118CHAPTER VIII
Journey’s End
The rain had ceased, and as they walked down the muddy road the sun came out even before the final mutterings of the thunder had died away in the distance, and so they came at last upon a little house which sat well back among a group of dripping trees.
“Take your coat, Jim,” Lou said, breaking a long silence which had fallen between them. “That porch is so wet now that we can’t get it any wetter an’ I’m goin’ to ask for a chance to get dry.”
But they had scarcely passed through the gate when the front door opened and a young woman rushed out.
“Oh! Will you run to the next house for me and telephone for the doctor?” she cried, 119all in one breath. Her eyes were staring and her breast heaved convulsively.
Jim quickened his pace.
“Where is the next house, and what doctor shall I send for?” he asked pleasantly.
“It’s just over the ridge there; the Colberts. They know Dr. Blair’s number. My husband would go himself but he can’t step on his hurt foot and I don’t dare leave. Tell the Colberts that it’s the baby! He’s dying, and I don’t know what to do!”
Jim turned, and hurried off over the ridge, but Lou took a step forward.
“Baby! I’ve been takin’ care of babies all my life, seems like. You let me look at it, ma’am.”
“Oh, do you think you could do anything, a little thing like you?”
The young woman eyed the forlornly drenched figure before her rather doubtfully, but something she read in Lou’s steady, confident gaze seemed to reassure her, and she threw wide the door. “Come in, please! He’s all blue.”
Lou unceremoniously pushed past her 120down the clean little hallway and paused for a moment upon the threshold of the room at its end. It was a kitchen, small, but as immaculately clean as the hall, and in a rocking-chair near the window sat an anxious-eyed young man with his bandaged foot up on another chair before him, and in his arms a tiny, rigid little form.
Lou went straight to him and unceremoniously possessed herself of the baby.
Its small face was waxen, with a bluish tinge about the mouth, and half-closed, glazing eyes.
“How long’s it been like this?” Lou demanded sharply.
“Only just a few minutes. It–it seemed like a sort of fit that he had.” The young woman turned to her husband. “Jack, this little girl stopped by and said she knew all about babies, and the man with her, he’s gone for─”
“I want some hot water, quick!” Lou interrupted the explanations brusquely. “Boiling hot, and a tub or a big pan. Have you got the kettle on?”
121“Y-yes, but I’m afraid I’ve let the fire go out,” the woman faltered. “I was so worried─”
With an exclamation of impatience Lou rewrapped the baby which she had been examining and thrust it into the man’s arms. Then turning to the woman with exasperation in her eyes and voice she demanded:
“I s’pose you can find some dry chips, somewhere, can’t you? If I don’t get this baby into a hot bath right away it’ll be all up with him.”
The woman gasped, and ran out of the back door while the young man in the chair groaned:
“It’s awful to sit here helpless and watch him suffer! If I could only put my foot to the floor─”
“How old is he, anyway?” Lou, who was busily searching the shelf of groceries, asked over her shoulder. “He looks to be under a year.”
“Ten months, miss,” he answered. “What do you think is the matter with him?”
“Convulsion,” Lou replied succinctly, as the 122woman rushed in once more with her apron full of chips. “Git some more, it don’t matter how you clog the stove with wood ashes; we gotta git boilin’ water as quick as we kin.”
Meanwhile Jim found the Colbert house, explained his mission, and having accomplished it, hastened back. He pulled the bell, but no one came, and knocking, found that the door yielded to his touch. Entering, he went down the hall and paused at the kitchen door just as the woman stammered:
“I d-don’t think there are any dry kindlings left.”
“Then chop some! Ain’t you got any old boxes? Oh, Jim!” Lou caught sight of him in the doorway. “Find a hatchet and some light, dry wood, will you?”
The fire was roaring in the stove at last, but the water was long in boiling, and the little figure in the man’s arms seemed to be undergoing a subtle but inevitable change. His lips were still parted, but no faintest stir of breath emanated from them, and the rigidity had taken on a marble-like cast.
123The mother bent over him, moaning once more, but Lou turned upon her in swift scorn.
“For goodness’ sake, where’s that tub or pan I asked you for? He’s got a chance, a good chance if you don’t waste any more time! What you been givin’ him, anyway?” she added, as the woman flew to do her bidding.
“Nothing but a little green corn. He relishes it, and it’s so cute to see him try to chew it─”
“Green corn!” Lou repeated, as she seized the heavy kettle and began pouring its steaming contents into the tub. “Ain’t nobody in your family ever had any babies before?”
She hastily added to the tub a quantity of yellowish powder from a can which she had found upon the shelf of groceries, and marched determinedly over to the man who was seated in the chair.
“Give me that baby!” she demanded.
“But, miss, that water’s boiling!” he gasped.
“You’re not going to put my baby in that?” The woman came quickly from her apathy of dismay and sprang forward, while Jim, too, advanced, his anxiety for another reason.
124“Lou! You’ll blister yourself horribly─”
“Let me alone, all of you!” Lou turned upon them even as she stripped the wrappings from the child. “Haven’t I done this a hundred times? He ain’t even goin’ to feel the heat of the mustard, he’s so far gone! I guess I know what I’m doin’!”
The woman buried her face in her hands with a sob, and even Jim turned away his eyes, but no one thought to interfere further with the assured little nurse. There was a splash of water, a little gasp from Lou, and then after a period which seemed interminable her matter-of-fact voice remarked:
“He’s comin’ round.”
The tiny body was scarcely tinged with pink, but it had lost its dreadful rigidity, and a faint cry came from it as Lou wrapped it in a shawl and laid it in its mother’s arms.
“He’ll do now, anyway till that doctor comes.”
Amid the rejoicing of the parents Jim advanced to Lou and demanded:
“Let me see your arms.”
“They’re all right–” She tried to put 125them behind her as she spoke, but he drew them forward. A network of blisters covered them almost to the shoulders.
“Oh, Lou! Lou!” he murmured brokenly. “What won’t you do next?”
She smiled faintly.
“You said I’d do anything once, but I’ve done this lots of times before─”
“Well, well, good people! What’s going on here?” A kindly voice sounded from the doorway, and the woman turned with a little cry.
“Oh, Dr. Blair, she saved the baby! Put him down in that scalding water and held him right there with her hands, and she’s burned herself something terrible, but she saved him! I never saw a braver─”
“Let me see.”
The doctor examined the baby with professional gravity and then looked up.
“I should say you did save him, young woman! I couldn’t have done better for him myself! Now let me have a look at those arms of yours.”
After he had bandaged her blisters the 126woman prepared food and coffee for them all and then took Lou upstairs with her, while Jim dried his soaking clothes by the kitchen fire and the three men talked in a desultory way of the topics of the countryside.
Dr. Blair had just ascertained that Jim and his “sister” were strangers, traveling toward New York, and had offered to drive them both to the trolley line in his little car, when the woman of the house reappeared with Lou, and Jim stared with all his eyes.
Could this be the little scarecrow of a girl he had met on the road only five days before; this unbelievably tall, slender young woman in the dark blue silk gown with filmy ruffles falling about her neck and wrists, and soft puffs of blond hair over her ears?
“It’s me, though I kin hardly believe it myself!” Lou answered his unspoken thought. Then drawing him aside she added: “Mis’ Tooker–that’s her name–gave me a pair of shoes, too, an’ a hat an’ five whole dollars! Are we goin’ to a place called Pelton?”
Jim nodded.
“That is where I hoped we would be by 127to-night, but it must be at least twelve miles away.”
“Well, Mis’ Tooker says the trolley goes right into Pelton, and she gave me a letter to a friend of hers there who’ll take us in for the night─”
The doctor interrupted with an intimation of another patient to be visited, and they bade farewell to the grateful young couple and started away. The sun was still high, and save for the mud which splashed up with each turn of the wheels, all traces of the storm had vanished.
“Jennie Tooker always was a fool!” Dr. Blair grumbled. “How many babies have you taken care of, young woman?”
“More’n twenty, I guess, off an’ on,” Lou responded. “I–I used to work in an institootion up-State.”
Fearing further revelations, Jim hastily took a hand in the conversation, and he and the doctor chatted until the trolley line was reached. There, when they had descended from the little car Lou turned to Jim and asked a trifle shyly:
128“You–you’re goin’ to let me ask you to ride, aren’t you? You bought all the food in Riverburgh, you know.”
“And you seem to have financed all the rest of the trip,” he said with a rueful laugh. “I thought, when you suggested that we should travel together, I would be the one to take care of you, but it has been the other way around. Oh, Lou, I’ve so much to say to you when we reach our journey’s end!”
They arrived at Pelton before dark and found Mrs. Tooker’s friend, who ran a small boarding-house for store employees, and was glad to take them in at a dollar a head. Lou disappeared after supper, and although Lou waited long for him on the little porch, he did not return until through sheer fatigue she was forced to go to bed.
In the morning, however, when they met before breakfast in the lower hall he jingled a handful of silver in his pocket.
“However did you git it?” she demanded.
“Garage,” he responded succinctly. “Didn’t know I was a chauffeur, did you, Lou?”
129A peculiar little smile hovered for a moment about her lips, but she merely remarked:
“I thought you wouldn’t only take a quarter─”
“For each job,” he interrupted her. “A lot of cars came in that needed tinkering with after the storm, and they were short of hands. I made more than two dollars, and we’ll ride in state into Hunnikers!”
Lou made no reply, but after breakfast she drew him out on the little porch.
“Jim, I–I’m not goin’ on.”
“What!” he exclaimed.
“The woman that runs this place, she–she wants a girl to help her, an’ I guess I’ll stay.” Lou’s tones were none too steady, and she did not meet his eyes. “I–I don’t believe I’d like New York.”
“You, a servant here?” He took one of her hands very gently in his. “I didn’t mean to tell you until we were nearly there, and as it is, there is a lot that I can’t tell you even now, but this much I want you to know. You’re not going to work any more, Lou. You’re going to a lovely old lady who lives in a big 130house all by herself, and there you are going to study and play until you are really grown up, and know as much as anybody.”
She smiled and shook her head.
“This is the sort of place for me, Jim. I wasn’t meant for anythin’ else, an’ if I should live to be a hundred I could never know as much as that lady at the circus who called you ‘Jimmie Abbott.’”
“What–” Jim exploded for the second time.
“At least, she said you looked like him, and if she didn’t know you were in Canada─”
“Good Lord! What was she doing there?”
“She was with another lady an’ two gentlemen, an’ I guess they come in an ottermobile,” Lou explained. “They was in one the next day, anyway–the one that slammed into the egg-wagon.”
She described in detail the two occurrences, and added miserably:
“I didn’t mean to tell you, Jim, but as long as I’m not goin’ on with you I might as well. It was me that walked on your note-book back there on Mrs. Bemis’s porch. It had fallen 131open on the floor, an’ when I picked it up I couldn’t help seein’ the name that was written across the page. It was your own business, of course, if you didn’t want to give your real name to anybody─”
“Listen, Lou.” He had caught her other hand now and was holding them both very tightly. “You are going on with me! I can’t explain now about my name, but it doesn’t matter; nothing matters except that you are not going to be a quitter! You said that you would go on to New York with me, and you’re going to keep your word.”
“I know better now,” she replied quietly. “It’s–it’s been a wonderful time, but I’ve got to work an’ earn my keep an’ try to learn as I go along. It isn’t just exactly breakin’ my word; I didn’t realize─”
“Realize what?” he demanded as she hesitated.
“I thought at first that you were kinder like me; it wasn’t until I saw that lady an’ found you were a friend of hers, that I knew you were different.”
Her eyes were still downcast, and now a 132tinge of color mounted in her cheeks. “I couldn’t bear to have you take me to that other lady in the city and be a-ashamed of me─”
“Ashamed of you!” he repeated, and something in his tone deepened the color in her cheeks into a crimson tide. “Lou, look at me!”
Obediently she raised her eyes for an instant; then lowered them again quickly, and after a pause she said in a very small voice:
“All right, Jim. I–I’ll go. I guess I wouldn’t just want to be a–a quitter, after all.”
It was mid-afternoon when they walked into Hunnikers and although they had come ten long miles with only a stop for a picnic lunch between, they bore no traces of fatigue. Rather they appeared to have been treading on air, and although Jim had scrupulously avoided any further reference to the future, there was a certain buoyant assurance about him which indicated that in his own mind, at least, there remained no room for doubt.
He needed all the assurance he could 133muster as, after ensconcing Lou at the soda counter in the drug-store, he approached the telephone booth farthest from her ears and closed the door carefully behind him. Lou consumed her soda to its last delectable drop, glanced down anxiously at the worn, but spotless, little silk gown to see if she had spilled any upon it, and then wandered over to the showcase.
Jim’s voice came to her indistinguishably once or twice, but it was a full half-hour before he emerged from the booth. He looked wilted but triumphant, and he beamed blissfully as he came toward her, mopping his brow. He suspected that at the other end of the wire a certain gray-haired, aristocratic old lady was having violent hysterics to the immediate concern of three maids and an asthmatic Pekinese, but it did not disturb his equanimity.
“It’s all right,” he announced. “Aunt Emmy expects you; I didn’t tell you, did I, that the lady I’m taking you to is my aunt? No matter. She’s awfully easy if you get on the right side of her; I’ve always managed 134her beautifully ever since I was a kid, and you’ll have her rolling over and playing dead in no time. Fifteen miles more to go, Lou, and we’ll be─”
“Hello, there, Jim.” An oil-soaked and greasy glove clapped his shoulder and as he turned, the same voice, suddenly altered, stammered: “Oh, I beg your pardon─”
“’Lo, Harry!” Jim turned to greet a tall, lean individual more tanned than himself, with little, fine, weather lines about his eyes and an abrupt quickness of gesture which denoted his hair-triggered nerves. “What are you doing in this man’s town?”
“Motoring down from the Hilton’s,” the other responded. “Pete was coming with me, but at the last minute he decided to stay over the week-end. I’m off to Washington to-night to see about my passport; sailing next Wednesday for Labrador, you know.”
“Then you’re alone?” Jim turned. “Miss Lacey, let me present Mr. Van Ness; he spends his time trailing all over the earth to find something to kill. Miss Lacey is a young 135friend of my aunt’s; I’m taking her down to her for a visit.”
The explanation sounded somewhat involved, but Mr. Van Ness seemed to grasp it, and bowed.
“You’re motoring, too?” he asked.
“No. I–The fact is–” Jim stammered in his turn. “We were thinking of taking the train─”
“Why not let me take you both down in the car?” The other rose to the occasion with evident alacrity. “Miss Lacy will like it better than the train, I’m sure, and I haven’t seen you for an age, old man.”
Jim accepted with a promptitude which proclaimed a mind relieved of its final burden, and he turned to Lou. Mr. Van Ness had gone out to see to his car, and they were alone at a far corner of the counter.
“How about it, Lou? The last lap! The last fifteen miles. It’s been a long pull sometimes, and we’ve had some rough going, but it was worth it, wasn’t it?”
Her eyes all unconsciously gave him answer even before she repeated softly:
136“‘The last lap.’ Oh, Jim, shall I see you some time, at this lady’s house where you are takin’ me?”
“Every day,” he promised, adding with cheerful mendacity: “I dine with her nearly all the time; have for years. Come on, Lou. Harry’s waving at us.”
Through the village and the pleasant rolling country beyond; past huge, wide-spreading estates and tiny cottages, and clusters of small shops with the trolley winding like a thread between, the big maroon car sped, while the two men talked together of many things, and the girl sat back in her corner of the roomy tonneau and gave herself up to vague dreams.
Then the cottages gave place to sporadic growths of brick and mortar with more open lots between, but even these gaps finally closed, and Lou found herself being borne swiftly through street after street of towering houses out upon a broad avenue with palaces such as she had never dreamed of on one side, and on the other the seared, drooping green of a city park in late summer.
137It was still light when the big car swept into an exclusive street of brownstone houses of an earlier and still more exclusive period, and stopped before the proudest of these.
Jim alighted and held out his hand.
“Come, Lou,” he said. “Journey’s end.”
138CHAPTER IX
The Long, Long Trail
Three hours later, in that same proudly exclusive house, an elderly lady with gray hair and an aristocratically high, thin nose paced the floor of her drawing-room with a vigor which denoted some strong emotion.
“I must say, John, that I think the whole affair, whatever it may be, is highly reprehensible. I supposed James to be up in Canada on a fishing trip when he telephoned me this morning from somewhere near town with a–a most extraordinary message─”
She broke off, glancing cautiously toward a room across the hall, and added: “He said he had something to tell me, and he would be here this evening. Now you come, and you appear to know something about it, but I cannot get a word out of you!”
139“All I can tell you, Mrs. Abbott, is that if Jimmie does come to-night, I’ve got to pay him a thousand bones–dollars, I mean. It was a sort of a wager, and that must be what he wants to tell you about.”
It was an exceedingly stout young man with a round, cherubic countenance standing by the mantel who replied to her, and the old lady glanced at him sharply.
“A wager? H-m! Possibly.” She paused suddenly. “There’s the bell.”
A moment later James Tarrisford Abbott, in the most immaculate of dinner clothes, entered and greeted his aunt, halting with a slight frown as he encountered the beaming face of the young man who fell upon him.
“Good boy, Jimmie! You made it, after all!”
“With a few hours to spare.” Jim darted a questioning glance at his aunt, and seemed relieved at her emphatic shake of the head.
“I knew we’d lost when Mrs. Abbott told me that you had telephoned to her from just a little way out of town to-day,” Jack Trimble responded. “I ran over on my way to the 140club to give her a message from my mother. Did you have a hard time of it, old man?”
“Hard?” Jim smiled. “I’ve been a rough-rider in a circus─”
Mrs. Abbott groaned, but Jack Trimble’s eyes opened as roundly and wide as his mouth.
“Thundering–So it was you after all!”
“Me?” Jim demanded with ungrammatical haste.
“You–rough-rider–circus!” Jack exclaimed. “Vera said the chap looked like you, but it never occurred to me that it could possibly be!”
“So it was Vera, was it?” Jim smiled. “I heard what she said–I mean, it was repeated to me. You were one of that party?”
“Yes. We were with the Lentilhons in their car, and the funniest thing happened the next day on the way home! Crusty old farmer wouldn’t turn out on the road, and Guy Lentilhon lost control and smashed straight through his wagon!” Jack laughed. “W-what do you think it was loaded with?”
“Eggs!” responded Jim crisply. “I happened to be on it at the time, my boy, and 141your sense of humor–I hope you all got what I did! But I must explain to Aunt Emmy here, or she will think that we are both quite mad!”
“And I must be off to the club,” Jack announced. “I’ll break the news to Billy Hollis that we’ve lost. See you later, and we’ll all settle up. Good evening, Mrs. Abbott.”
When the stout young man had taken his departure, Mrs. Abbott turned to her nephew between laughter and tears.
“James, this is the maddest of all mad things that you have ever done!”
“Jack doesn’t know anything about Lou?” Jim demanded anxiously.
“Certainly not. He has only been here a quarter of an hour, and I kept her out of the way. But, James, you cannot be serious! You cannot mean to marry this nameless waif?”
“Stop right there, Aunt Emmy,” he interrupted her firmly. “I’m going to marry, if she will have me, your ward whom you have legally adopted; I mean, you will have adopted her by the time she has grown up. 142But I don’t intend to be nosed out by any of these debutante-grabbers; I’m going to have everything settled before her studies are finished and you bring her out. I saw her first!”
“H-m. We shall see,” Aunt Emmy remarked dryly, adding: “But that can wait for the moment. What was this ridiculous wager all about, and how did you get into such horrible scrapes?”
“The whole thing came out of an idle discussion Jack Trimble, Billy Hollis and I had at the club one night concerning human nature. It drifted into a debate about charity in general and the kindness shown toward strangers by country folk in particular, with myself in the minority, of course,” Jim explained.
“They each wagered me a thousand against my five hundred that I couldn’t walk from Buffalo to New York in twenty-five days with only five dollars in my pocket to start with, and work my way home without begging nor accepting more than a quarter for each job I managed to secure in any one time.
“The idea was to see how many of these 143hard-boiled up-State farmers we hear so much about would offer you the hospitality reputed to be extended only by the rural population of the South and West, and how many would give a foot-sore and weary traveler a lift upon the way. There were other conditions, too; I was not to use my own surname, not to go a foot out of the State into either Pennsylvania or New Jersey. I was not to beg, borrow, or steal, and for the occasional twenty-five cents I might earn I could only purchase food or actual necessities, not use it for transportation, and I must not beat my way by stealing rides on boats or trains or any other conveyances.”
While Aunt Emmy sat staring at him in speechless amazement, Jim produced his little red note-book and laid it before her.
“There’s the route I chose over the mountains, my expense account for each day, and the names and addresses of the people who helped to prove my contention that, take them by and large, the people of my own State are as big-hearted as any in the Union, and Jack’s money and Billy’s says that they are!
144“I’m going to return some of that kindness, Aunt Emmy. There are two little boys near Riverburgh whose father is dead and who are trying to do the farm work of men. They are going to a good school this winter, and there are a few other people who are going to be surprised! By Jove, I never realized what money was for until now! But best of all, I found Lou!”
“And what makes you so sure that I am going to adopt her and educate her and bring her out?” demanded Aunt Emmy. “My dear boy, when you started on this Canadian fishing trip of yours I knew that something extraordinary would come of it, but I did not anticipate anything so bizarre as this! Why do you think that I will interest myself in this child?”
“Because you won’t be able to help it.” His face had sobered, and there was a note in his voice that his aunt had never heard before. “You won’t be able to help loving her when you find out how courageous she is, and sincere and true! She is the biggest-hearted, most candid, naïve little─”
145“She is quite that!” Aunt Emmy interrupted in her turn, with emphasis. “How I am ever to hide her away until I’ve had her coached not to drop her g’s, and to realize that there is a ‘u’ in the alphabet I don’t know, but I’ll try. James–I think there are distinct possibilities there.”
“I knew it!” Jim cried. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist her! For the Lord’s sake, Aunt Emmy, don’t let them spoil her! She’s so sweet and simple-hearted, don’t let them make her cynical and worldly-wise! I’ll promise not to speak to her, not to let her know how I feel until you say that I may.”
“Will you, James?” There was a faint smile about the delicately lined lips. “She is a child in many ways, a blank page for most impressions to be made upon, but in other things she is very much of a woman, and I rather fancy that what you have to tell her will not be so much of a surprise.”
“You old dear!” Jim sprang to his feet and folded his aunt in his embrace which threatened her coiffure. “Where is she?”
“In the library waiting for you, Jamie!”
146She used the old nursery name, and caught his arm. “She is very young, but the heart sometimes breaks easily then. Don’t speak unless you yourself are very sure.”
Jim smiled, and throwing back his head looked straight into the kindly old eyes. Then without a word he turned and disappeared through the door.
“And you’re going to be happy here?” It was some time later when Jim had explained about the wager, and they were sitting together in the window-seat.
“Happy? Why, Jim, I can’t believe I’m awake! I’m going to study an’ work an’ try my best to be like her. Seems to me it’ll take the rest of my life, but she says that in a year or two there won’t anybody hardly tell the difference.”
“And then, Lou, when the time is past? What then?”
“I don’t know.” Her tone was serenely unconcerned.
“That trail we’ve followed together for the 147last week wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked. “You were happy in spite of the hardships?”
“It was wonderful!” She drew a deep breath. “I–I wish we could start again, Jim, and do it all over again, every step of the way!”
“If you feel like that, dear, perhaps some day when you have finished your studies we will start again on a longer trail.” He took one of the little toil-worn hands in his. “The long, long trail, Lou, only we will be together! When that day comes, will you take the new road with me?”
She bowed her head, and somehow he found it nestling in the hollow of his shoulder, and his arms were about her. After a long minute, she stirred and smiled.
“Well–” she hesitated. “You knew from the very beginning, Jim, that I’d do anything once!”
THE END