CHAPTER XI

IN THE VALLEY.

“No, dear. I shall not wear myself out,” said Mrs. Carruth, gently, though firmly. “I want you to go back to the house to look after the maids and Jean——”

“Oh, I don’t want to go back! Please, please let me sleep in the Bee-hive, mother. Please, please do,” begged Jean, clasping her arms about her mother’s waist. Constance interrupted:

“Yes, mother, do. I will go back if you are determined not to, for I dare say the maids would be panic-stricken if left alone; but Jean might just as well remain here with you,” for into Constance’s active brain had sprung an idea which she wished to carry out, and she knew she could count upon Jean’s co-operation.

“But you and the maids would be quite alone in the house,” demurred Mrs. Carruth.

“And do you think Jean would be big and valiant enough to protect me from prowlers?” smiled Constance. “It would be a hard-pressed burglar who would venture forth this night, I’m thinking.”

Just then a sound overhead caused Mrs. Carruth to raise her hand to enjoin silence, and Mammy was heard to say soothingly:

“Dar, dar, honey, jis’ let me raise an’ ease yo’ up a leetle, so’s yo’ hits de sof’est fedders in de baid,” and quickly upon the softer, more soothing tones followed: “Yit what in de name o’ man ever done teken yo’ out of dis house yistiddy’s mo’n I can tell. Ef yo’d done taken heed ter ma’ wo’ds yo’ wouldn’ never come ter dis hyer pass.”

Then followed a series of groans from the patient.

“Mammy is getting worn out and consequently irritable,” said Mrs. Carruth. “Yes, you may remain, Jean, but Constance must go back, and I must go to Charles. If Mammy has much more to tax her strength and mind she will be ill, and she is in no mood to care for Charles now; she will do more harm than good. Good-night, darling. Don’t worry about me I will ’phone over to the house if I need anything in the night.” And Mrs. Carruth hurried upstairs.

“Come into the Bee-hive, Jean,” whispered Constance. The little girl followed.

“Now, dear,” said Constance, earnestly, “you and I have got to take matters into our own hands. Can I trust you, Jean?” Constance dropped upon a chair, and placing both arms about the little sister looked straight into her eyes.

The look was returned as steadfastly, and the fine little head poised in a manner which would have delighted an artist’s soul, as Jean asked:

“Don’t you know you can, Connie?”

“Yes, I do! And here is the situation: Before we came over here I tried to ’phone over to mother, but even our wire is out of order. I dare say every wire is, and that the trouble is in the central office, owing to this storm. I did not tell mother because it would only alarm her, and she may not have occasion to use the ’phone at all; I earnestly hope she will not until it is repaired. I shall go home, but I shall not go to bed. You stay here in the Bee-hive, but don’t undress, Jean; roll this warm rug around you and cuddle down on the couch. I know you will drop asleep, but I know you will not sleep so soundly that you will be lost to the world altogether. I shall be on the couch in the library and can see this window from there. If Charles grows worse, or you think mother is worn out and needs me, will you flash the electric light three times? I shall know what it means and come straight over.” Constance spoke very quietly, but very earnestly.

“I’ll do it. I may go to sleep, but somehow I know I shall wake up if I am needed, Connie. Even if I am only fourteen years old I can be a little woman, as mother so often says I am.”

“I know you can, dear, and you are, Jean; even if in many ways you are younger than most girls of your age. I don’t think any of us have grown up quite so fast as the girls around us. Mother says we have not, and she does not wish us to, because there are so many more years in which we must be old than in which we can be young; but I reckon we can rise to a situation when occasion demands, and, somehow, I feel that we will both be needed to-night. Dear old Charles, he is pretty sick, I know, or mother would not look so anxious, and _such_ a night as this is. Why, Jean, we could not get a message to Dr. Black however badly we might need him. We must depend entirely upon ourselves.”

“I wonder Champion did not come over.”

“He ’phoned mother this morning, but before she got all his message the connection broke, and, I dare say, the roads have been almost impassable.”

“Impassable roads would never keep him from coming,” cried the “Champion’s” champion. “There must have been something worse than the roads. I don’t know what, but I know it was something,” insisted Jean.

“Yes, I am sure there must have been, he is always so thoughtful for us,” replied Constance, a soft light springing into her eyes as she recalled Hadyn’s unvarying kindness from the first moment she knew him. “Now, good-night, honey. I hope you won’t need me at all, but I know you will be on the lookout if you do.”

A moment later Constance was struggling back to the house through the blinding storm and snowdrifts. As she entered the back door the front one opened to admit a snow-covered, panting figure, and Hadyn confronted her.

“Great Scott! Where have you come from?” he demanded.

“I might ask the same question,” panted Constance, divesting herself of her cloak, and shaking it to free it from the snow which covered it. “Get out of your coat, quick, and give it to Lilly to hang in the kitchen until it is dry. What under the sun possessed you to try to come here to-night, you madman?”

“Under the sun? Nay, lady, neither sun nor moon. I fear you are wandering. Is it a case of blizzard-madness?” answered Hadyn, as he slipped off his big ulster and cap and gave them to the maid.

“Now, come along in here and tell me all the little mother couldn’t tell me. Where is she, and where is my little sister?”

“Lilly, please bring some more logs for the library fire. Come in here, Hadyn, and I’ll tell you all about it. Mother and Jean are over With Charles and Mammy, and I’m here to mount guard over the house and maids, who, luckily, are storm-bound.”

“But why on earth aren’t you all here? The little mother and Jean have no business to be anywhere else on such a villainous night. Let me go right over after them,” and Hadyn turned toward the door.

“Stop! Wait! Listen to me!”

“Oh, of course, Mademoiselle la General,” laughed Hadyn, as Constance laid a detaining hand upon his arm. “I’m listening.”

“Then sit down to do it and hear the whole story. When you really know all about it you can help me; but you might as well whistle to the wind out yonder as to hope to get mother back here to-night. Yes, Lilly, put the logs in the basket, and you and Rose please stay in the kitchen until eleven. I will be out to speak to you when Mr. Stuyvesant goes.”

“When he _does_,” said Hadyn, under his breath, then louder: “It must be rather satisfying to have such a flower-garden right indoors when it is whooping things up so outside,” and he nodded toward the maid just leaving the room. “If you could only have a ‘Violet’ and a ‘Pansy,’ and one or two other blossoms, you’d have a whole greenhouse.”

Constance laughed outright as she answered:

“We’ve had wood nymphs, and some of the months—May and June, for instance—and several jewels, to say nothing of a few royalties, so nothing will surprise us now; but Mammy seems equal to all of them put together. And apropos of Mammy, let me tell you all about her and Charles.”

They sat down before the blazing logs while Constance told of the experiences of the past twenty-four hours. Hadyn listened with a troubled face.

“I’d no idea it was so serious,” he said, when she finished, “but I am mighty glad I came over to-night. And now you are to heed what _I_ say: you may sit here with me until eleven if you will. I’ll be right glad of your company. _Then_ you are going upstairs to bed—_yes_, you are, too. Now, it is no use ‘argifyin’,’ to quote Mammy. I’ll stay here in the library snug, warm, and as comfortable as any man could wish to be. I shall see Jean’s light if she signals, and I’ll be good—yes, honest I will. You doubt it, I know, and you think I will sneak over yonder and be more bother than I am worth; but I give you my word I won’t. I’ll do exactly as you would do if you were here alone.”

Constance raised her eyes to his, and little guessed how hard it was for the man who looked into their pure, trustful depths to refrain from holding out his arms to the girl who had grown so dear to him during the past three and a half years.

“I’ll take you at your word,” she answered.

“Good. Now sit down and toast your toes before this blaze. By Jove, is there anything like blazing logs and soft lamplight? They spell _h-o-m-e_, don’t they?” and Hadyn glanced around the cosy room as though to him, at least, it held the sweetest elements of home a man could ask for.

Softly the little clock ticked the moments and hours away as they sat there together, talking over a hundred little happenings of the past years, now and then glancing over to the Bee-hive. But all was quiet. A dim light shone in Mammy’s bedroom, and in the Bee-hive Jean’s shaded electric light cast a faint halo upon the snow which continued to whirl by the window, although the wind had died down a little and the storm seemed less violent. Shortly after ten Constance went out to the kitchen to see that the storm-bound maids were comfortable. Cots had been placed in the laundry for them, and they were probably far better off than they would have been in their own home.

“Now, are you sure _you_ will be comfortable?” she asked Hadyn when she returned to the library. He glanced about the room, at the cheerful fire and the divan, with its numberless pillows, and smiled significantly. “Only trouble is, I may be _too_ comfortable,” he said. “But you need not worry,” as a slight shade of doubt crossed Constance’s face. “I won’t go to the Land o’ Nod. But _you_ must, so good-night, little girl. Go on upstairs and sleep well. I know just what that room looks like; I shall never forget the night you gave it up to me. If I had known it a little sooner, I should not have let you do so, although the memory of it has been one of the sweetest ones of my life. Good-night.”

“Good-night, Hadyn, and—thank you a thousand times.”

If Haydn held the slender fingers an extra moment, and looked earnestly into the beautiful eyes raised to his, he was hardly to be blamed.

Turning to the book shelves, he selected a book and went back to his chair before the fire. Eleven and twelve were struck by the clock on the mantle shelf, but all was quiet in the little cottage at the foot of the garden. Then came three single strokes in succession; twelve-thirty, one, one-thirty. Hadyn remembered no more. His wild struggle through the storm earlier in the evening, the silent house, the warmth, the luxurious depth of the Morris chair had all conspired against his resolutions, and three o’clock was striking when he started wide awake with a sense of calamity at hand and the deepest contrition in his heart—an hour and a half blotted out as though they had never been!