Part 10

"Who are you?" he said abruptly, as he put up his hand to help her from the car. "I don't know you! I thought I did--but you are somebody else!" He was looking at her keenly.

"Goose!" she laughed. "I am Mary Canfield, of course-- Which way do we go?"

"This way." They fell into step. And he was conscious that the light, tripping, hospital step had given way to a free, swinging movement of the whole body. She was like the radiant day about them.... And she was like the roses--when at last they stood among them.... Her freedom had the same careful air of cultivation; and the crisp little color in her cheeks had the same dainty refinement.

He plucked a rose and held it against her cheek. "Just a match!" he said critically. "Goes with you! Will you have it?"

She tucked it in her belt--among the endless frills--and he looked at it admiringly.

When he saw the gardener's eyes following them, he walked with conscious pride. He had not known that any one felt like this! He would have liked to walk with her always--with the whole world looking on and admiring her.... She belonged to him!

"I say!" He stopped short in the path. "You are engaged to me, you know!"

"Oh--am I?" She laughed.

He went in a panic-- Some girls were such frightful flirts! They had no decency--They didn't play the game!

"You are _mine_!" he said fiercely and he glared at the gardener among his roses across the path.

"Oh--very well! Have it so!" Her voice was laughing and sweet.

His courage came flooding back. "You are to wait here--please, and we'll have the tea brought out."

"Oh-- How pretty!" She was looking into the pergola. A green maze of branches crossed and recrossed the sides; and among them the scattered roses flushed transparently in the light. "How beautiful it is!"

"Will you go in?" he said, standing aside.

"Will you walk into my parlor?" She stepped lightly in and faced him. "Now go and get tea! I like it here!"

She sat down and he looked at her once--and was off.

He hurried fast. Suppose she didn't stay?... Suppose it were not real! He fussed about cakes and sandwiches--and there must be strawberries. Everything must be of the best. Suppose she didn't wait! He hurried back.

She had taken off her hat and sat with her hands clasped, looking up into the mazy green tracery and the bits of rose color shining through.

"It is like us," she said with a little motion of her hand.

"Like you," he said soberly, sitting beside her. "_I'm_ not a rose!"

"No!" She laughed out. "But it _is_ like us--it's just happiness--nothing to it!" She crushed it in her hand.

And he stared at her.

"No one takes us seriously," she said. "They just think how young we are----"

"And how beautiful _you_ are!"

"They know it won't last." She was looking at it musingly. "And they think _we don't_ know----"

"It _will_ last!" said the boy vehemently.

"Will it?" She held out her hand prettily and he kissed it.

"It's going to last forever," he said stoutly.

"But we don't care if it doesn't.... Do you know, I think that is what makes it beautiful--" She glanced at the leafy walls of the pergola. "We know it will not be like this always--and so we just--love it!"

He stared a little. "You are not the least bit what I thought you were!" he said helplessly.

"Don't you like me!" Her eyes demanded it.

"I--adore you!" he said softly. "But all these ideas about not lasting-- Good Lord!--Here's the tea!" He sprang up and took it from the man and set it out for her. And they drank it--with the light coming in through the crossing vines and checkering the table, and falling on her hair and gleaming delicately at him in little glints like stars--all through it.

XXXIV

"Do you think we'd better tell dad?"

They had gathered an armful of the roses and loitered along the winding paths, and were standing at last by the curb, waiting for the car.... She carried a few of the roses in her hand. She looked down at them thoughtfully. And suddenly the look of Miss Canfield, the nurse, flashed back to him.

"We don't want to upset him," she said slowly.

"I don't believe it will--upset him.... Do you know, I believe he wants it--I half suspect he's been planning it all along!"

"Do you? What makes you think so?" She had turned to him curiously.

He shook his head.

"Father's deep! I can't tell exactly why I think he knows.... But I never got very far ahead of him yet!"

"Very well--we will tell him."

"To-night?"

"If you like."

"I want him to see you like this-- There's the car!" He hailed it.

So they came into Herman Medfield's room and stood before him with the armful of flowers. And he looked up at them--and smiled.

"God bless you, my children!" he said, after a critical glance at their smiling faces. "That is the proper thing to say, isn't it?" His eyes dwelt on them fondly.

Julian glanced at her. "I told you!" he said meaningly.

"What did you tell her?"

"That you knew all along, sir. I told her I never fooled you yet!"

"Well, you have tried hard enough.... Come here, please, Daughter."

So she went over and stood beside him and bent a little for him. And he kissed her, and looked at the delicate color that came and went in her face, and at the slender freshness of her figure as it straightened itself.

"I am glad my boy has done so well," he said quietly.... "I think I'll go to bed, when my nurse comes back. I am a little tired, I find."

"She will be here in a minute, sir--as soon as she changes her gown." She nodded to him and was gone.

And the boy and his father sat facing each other, with the light lessening in the room.

"How was the garden?" asked Medfield.

"Fine! I never saw it look so well!" The boy's voice was happy.

Medfield's eyes twinkled. "Perhaps you were not altogether fitted to judge." He was leaning back in his chair and looking at the light in his son's face.

"Perhaps not. I was never so happy in my life--I know that!" And his voice was serious now, with a deeper note in it than his father had heard.

And Herman Medfield began to speak of the business and of Dalton, and of his purpose to see Dalton.... They could use him, perhaps, in some minor capacity and see how he did.

"I have an idea that he may be the very man for your secretary--for your personal work, you know. I've always depended a good deal on Sully. You must have some one of your own.... Suppose you see this man Dalton yourself. See him to-morrow. Get the address from Aunt Jane--" He paused.... A look came to his face.

"You told Munson to send the roses, did you?"

"I told him. Yes. He'll send them to-night." The reply was absent. The young man's mind was reaching out to business and to the responsibilities that he saw his father would lay on him.

His shoulders straightened a little as he stood up. "I feel as if I had just come home," he said. "I've never felt at home before--anywhere!... It is curious to feel that way in a hospital, isn't it?"

His father's eyes were fixed on him dreamily. "I've been feeling 'at home,' too. And I have an idea a good many people feel that way--in the Berkeley House of Mercy." He said the last words slowly and softly, as if they pleased him.

"Why should they, I wonder?" said the boy.

"I wonder--" said Herman Medfield. "Perhaps I shall be able to tell you some day. I feel as if I were beginning to understand a good many things I never knew before.... If you will just give me your arm now, across the room, I think I'll get to bed."

XXXV

Aunt Jane was tired. She would not acknowledge it--even to herself. But it had been a trying day. The people in the laundry had been surprisingly difficult--when she went to give them their talking to, and she finally had to put her foot down.

She went slowly along the hall now, giving a last look for the night and glancing into shaded rooms, here and there.... At the door of 16 she paused.... The case in 16 troubled her. Dr. Carmon was anxious about the case. He did not need to tell her. She had known by the little hunched-over look of his broad shoulders down the hall.... She knew that look as far as she could see it.... And he had already been twice to look after Room 16.

She went in and gave a few directions to the nurse and glanced at the figure on the bed, and went on to her office.

The room looked very inviting as she came in. Her big chair stood waiting for her, the light comfortably shaded beside it, and she crossed to it leisurely. She would rest a few minutes, and make her entries in the day-book and go to bed.

She sat down with a sigh of comfort and rocked gently.

The house was very quiet. The softly creaking rockers seemed the only thing awake....

Aunt Jane's eye fell on a long pasteboard box resting on a chair across the room. She looked at it doubtingly. She was too tired to get up. But the sight of the long box irritated her subtly. She had thought flowers were over--for the day. Sometimes Aunt Jane wished that she might never see another flower-box! She wished so now.... Just as she wanted to rest! Well, she would get up presently and take it to the ice-box. Let it stay there till morning. It was no time of night to be sending flowers.... Everybody in bed and asleep! She looked at it severely and got up from her chair and took it up.

Her eye fell on the address-- She looked at it disbelievingly--and put it back on the chair--and looked at it.... She fidgeted about the room and came back to the chair.

Aunt Jane had never received a box of flowers in her life. She had handled hundreds of them--they had passed through her hands into the eager waiting hands held out for them. She had watched the faces light up, and she had looked on and smiled tolerantly. Folks' faces were _her_ flowers, she had said.... She had never wanted to keep the flowers herself. Flowers were things to be passed on to some one else. No one had ever sent them to her. They knew better!

She looked down at the innocent box as if it contained something baleful--something that would disturb the quiet routine of life for her. She did not want to be disturbed--She did not want flowers! And she reached out her hand to the box.... It was very long and big. She wondered how she could have overlooked it when she came in.... If she had not been so tired she would have seen it--perhaps. Who could have sent it, she wondered; and a little, mild curiosity came under the white cap as her fingers undid the tape, and rolled it methodically, and lifted the lid of the box and raised the bit of waxed paper underneath-- Aunt Jane gave a pleased sigh.

Herman Medfield's best roses--three dozen of them--shed their fragrance about her; and the little card lying on top of them held their message. She took it up gingerly and read it and put it down sharply--as if it had burned her--and looked at it.

Then she gathered up the roses in her hands and held them against her face--until her very cap was lost to sight.... It was a subdued face that emerged from the roses at last. Something of their hardy color seemed to have been caught in its disturbed quiet.

She laid them on the table and brought a great vase of water and shook them loose in it--standing off to look at them and touching them here and there.... The subdued look glanced softly at the roses as she lifted the vase and set it on her desk--and stood back again to admire them.

They made a gorgeous show--lighting up the wall behind them. The room was filled with rose fragrance.

She moved slowly backward, gazing at them--a troubled, happy look in her face.... Then her eye fell on the little card lying on the table.

She looked down at it, fascinated, and took it firmly in her fingers and carried it to the desk and slipped it beneath the vase--with Herman G. Medfield's name exposed.... There was no reason why Mr. Medfield should not send flowers to her!

She surveyed them complacently. It was very natural for Mr. Medfield to send flowers--and the little card announced to all the world--how natural it was.... The words jotted on the other side of the card were safely out of sight.

Aunt Jane sat down at her desk and folded her hands on the edge of the blotter and looked at the flowers. Her peaceful face gave no hint of anything but the most serene admiration and pride.

Her hand reached out for the big day-book and drew it forward and opened it and took up the pen; and Aunt Jane's finger found the place and moved along the dotted lines composedly.... And two great tears fell on the spotless page and blurred it and Aunt Jane sat up and sought swiftly for her handkerchief. She dabbed at two more tears that were sweeping down--she moved the handkerchief quickly across her face and wiped it over the page, and once more across her face--that kept breaking up in little incredulous, ashamed waves. She shut up the day-book impatiently and folded her arms on top of it and dropped her face on her arms and sobbed--a great, shamed, bewildered sob that shook the quiet shoulders; then they were very still.

Presently she sat up. She shook out her handkerchief and blew her nose methodically and opened the book. "I am a fool!" she said softly. "Room 36--" And two left-over tears splashed down on Room 36 and flooded it-- Tears enough to wash Room 36 out of existence. They overwhelmed Aunt Jane.

She got up abruptly and closed the book and turned down the light--groping for it and glancing hastily at the open door. The light shone dimly on a very disturbed and crumpled face.

She looked about her for a minute. Then she went to a small door and drew a key from beneath her apron and inserted it in the lock.

No one in the hospital knew what was behind the small door. It was popularly supposed to hold Aunt Jane's private supplies--dangerous remedies for emergencies, perhaps. No one knew.

She opened the door slowly and stepped in, closing it gently behind her; the key still dangled from the lock. There was no light in the little room--except for the moonlight shining through a small window and lighting up the bareness of the place; it shone on a single chair by the window. There was nothing else in the room. Aunt Jane went across to it and sat down.... She was not crying now. She folded her hands in her lap and sat very quiet, and the moonlight filtered in through the window and touched the muslin cap and the white figure, and passed silently across it and fell on the floor, making a luminous path in the blackness.... And Aunt Jane did not stir.

Often when she was sought for in the hospital and could not be found, high or low, Aunt Jane was sitting by the window of this tiny room, gathering up the tangled fibres of pain and discord and holding them steady.... She knew all the stars that moved across the window--at every hour of the night, and every night of the year. It was not a new experience for her to sit very quiet, while the stars travelled across.... But to-night she was not reaching out to stars and drawing them down into the pain of the world to heal it.

She was looking into a very queer, disturbed heart--that seemed breaking up in little bits. Curious things bubbled up and startled her as she gazed at them.... No one had loved her for twenty years!-- Why _should_ any one love--an old woman like her?... Why should she _want_ to be loved? Her thought was full of gentle scorn for all old women that wanted to be loved--and for Aunt Jane!... She would have to get a new day-book, or tear out the page! What would Mrs. Samuel Hotchkiss, chairman of the Woman's Board of Directors, say to that page if she happened to come on it!... It was a disgraceful page! Aunt Jane was a disgrace! And something in her heart ached so with the happiness and the misery of it, that Aunt Jane's lips fell to quivering.... Any woman that had as much as she had to be thankful for, ought to be ashamed!... And what was Herman Medfield? Just a man! But it wasn't Herman Medfield--it was all the repressed heartache of years.... "Women are not fit to live alone!" She had said it many times. But she had not thought of Aunt Jane when she said it. _She_ was superior to such things--with her hospital and her patients and Dr. Carmon-- Her thought stopped suddenly--and flashed on.... She had always thought she depended on the Lord--and here was this great lonely ache in her heart.

It didn't seem to make any difference how ashamed she was!

Her handkerchief brushed fiercely at her eyes.

There was a sound in the outer office. Aunt Jane sat up-- Some one looking for her! The hand felt again for its handkerchief and she turned her head to listen.... The steps crossed the office and a bright line of light ran along under the door. Aunt Jane's eye rested on it. She brushed the traces of crying from her face and reached up to her cap. Then she leaned forward to the door--she could reach it from her chair in the little room without getting up; and she turned the handle softly, opening it a crack.

There was no sound in the office.

From her crack, Aunt Jane could see the table and the shaded light on it and a man standing by the table looking down.

XXXVI

His back was toward the door, but Aunt Jane had no doubt about the shabby, wrinkled coat and the shrugging shoulders.

She waited, holding her breath. She was not quite sure of her cap--she put up her hands to it cautiously, adjusting and smoothing it.... The figure by the table moved across to the bell and rang it sharply.

His face was toward her now. She saw that he was smiling a little.

Aunt Jane nodded shrewdly. Number 16 was better!... From her place in the dark, she watched the man move about the room. He was humming softly--a half-meaningless little tune, with a tumty-tumty refrain, and his face was absent.

A nurse appeared in the door and looked at him inquiringly.

He glanced at her. "I want Mrs. Holbrook--yes."

"Aunt Jane? I don't know where she is. I thought she came into her office."

"Well--she isn't here. You can see she isn't here, can't you? Find her--please."

Aunt Jane behind her crack, shivered a little as the girl turned. But the nurse had eyes and ears only for the surgeon and his impatience. She hurried away.

Aunt Jane drew a free breath.

The surgeon crossed to her desk and halted there. His eye rested absently on the great bunch of roses. Presently his face lighted up; he was seeing the roses! He looked at them with an air of appreciation. The little smile was still on his lips, and the tumty-tumty tune.... Slowly he leaned forward, on tiptoe, and--smelled of them and nodded approval.

Aunt Jane's hands made swift, darting touches at her cap and her apron and her hair and she got up quickly.... Perhaps he would go away! But Dr. Carmon's eye had fallen on the little card under the vase and he took it up--and read the name with near-sighted curious gaze, and turned it over----

Aunt Jane stepped out from her place. "How is Number 16?" she asked placidly.

He wheeled--the card in his hand.

"Oh! You're here! I just sent for you." He waved the card.

"I know. I was busy."

"Funny, I didn't hear you come in!" He looked at her thoughtfully.

"You were thinking of something else, maybe," said Aunt Jane tranquilly. She came up to the desk.

He looked curiously at her face.

"What is the matter?" he asked.

"Nothing," responded Aunt Jane. "Do I look as if anything was the matter?" The face under its ink stains was serene.

Dr. Carmon regarded it critically. "Soap and water--" he suggested. He pointed a helpful finger at the smudge of ink on her cheek.

She lifted a quick hand.

He nodded grimly. "And there's a little over there by your left ear," he said wickedly.

She rubbed at the place blindly. "I must have got ink on me--when I was making up my book--" Her glance flitted toward it.

Dr. Carmon's eye fell on the open page and on the smudge of Room 36. He bent forward, tapping the place with the card in his hand, and laughed out.

"I never saw your book look like that!" He gazed at it and then at Aunt Jane's face--a little suspiciously.

She leaned forward to inspect it.

"Somebody must have spilled water--or something on it!" she said casually. "Folks are so careless here!" She laid a blotter methodically across the smudge and closed the book and put it away.

Dr. Carmon surveyed the roses. "Handsome bunch of flowers!" he said carelessly. He waved the card at them.

"They look nice," admitted Aunt Jane. "They're some Mr. Medfield sent--they came from his garden." Her tone was quiet and businesslike--there was no nonsense about those roses. She looked at them impersonally.

"I saw it was his card." Dr. Carmon's hand motioned with the card and dropped it to the desk. He might almost have been said to fling it from him--as if it were a challenge.

"Who did he send them to?" he asked.

"Why--to me!" said Aunt Jane.

She tried her best to look commonplace and unconcerned--as if she had been receiving roses all her life--as if she had large bunches of them every day, flaming away there on her desk.

Dr. Carmon's glance twinkled across the roses--to the placid face.

"Humph!" he said.

"How is Number 16?" asked Aunt Jane.

"Fine!" Dr. Carmon's face lighted with it. He forgot roses--"He's going to pull through all right--I think."

"That's good! I kind of reckoned he'd come through." She had turned a leisurely glance to the door.

The nurse stood there.

"I can't--" she began. "Oh--you're here! I looked everywhere for you!"

"Yes, I'm here. I've been here quite a spell," said Aunt Jane.

The nurse withdrew and Dr. Carmon and Aunt Jane and the roses were left alone.

He looked suspiciously and grudgingly at the roses and shrugged his shoulders and turned away. He took his hat. "I want you to look in on Number 16--sometime later."

There was no "please" about the request--or "will you kindly." But Aunt Jane understood.

"I was planning to go in by and by--along about four o'clock," she said kindly. "That's the time he'll need somebody most, I guess!"

Dr. Carmon looked again at the roses. "I shall want Suite A, Friday--for a new patient," he said abruptly.

Aunt Jane's mouth opened--and closed.

"Medfield's well enough to go," said Dr. Carmon. He nodded to the roses--as if they knew of Herman Medfield's health. "He'll be better off at home!" he said shortly--and shot out the door.

Aunt Jane gazed after him, a minute.

She took up the card from the desk and held it off and looked at it severely and shook it a little--as if it might have known better--and dropped it into a small drawer behind the roses and locked the drawer--and put the key in her pocket.

Then she turned off the lights and left the room. And the great bunch of roses that had flamed up so bravely, lost their color in the dark.

Perhaps they went to sleep.

All night the fragrance of the roses stole out into the room and filled it--as if little flitting dreams of roses came and went there in the dark.

XXXVII

Things were moving happily in Suite A. Herman Medfield had been awake and stirring since daybreak. He had written one or two notes in his own hand, and had dictated a longer one to Miss Canfield. It was addressed to Thomas Dalton, and it lay on the stand beside his chair in the window.

The girl had grasped its import swiftly, as she took down the crisp words.

"It is just what Julian needs," she said compactly as she folded and sealed and stamped it.

He nodded. "You understand him surprisingly well--considering that you love him," he added smiling.

She returned the smile. "That's _why_ I understand, isn't it?"

"Perhaps----"

He watched her move about the room, contentedly. Julian was a lucky dog! Luckier than he knew, to win a girl like that--sweet and sensible and poor!

"I will mail this now," she said. She took it from the stand.