unwrapping the
bandages from about her head. The room was not brightly lighted,
neither was it dark, for a single blind had been drawn up at the window
on the opposite side of the room.
Dr. Barton's face showed lines of anxiety and sympathy. Indeed, Rose
Dyer could hardly have been persuaded to believe how nervous and shaken
he appeared and how, instead of his usual look of hardness and
austerity, he was now as tender and gentle as a woman.
"But my dear Betty," he returned in a more cheerful voice than his
expression indicated, "what I say to you about yourself is by no means
the last word. My opinion, you must remember, is of blessedly little
importance. If there are any scars left by my treatment of your burns,
there are hundreds of wonderful big doctors who can perform miracles
for you. And then time is the eternal healer."
"Yes, I know," the girl answered, "but just the same, please hurry and
let me know what you yourself honestly think. At least, I shall be
able to tell myself whether my eyes are injured, as soon as you let me
try them in a bright light."
For a fraction of a moment Dr. Barton delayed his work. "Won't you
allow me to call your mother, or Miss Dyer or Miss McMurtry? Miss Dyer
is in the house. I happen to have seen her. And it may be better, in
case you do not feel yourself, to have some one else here to care for
you. There is Sylvia. Actually I believe she has been of as much use
to you and Polly O'Neill as your professional nurses."
At this instant, although she had set her lips so close together that
only a pale line showed, Betty's chin quivered, and although her hands
gripped the sides of her chair so hard that her arms ached, her
shoulders shook.
If only Dr. Barton would cease his perfectly futile efforts to distract
her attention. Could any human being think of another subject or
person at a time like this?
And Dr. Barton did recognize the clumsiness of his own efforts, only
his conversation was partly intended to conceal his own anxiety.
"Don't I hear some one coming along the hall? Are you sure you locked
the door?" Betty queried uneasily.
Dr. Barton did not reply. At this instant, although the linen covering
still concealed his patient's eyes, he had removed the upper bandages,
so that now her forehead was plainly revealed to his view.
And Betty Ashton's forehead had always been singularly beautiful in the
past, low and broad with the hair growing in a soft fringe about it and
coming down into a peak in the center. Now, however, across her
forehead there showed a long crimson line, almost like the mark from
the blow of a whip. Dr. Barton examined it closely, touched it gently
with the tips of his fingers and then cleared his throat and attempted
to speak. But apparently the needed words would not come. On either
side the ugly scar the girl's skin was white and fine as delicate silk
and on top of her head, which had been protected by her heavy hair, the
burns had almost completely healed.
"It is all right, Miss Betty," Dr. Barton said in a curiously husky
voice. "You are better than I even dared hope. There is a scar now,
but I can promise you that it will be only a faint line in the future,
or else will disappear altogether. The very fact that the trouble has
concentrated into the one scar shows that the healing has taken place
all about it."
Betty's own hands slipped the final covering from about her eyes. Then
for a moment her heart seemed absolutely to have stopped beating. For
the room swam around her in a kind of disordered dimness. She could
see nothing clearly. In a panic she sprang to her feet, when Dr.
Barton took a firm hold on her shaking shoulders.
"Be quiet, child. Pull yourself together for just a minute. You are
frightened now, you know. In another moment things will clear up and
grow more distinct."
And even before he had finished speaking Betty realized this to be the
blessed truth.
There in the far end of the big room stood her bed and, on a table
near, a bunch of John's pink roses. She could even see their bright
color vividly. In another direction was her dressing table and about
it hung the photographs of Rose, of Miss McMurtry, of the eleven Camp
Fire girls.
Dropping back into her chair Betty, covering her face with her hands,
began to sob. And she cried on without any effort at self-control
until she was limp and exhausted, although all the while her heart was
saying its own special hymn of thanksgiving. And young Dr. Barton kept
patting her upon the shoulder and urging her not to cry, because now
there was nothing to cry about, until Betty would like to have laughed
if the tears had not been bringing her a greater relief. How like a
man not to understand that she could now permit herself the indulgence
of tears, when for the past two weeks she had not dared, fearing that
once having given way there would be no end.
"Would you mind leaving me for a few minutes and trying to find
mother?" Betty at last managed to ask.
She wanted to be alone. But a few seconds after the doctor's
disappearance, Betty got up and with trembling knees managed to cross
her room, feeling dreadfully weak and exhausted from the long suspense.
For she wished to look into a mirror with no one watching. And as
Betty Ashton got the first glimpse of herself, although vanity had
never been one of her weaknesses, she honestly believed that she never
had seen any one look so tragically ugly before in her entire life.
She hardly recognized herself. Her face was white and thin, almost
bloodless except for the scar upon her forehead. Then her hair had
been cut off, and though in some places the curls still remained heavy
and thick, in others she looked like a badly shorn lamb.
And this time the tears crowding Betty's eyes were not of relief but of
wounded vanity.
"I never saw any one so hideous in my life," she remarked aloud. "And
I am truly sorry for the people who must have the misfortune of looking
at me."
Betty was wearing an Empire blue dressing gown and slippers and
stockings of the same color. Her eyes were dark gray and misty with
shadows under them. She looked ill, of course, and unlike her usual
self, and yet it would be difficult for any misfortune to have made
Betty Ashton actually ugly. For beauty is one of the most difficult
things in the world to define and one of the easiest to see--a
possession that is at once tangible and intangible. And Betty
possessed the gift in a remarkable degree.
Therefore she did not look unattractive to the eyes of the young man
who was now staring at her in astonishment, fear and delight, from her
own open doorway, which Dr. Barton, on leaving the room, had neglected
to close.
"I am sorry. Oh, I am so glad!"
Anthony Graham murmured. "I was passing your room; I didn't mean to
intrude. But nothing matters now you are well again and looking like
yourself. It's so wonderful, so splendid, so----" And the young man,
who was ordinarily quiet and reserved, fairly stammered with the rush
of his own words.
Betty walked shyly toward him with her eyes still filled with tears.
"Oh, I am dreadful to look at, but I must not complain," she answered
wistfully. "A Camp Fire girl ought to have learned some lessons in
bravery and endurance. Please let's don't talk about me. I want to
thank you, for if it had not been for you, I might have--I can't bear
to think even now what might have happened to me."
"Then don't," the young man returned brusquely, but Betty did not this
time misunderstand his manner. "I did not do anything. I ought to
have gotten to you sooner. I have been hating myself ever since for
the time I took to reach you. After all you had done for me in the
past!"
The next moment the girl put her hand into the boy's hard,
work-roughened one. "Ask Nan to tell the others for me. And remember
that no matter what has happened or may happen in the future, I shall
always feel myself in your debt, not you in mine."