Part 13

“Don't talk like that, please,” said Darley, gravely. It is wonderful the aversion a young man has to being thanked in a case of this sort--at least, his profession of dislike. “I cannot tell you how unfortunate I regard the doctor's mandate,” said Darley after one of those awkward pauses between two young people who fancy, on a short acquaintance, that they have a tender regard for each other. “On your own account, of course, because I can understand how you feel over losing such a chance as the present ice affords; but chiefly, I am selfish enough to say, on my own behalf, because by the time you are able to skate again, even if the ice is still good, my visit will have come to an end; and I had been hoping, presumptuously enough, I know, to see you often.”

“Will it be really imperative for you to return so soon?” said Miss Charteris, working rapidly at the woolen hood on which she was engaged.

“I am afraid so,” answered Darley, with something very like a sigh. “I could not infringe on too much of Leonard's time----”

“Ah! it is not the city which calls, then?”

“No, it is not the city,” answered Darley, laughing, and being angrily conscious that he was flushing. “But Jack is such a dear good fellow, that I know he would not dream of sending me away.”

Miss Charteris' eyes were on her work, and she plied her fingers rapidly.

“Do you know Leonard very well, Miss Charteris?” continued Darley, as the girl did not venture a remark.

“Oh, yes!” The tone might have suggested that Miss Charteris was agitated; but Darley went on, radiant and sublimely ignorant.

“He is a grand fellow--the one man in the world that I would fall down and worship! I think Shakespeare must have had him in his vaticinal eye when he put those perfect words, that immortal eulogy, in the mouth of Antony: 'His life was gentle; and the elements so mixed in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, '_this_ was a man!'”

The maid came in and asked if she should light the lamps.

“Not just yet. I prefer this twilight. Do you, Mr. Darley?”

“Very much--for itself. It is very satisfying and soothing, and always seems to me like a benediction. But it is very bad for your eyes, and very soon I shall be only able to half see your face.”

“Which will be very good for _your_ eyes. Well, I have done work for today.” Miss Charteris laid the hood away, which Darley had been regarding curiously, and folded her hands in her lap. The action and the moment made Darley think of the “Angelus;” the “Angelus” made him think that it was getting late, and that made him think that it was time to go. The lamps, he said, had come round, and----

“No, sit down, unless you really want to go,” said Miss Charteris. She was remarkably frank, this young lady. “The lamps have not come round; and, on the contrary, I think that my disinclination for them should be taken as proof that I do not think it is time for you to go. Besides, the days are cruelly short now.”

“I find them so,” answered Darley, softly. “Leonard is making everything so comfortable for me that I do not know what I shall feel like when the curtain has rung down. It will seem like awaking suddenly from dreamland to cold earth again. I am sure I shall feel like one of those mountains falling into the sea of dullness that Poe describes: 'Mountains toppling evermore into seas without a shore.'”

“You seem a great admirer of Mr. Leonard,” ventured Miss Charteris. There was just the slightest suspicion of jealousy in her tone, which Darley did not notice. Was it because he had inadvertently attributed his loneliness at leaving to his friend's kindness, and not paid her that little tribute of homage which women love? But who knoweth the heart of woman? Darley longed to tell her why he should feel lonely when he came to say good-by; but he did not wish to garnish such a declaration with quotations from poets. Let a man speak from the inspiration of the moment when he tells his love, or hints at it.

“Admirer!” he echoed, in reply to Miss Charteris' remark. “It is more than that. Just think! We were inseparable for years. I wish we had remained so. No one who knows Jack Leonard as I have known him could help thinking him a perfect man, noble and generous, as he is!”

“We are one in that opinion,” answered Miss Charteris, quietly. “And, next to esteeming a noble man, I can esteem his friend who can speak so unselfishly and sincerely of him, as you have done.”

Darley felt touched--not so much at the words, but at the way in which they were spoken, gently, deeply, as if breathing of sincereness. But he did not distinguish anything beyond that in the grave eulogy to Leonard and himself.

At length the lights _had_ to be brought in, and Darley rose to go.

“You said you felt it unfortunate that I should be unable to skate, because you had been hoping to see me often,” said Miss Charteris. She was conscious of a slight flush, but she went bravely on. In certain circumstances a woman _has_ to be what prudes call bold. “Did you mean it?”

“How could you doubt that I meant it? I certainly did mean it.” Darley was a little confused by this frankness. All true women must be coquettes in some degree, was Darley's creed. But Miss Charteris was hardly a coquette even in a slight degree, he thought. It was not frivolousness that prompted her to speak in this way.

“Because, if you meant it,” continued this charming young person, “I shall be glad if you will come and see me as often as you like, if you will not find it dull.”

Miss Spooner, Miss Charteris' aunt, came in at this moment and spoiled the eloquent look of reproach that Darley gave her niece.

“Did you ever see such a girl!” exclaimed Miss Spooner in her high but pleasant voice. Miss Spooner's speech was emphatic, and endowed with realism. Darley felt like saying that he never had, indeed. “_I_ never did! Going into mourning, I believe, because she can't go out and break another ankle! You wouldn't catch _me_ on that ice! I saw it to-day from the bridge--horrible, shiny, treacherous stuff! Not going already, Mr. Darley? Better stop to tea.”

Darley said he could not stop to tea _that evening_; which meant that he could some other evening, of course, and would be unspeakably happy to do so. All of which Miss Spooner understood; and so she extended her hospitality to him for the next evening.

*****

“Do you know, Percy, I believe you are going to marry Miss Charteris,” said Leonard, quietly, one evening. “_Our_ Miss Charteris, I mean.”

“What makes you say so?”

“I believe you are in love with her; in fact, I know you are. And I hope you will. Nothing could make me happier.” Darley looked the satisfaction he could not speak at this little speech.

“I am in love with her. But I am not good enough for her,” he said, humbly. “I have been a worthless beggar all these years----”

“You can prove your worth,” said Leonard, warmly. “And you _must_, if you marry Florence Charteris. I know you are not worthless; but you must let the good come to the surface.”

“I shall work,” answered Darley, earnestly. “I begin to feel now the approving glow that comes to a man when he anticipates marrying a woman he loves. But why should I anticipate? I have not the slightest reason to believe that Miss Charteris cares a jot for me!”

“Is that true, Percy?” questioned Leonard, sharply.

Darley did not know whether it was true or not. He did not like to be sanguine, he said. No; he had no reason to think Miss Charteris cared whether he went back to town to-morrow. Not an item of which Leonard believed.

“I hope earnestly you will win her,” he said again. “But you will have to retrench. Florence Charteris is as poor as a church mouse.”

“I am heartily glad of it,” said Darley, warmly. “I shall be the man I have never yet been if I win her.”

“Well, you will win her,” said Leonard. “I feel it in my bones.”

So the days went round; and each one found Darley at Miss Spooner's. Even little Dutton had begun to watch with interest the outcome of this quiet wooing of the little lady whom all the town loved. The evolutions of acquaintance had merged rapidly into the sweeter plane of an almost wordless courtship; but as yet Darley had not ventured to speak He felt fearful lest his dream should be dispelled; and yet, though he was not a vain man, he felt that this lovable little woman cared for him. He could not go back to town and leave his love unspoken, however; because if he had done so this little story would not have been written. And at length came the day when he felt that his visit had been prolonged beyond the limits that even close friendship allows.

“I am going away to-morrow,” he said on this eventful afternoon. It was just such an afternoon as that first one which he had spent there. It was growing dusk; and through the window they could see the red lights of home, those terrestrial apostles of Hesperus, punctuating the white landscape.

“I am going away to-morrow,” repeated Darley. Miss Charteris said nothing, but gazed out of the window.

“Why don't you say something?” he burst out. “Have you nothing to say?”

“What should I say? Do you want me to say good-by? Is it such a sweet word, then, that you are anxious that I should say it now?”

Darley knelt beside the little dusky figure in the rocker. How sweet it is to have the woman you love speak to you like this, and to hear her voice tremble, and to feel that she cares for you!

“No, I don't want you to say good-by,” he said, very gently. “I want you to tell me not to go. Can't you see that the thought of leaving you has been like the thought of eternal darkness to me? I love you, and I want you for my own, always, that I may never know the bitterness of good-by!” Miss Charteris turned her head, and Darley saw that the gray eyes he loved so well were wet. She put out one little white hand till it rested on his.

“Stay!” she whispered.

After a while, when the lamps--those horribly real and unromantic things--were brought in, they talked of other matters. But both seemed very happy, and ready to talk of anything. Even the mysterious hood, which was now completed, came in for a share of attention, and the inquisitive Darley learned that it was for a “poor old soul,” as Miss Charteris expressed it, who lived in a wretched little shanty with a worthless grandson, at the other end of the town. By-and-by Miss Charteris said:

“I have some news for you. Bella was married yesterday. Can you guess to whom?”

“No, I cannot,” answered Darley, almost breathlessly. Bella was the Miss Charteris of the city. He did not know whether to feel glad or indifferent, but he was free of the gentlest touch of spleen. A woman will be conscious of a twinge of pique when she hears that a man with whom she has had some little love affair has married some one else. But Darley was not conscious of any such sensation.

“It was very quiet,” continued Miss Charteris. “At least, I gather so from the paper which tells me of it. Bella never writes me, and not even on this occasion has she done so. However, she is now Mrs. Lawrence Severance.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Darley in a superior tone, which testified that he knew something about it. Then he mentioned having met Severance. He had not said anything of the occurrence before, not caring for Miss Charteris of the city as a subject of conversation with her sister, for reasons best known to himself.

“There is quite a little story about it, you know,” continued Miss Florence. “Lawrence, you know, and Bella have been lovers ever since they were so high, and Bella was Aunt Mary Spooner's favorite. When Aunt Mary died she left a great deal of money for Bella when she should come of age, stipulating, however, that Bella should have only a certain allowance till she was beyond a marriageable age.”

“And, pray, what age is that?” asked Darley, laughing.

“I should not have cared to ask Aunt Mary that question. The reason was that Lawrence was the son of an old sweetheart of Aunt Mary's, who had jilted her without any mercy; and so the sins of the father were visited upon the head of the son. 'Marry Lawrence, my dear,' says Aunt Mary, 'if you like, but you don't have my money. Florence shall have it the day you marry Lawrence Severance.'”

Darley started as if stung. “Eh?” he exclaimed, “I don't understand!”

“Then listen. 'Oh, ho!' quoth Lawrence, when he grew up and understood the story. 'So that is the way of love, is it? Well, there are more fortunes than Aunt Mary's in the world.' And away went Lawrence, nothing daunted, to win--what I hear he has won--double the fortune that Bella, in marrying him, hands over to me.”

“Then you mean to say that this--money comes to you; that you are a rich woman, in fact?” Darley's tone was almost bitten.

“Yes!” answered Miss Florence, gleefully, and clapping her little hands. “Aren't you glad?”

“Glad? I hate it!”

“Hate it?”

“Yes, hate it! I was glorying in the fact that if I won you I would marry a poor woman. Now--” Darley did not finish his sentence.

“You must not talk like that,” said Miss Florence with some asperity. “It is very wrong, and it hurts me, although I know I should be pleased. But I know you love me for all that. Money is a very good thing--God's gift in the hands of those who use it well. There is a great deal of good that we can do with Aunt Mary's money. She was very good herself to the poor, despite her unnatural dislike for Lawrence Severance; and I should like her to know that her mantle had fallen on worthy shoulders. You and I shall use this money to a great purpose.”

“But you don't know what a happy thing it has been to me, this thought of winning you and proving my love by earnest work!”

“And need that resolve be dissipated?” said Miss Florence, gravely. “You shall do that. There is a great deal of work to be done.”

*****

Leonard met Darley on his return, and drew him into the light.

“I have won her, Jack!” said the younger man, grasping his friend's hand. “The sweetest and the noblest woman God ever made!”

“I see it in your face,” said Leonard, huskily. Even Darley could not fail to notice the change in his friend's voice. “What is the matter, old man?” he exclaimed. “You----”

“Nothing, nothing, my boy,” Leonard answered quickly. “But promise me one thing: that you will make her a noble husband, always--always!”

Then Darley understood.

“Dear old Jack!” he said tenderly. “What a fool I have been! Can you forgive me?”

“There is nothing to forgive, my boy--nothing. But you must always be good to her. But never get angry because another man besides yourself worships your wife.”

THE BEAR 'S-HEAD BROOCH, By Ernest Ingersoll

HE story I am about to narrate happened this way, Thomas Burke and I were old schoolmates. But his course and mine had been widely divergent for a score of years, so that by the time he had brought his family back to New York, and our acquaintance could be renewed, many untold things had happened to each.

I knew Tom had won his fortune by mining in the Rocky Mountains. It was rumored that his accomplished wife also had wealth in her own right, but Tom never had much to say in regard to his financial matters, and I did not like to question him notwithstanding our intimacy. I had dined with him two Christmases in succession, and now for the third time had eaten my Christmas dinner at his table.

On each of these occasions Mrs. Burke had worn at her throat a magificient brooch which I had never seen at any other time, though I had met her often when such an ornament would have been suitable enough. This brooch was a bear's face, holding in its teeth a tiny steel key. It was a marvel of delicacy in the goldsmith's art, and evidently very costly; for the eyes were each a ruby, and the head was encircled with large diamonds, half hidden by hairs of gold, as though they represented a collar round bruin's hirsute neck.

“Tom,” I said, when Mrs. Burke had left us to ourselves after dinner, “I am very curious about that bear's head brooch your wife wears. Why do I never see it except at Christmas? I am sure it has a history, and if there is no secret about it I wish you would enlighten me.”

“Well,” said my old friend, “that is rather a lengthy story. There is no secret about it--at least none to keep from an old chum like you. As for the brooch, that's only an ornament I had made some years ago; but the design and the little key--which is a real key--remind Marion and myself of what we call our Christmas story, because it culminated on that day.

“When you and I left the old university in 1870, and you came here, and I went West----”

But if I were to tell the story as he did, it would hardly be as plain to you as it was to me. I must write it out.

When Tom Burke left the university after his graduation he took the few hundred dollars which were the measure of his capital and went to the Rocky Mountains to seek his fortune. In the autumn of 1871 he became the superintendent of the Crimson Canyon Mining Company in Southern Colorado, where he found as assayer, and scientific assistant generally, a queer, learned and proud old Scotchman named Corbitt. This man had been one of the “Forty-niners” and had made a fortune which he had greatly enjoyed while it lasted, and the loss of which, in some wrong-headed speculation, he never ceased to deplore.

Now, a few weeks before Tom's arrival at the camp, Corbitt's home had been brightened by the coming of his daughter Marion, on what he told his envious acquaintances was a “veesit,” implying that she could not be expected to make her home there.

And truly this remote mountain settlement, inclement in climate, uncouth, dusty, filled with rough men, and bountiful only in pure air and divine pictures of crag and glen, icy-blue peaks and chromatic patches of stained cliff above or flower meadow below--all this was anything but the sort of place for a girl like her to spend her maiden days in.

Perhaps it was not quite a case of love at first sight between her and Tom, but certainly the winter had not passed before each had confessed that there was no one else in the world beside the other whose presence much mattered in the way of happiness.

But that seemed to be the end of it, for Corbitt gave young Burke to understand most decisively that he could hope for nothing more--an engagement to marry was out of the question.

“Love, let us wait,” was Marion's last word, when, on her first and last tryst, she had stolen away to meet him, and he counted her kisses as a miser counts his gold.

“Let us wait. I care for nobody else, and nobody can marry me against my will. We are young yet. Who knows what may happen? You may get money enough to satisfy papa--I don't suppose he holds me at a very, very high price, do you? Or I may be freer after a while to do as I wish.”

This was commonplace advice enough, but Tom saw both the good sense and the pure love in it, and accepted the decree, steeling his heart against the impulses of rage and revolt.

And then, quite unexpectedly, Mr. Corbitt resigned his place and went to Denver, taking his family with him. The same week the mine changed owners, and Burke was superseded by a new superintendent; and so, almost at a stroke, the lad lost both his sweetheart and the weapon by which he was to fight for her in the business tournament of the world. However, the latter evil was presently remedied, and he worked on, saving his money and teasing his brain for suggestions how to make it increase faster.

At that time the mighty range had never been very carefully prospected. Men had, indeed, ascended Crimson Creek to its sources in search of the deposits of quartz whence the auriferous gravels below had been enriched, but they had brought back a discouraging report. Tom was not satisfied to accept their conclusions. He was confident, from the geological and other indications, that treasures of ore lay undiscovered among those azure heights. At last, resolved to see for himself, he enlisted the help of a young miner and mountaineer named Cooper, and one day late in August they started.

After passing the pillared gateways of the Canyon, and ascending for a few miles the great gorge down which the creek cascaded over boulders and ledges of granite and rounded fragments of trachyte and quartz, you come to a noble cataract leaping into the Canyon from the left through a narrow gash or depression in the wall. By climbing up the opposite slope a little way, you see that this stream comes tumbling white and furious down a long rugged stairway of rocky fragments before it reaches the brink, whence it shoots out in the air and then falls in a thousand wreaths of dangling vapor.

“Cooper,” Tom called out to his companion, who was more comrade than servant, “I guess we'll camp here. I want to examine this side gorge a bit.”

“It looks to me,” remarked Tom, “as if this had formerly been the main stream, and had carried pretty much all the drainage of the valley until a big landslide--and it didn't happen so very long ago either--dammed the exit of the valley and changed the shape of things generally, eh?”

“That's about the size of it, I guess. But, I say, ain't that smoke down there by the lake?”

“I reckon we've got time enough to go and see. It ain't far down there, and the moon'll show us the way back if we get late.”

Noting their bearings, they began the descent toward the lake and presently came out upon its border, where the walking was easier. Advancing cautiously half a mile or thereabout, they again caught sight of the smoke through the bushes--a feeble column rising from some embers before a small shelter of boughs and bark that hardly deserved the name of hut. A skillet, a light pick and shovel, and one or two other household articles lay near by, but nothing alive appeared.

“No Injun 'bout that,” said Cooper.

“No, Cooper; more likely a prospector.”

Hallooing as they neared the hut, a lean and miserable dog rushed out and greeted them with ferocious growls, whereupon they heard a weak voice speaking to him, and saw a frowsy gray head and a bony hand, clutching a revolver, stretched out of the opening that answered for a door.

“Hello!” Tom cried. “Call off your dog; we're friends.”

Then a tousled, ragged, gaunt-limbed figure, emaciated with hunger, wild eyed with fever, dragged itself from the sheltering brush, gave one long look at the stalwart strangers, and fell back on the stony ground in a dead faint, while the dog, rushing forward with the courage of a starved wolf, planted himself before the corpse-like form and defied them to touch it.

They fought off the animal, brought water from the lake and revived the man. A dram from Tom's flask stimulated him, whereupon he sat up and began to chatter incoherently, thanks to God and wild exclamations about some hidden treasure mingling with such plaintive cries as “She'll be all right now!” and “Mebbe she'll forgive her old dad!” making up the whole of his ceaseless talk.

“He's clean crazy!” was Cooper's opinion.

“Yes,” Tom assented, “but it is fever and famine. Couldn't you shoot a rabbit or something? Then I could make him a stew. Try it.”

But all that Cooper could quickly find to kill were three mountain jays, which were converted into a broth, thickened with the dust of flour that remained. A little tea was also found in the sick man's pack, and this was brewed for him. Then Cooper volunteered to go back to their own camp and bring over more food and Tom's little medicine case.