CHAPTER XV

“ONE TOUCH TO HER HAND AND ONE WORD IN HER EAR”

“See here, Jan, it’s no good,” said Sydney, speaking so suddenly that Miss Lochinvar was startled.

“What isn’t any good?” she asked, giving a last twitch to Tommy Traddles’s red ribbon.

“Trying to earn money and go to school at the same time. I am not making a success of either, for I have only earned about four dollars and ninety-nine cents,” replied Sydney gloomily.

“Is the man getting impatient?” inquired Jan.

Sydney nodded with much emphasis. “Won’t wait,” he said laconically.

“Then I’ll tell you what to do, Syd,” said Jan, coming over to where the boy was sitting, moodily jerking the shade cord at the window. “Ask Gwen to lend you the money. She has quite a good deal--nearly fifty dollars--left from Christmas presents, and allowance, and so on, and it would be better for you to let her help you out, as I can’t.”

“I don’t want a girl’s money, either hers or yours,” said Sydney.

“Well, I suppose you don’t _want_ it, but you _need_ it dreadfully,” said Jan with some subtleness of distinction. “And I want to tell you, Syd, that I think it would be real kindness to talk to Gwen about your troubles, and get her interested in something. She isn’t better, and I heard the doctor say that if she couldn’t be aroused she’d have a serious illness. Get her to think of something besides her poor eyes, and it would be good for her. Gwen would be glad, too, to think you trusted her.”

“I wonder!” said Sydney doubtfully.

“Well, I know!” said Jan emphatically. “And then, after she’s lent you the money to square up, tell your father all about it, and get him to put you in the way of earning something. He ought to know. I don’t feel right to think I know and he doesn’t. It is wrong to help you have secrets from him. I wouldn’t have done it if I could have coaxed you to tell at first.”

“Maybe I will talk to Gwen,” said Sydney slowly. “I don’t see any other way unless I do talk to father, and he’d make it pleasant for me if I did that!”

“He might take you away from that school and those extravagant boys, but you’d find he wouldn’t be hard on you. And I should think you’d like to get out of that crowd,” said Jan.

Sydney flushed with sudden eagerness. “Say, Jan,” he cried, “I’d give my head to be let off from college! There’s no college in me--I’m crazy to live out of doors. I don’t even want to go into business! If I thought daddy would give me a start civil engineering I’d work hard, but he won’t. What I’d like is to go out on a ranch. I’d rather study men and beasts than books. But there’s no use talking--he’s made up his mind to college for me, and to college I must go.”

“Isn’t that silly! To say there’s no use talking, when you haven’t tried talking!” exclaimed Jan impatiently. “I never saw a family that knew one another so little! Why, Uncle Howard isn’t an ogre! How do you know he wouldn’t let you do what you like best? ’Tisn’t likely he wants you to be spoiled! Come home with me when I go,” she added with sudden inspiration. “Fred talks of ranching, and we’d make a man of you in Kansas.”

Sydney swallowed the implication that he was not wholly manly now with fairly good grace. “Well,” he said, “it’s pretty hard for a fellow to be different from all around him. I haven’t had to rough it, and I suppose I got extravagant without knowing it. I’m disgusted enough with myself to find myself in debt, goodness knows! I’ll see Gwen to-day, and if the poor old girl wants to lend me her ducats I’ll brace up and make a clean breast to father. You deserve to have your advice followed, for you’ve been a trump to me, and to us all, down to this fellow.” And Sydney affectionately twitched Drom’s tail.

Jan gave Gwen a hint of her brother’s approaching visit, and Sydney found her as gentle, loving, and interested as a sister could be.

“Why, of course, I’ll lend you the money, Syd,” she said. “You ought to have told me before. I’ve been thinking that we all told one another too little. Since I’ve been lying here I’ve had to see with inside eyes, you know, and I’ve discovered several things. You’ll have to find my little bead bag in my upper drawer, Syd. That has my money in it--not my pocket-book. And you’ll have to help yourself to what you want--if I have so much--for I----”

Sydney found the abrupt breaking off of Gwen’s sentence very pathetic. If only Gwen might see again!

Sydney found the bag and counted over the crisp bills it contained. “You have four dollars more than I need to pay that shopkeeper,” he said, putting them back. “Jan lent me five some time ago.”

“O Syd! When Jan has so little!” said Gwen with reproach in her voice. “And you went to your cousin instead of your sister!”

“Well, Gwen, I guess I’ve been a dunce! We have got into the way of standing off from one another, but you’re a trump, and we’ll stick together henceforth,” said Sydney.

Joy such as she had not thought that she could feel again surged through Gwen’s heart at these words. “Syd,” she said, “if ‘Miss Lochinvar’ had never ‘come out of the West’ we wouldn’t have discovered how horrid it was to be so selfish and distant--maybe never.”

“That’s shaky English, but solemn truth, Gwendoline, my dear,” said Sydney. “Jan’s a trump! That’s two trumps now--we’ll have a handful if we keep on! She’s not one bit goody-goody and she never preaches, but she seems to clear the air--kind of like a thunder-shower that never strikes.”

“More like the little leaven that leaveneth the whole,” said Gwen softly. “I love her so, I could never tell you! And I always think of that line in the gospel when I think about her. Now finish up getting acquainted with the Graham family, Syd, and tell papa how things have been going at school. He has a right to know, and I don’t believe it is a good place for you where the boys are spending so much money, and getting into debt, and all! Tell him I’ve lent you the money, so you don’t want him to help you that way, but you do want him to show you how to pay me back, and start square. If I’m not mistaken, papa will be pleased to find you see things straight without needing showing, and instead of scolding you, you’ll find him kind and ready to lend a hand.”

“I don’t know that I could say honestly that I hadn’t had some showing as to the most honorable and manly course,” said Syd truthfully. “Jan gave me the tip, and now you back her up. I didn’t expect to find girls so on the level, but I’m glad to say I’m able to see that you’re both right. I’ll talk to dad the first chance he gives me, and I’m much obliged, Gwen; we’re better friends from this day. I guess you won’t be blind--we all are seeing a good deal clearer, strikes me.” And Sydney disappeared with a boy’s awkwardness in expressing the deep gratitude and the softer emotion which filled him.

“Ask Gwen,” said Jan, the artful, as Viva came begging for a story at dusk. She was beginning to say “Ask Gwen” as often as possible when one of the three younger Grahams implored a favor. It was long that they had waited for Gwen’s sentence, and still the doctors could not be sure of what it was to be. Gladys and Jan had resumed school, and the hours dragged while the poor child waited their return and the coming of her friends who were faithful in spending some time with her each afternoon. It was to little Jerry and Viva that Gwen found herself turning for comfort while the others were away; Viva always gentle, grave, and sweet; Jerry showing herself the dearest mite, with her headstrong, impulsive baby nature toned down to meet the needs of her whom she now invariably called her “poor, dear little Gwennie.” Gwendoline’s talent for story-making was used now chiefly to entertain Viva, while Jerry spun yarns for “poor, dear little Gwennie,” usually of thrilling interest, though briefly sustained.

“Once there was a dreat, bid lion, and he roared--like dis!” And Jerry interrupted her recital to open her mouth to its widest extent and roar fearfully in a deep alto. “And he was wery hundry, and he came to N’Yort, and he ated up seven, five, free little dirls on n’avenue, and Jewwy Draham shood him off wid her stirts in bot’ hands, and she stared him so he was awful feared, and she said: ‘Poor, poor lion, come in n’house and see little Gwennie!’ Isn’t dat er fine stowy?”

“Well, he might be an awkward caller,” laughed Gwen. “Perhaps if he’d eaten up so many little girls he wasn’t hungry, though. Yes, that’s a fine story, Jerry!” And Gwen groped for the little dimpled hands to squeeze them, and Jerry snuggled down with rapturous kisses for “poor, dear Gwennie.”

Jan rejoiced to see how unconsciously but surely the Graham household was knitting together around Gwen’s bed. At the worst they would be happier than before the accident, but Jan would not admit, even to herself, that the worst was possible.

Sydney had discovered his father. In a long, intimate talk the boy had laid before him the difficulties and temptations of his little world, and found himself telling the man, who remembered quite well, after all, how it felt to be a boy, some things that he had not said to the girls. But they had proved right in their prophecies of how his father would take Sydney’s disclosures. With unspoken self-reproach for having left a boy of sixteen unguarded, Mr. Graham set to work to undo his mistakes. If Sydney did not feel that he would be a success as a business man or as a professional one, Mr. Graham said, he would not ask him to go through college. But he did ask him now to work harder than he had ever done at his books, and prepare himself for whatever he was to be in the future by doing his duty faithfully in the present. And he promised him to send him every afternoon to a friend of his, a professor at Columbia, who had asked for an intelligent boy to copy for him notes he was making on natural history. He would pay Sydney for his labor, and thus he could set himself right in his own eyes, and pay back the money his sister had lent him. In the meantime he would be having the best possible companionship, and be in the way of making sure that he was not mistaken in deciding that college life and study had no charm for him.

Sydney felt as though the gloom in which he had walked for months had given way to a glare of sunshine, and he blessed Jan in his heart for showing him the road to the best and most needed friend that a boy of his age could have--his own kind father.

“Daisy and Ida Hammond have left school,” announced Gladys, bursting into Gwen’s room one day. “They said their mother considered the Hydra less exclusive that it had been, and was going to let them go to boarding-school.”

“I don’t see how they stood it so long after they were found out,” said Gwen scornfully. “It’s rather nice of them to make the Hydra more exclusive by removing the only girls in it who had been found out in a disgraceful act.” Gwen was stronger; she could bear sudden outbursts from the children, and Jan couldn’t help hoping that the next step would be the restoration of the wounded eyes to light and health.

“Oh, as to the exclusive, that refers to me, I suspect,” said Jan so carelessly that it showed how completely she had lost the timidity and wounded sensibility of her first days in New York. “Tommy Traddles,” she added to the cat lying at Gwen’s feet, curled over on his back, with his four feet drawn up on his white breast, and his tongue sticking out while he looked over the top of his head to see what effect his blandishments had, “Tommy Traddles, you may consider that a squirm, but I consider it a device for winning attention.” And she proceeded to bury her fingers in Tommy’s white shirt-front, while he shut his eyes in blissful satisfaction with the result of his “device.”

“Well, I am thankful they have gone,” said Gladys, removing her rubbers with her right hand while her left thoughtfully smoothed her stocking. “It was very disagreeable to have them around when you didn’t want to go with them. And your set have not been so very anxious to have me, Gwen. If it hadn’t been for Jan I’d have been quite out of it since the fuss.”

“Slang, Gladys?” hinted Gwen, for they had pledged themselves never to use slang--or, as everybody said in the ancient days of Pinafore: “Hardly ever!” She had hard work not to rejoice over her sister’s admission, and found it quite impossible not to smile.

“I know a great deal more than I did,” continued Gladys. “Those girls are really a dreadful warning to me. I can see plainly now how different a real lady is from an imitation one. It’s funny how blind I was.” She stopped short, frightened by having used a word that never was to be mentioned before Gwen.

But Gwen met the allusion quietly. “You were blind first, Glad, and got well. Maybe I’ll get well, too. I feel stronger, and sometimes I hope a little. If I don’t get well, I’m going to try not to be a failure, and be brave,” she said.

Gladys went over to her and kissed her with a sweet gravity that was pretty to see in the little girl who had been so shallow and vain. “My kind of blindness was worse than yours, Gwen,” she said. “You’d be nicer than I ever could be if you lost all your eyes.”

“Gwen isn’t a spider, and Gwen is going to get well,” cried Jan, laughing to keep from crying.

Gladys left the room hastily and Jan perched on the bedside, holding Tommy Traddles’s paw in one hand and Gwen’s fingers in the other. “I’ve been wanting to tell you something Aunt Tina said yesterday, and I haven’t had a chance,” she said. “Something just for yourself to hear--right in your own ear.”

“This is my own ear, Jan; it was given to me fifteen years ago,” said Gwen, inclining that organ toward her cousin.

Jan leaned forward to whisper into it. “She said that you were making such a peaceful, happy little spot of your room, and were so brave and cheerful, and all the children were getting so loving and gentle with you that she half dreaded to have you get well and break up the little oasis in the midst of a selfish world. Isn’t that nice for your mother to have said?” And Gwen could not help feeling that it was.