Chapter 7

While she was watching, Ambrose North came around the base of the hill, crossed the road, and opened the gate. He had been to his old solitude at the top of the hill, where, as nowhere else, he found peace. While he was talking with the visitors, Miriam went out, taking the neatly-packed suit-cases, one at a time, and put them into the buggy.

"Mr. North," said Doctor Conrad, "while these girls are chattering, will you go for a little drive with me?"

The blind man's fine old face illumined with pleasure. "I should like it very much," he said. "It is a long time since I had have a drive."

"It's more like a walk," laughed Allan, as they went out, "with this horse."

"We sold our horses many years ago," the old man explained, as he climbed in. "Miriam is afraid of horses and Barbara said she did not care to go. I thought the open air and the slight exercise would be good for her, but she insisted upon my selling them."

[Sidenote: About Barbara]

"It is about Barbara that I wished to speak," said Allan. "With your consent, I should like to make a thorough examination and see whether an operation would not do away with her crutches entirely."

"It is no use," sighed North, wearily. "We went everywhere and did everything, long ago. There is nothing that can be done."

"But there may be," insisted Allan. "We have learned much, in my profession, in the last twenty years. May I try?"

"You're asking me if you can hurt my baby?"

"Not to hurt her more than is necessary to heal. Understand me, I do not know but what you are right, but I hope, and believe, that there may be a chance."

"I have dreamed sometimes," said the old man, very slowly, "that my baby could walk and I could see."

[Sidenote: If Possible]

"The dream shall come true, if it is possible. Let me see your eyes." He stopped the horse on the brow of the hill, where the sun shone clear and strong, stood up, and turned the blind face to the light. Then, sitting down once more, he asked innumerable questions. When he finally was silent, Ambrose North turned to him, indifferently.

"Well?" The tone was simply polite inquiry. The matter seemed to be one which concerned nobody.

"Again I do not know," returned Allan. "This is altogether out of my line, but, if you'll go to the city with me, I'll take you to a friend of mine who is a great specialist. If anything can be done, he is the man who can do it. Will you come?"

There was a long pause. "If Barbara is willing," he answered simply. "Ask her."

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The Plunge]

Meanwhile, Eloise was talking to Barbara. First, she told her of the letters she had written in her behalf and to which the answers might come any day now. Then she asked if she might order preserves from Aunt Miriam, and discussed patterns and material for the lingerie she had previously spoken of. Finding, at length, that the best way to approach a difficult subject was the straightest one, she took the plunge.

"Have you always been lame?" she asked. She did not look at Barbara, but tried to speak carelessly, as she gazed out of the window.

"Yes," came the answer, so low that she could scarcely hear it.

"Wouldn't you like to walk like the rest of us?" continued Eloise.

Barbara writhed under the torturing question. "My mind can walk," she said, with difficulty; "my soul isn't lame."

The tone made Eloise turn quickly--and hate herself bitterly for her awkwardness. She saw that an apology would only make a bad matter worse, so she went straight on.

"Doctor Conrad is very skilful," she continued. "In the city, he is one of the few really great surgeons. He told me that he would like to make an examination and see if an operation would not do away with the crutches. He thinks there may be a good chance. If there is, will you take it?"

"Thank you," said Barbara, almost inaudibly. Her voice had sunk to a whisper and she was very pale. "I do not mean to seem ungrateful, but it is impossible."

"Impossible!" repeated Eloise. "Why?"

"Because of father," explained Barbara. Her colour was coming back slowly now. "I am all he has, my work supplies his needs, and I dare not take the risk."

"Is that the only reason?"

Barbara nodded.

"You're not afraid?"

Barbara's blue eyes opened wide with astonishment. "Why should I be afraid?" she asked. "Do you take me for a coward?"

Eloise knelt beside Barbara's low chair and put her strong arms around the slender, white-clad figure. "Listen, dear," she said. Her face was shining as though with some great inner light.

"My own dear father died when I was a child. My mother died when I was born. I have never had anything but money. I have never had anyone to take care of, no one to make sacrifices for, no one to make me strong because I was needed. If the worst should happen, would you trust your father to me? Could you trust me?"

"Yes," said Barbara slowly; "I could."

[Sidenote: A Compact]

"Then I promise you solemnly that your father shall never want for anything while he lives. And now, if there is a chance, will you take it--for me?"

Barbara looked long into the sweet face, glorified by the inner light. Then she leaned forward and put her soft arms around the older woman, hiding her face in the masses of copper-coloured hair.

"For you? A thousand times, yes," she sobbed. "Oh, anything for you!"

* * * * *

Late in the afternoon, when Ambrose North and Barbara were alone again, he came over to her chair and stroked her shining hair with a loving hand.

"Did they tell you, dear?" he asked.

"Yes," whispered Barbara.

"I have dreamed so often that my baby could walk and I could see. He said that the dream should come true if he could make it so."

"Did he say anything about your eyes?" asked Barbara, in astonishment.

[Sidenote: Hopeful]

"Yes. He thinks there may be a chance there, too. If you are willing, I am to go to the city with him sometime and see a friend of his who is a great specialist."

"Oh, Daddy," cried Barbara. "I'm afraid--for you."

He drew a chair up near hers and sat down. The old hand, in which the pulses moved so slowly, clasped the younger one, warm with life.

"Barbara," he said; "I have never seen my baby."

"I know, Daddy."

"I want to see you, dear."

"And I want you to."

"Then, will you let me go?"

"Perhaps, but it must be--afterward, you know."

"Why?"

"Because, when you see me, I want to be strong and well. I want to be able to walk. You mustn't see the crutches, Daddy--they are ugly things."

"Nothing could be ugly that belongs to you. I made a little song this afternoon, while you and Miriam were talking and I was out alone."

"Tell me."

[Sidenote: In a Beautiful Garden]

"Once there was a man who had a garden. When he was a child he had played in it, in his youth and early manhood he had worked in it and found pleasure in seeing things grow, but he did not really know what a beautiful garden it was until another walked in it with him and found it fair.

"Together they watched it from Springtime to harvest, finding new beauty in it every day. One night at twilight she whispered to him that some day a perfect flower of their very own was to bloom in the garden. They watched and waited and prayed for it together, but, before it blossomed, the man went blind.

"In the darkness, he could not see the garden, but she was still there, bringing divine consolation with her touch, and whispering to him always of the perfect flower so soon to be their own.

"When it blossomed, the man could not see it, but the one who walked beside him told him that it was as pure and fair as they had prayed it might be. They enjoyed it together for a year, and he saw it through her eyes.

"Then she went to God's Garden, and he was left desolate and alone. He cared for nothing and for a time even forgot the flower that she had left. Weeds grew among the flowers, nettles and thistles took possession of the walks, and strange vines choked with their tendrils everything that dared to bloom.

[Sidenote: A Perfect Flower]

"One day, he went out into the intolerable loneliness and desolation, and, groping blindly, he found among the nettles and thistles and weeds the one perfect white blossom. It was cool and soft to his hot hand, it was exquisitely fragrant, and, more than all, it was part of her. Gradually, it eased his pain. He took out the weeds and thistles as best he could, but there was little he could do, for he had left it too long.

"The years went by, but the flower did not fade. Seeking, he always found it; weary, it always refreshed him; starving, it fed his soul. Blind, it gave him sight; weak, it gave him courage; hurt, it brought him balm. At last he lived only because of it, for, in some mysterious way, it seemed to need him, too, and sometimes it even seemed divinely to restore the lost.

"Flower of the Dusk," he said, leaning to Barbara; "what should I have been without you? How could I have borne it all?"

[Sidenote: Strength for the Burden]

"God suits the burden to the bearer, I think," she answered, softly. "If you have much to bear, it is because you are strong enough to do it nobly and well. Only the weak are allowed to shirk, and shift their load to the shoulders of the strong."

"I know, but, Barbara--suppose----"

"There is nothing to suppose, Daddy. Whatever happened would be the best that could happen. I'm not afraid."

Her voice rang clear and strong. Insensibly, he caught some of her own fine courage and his soul rallied greatly to meet hers. From her height she had summoned him as with a bugle-call, and he had answered.

"The ways of the Everlasting are not our ways," he said, "but I will not be afraid. No, I will not let myself be afraid."

X

In the Garden

[Sidenote: A Summer Evening]

The subtle, far-reaching fragrance of a Summer night came through the open window. A cool wind from the hills had set the maple branches to murmuring and hushed the incoming tide as it swept up to the waiting shore. Out in the illimitable darkness of the East, grey surges throbbed like the beating of a troubled heart, but the shore knew only the drowsy croon of a sea that has gone to sleep.

Golden lilies swung their censers softly, and the exquisite incense perfumed the dusk. Fairy lamp-bearers starred the night with glimmering radiance, faintly seen afar. A cricket chirped just outside the window and a ghostly white moth circled around the evening lamp.

Roger sat by the table, with Keats's letters to his beloved Fanny open before him. The letter to Constance, so strangely brought back after all the intervening years, lay beside the book. The ink was faded and the paper was yellow, but his father's love, for a woman not his mother, stared the son full in the face and was not to be denied.

Was this all, or--? His thought refused to go further. Constance North had died, by her own hand, four days after the letter was written. What might not have happened in four days? In one day, Columbus found a world. In another, electricity was discovered. In one day, one hour, even, some immeasurable force moving according to unseen law might sway the sun and set all the stars to reeling madly through the unutterable midnights of the universe. And in four days? Ah, what had happened in those four days?

[Sidenote: A Recurring Question]

The question had haunted him since the night he read the letter, when he was reading to Barbara and had unwittingly come upon it. Constance was dead and Laurence Austin was dead, but their love lived on. The grave was closed against it, and in neither heaven nor hell could it find an abiding-place. Ghostly and forbidding, it had sent Constance to haunt Miriam's troubled sleep, it had filled Ambrose North's soul with cruel doubt and foreboding, and had now come back to Roger and Barbara, to ask eternal questions of the one, and stir the heart of the other to new depths of pain.

He had not seen Barbara since that night and she had sent no message. No beacon light in the window across the way said "come." The sword that had lain, keen-edged and cruel, between Constance and her lover, had, by a single swift stroke, changed everything between her daughter and his son.

Not that Barbara herself was less beautiful or less dear. Roger had missed her more than he realised. When her lovely, changing face had come between his eyes and the musty pages of his law books, while the disturbing Bascom pup cavorted merrily around the office, unheard and unheeded, Roger had ascribed it to the letter that had forced them apart.

* * * * *

The woollen slippers muffled Miss Mattie's step so that Roger did not hear her enter the room. Preoccupied and absorbed, he was staring vacantly out of the window, when a strong, capable hand swooped down beside him, gathering up the book and the letter.

[Sidenote: Tremendous Power]

"I don't know what it is about your readin', Roger," complained his mother, "that makes you blind and deaf and dumb and practically paralysed. Your pa was the same way. Reckon I'll read a piece myself and see what it is that's so affectin'. It ain't a very big book, but it seems to have tremendous power."

She sat down and began to read aloud, in a curiously unsympathetic voice which grated abominably upon her unwilling listener:

"'Ask yourself, my Love, whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the letter you must write immediately and do all you can to console me in it--make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me--write the softest words and kiss them, that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been. For myself, I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form; I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies and lived but three summer days--three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.'

"Ain't that wonderful, Roger? Wants to get drunk on poppies and kiss the writin' and thinks after that he'll be made into a butterfly. Your pa couldn't have been far from bein' a butterfly when he bought this book. There ain't no sense in it. And this--why, it's your pa's writin', Roger! I ain't seen it for years."

Miss Mattie leaned forward in her chair and brought the letter to Constance close to the light. She read it through, calmly, without haste or excitement. Roger's hands gripped the arms of his chair and his face turned ashen. His whole body was tense.

[Sidenote: A Moment's Pain]

Then, as swiftly as it had come, the moment passed. Miss Mattie took off her spectacles and leaned back in her chair with great weariness evident in every line of her figure.

[Sidenote: Crazy as a Loon]

"Roger," she said, sadly, "there's no use in tryin' to conceal it from you any longer. Your pa was crazy--as crazy as a loon. What with buyin' books so steady and readin' of 'em so continual, his mind got unhinged. I've always suspected it, and now I know.

"Your pa gets this book, and reads all this stuff that's been written about 'Fanny,' and he don't see no reason why he shouldn't duplicate it and maybe get it printed. I knew he set great store by books, but it comes to me as a shock that he was allowin' to write 'em. Some of the time he sees he's crazy himself. Didn't you see, there where he says, 'I hope you do not blame me because I went mad'? 'Mad' is the refined word for crazy.

"Then he goes on about eatin' husks and bein' starved. That's what I told him when he insisted on havin' oatmeal cooked for his breakfast every mornin'. I told him humans couldn't expect to live on horse-feed, but, la sakes! He never paid no attention to me. I could set and talk by the hour just as I'm talkin' to you and he wasn't listenin' any more'n you be."

"I am listening, Mother," he assured her, in a forced voice. He could not say with what joyful relief.

"Maybe," she went on, "I'd 'a' been more gentle with your pa if I'd realised just what condition his mind was in. There's a book in the attic full of just such writin' as this. I found it once when I was cleaning, but I never paid no more attention to it. I surmised it was somethin' he was copyin' out of another book that he'd borrowed from the minister, but I see now. The Lord tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. If I'd 'a' knowed what it was then, maybe I couldn't have bore it as I can now."

Seizing his opportunity, Roger put the book and the letter aside. Miss Mattie slipped out of its wrapper the paper which Roger had brought to her from the post-office that same night, and began to read. Roger sat back in his chair with his eyes closed, meditating upon the theory of Chance, and wondering if, after all, there was a single controlling purpose behind the extraordinary things that happened.

[Sidenote: Inner Turmoil]

Miss Mattie wiped her spectacles twice and changed her position three times. Then she got another chair and moved the lamp closer. At last she clucked sharply with her false teeth--always the outward evidence of inner turmoil or displeasure.

"What's the matter, Mother?"

"I can't see with these glasses," she said, fretfully. "I can see a lot better without 'em than I can with 'em."

"Have you wiped them?"

"Yes, I've wiped 'em till it's a wonder the polish ain't all wore off the glass."

"Put them up close to your eyes instead of wearing them so far down on your nose."

"I've tried that, but the closer they get to my eyes, the more I can't see. The further away they are, the better 't is. When I have 'em off, I can see pretty good."

"Then why don't you take them off?"

"That sounds just like your pa. Do you suppose, after payin' seven dollars and ninety cents for these glasses, and more'n twice as much for my gold-bowed ones, that I ain't goin' to use 'em and get the benefit of 'em? Your pa never had no notion of economy. They're just as good as they ever was, and I reckon I'll wear 'em out, if I live."

"But, Mother, your eyes may have changed. They probably have."

[Sidenote: Miss Mattie's Eyes]

Miss Mattie went to the kitchen and brought back a small, cracked mirror. She studied the offending orbs by the light, very carefully, both with and without her spectacles.

"No, they ain't," she announced, finally. "They're the same size and shape and colour that they've always been, and the specs are the same. Your pa bought 'em for me soon after you commenced readin' out of a reader, and they're just as good as they ever was. It must be the oil. I've noticed that it gets poorer every time the price goes up." She pushed the paper aside with a sigh. "I was readin' such a nice story, too."

"Shan't I read it to you, Mother?"

"Why, I don't know. Do you want to?"

"Surely, if you want me to."

"Then you'd better begin a new story, because I'm more'n half-way through this one."

"I'll begin right where you left off, Mother. It doesn't make a particle of difference to me."

"But you won't get the sense of it. I'd like for you to enjoy it while you're readin'."

"Don't worry about my enjoying it--you know I've always been fond of books. If there's anything I don't understand, I can ask you."

"All right. Begin right here in _True Gold, or Pretty Crystal's Love_. This is the place: 'With a terrible scream, Crystal sprang toward the fire escape, carrying her mother and her little sister in her arms.'"

[Sidenote: Two Sighs]

For nearly two hours, Roger read, in a deep, mellow voice, of the adventures of poor, persecuted Crystal, who was only sixteen, and engaged to a floor-walker in 'one of the great city's finest emporiums of trade.' He and his mother both sighed when he came to the end of the installment, but for vastly different reasons.

"Ain't it lovely, Roger?"

"It's what you might call 'different,'" he temporised, with a smile.

"Just think of that poor little thing havin' her house set afire by a rival suitor just after she had paid off the mortgage by savin' out of her week's wages! Do you suppose he will ever win her?"

"I shouldn't think it likely."

"No, you wouldn't, but the endin' of those stories is always what you wouldn't expect. It's what makes 'em so interestin' and, as you say, 'different.'"

Roger did not answer. He merely yawned and tapped impatiently on the table with his fingers.

[Sidenote: Nine o'Clock]

"What time is it?" she asked, adjusting her spectacles carefully upon the ever-useful and unfailing wart.

"A little after nine."

"Sakes alive! It's time I was abed. I've got to get up early in the mornin' and set my bread. Good-night."

"Good-night, Mother."

"Don't set up long. Oil is terrible high."

"All right, Mother."

Miss Mattie went upstairs and closed her door with a resounding bang. Roger heard her strike a match on a bit of sandpaper tacked on the wall near the match-safe, and close the green blinds that served the purpose of the more modern window-shades. Soon, a deep, regular sound suggestive of comfortable slumber echoed and re-echoed overhead. Then, and then only, he dared to go out.

[Sidenote: A Light in the Window]

He sat on the narrow front porch for a few minutes, deeply breathing the cool air and enjoying the beauty of the night. Across the way, the little grey house seemed lonely and forlorn. The upper windows were dark, but downstairs Barbara's lamp still shone.

"Sewing, probably," mused Roger. "Poor little thing."

As he watched, the lamp was put out. Then a white shadow moved painfully toward the window, bent, and struck a match. Star-like, Barbara's signal-light flamed out into the gloom, with its eager message.

"She wants me," he said to himself. The joy was inextricably mingled with pain. "She wants me," he thought, "and I must not go."

"Why?" asked his heart, and his conscience replied, miserably, "Because."

For ten or fifteen minutes he argued with himself, vainly. Every objection that came forward was reasoned down by a trained mind, versed in the intricacies of the law. The deprivations of the fathers need not always descend unto the children. At last he went over, wondering whether his father had not more than once, and at the same hour, taken the same path.

[Sidenote: Two Hours of Life]

Barbara was out in the garden, dreaming. For the first time in years, when she had work to do, she had laid it aside before eleven o'clock. But, in two hours, she could have made little progress with her embroidery, and she chose to take for herself two hours of life, out of what might prove to be the last night she had to live.

When Roger opened the gate, Barbara took her crutches and rose out of her low chair.

"Don't," he said. "I'm coming to you."

She had brought out another chair, with great difficulty, in anticipation of his coming. Her own was near the moonflower that climbed over the tiny veranda and was now in full bloom. The white, half-open trumpets, delicately fragrant, had more than once reminded him of Barbara herself.

"What a brute I'd be," thought Roger, with a pang, "if I had disappointed her."

"I'm so glad," said Barbara, giving him a cool, soft little hand. "I began to be afraid you couldn't come."

"I couldn't, just at first, but afterward it was all right. How are you?"

"I'm well, thank you, but I'm going to be made better to-morrow. That's why I wanted to see you to-night--it may be for the last time."

Her words struck him with chill foreboding. "What do you mean?"

"To-morrow, some doctors are coming down from the city, with two nurses and a few other things. They're going to see if I can't do without these." She indicated the crutches with an inclination of her golden head.

"Barbara," he gasped. "You mustn't. It's impossible."

"Nothing is impossible any more," she returned, serenely.

"That isn't what I meant. You mustn't be hurt."

[Sidenote: A Wonderful World]