Part 34

“Don’t you worry one mite about my knob,” I shouted, cracking my scarred knuckles against it--and the pain in the knuckles made me all the uglier. “I’m not going to be nursed and fussed over any longer. I have been nursed too much already. They’re even nursing my own private business--and making it sicker all the time. From now on I’m going to tend to my own affairs. Mr. Vose, help me get these bandages off my feet!”

He stood back and flapped his hands and protested. I knew he felt that I had become a lunatic, and so I convinced him by walking up and giving him a good, sane stare.

“Do you think I’m going to stay in bed the rest of my life--a man who has so much to live for as I have?”

“That’s right--a man who is wuth--”

At last somebody was going to post me on my financial status--satisfy my wild eagerness to find out! And I stopped him.

“Shut up,” I fairly barked. “I don’t want to be reminded of that every five minutes. Excuse me, Mr. Vose. But get my clothes.”

I had made up my mind that only one voice in all the world should tell me what my sacrifice had wrung from the Pacific for my own self! Silly notion, eh? No matter. I felt that a certain pair of lips would bless the information when it passed them.

A half-hour later I was dressed after a fashion. I walked down-stairs, or it may be better to say that I scuffed and skated down, for I could not squeeze my feet into shoes and was provided with a pair of Dodovah Vose’s slippers--carpet affairs with a hectic rose on each instep.

I found Captain Holstrom on the porch with my uncle Deck; their chairs were tipped back and they were confabbing in most amiable fashion. My uncle grinned at me, and I floundered for words because I wasn’t sure what I had said to him prior to my awakening or just what our diplomatic relations were. His grin encouraged me.

“Damn it,” he ejaculated, “I’ve said right along it was best for you to be up and around. But Cap’s girl would have it t’other way. Feel all right, sonny?”

“I’ll feel better, Uncle Deck, if I’m sure that you and I will never have any more misunderstandings. As we have said--”

I stopped there and waited, figuring that I had left about the right kind of an opening to find out what we _had_ said. My uncle arose and clapped my shoulder.

“Sonny, I tell you again, now when you stand man-fashion in front of me, that the night when I took my first trick at sitting up with you we fixed it all! For I found out how you felt, underneath, about _him!_ And about the whole proposition!” He nudged me. “I’m taking my comfort these days watching him. No more liberty than old Potter Crabtree’s clay-grinding hoss--around and around in an everlasting circle. I hope he’ll live long enough to pay his debts--that means a considerable stretch of enjoyment for me. I wouldn’t trig his wheel for all the world!”

That was how it stood, eh? And I let it stand, for I wasn’t just sure what my private sentiments were in regard to Judge Kingsley at that time. Furthermore, I had some very special business of my own on my mind. I turned to Captain Rask.

“Where is Kama?”

“Reckon she’s over saying good-by to your girl.”

My uncle stared at me--I must have been telling him things when he sat up with me.

Saying good-by! Then she probably had told her father that she was ready to go away. I started across the village square, sliding along in my huge slippers like a man walking on snow-shoes. I banged the big knocker on the front door of Judge Kingsley’s mansion and the maid admitted me. I was not bashful that day--I walked right into the sitting-room.

If I am any judge of expressions I did not interrupt any amiable and confidential tête-à-tête. The two girls rose and, after a few moments of constraint, Celene Kingsley asked me to be seated. I told her that I preferred to stand; I reckon that I wasn’t sure that I _could_ sit down; the stiffness of the whole situation made me feel as if I did not have any joints.

“I have finished my errand,” declared Kama. The red was in her cheeks and there was no encouragement for me in her eyes. “I will say, Mr. Sidney, that I have apologized to Miss Kingsley for meddling in matters between you two. I thought I understood and I have tried to help. I deserve exactly what I have received! I assure you both that I will keep out of the way after this.” She started for the door, but I was standing where I could block her. I supplemented my interference by an appeal to the lady of the mansion.

“Will you ask Miss Holstrom to remain for a moment?” I entreated. And Miss Holstrom did remain, biting her lower lip with impatience.

“I haven’t had much time for thinking on what to say,” I confessed. “I don’t know how to talk to ladies very well, anyway.”

My face was flaming--I could hardly control my voice--I felt sure that I was committing a dreadful sin in point of etiquette and all that--but once more I was playing a big game in my life--bigger, even, for the sake of my happiness than when I offered to go down after the remainder of the treasure of the _Golden Gate_. I was operating again on human nature--and that nature was in the complex little personality of Kama Holstrom who pressed impatiently at my elbow, frowning at me. I knew with all my heart and soul that unless she stood in the presence of Celene Kingsley and myself--as she then stood--and heard the truth about my boyhood folly, my cause was lost; because the pride of a girl makes the way of a man with a maid a mighty doubtful proposition.

“May I hope that you have found out that I am not the scoundrel you believed me to be?”

“I know the truth now. My father is wiser! I am trying to find words--”

She hesitated, just as if she did not know what she ought to say to me, and I could not blame her for feeling pretty uncertain. She looked at me with a sort of kindly and tolerant expression--but, good heavens, there wasn’t any love in her eyes! I had found out what love-light was like when Kama Holstrom kneeled beside my bed that afternoon!

As I have confessed and have shown, I was pretty much of a blunderer in affairs with women. But do me this credit in your estimate: I had not come into the presence of Celene Kingsley that day harboring any more illusions as to how I stood with her. I was awake! Think back with me! Never had she given me a word of affection. Rather, her tolerance of me had been plainly inspired by her zeal in her father’s behalf. After that piece of brazen idiocy of mine, when I had taken her in my arms, she had been careful to keep out of my reach. Allow me to say that I had been doing some swift and coherent thinking on my way from the tavern.

In my soul was the shamed consciousness that I had been making a real thing out of a dream--and had been babbling unwarrantably. I was a pitiful object as I stood there between them--I deserved punishment at the hands of both of them. For I had made free with Celene Kingsley’s name and had misdirected Kama Holstrom’s devoted obedience to a promise.

I say, I knew with all my heart and being that I had never struck a spark of real love from the condescending nature of Judge Kingsley’s daughter; I knew that I loved Kama Holstrom with all the tender devotion one pours forth to the true mate.

Yet I dared not say a word lest I should appear as an atrocious cad seeking release from the old love before taking on the new.

Equally did Celene Kingsley’s high-bred delicacy restrain her tongue; I understood that she did not want to betray me as a mere cheeky boaster.

So we stood there looking at one another, three as unhappy specimens of humanity as there were in Levant that day.

“I am too much of a fool to know what to say and how to say it,” I blurted, and the tears ran down my cheeks.

It was Celene who stepped into the breach; she wasn’t in love, and she was cooler than the other two in the party.

She walked up to Kama and took her hands in caressing grasp.

“Don’t you understand, dear?”

“No,” faltered the poor girl.

“I hoped you could understand without obliging me to speak. I hoped you would guess when I refused to discuss certain matters with you--I made you angry, and I’m sorry.”

“I know I meddled--”

“My dear, I understood you all the time! I understood my old school friend, too!” She reached out her hand and drew me close to Kama. “He has been very noble in his help in a great trial in my family, dear! I owe my happiness to him. And I’m speaking out, rather boldly--rather bluntly, because I want to help him in obtaining his great happiness. I know what must happen to make him happy.” She put Kama’s hand in mine. “Now, my dear, do not force me to disparage one of the best young men I have ever known by telling you that I never dreamed of him as a husband--nor was I anything else to him except a school-day fancy, a--”

“An inspiration to set me on the way to make something of myself,” I insisted.

“And now--say it, Ross Sidney, or you’re a coward--say it, and let me hear it! She deserves it!”

“I have found out that real love differs from boyhood fancies--and I--I--want to--”

She gently pushed us toward the door while I was stammering.

“You want to tell a dear girl the sweetest story in the world, Ross Sidney! My blessing on you both. Good night!”

We did not speak to each other for some time after we were out of doors together. I took her arm in gentle manner and led her steps away from the tavern. We could see its lights in the early dusk, and I wanted to keep away from lights for a time.

I was glad the autumn dusk had settled--a sliver of new moon was a comforting sight for a lover.

“I guess neither of us knows very well how to talk about love, Kama,” I told her, hobbling along beside her as best I could. The judge’s orchard was shaded by the evening’s gloom, and when I turned down there she did not resist.

“I’m sure I’m mighty awkward about making love,” I went on, “but God knows I want to learn how.”

“Why do you think I can do any better as a tutor in love than as an attorney?” she asked.

“Because I’ll be such a willing pupil, dear.”

“I heard you inform Miss Kingsley with a great deal of earnestness just now that you have found out what real love is like.” She couldn’t keep all the naughty teasing from her tone, though her voice trembled. “Who is the fortunate one?”

Then I caught her to me, and with her warm cheek close to mine and her lips near and never denying caresses, I told her and I convinced her.

“I think,” she admitted, after a long time and after many words there in the blessed shadows, “that you are entitled to your diploma, Ross. You are showing me that you know more than your tutor. But is there a woman who is not jealous when she is in love? Here!” She pressed into my hand a little packet; it contained the three rings. I drew her along to the cleft tree. I dropped them into the hollow.

“One for fancy, one for folly, one for the freakish dreams of boyhood!” I told her. “All buried! Come back to the tavern, precious girl! I want you to tell Dodovah Vose how to decorate the parlor for the wedding!”

She reached on tiptoe and plucked two apples from the old tree. She gave one to me.

“An apple of gold from the only woman in the world,” I said.

“Don’t say ‘gold’ to me, Ross! Don’t! A boy of your age with half a million safe in the bank--”

There was my news at last! I kissed the lips which told me!

Then, eating the sweet fruit of our new knowledge of life and of each other, we went on our way up through the whispering trees toward the welcoming, glowing windows of the old tavern.

THE END