CHAPTER XIV

IN THE SPRINGTIDE.

It is probable that not even those who loved her best realized how Jean had loved the pet which had been her daily companion for nearly four years. The very fact that she had rescued him from a miserable death, nursed and tended him to restored health, had felt his love for her growing with each day, made Baltie nearer and dearer to her than a young, vigorous horse could ever have been.

Baltie was now resting in his lowly bed at the foot of the garden, but Jean did not cease to grieve for him. When Mammy had found her with Baltie’s head in her lap that morning there had been a pathetic little scene—for Mammy loved the old horse as dearly as Jean loved him; but had she been entirely indifferent to him, the fact that her baby loved him would have been enough to exalt him above all other animals in Mammy’s sight. Jean was utterly exhausted by her grief and benumbed from her cramped position when Mammy found her, and the good old soul was genuinely alarmed when she tried to help the child to her feet. Baltie’s weight and her cramped position had completely arrested circulation. In spite of her own grief Mammy lifted Baltie’s head from Jean’s lap, laid it gently upon the straw and then helped the girl up, or tried to, for Jean was too numb to stand.

“Bress Gawd, what comin’ to us nex’?” she cried, half carrying Jean to the house, where Constance met them.

It was hours before Jean could walk unaided, and many days before the girl smiled again. Mrs. Carruth grew troubled, and one afternoon spoke to Hadyn about her.

“I am so distressed about it. She is filled with remorse for having taken Baltie out that night, and that, added to her grief for him, is making the child positively ill. I have done my best to make her understand that Baltie had already lived far beyond a horse’s allotted years, and that very soon he must have come into his long rest, but I seem to make no impression.”

“If I had been on hand when needed he would be alive this minute, and my little girl happy and cheery as ever,” protested Hadyn. “I’ll never, never forgive myself that lapse as long as I live, and nothing I can do will ever atone for it. It was the most contemptible failure of which I have ever been guilty; but I declare to you, I’m going to do something to make reparation. Where is Jean now?”

“She went down to the Arcade for Constance about an hour ago, but she ought to be back very soon.”

“I’ll walk down and meet my little sister. I’ve a scheme simmering far back in my witless mind which may take form and shape if I can keep awake. Au revoir, little mother,” and with the grace so characteristic of him, Hadyn raised her hand and pressed his lips to it! There was no one on earth he loved as he loved this gentle, gracious woman.

Riveredge in its late April dress was very dainty. She seemed to be preparing for Easter, which this year fell late in the month, and over all the world lay the softest veil of gossamer green. The air was redolent of cherry and apple blossoms, and filled with bird notes.

As Hadyn walked down the steep roadway, which led from the Carruth’s to the broader highway, he saw Jean coming toward him and waved his hand in greeting. As he hurried toward her he called:

“Well met, little sister,” raising his hat and extending his hand.

A quick light sprung into Jean’s eyes. “I like that,” she said, with a quaint, little upraising of her head.

“Like what, Jean?”

“I like to have a man bow as you do, Champion. Because I’m only fourteen and still wear short skirts some of them seem to think a nod and ‘how-d’-do’ is all that is required of them, but I don’t agree with them.”

Hadyn did not betray the amusement this characteristic little comment caused him. He knew Jean to be more observing of the amenities than most girls of her age, and that all her Southern instincts demanded the chivalrous attention which generations of her ancestors had received from men. Many of her girl friends laughed at her and teased her, but that did not lower her standard of what was due womanhood from manhood.

“I should be unworthy the name you’ve given me if I forgot,” said Hadyn.

“It wouldn’t make one bit of difference whether I had given you that name or not, you couldn’t be different.”

“Thank you. But where are you going now?”

“Nowhere in particular. Amy is away and Connie up to her eyes in the month’s accounts. So I’m adrift.”

“How would you like to come for a walk in the woods with me? I am not going back to the office this afternoon, for the fever is on me. The call of the woods gets into my blood sometimes, and then I’ve got to tramp. Only trouble is, I can’t always get a tramping companion. Will you come?”

“I’d love to, but I must let mother know, she might worry.”

“She won’t, because she knows I came to ask you to go with me if I could find you.”

They struck into a side road, which presently became a mere wood path leading up the mountain, and from which a little higher up an exquisite picture of the river and opposite mountains could be seen. Hadyn, pausing at a broad, flat rock, said:

“Let’s sit down and enjoy all this. Come, sit beside me, little sister.”

Jean dropped down upon the lichen-covered rock, warm and dry in the afternoon sunshine which fell upon it, and said:

“Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t all the world beautiful? Why need anybody or anything in it ever die, and why will other people make them. Oh, Champion, if I only hadn’t made Baltie!” and quick tears sprung into her eyes. During the two weeks since Baltie’s death Jean had actually lost flesh and grown pale in her sorrow and remorse for what she believed to be purely the result of her want of thought.

Hadyn put his hand on hers and, looking into her eyes, asked:

“Little sister, do you know how that hurts _me_? It was not your want of forethought that night, but my faithlessness which carried you out into that terrible storm, and I shall never, never forgive myself. You might have been the victim instead of old Baltie, but as it is his life paid the penalty of my lapse. True, he was very old and might not have lived a great deal longer, but his end certainly would not have been hastened, or your loving heart grieving as it now is had I done my duty. Can you ever forgive me, dear?”

As Hadyn talked a swift change swept over Jean’s expressive face; a new light sprung into her eyes, and she said:

“Why, Champion, I never for one single second blamed you. Did you think I did? Oh, you couldn’t think that, not when you know how dearly I love you, and how good you’ve always been to Baltie and me. Why, you saved his life, you know, and have always helped me look out for him; and you’ve done hundreds and hundreds of things for us both. Please, please never say that again. You didn’t know I was going to signal that night.”

“Ah, but I _did_ know it, and it was only upon that condition that Constance consented to go upstairs to bed. She thought she could trust me to answer that signal, but you see she couldn’t, and all this is the result. You are grieving for your pet until you are almost ill from it, and I feel like—like, oh, like the most contemptible thing that ever happened. What can I do to help, little one? It hurts me to see you or yours unhappy.”

“I shall not be unhappy,” was Jean’s instant assertion. “I do miss Baltie terribly, for I loved him, and—and he seemed so much mine, and was so good and faithful—” here a little sob checked her words. Hadyn slipped his arms about her, and she leaned her head upon his shoulder. This big “brother” was a great source of strength and comfort to her. Then she resumed: “But I shall not let it make you unhappy, too. I dare say I am silly—the girls laugh at me and say I am, but I can’t help it—when I love anybody, or anything, I _love_ them, and that’s all there is about it. Baltie knew me better than he knew anyone else, and loved me better. No one knows or believes how he understood me, or I him, and it is no use trying to make them; but I feel as if some part of me had gone without having him to love and visit and pet every day, and have him snuggle up to me. I wish horses could have monuments raised to their memory, and some record kept of their good deeds and faithfulness for people to read. My goodness, more good things could be said of Baltie this minute, and they’d be true, too, than can be said of that dreadful old Jabe Raulsbury; and yet when he died last year they put up a tombstone for him the very first thing, and what do you think they had inscribed on it?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” and Hadyn smiled at the thought of any commendatory legend being placed upon the monument of the irascible Jabe, whose life had been one long series of quarrels with his neighbors, brutality to the dumb creatures which had lucklessly fallen into his hands, and whose last act had been to fly into a wild rage and beat his wife. Fortunately, it had been his last transgression, for a neighbor, hearing her screams, had rushed to her aid, and Jabe, hearing his approach, and starting to escape by a back door, had pitched headlong through an open trap-door and into his cellar. Several broken bones and some internal injuries brought him his just desserts of four months’ torture, ending in his death, and the town drew a sigh of relief. Then his widow erected a monument to his memory. It bore this memorial to the deceased Jabe:

“A loving husband, tender brother. Never shall we find another,”

The first statement was open to doubt, also, the second, for Ned Raulsbury, who had not had the pleasure of fraternal intercourse with his brother Jabe for many years, unless a ten years’ lawsuit to secure his own share of the estate represented it, probably congratulated himself that he was not likely to “find another.”

Jean repeated the legend with infinite scorn, and Hadyn laughed outright. Then growing serious again, he said:

“Perhaps a better record of Jabe’s true character is preserved in his neighbors’ memory of him, and I should think that Mrs. Raulsbury might now draw her first free breath. It _is_ true that a man’s death can sometimes bring oblivion of his evil deeds. Poor old Baltie might have told a few of Jabe’s, but even had he possessed human speech I doubt if he would have so employed it. Baltie was a gentleman. And, Little Sister, as a gentleman he must have a monument. Yes, I mean it. A shaft shall mark the old horse’s resting-place down there in the garden, and I shall have it erected; it is the least I can do under the circumstances. Don’t say anything about it to anyone. What would you like inscribed on it, dear?”

As Hadyn talked in his deep, softly-modulated voice, Jean’s face grew radiant. At his concluding question she clasped his hand in both of hers and pressed her lips to it again and again, exclaiming:

“No one but you would ever have understood! No, not anyone. You have _always_ understood; right from the very first day I knew you. Baltie would never have been saved on that awful day, or ever have been mine at all, if it hadn’t been for you, Champion, and oh, how hard, hard, hard I love you for it. Please don’t ever go away from us; I couldn’t live without you now; none of us could; you’ll be just one of us always, won’t you, Champion?”

Jean was too deeply in earnest to be aware that Hadyn’s face was flushing, or of the strange expression creeping into his eyes: a light of wonderful tenderness and yearning. He looked steadily into the eyes regarding him so earnestly as he said:

“Little Sister, do you realize that your home is the only real home I have known in many years? That when you and Eleanor and Constance agreed to share with me ‘a part of Mother,’ as you so sweetly expressed it, you made me your debtor forever and ever? Can you understand how very dear that little Mother of yours is to me, or how much her daughters’ welcome into their home has done to spare me a great many lonely hours? True, there are many friends in the outer world, but that house was once my Mother’s home, you know, and all my boyhood was spent in it. To go back to it under almost any conditions would seem almost like entering my own doors, but to be welcomed to it as I have been makes it—well, some day you may understand just what it _does_ make it, little girl. And now I want to tell you something else: You miss old Baltie, I know, and nothing can ever quite fill his place for you, but your heart is big, true and warm enough to hold another, isn’t it? For some time I have been dissatisfied with the care given Comet down in that South Riveredge boarding stable. They are careless in grooming him, and someone, I can’t find out which man, is not treating him kindly. Comet never knew the meaning of a harsh or impatient word until he went there, never feared a blow——”

“Strike Comet!” cried Jean, all her sense of justice outraged.

“Not exactly strike him, I think, but there are many ways of making a high-strung, thoroughbred horse’s life a torture. A sudden slap when grooming him, a shout if he does not step around briskly, or even a blow on his muzzle with the curry-comb. They may not inflict any great amount of pain, but they soon get on his nerves, and the next thing we know we have a horse that starts and plunges at the first sharp word; jerks his head up if anyone raises a hand toward it; shrinks at the sight of a curry-comb as from an instrument of torture. Comet never before manifested any of those signs, but now I’m beginning to notice them, and I don’t like it a little bit. I wouldn’t have that horse ruined for ten times his price in dollars, and so I’m going to see what I can do to place him where all chance of it will be removed.”

“Where, where are you going to send him?” cried Jean, clasping her hands in her eagerness.

“How would you like to have him come and live down yonder with you?” asked Hadyn, nodding toward Jean’s home, which could be seen from their woodland nook.

“In our stable: Comet? To be there all the time so I could go out to see him every single day, and he’d grow to love me just as Baltie did? Do you really mean it? Could I?”

“I think Comet will meet your advances more than half way. He has been treated like a child since his colthood, and you know how he understands _me_. I’ve had a long talk with the little mother, and she has agreed to let me keep Comet down there, and my man Parsons is to take care of him, to sleep in the coachman’s room upstairs and board with Mammy. You know most of his color find ‘just naturally doing nothing’ quite to their liking; but Parsons seems to be of different clay, so we will make him happy by keeping him busy. Good plan all around, don’t you think so?”

“I think you are just the splendidest, dearest man that ever lived, and Comet shall have the best care in all the world, and if any living being so much as points a finger at him I’ll—I’ll—well, I just tell you, they’d better not! Now, let’s go right back home and tell Connie all about it. You know she loves Comet as much as you or I love him, and she’ll be tickled to death to have him right there,” and Jean bounded to her feet all enthusiasm, her eyes shining and cheeks glowing, for something to love and care for was absolutely essential to Jean’s happiness.

And so it came to pass that about a week later Comet was installed in the Carruth stable, and if ever a horse came into an earthly paradise, Comet came into one in this new home.

Jean was in a rapture, and truly no horse-lover could fail to fall complete victim to Comet’s charms. It was the balm needed for Jean’s sorrow for Baltie, and when, in the course of the following weeks, a granite shaft was placed over Baltie’s grave, the little girl was as happy as she well could be.

The shaft bore the legend:

TO BALTIE.

_For Thirty Years a Faithful Friend and Servitor._

Perhaps in some more blissful realm Your eyes will beam on us again, And we shall find that great and small, God _is_ the father of us all.