Part 8

“It’s a heavenly sweet place to sit on a summer’s day, weaving spells, isn’t it? They say she was old and ugly, but I think that was only when she went down among the Valley folk. Up here she must have been young and beautiful and she smiled a wonderful smile as she worked enchantment. I’m sure of it.”

“It’s believable,” admitted the man who was watching her face. It was easy, astonishingly easy, for him to believe in a witch who was young and beautiful and who sat on a hilltop smiling and working enchantment.

They idled the afternoon away with talk and laughter and drowsy silences; and being very humanly hungry in the midst of all the glamour, they finally ate Ellen’s six sandwiches and sighed for more.

“The next time,” said the Smiling Lady, “we will bring a knapsack luncheon and make tea.”

“The next time!” He liked the promise in it.

She rose to her knees and leaning over the spring cupped her hands and drank.

“You knew,” she said seriously, looking back across her shoulder at Archibald, “that it’s the Well at the World’s End?”

“I guessed it,” he said as seriously.

“And whoso drinks the nine drops shall win his heart’s desire, At the Well o’ the World’s End,”

she quoted softly. Then she leaned toward him, laughing, and touched his lips nine times with the cool wet forefinger of a dripping hand.

For one reckless moment, he was tempted to seize the daring hand, to hold it fast and kiss it, from pink finger tips to blue veined wrist. With any other woman he had ever known he would have dared it, with any other woman the thing would have been a challenge—but he looked into the laughing face so near him, and buried his hands in the moss beside him.

She was different. It was too much to risk—this blessed comradeship. He did not dare.

“Shall win his heart’s desire,” he echoed. “And if he does not know the desire of his heart?”

“One day he will learn it and then he will be glad of the nine drops from the Well o’ the World’s End.”

Archibald closed his eyes and lay quiet, but there was tumult in his thoughts. In May he had been so sure that he knew the face of his heart’s desire, had been mad with the beauty of it, hungered and thirsted for it, broken heart and spirit in pursuit of it In May!—Now, in July, he could feel the cool touch of the nine drops from the Well o’ the World’s End without any stirring of the old longing, any throb of the old pain. The fever had died quite out of him and the face that looked at him from that faraway Maytime, was beautiful—but not the face of his heart’s desire.

The Happy Valley had done it. The Happy Valley and Pegeen and his Smiling Lady, and he was ashamed to have been so quickly cured, so light of love, yet glad with the gladness of one who wakens from long illness and pain and fevered dreams, to consciousness and peace and the face of a friend.

He opened his eyes and looked up at the Smiling Lady. “The face of a friend.” The thought did not quite satisfy him. Friendship seemed lukewarm business for Witch Hill.

“I wonder,” he said, “whether you are as understanding as you seem.”

The laughter died out of her face. She looked at him with quiet eyes and waited. She was used to confidences, this girl whom the Valley loved and trusted.

“Could you understand a man’s having made a fool of himself over a woman—all kinds of a fool—tossing aside his ideals and ambitions and hopes for love of her, letting her fool him to the limit—and then crawling away into hiding with his hurt and his bitterness?”

The Smiling Lady nodded gravely.

“Yes,” she said; “I could understand that.”

The man raised himself on his elbow and looked into the quiet eyes. There were incredulity, wonder, and something that was part shame, part gladness, and wholly boyish in his face.

“But if the man, after all his struggle and unhappiness, should suddenly find himself whole, clean quit of the pain and the desire, glad of life again and eager for happiness—could you understand that? This is a place for oracles. Read me the riddle. What is a man worth to whom that thing can happen?”

There was self-contempt in his voice, but pleading in his eyes. Perhaps, in her merciful heart, this Smiling Lady could find charity for a man who had wasted himself on a love that had not even the excuse of greatness.

“He is worthy of what he can win,” the girl said gently.

“Nothing less Delphic than that for a man with the nine drops on his lips?” Archibald urged. She shook her head.

“There’s no promise that the water will give him whatever he happens to want,” she said. “He’s to win his heart’s desire; but he must prove that he knows the one desire of his heart and is worthy of it, before it is given to him.—That’s the way I’d read the riddle.”

He thought it over and nodded assent.

“That’s fair—but when he has proved it?—”

She sprang to her feet and stood looking out over the Valley.

“Then he will meet the Wonderful Thing,” she said. She laughed as she said it, striving to put their talk back into the realm of whimsy; but her eyes were very sweet, and looking down into them the man, who had risen and stood beside her, had a vague glimpse of the Wonderful Thing coming to meet him along mysterious, enchanted ways.

They rode home through the sunset, and Archibald stayed for supper in the house among the maples, but after that moment on the hilltop, their talk was all of impersonal things. The girl led and the man followed. They discussed the advisability of draining the east meadow and the probable effect of spraying the cabbages with kerosene emulsion and the Valley’s need of a social center. Not for an instant was sentiment allowed to show its head, yet Archibald went back to the shack with a singing heart He wakened the next morning with an odd sense of having journeyed in a far country and come back to a familiar world where all was not quite as it had been before his going; and, puzzling over the change, he came face to face with the truth. He was in love with the Smiling Lady. He had been in love with her ever since his first glimpse of her; but it had taken Witch Hill magic to clear the fog from his brain. He sprang from bed hastily, eager to be up and about, in a world new made; and Pegeen, in the kitchen, heard him whistling gaily as he dressed. The past clutched at him and he shook it off with a laugh. Ghosts were foolish, futile things—but his whistle ceased abruptly on a high note as, looking eagerly into the future, he was confronted by a man with graying hair and tired eyes. He had forgotten Meredith; and, for a moment, the thought of him sluiced his warm happiness with chilling doubt; but he shook it off, too. Hadn’t the nine drops touched his lips and wasn’t he sure now, sure beyond possibility of mistake, that he knew his heart’s desire?

His mood of exultant happiness lasted until he met Nora Moran again. Then its glad certainty wavered and doubts came creeping in; for things, in the prosaic Valley world, were not as they had been on Witch Hill. In some mysterious way, his lady had clothed herself in aloofness. It was not that she was not kind. There was nothing of which he could take hold, nothing of which he could demand an explanation. She was very friendly, very gracious, but the old intimacy was lacking and not, by any force or strategy, could he manage to see her alone. For some reason, she had gone within herself and gently closed the door; and, though he rebelled against her withdrawal, he was afraid he understood it. She had taken alarm, there beside the Witch’s Well, had realized that he wanted more than friendship, and, being promised to another man— Yes; that must be it. She was not free and she wanted to warn him in time, before there could be need of words, before he could give her face to his heart’s desire and take the wrong road for happiness.

That was like the Smiling Lady. She was no cheap coquette. It was not in her to deal unfairly. If she had given her love, even if she had given only her promise to some one else, then she was doing only what a woman like her would do; and he must accept it as a man she could make her friend would accept it. Only—there was a chance that he was misreading her mood, that gossip was wrong, that Meredith was nothing more to her than an old and dear friend. While there was a doubt, one might fight against exile.

In his perplexity he turned to Ellen. She had always shown her liking for him. She would tell him the truth, unless loyalty to her mistress forbade. One afternoon, when he had ridden up to the house among the maples only to be told that its lady was out and away somewhere, he spoke what was in his thought.

“What is it, Ellen?”

The old woman looked at him kindly with her shrewd, far-seeing eyes, but was noncommittal.

“Sure, there’s nothin’, sir. Herself is away somewhere for a walk. She’s fair set on roamin’ these days.”

He brushed evasion aside.

“Tell me, Ellen, if you can tell me without betraying confidence; Is Miss Moran engaged to this Mr. Meredith of whom I hear?”

The homely Irish face softened to sympathy for an instant, then went back to its reserve.

“She is that, sir.”

There were other questions burning his lips, but he forced them back. One does not ask a servant whether her mistress loves the man she means to marry.

“Thank you, Ellen,” he said simply, as he turned away. He was in the saddle, when the woman who had stood watching him stepped to his side.

“’Twas her father’s doin’, God rest his soul,” she said. Before he could answer, she had gone swiftly into the house.

Archibald rode away, repeating the words to himself. “’Twas her father’s doin’.” Now, why had she told him that? Did she mean him to understand that the girl’s own heart was not in the marriage? Did she think that it lay in his power to interfere? Did she believe that her mistress cared more for him than for the man she had promised to marry? For a moment or two, his heart beat high. Then again it was a leaden weight. The Smiling Lady was not to be swept off her feet by any lover. Since she had given her word to Meredith, perhaps to her father too,—No; she would not listen, if he should plead; and, even if she would, there were things no fellow could do. He had never believed that all was fair either in love or in war.

It was Mrs. Neal who brought him word of Meredith’s arrival. She billowed into the shack one morning to borrow some coffee and settled into the largest of the chairs to rest and gossip, while Pegeen went after the coffee.

“Met Miss Moran’s beau yet?” she asked. “No? Well, I guess he just come yesterday. They went by our house this morning and she stopped to ask about a ham I’d promised her. Pretty as a picture, she looked. Pinkish, soft sort of a veil around her head, and her cheeks pinker. They make a mighty hansome couple. I’ll say that for them, even if he is mite old for her. I should say he’d make a first-rate husband—kind as any woman could ask. You can see that in his face and in his ways, only he can’t help being quiet and a little bit stiff—kind of like a pudding where you’ve used too much gelatin but got the flavor all right. John, that works down at Miss Moran’s, told Neal last night that he’d heard they was going to be married this fall and go off to Egypt or some heathen place like that for the winter. I tell you, the Valley’ll miss Miss Moran.”

“Yes; she’ll be missed.” Archibald admitted.

“Peggy,” he said, after their neighbor had gone away, “you’ll have to keep me hard at my gardening and my neighboring. It isn’t going to be easy for me to be contented all the time.”

“Yessir.” There was a trace of anxiety in her ready smile. Something was wrong in his face and voice and she was quick to notice it. “The garden doesn’t need much now; but neighbors always need a lot. Shall we go and see the Kelleys this afternoon? He’s up now; but he isn’t well enough to work and she says he gets awfully lonesome and discouraged.”

In their way to the Kelleys they stopped at the house under the maples. Archibald proposed it. He wanted to meet the man the Smiling Lady was going to marry; wanted to meet him and have done with it. When a dream refused to lie down decently and die of its own accord, the thing to do with it was to kill it and the sooner, the better.

So he and Pegeen made their call on the Smiling Lady, finding a warm welcome—and Richard Meredith, which was what Archibald had expected. He took the measure of the man, as he shook hands with him and, involuntarily, his hand tightened. This was a man. He liked the quiet manner, the quiet voice, the air of distinction, the refinement and strength of the mouth, the kindness in the eyes—but, as he noted the fine lines about the kind eyes and the gray hair above them, his heart cried out Ellen’s protest. Springtime was mating time.

The Smiling Lady was quiet, too, that afternoon. She and Archibald talked together over the teacups, while Pegeen sat in the hammock with Richard Meredith—at his invitation; and the teacup talk of casual things was punctuated by gay little peals of laughter from the child and deeper answering laughter from the man beside her. They seemed to be getting on famously together, those two.

“Do you know,” Pegeen announced to Archibald, when an hour later they rode away, “I honestly believe I could see to Mr. Meredith after all. I never really talked to him before and he isn’t a bit the way I thought he was. He isn’t proud inside atall; and, if he wasn’t going to marry Miss Moran, so that he can’t possibly need anything, I’d think he sort of needed seeing to. There’s a lonesomey look in his eyes.”

“That’s better than a lonesomey feeling in his heart,” Archibald said with a shade of bitterness in his voice. Meredith was all right; but he didn’t care to hear Peggy praising him.

They turned into the back road as he spoke; and, far ahead, by the roadside, he saw a willow tree mourning forlornly over a tumble-down cottage. A sudden whim seized him.

“Why don’t you take him on?” the Smiling Lady had asked. Perhaps, some very strenuous neighboring would be good for this bitter mood of his.

IX

“Peg,” Archibald said, “let’s call on Ezra Watts.”

She looked surprised, a bit doubtful, but her sporting blood rose.

“All right,” she agreed promptly. “He won’t let us neighbor and I expect the dirt’s something terrible; but I’d just as soon.”

As they dismounted in front of the cottage, Ezra’s terrier came running out of the door. He was barking, but not angrily—urgently rather.

“You’d think he was inviting us in,” Pegeen said, as she watched the dog run toward the door, come back to bark eagerly, and run forward again.

“More hospitable than his master, I should say,” Archibald commented. “I wonder if the man is home.”

They reached the door which stood partly open, and rapped on it.

No sound came from within. Archibald rapped again. The terrier ran through the opening and barked encouragement across his shoulder.

“I believe something’s the matter,” said Pegeen suddenly. “Let’s go in.”

She pushed the door open and before Archibald could stop her stepped inside. He followed her and they stood in a filthy little room that had once been the parlor of the house. Moldy paper was hanging from the walls. Much of the plaster had fallen from the ceiling and lay where it fell. One or two rickety chairs were the only attempt at furnishing and the accumulated dirt of years littered the floor.

No one was in sight, but the dog ran on into a back room and from there the intruder heard a low mumbling voice.

“Stay here, Peg,” Archibald said authoritatively. “He’s drunk.”

But her instinct drove her quickly forward, in spite of his command.

“He’s sick,” she said.

Standing in the second doorway they looked into a room as dirty and neglected as the first, but they did not notice walls or ceiling or floor, for on a cot by the farther wall lay Ezra Watts, haggard, ghastly, purple-faced, unseeing, tossing restlessly on an unspeakably dirty bed and muttering meaningless things.

With a little cry of pity, Pegeen ran toward him, but Archibald caught her in his arms and lifting her bodily, carried her into the next room.

“Listen, Peg,” he said quietly, as he put her down. “The man has fever. There’s no telling what the disease is. I can’t have you taking chances. You can help most by getting on Zip and riding down to Miss Moran’s to telephone for Doctor Fullerton. Tell him what’s wrong and that I want him at once. Then ask Miss Moran for some old linen she can spare and some soap and bring them to me.”

“But you’re going to stay,” she protested.

“And who’ll take care of me if I get sick unless you keep in shape for it?”

The argument was overwhelming. She allowed him to lift her to the saddle and pelted away down the road at a breakneck pace, while Archibald went back into the house.

He found an old stove in the kitchen and made a fire in it Then he filled a kettle with fresh water and set it over the fire.

Whatever the doctor’s verdict was, hot water was sure to be needed in that house.

Pegeen was back in a few minutes.

“Miss Moran and Mr. Meredith have gone motoring,” she said breathlessly, as Archibald lifted her from the horse, “but Ellen’s coming. John’s going to bring her over in the cart. I’ve got some sheets and towels and a blanket and a cake of soap, but she’ll have more linen and scrubbing brushes and lots of cleaning things. There comes the doctor now. I hear his car.”

A muddy battered roadster came plunging up the crooked road at reckless speed and a tall, wiry, competent-looking man sprang out of it.

“Just caught me. I was rolling out of the yard when they yelled after me. Didn’t even have to crank up. So the germs have downed Ezra at last! Nature does get back at a man in time. Lord, what a hole!”

He went briskly through the front room, growling anathemas at the foulness, and bent over the tossing, muttering man on the bed with as lively an interest as though the patient had not been the black sheep of the Valley.

A body was a body to Dr. Fullerton, and his business was saving bodies. The harder the battle, the greater his interest and enjoyment. As to the value of the salvage to the community—that was the community’s business.

“I’ll patch up the tenements,” he said to the gentle, nervous, little Protestant minister in Pisgah. “It’s up to you and Father Rafferty to see that your people lead decent lives in them.”—But when the little man or the priest needed backing up with work or money, it was usually Dr. Fullerton who lent the hand or the dollars.

He was all doctor as he examined Ezra Watts, keen eyed, deft fingered, intent, but as he straightened himself and looked down at the dirty, unshaven face, the keenness gave way to kindliness in his eyes.

“Nothing contagious,” he said shortly. “Pneumonia with some complications. Not much show for him except in his tough constitution. He never did drink, for all his cussedness; and that’s in his favor now. Fed himself enough, such as it was and it was plain food with no knick-knacks. That counts for him too. It’s the high-living, robust fellows that wink out with pneumonia. Shouldn’t wonder if we’d pull him through provided we can get him clean without killing him. Got to have a scrubber and a nurse here and quick about it.”

“How about me?” Archibald asked. “Strong and willing at scrubbing and nursing but not a professional in either line.”

“Call Peggy,” ordered the doctor. “She’s one of my best nurses; but you and I’ll have to turn in and give him a bath before we hand him over to her.”

Archibald found Pegeen fairly dancing with eagerness and impatience on the doorstep. “Oh, my stars, I’m so glad it isn’t catching,” she said, darting past him into the sick room. “I couldn’t have stood it not to be able to see him. There’s such a splendid lot to do. It’s awful when there isn’t anything you can do but sit around and wait. This is the very best chance I ever had.”

“Well, you keep the fire roaring in the kitchen,” ordered the doctor, “and warm some of those towels and the blanket for us and see that there’s plenty of hot water. Archibald and I are going to give Ezra’s system the worst shock it has had since childhood. After that’s over, you can help us clean the front room a bit and move him in there.”

She flew into the kitchen with the towels and blanket, quick, noiseless, radiant.

Dr. Fullerton grinned as he watched her go.

“Funny what a passion for seeing to people that youngster has,” he said, “and what a corker she is at it, too. She’s helped me in some tight places, child as she is. Once it was sewing a man up—bad mowing-machine accident. His wife couldn’t stand by; but Peg could. White as a sheet, but never batted an eye until she’d done all I needed. Then she went away quietly into the yard and keeled over in a faint—but not till her job was done, mind you. That’s Peg.”

Ellen and John arrived during the progress of the bath, and, within an hour, the sick man lay between white, lavender-scented sheets in a room that, while forlorn, was amazingly clean.

“When he comes out of the fever, he’ll think he’s died and gone to hell,” Dr. Fullerton prophesied. “A clean eternity would be about the worst future Ezra could figure out. Who’s going to look after him, while I see to some of my other patients?”

“Me,” announced Peg, making up in enthusiasm what she lacked in grammer. “Boots is at Mrs. Neal’s and it won’t hurt Wiggles and Spunky and Peterkin to go without supper once, and Ellen’ll give you some supper, Mr. Archibald. Won’t you, Ellen?”

“Miss Nora would want me to be staying here,” protested Ellen.

Archibald settled the question.

“Peg and I will stay,” he said, “and maybe Ellen will send John over with a bite for us. We’ll have provisions in here by to-morrow and the back room fit to be lived in. He couldn’t be moved, I suppose, Doctor?”

Dr. Fullerton shook his head.

“Finish him,” he said. “I’ll have Miss Kirby down from Albany to-morrow morning. She’s the only nurse I know who likes cases of this sort—eats ’em up. Can’t be too bad for her. Only thing she balks at is a sick millionaire. Abnormal woman, but a rattling good nurse.”

“Couldn’t I—” began Pegeen. She looked woefully disappointed.

“You couldn’t.” The doctor was firm. “Not until after he’s over the ridge one way or the other. Then there’ll be enough for you and anybody that applies. Just shows what a frost virtue is. I’ve had highly respectable patients neglected and here’s a spirited contest for the privilege of taking care of Ezra, who’s as worthless a customer as you’d find in a day’s journey.”

“Oh, Doctor, he’s so sick!” Pegeen was distressed, shocked.

“But he’s not dead. It’s only after they’re dead that we can’t speak ill of them. I’m not going to let Ezra die, so I feel perfectly free to tell the truth about him. There’s the medicine. Nothing much to do at this stage of the game. I’ll be back in an hour and bring a tank of oxygen down to have it handy. Don’t you fret, Peggy. He’s going to rob many a hen-roost yet.”

He went away, driving in utter defiance of the speed laws. John and Ellen drove off home, and Peg and Archibald sat down in two of the rickety chairs near the bed upon which the transformed Ezra lay, breathing heavily.

“This, Miss Pegeen O’Neill, is what comes of neighboring,” said Archibald.

“Yes; isn’t it splendid?” Peg was important, shiny-eyed.

“Well, come to think of it, I don’t know but what it is,” admitted the man.

“Doesn’t he look different when he’s clean?”—Pegeen lowered her voice to sick-room pitch, but she was too excited to keep still and Ezra would not hear.

“Even so he’s not beautiful,”—Archibald studied the face on the pillow as he spoke. A weak, evil face it was even now when the man’s spirit did not look out through his eyes, but Peg’s tender heart could not find helplessness quite unbeautiful.