Dear Miss Linton:
The time has come, it seems to me, for two patients who have nothing to do but while away the hours for a bit longer, to help each other out. What do you say? I suppose you don't know that I've been lying flat on my back now for a fortnight, getting over a rather bad spill from my car. I'm pretty comfortable now, thank you, so don't waste a particle of sympathy; but the hours must certainly drag for you as they do for me, and my idea is that we ought to establish some sort of system of intercommunication. I have an awfully obliging nurse, and a young man with a fiddle here besides, and I'd like to send you a short musicale when you feel up to it. Are you fond of music? I have a notion you are. Franz will come and play for you whenever you say. But besides that I'd awfully like to have a note from you as soon as you are able to write. I'll answer it, you know—and then you'll answer that, perhaps—and so the hours will go by. I know this is a rather free-and-easy-sounding proposition from a perfect stranger, as I suppose you think me, but circumstances do alter cases, you know, and if our circumstances can't alter our cases, then it's no good being laid up!
Hearty congratulations on that raging appetite. You see Doctor Burns is good enough to keep me informed as to how you come on. You certainly seem to be coming on now. Please keep it up. I shouldn't dare ask you to write to me if the Doctor hadn't said you could—if you wouldn't do it enough to tire you. So—I'm hoping.
Yours, under the same roof,
Jordan King.
"Good morning!" said a beloved voice from the doorway. Anne looked up eagerly from her letter.
"Oh, Mrs. Burns—good morning! And won't you please stand quite still for a minute while I look at you?"
Ellen laughed. To other people than Anne Linton she was always the embodiment of quiet charm in her freshness of attire and air of general daintiness. In the pale gray and white of her summer clothing, with a spray of purple lilac tucked into her belt, she was a vision to rest the eye upon. "You are looking ever so well yourself to-day," Ellen said as she sat down close beside Anne, facing her. "Another week and you will be showing us what you really look like."
"The little pink cover-up does me as much good as anything," declared Anne. "I never thought I could wear pink with my carroty hair. But Miss Arden says I can wear anything you say I can, and I believe her."
"Your hair is bronze, not carroty, and that apricot shade of pink tones in with it beautifully. What a glorious mass of white lilacs! I never saw any so fine."
"They're wonderful. I insisted on keeping them right here, I'm so fond of the fragrance. They came from Mr. King," said Anne frankly. "And a note from him says he's here in the hospital with an injured back. I'm so sorry. Please tell me how badly he is hurt."
"He will have to be patient for some weeks longer, I believe, but there is no permanent injury. Meanwhile, he is like any man confined, restless for want of occupation. Still, he keeps his time pretty full." And Ellen proceeded to recount the story of Franz, and of how Jordan King was continuing here in the hospital to teach him to speak English, finding him the quickest and most grateful of pupils.
"How splendid of him! He's going to send Franz to play for me. I can't think of anything—except beefsteak—I should like so much!" and Anne laughed, her face all alight with interest. But the next instant it sobered. "Mrs. Burns," she said, "there's something I want to say very much, and so far the Doctor hasn't let me. But I'm quite strong enough now to begin to make plans, and one of them is this: The minute I'm able to leave the hospital I want to go to some inexpensive place where I can stay without bothering anybody. You have all been so wonderful to me I can never express my gratitude, but I'm beginning to feel—oh, can't you guess how anxious I am to be taking care of myself again? And I want you to know that I have quite money enough to do it until I can go on with my work."
Mrs. Burns looked at her. In the excitement of talking the girl's face looked rounder and of a better colour than it had yet shown, and her eyes were glowing, eyes of such beauty as are not often seen. But for all that, she seemed like some lovely child who could no more take care of itself than could a newborn kitten. Ellen laid one hand on hers.
"You are not to think about such things yet, dear," she said. "Do you imagine we have not grown very fond of you, and would let you go off into some place alone before you are fully yourself again? Not a bit of it. As soon as you can leave here you are coming to me as my guest. And when you are playing tennis with Bob, on our lawn, you may begin to talk about plans for the future."
Anne stared back at her, a strange expression on her face. "Oh, no!" she breathed.
"Oh, yes! You can't think how I am looking forward to it. Meanwhile—you are not to tire yourself with talking. I only stopped for a minute, and the Doctor is waiting by now. Good-bye, my dear." And before Anne could protest she was gone, having learned, by experience, that the way to terminate useless argument with the one who is not strong enough to be allowed to argue is by making early escape.
That afternoon, having recovered from the two surprises of the morning, Anne asked for pencil and paper. Miss Arden, supplying them, stipulated that their use should cover but five minutes.
"It is one of the last things we let patients do," she said, "though it is the thing they all want to do first. There is nothing so tiring as letter writing."
"I'm not going to write a letter," Anne replied, "just a hail to a fellow sufferer. Only I'm no sufferer, and I'm afraid he is."
She wrote her note, and it was presently handed to Jordan King. He had wondered very much what sort of answer he should have, feeling that nothing could reveal the sort of person this girl was so surely as a letter, no matter how short. He had been sure he recognized education in her speech, breeding in her manner, high intelligence as well as beauty in her face, but—well, the letter would reveal. And so it did, though it was written in a rather shaky hand, in pencil, on one of Miss Arden's hospital record blanks—of all things!
It is the most wonderful thing in the world to be sitting up far enough to be able to write and tell you how sorry I am that you are lying down. But Mrs. Burns assures me that you are fast improving and that soon you will be about again. Meanwhile you are turning your time of waiting to a glorious account in teaching poor Franz to speak English. Surely he must have been longing to speak it, so that he might tell you the things in his heart—about that dreadful night. But I know you don't want me to write of that, and I won't.
Of course I should care to have him play for me, and I hope he may do it soon—to-morrow, perhaps. I wonder if he knows the Schubert "Frühlingstraum"—how I should love to hear it! As for your interesting plan for relieving the passing hours, I should hardly be human if I did not respond to it! Only please never write when you don't feel quite like it—and neither will I.
The white lilacs were even more beautiful than the roses and the daffodils. There was a long row of white lilac trees at one side of a garden I used to play in—I shall never, never forget what that fragrance was like after a rain! And now that my sun is shining again—after the rain—you may imagine what those white lilacs breathe of to me.
With the best of good wishes,
Anne Linton.
Jordan King read this note through three times before he folded it back into its original creases. Then he shut it away in a leather-bound writing tablet which lay by his side. "Franz," he said, addressing the youth who was at this hour of the day his sole attendant, "can you play Schubert's 'Frühlingstraum'?"
He had to repeat this title several times, with varying accents, before he succeeded in making it intelligible. But suddenly Franz leaped to an understanding.
"Yess—yess—yess—yess—sair," he responded joyously, and made a dive for his violin case.
"Softly, Franz," warned his master. As this was a word which had thus far been often used in his education, on account of the fact that the hospital did not belong exclusively to King—strange as that might seem to Franz who worshipped him—it was immediately comprehended. Without raising the tones of his instrument, Franz was able presently to make clear to King that the music he was asked to play was of the best at his command.
"No wonder she likes that," was King's inward comment. "It's a strange, weird thing, yet beautiful in a haunting sort of way, I imagine, to a girl like her, and I don't know but it would be to me if I heard it many times—while I was smelling lilacs in the rain," he added, smiling to himself.
That hint of a garden had rather taken hold of his imagination. More than likely, he said to himself, it had been her own garden—only she would not tell him so lest she seem to try to convey an idea of former prosperity. A different sort of girl would have said "our garden."
Next morning, at the time of Mrs. Burns's visit to the hospital, King sent Franz to play for Miss Linton. With her breakfast tray had come his second note telling her of this intention, so she had two hours of anticipation—a great thing in the life of a convalescent. With every bronze lock in shining order, with the little wrap of apricot pink silk and lace about her shoulders, with an extra pillow at her back, Miss Anne Linton awaited the coming of the "Court Musician," as King had called him.
"It's a very good thing Jord can't see her at this minute," observed Burns to his wife as he met her in the hall outside the door. "The prettiest convalescent has less appeal for a doctor than a young woman of less good looks in strapping health—naturally, for he gets quite enough of illness and the signs thereof. But to a lusty chap like King Miss Anne's present frail appearance would undoubtedly enlist his chivalry. Those are some eyes of hers, eh?"
"I think I have never seen more beautiful eyes," Ellen agreed heartily.
Her husband laughed. "I have," he said, and went his way, having no time for morning musicales.
That afternoon Anne Linton, having had all her pillows removed and having obediently lain still and silent for two long hours, was permitted to sit up again and write a note to King to tell him of the joy of the morning:
It was as if the twilight were falling, with the stars coming out one by one. By and by they were all shining, and I was on a mountain top somewhere, with the wind blowing softly against my face. It was dark and I was all alone, but I didn't mind, for I was strong, strong again, and I knew I could run down by and by and be with people. Then a storm came on, and I lifted my face to if and loved it, and when it died away the stars were shining again between the clouds. Somewhere a little bird was singing—I opened my eyes just there, and your Franz was looking at me and smiling, and I smiled back. He seemed so happy to be making me happy—for he was, of course. After a while it was dawn—the loveliest dawn, all flushed with pink and silver, and I couldn't keep my eyes shut any more for looking at the musician's face. He is a real musician, you know, and the music he makes comes out of his soul.
When it was all over and he and Mrs. Burns were gone, my tray came in. This is a frightful confession, but I am not a real musician; I merely love good music with some sort of understanding of what it means to those who really care, as Franz does. To me, after all the emotion, my tray looked like a sort of solid rock that I could cling to. And I had a piece of wonderful beefsteak—ah, now you are laughing! Never mind—I'll show you the two scenes.
Upon the second sheet was something which made Jordan King open his eyes. There were two little drawings—the simplest of pencil sketches, yet executed with a spirit and skill which astonished him. The first was of Franz himself, done in a dozen lines. There was no attempt at a portrait, yet somehow Franz was there, in the very set of the head, the angle of the lifted brow, the pose of the body, most of all in the indication of the smiling mouth, the drooping eyelids. The second picture was a funny sketch of a big-eyed girl devouring food from a tray. Two lines made the pillows behind her, six outlined the tray, a dozen more demonstrated plainly the famishing appetite with which the girl was eating. It was all there—it was astonishing how it was all there.
"My word!" he said as he laid down the sheets—and took them up again, "that's artist work, whether she knows it or not. She must know it, though, for she must have had training. I wonder where and how."
He called Miss Arden and showed her the sketches.
"Dear me, but they're clever," she said. "They look like a child's work—and yet they aren't."
"I should say not," he declared very positively. "That sort of thing is no child's work. That's what painters do when they're recording an impression, and I've often looked in more wonder at such sketchy outlines than at the finished product. To know how to get that impression on paper so that it's unmistakable—I tell you that's training and nothing else. I don't know enough about it to say it's genius, too, yet I've had an artist friend tell me it cost him more to learn to take the right sort of notes than to enlarge upon those notes afterward."
When he wrote to Anne next morning—he was not venturing to ask more of her than one exchange a day—he told her what he thought about those sketches:
I've had that sheet pinned up at the foot of my bed ever since it came, and I'm not yet tired of looking at it. You should have seen Franz's face when I showed it to him. "Ze arteeste!" he exclaimed, and laughed, and made eloquent gestures, by means of which I judged he was trying to express you. He looked as if he were trying to impress me with his own hair, his eyes, his cheeks, his hands; but I knew well enough he meant you. I gathered that he had been not ill pleased with his visit to you, for he proposes another; in fact, I think he would enjoy playing for you every day if you should care to hear him so often. He does not much like to perform in the wards, though he does it whenever I suggest it. He has discovered that though they listen respectfully while he plays his own beloved music, mostly they are happier when he gives them a bit of American ragtime, or a popular song hit. His distaste for that sort of thing is very funny. One would think he had desecrated his beloved violin when he condescends to it, for afterward he invariably gives it a special polishing with the old silk handkerchief he keeps in the case—and Miss Arden vows he washes his hands, too. Poor Franz! Your real artist has a hard time of it in this prosaic world doesn't he?
The note ended by saying boldly that King would like another sketch sometime, and he even ventured to suggest that he would enjoy seeing a picture of that row of white lilac trees at the edge of the garden where Anne used to play. It was two days before he got this, and meanwhile a box of water colours had come into requisition. When the sheet of heavy paper came to King he lay looking at it with eyes which sparkled.
At first sight it was just a blur of blues and greens, with irregular patches of white, and gay tiny dashes of strong colour, pinks and purples and yellows. But when, as Anne had bidden him, he held it at arm's length he saw it all—the garden with its box-bordered beds full of tall yellow tulips and pink and white and purple hyacinths—it was easy to see that this was what they were, even from the dots and dashes of colour; the hedge—it was a real hedge of white lilac trees, against a spring sky all scudding clouds of gray. Like the sketch of Franz, its charm lay entirely in suggestion, not in detail, but was none the less real for that.
There was one thing which, to King's observant eyes, stood out plainly from the little wash drawing. This garden was a garden of the rich, not of the poor. Just how he knew it so well he could hardly have told, after all, for there was no hint of house, or wall, or even summer-house, sundial, terrace, or other significant sign. Yet it was there, and he doubted if Anne Linton knew it was there, or meant to have it so. Perhaps it was that lilac hedge which seemed to show so plainly the hand of a gardener in the planting and tending. The question was—was it her own garden in which she had played, or the garden of her father's employer? Had her father been that gardener, perchance? King instantly rejected this possibility.
CHAPTER VII
WHITE LILACS
Burns, coming in to see King one day when the exchange of letters had been going on for nearly a fortnight, announced that he might soon be moved to his own home.
King stared at him. "I'm not absolutely certain that I want to go till I can get about on my own feet," he said slowly.
Burns nodded. "I know, but that will be some time yet, and your mother—well, I've put her off as long as I could, but without lying to her I can't say it would hurt you now to be taken home. And lying's not my long suit."
"Of course not. And I suppose I ought to go; it would be a comfort to my mother. But—"
He set his lips and gave no further hint of his unwillingness to go where he would be at the mercy of the maternal fondness which would overwhelm him with the attentions he did not want. Besides—there was another reason why, since he must for the present be confined somewhere, he was loath to leave the friendly walls where there was now so much of interest happening every day. Could he keep it happening at home? Not without much difficulty, as he well foresaw.
"Miss Linton's coming to us on Saturday," observed Burns carelessly, strolling to the window with his hands in his pockets.
"Is she? I didn't suppose she'd be strong enough just yet." King tried to speak with equal carelessness, but the truth was that, with his life bound, as it was at present, within the confines of this room, the incidents of each day loomed large.
"She's gaining remarkably fast. For all her apparent delicacy of constitution when she came to us, I'm beginning to suspect that she's the fortunate possessor of a good deal of vigour at the normal. She says herself she was never ill before, and that's why she didn't give up sooner—couldn't believe there was anything the matter. We can't make her agree to stay with us a day longer than I say is a necessity for safety."
"Where does she want to go? Not back to that infernal book-agenting?" There was a frown between King's well-marked brows.
"Yes, I imagine that's what she intends. She's a very decided young person, and there's not much use telling her what she must and must not do. As for the book itself, it's pretty clever, my wife and Miss Mathewson insist. They say the youngsters of the neighbourhood are crazy over it. Bob knows it by heart, and even the Little-Un studies the pictures half an hour at a time. If children were her buyers she'd have no trouble."
"Have a look at those, will you?"
King reached for a leather writing case on the table at his elbow, took out a pile of sheets, and began to hand them over one by one to Burns.
"What's this? Hullo! Do you mean to say she did this? Well, I like her impudence!"
"So do I," laughed King, looking past Burns's shoulder at a saucy sketch of the big Doctor himself evidently laying down the law about something, by every vigorous line of protest in his attitude and the thrust of his chin. Underneath was written: "Absolutely not! Haven't I said so a thousand times?"
"'Wad some power—'" murmured Burns. "Well, she seems to have the 'power.' I am rather a thunderer, I suppose. What's this next? My wife! Jolly! that's splendid. Hasn't she caught a graceful pose though? Ellen's to the life. Selina Arden? That's good—that's very good. There's your conscientious nurse for you. And this, of herself? Ha! She hasn't flattered herself any. She may have looked like that at one time, but not now—hardly."
"She's looking pretty well again, is she?"
"Both pretty and well. We don't starve our patients on an exclusively liquid diet the way we used to, and they don't come out of typhoid looking half so badly in consequence. And she's been rounding out every day for the last two weeks in fine shape. She's a great little girl, and as full of spirit as a gray squirrel. I'm beginning to believe she's a bit older than I would believe at first; that mind of hers is no schoolgirl's; it's pretty mature. She says frankly she's twenty-four, though she doesn't look over nineteen."
"Is there any reason why I can't see her for a bit of a visit if she goes Saturday?" asked King straightforwardly. It was always a characteristic of his to go straight to a point in any matter; intrigue and diplomacy were not for him in affairs which concerned a girl any more than in those which pertained to his profession. "You see we've been entertaining each other with letters and things, and it would seem a pity not to meet—especially if she'll be leaving town before I'm about."
There was a curiously wistful look in his face as he said this, which Burns understood. All along King had said almost nothing about the torture his present helplessness was to him, but his friend knew.
"Of course she'll come; we'll see to that. She's walking about a little now, and by Saturday she can come down this corridor on her two small feet."
"See here—couldn't I sit up a bit to meet her?"
"Not a sixteenth of a degree. You'll lie exactly as flat as you are now. If it's any consolation I'll tell you that you look like a prostrate man-angel seven feet long."
"Thanks. I'd fire a pillow at you if I had one. I don't want to look like an object for sympathy, that's all."
Burns nodded understandingly. "Well, Jord," he said a moment later, "will you go home on Saturday, too?"
The two looked at each other. Then, "If you say so," King agreed.
"All right. Then we'll get rid of two of our most interesting patients on that happy day. Never mind—the mails will still carry—and Franz is a faithful messenger. What's that, Miss Dwight? All right, I'll be there." And he went out, with a gay nod and wave of the hand to the man on the bed.
This was on Monday. On Tuesday King offered his petition that Anne Linton would pay him a visit before she left on Saturday. When the answer came it warmed his heart more than anything he had yet had from her:
Of course I will come—only I want you to know that I shall be dreadfully sorry to come walking, when you must still lie so long on that poor back. Doctor Burns has told me how brave you are, with all the pain you are still suffering. But I am wonderfully glad to learn that he is so confident of your complete recovery. Just to know that you can be your active self again is wonderful when one thinks what might have happened. I shall always remember you as you seemed to me the day you brought me here. I was, of course, feeling pretty limp, and the sight of you, in such splendid vigour, made me intensely envious. And even though I see you now "unhorsed," I shall not lose my first impression, because I know that by and by you will be just like that again—looking and feeling as if you were fit to conquer the world.
It was the most personal note he had had from her, and he liked it very much. He couldn't help hoping for more next day, and did his best to secure it by the words he wrote in reply. But Wednesday's missive was merely a merrily piquant description of the way she was trying her returning strength by one expedition after another about her room. On Thursday she sent him some very jolly sketches of her "packing up," and on Friday she wrote hurriedly to say that she couldn't write, because she was making little visits to other patients.
Jordan King had never been more exacting as to his dressing than on that Saturday. He studied his face in the glass after an orderly had shaved him, to make sure that the blue bloom it took but a few hours to acquire had been properly subdued. He insisted on a particular silk shirt to wear under the loose black-silk lounging robe which enveloped him, and in which he was to be allowed to-day to lie upon the bed instead of in it. His hair had to be brushed and parted three separate times before he was satisfied.
"I didn't know I was such a fop," he said, laughing, as Miss Dwight rallied him on his preparations for receiving the ladies. "But somehow it seems to make a difference when a man lies on his back. They have him at a disadvantage. Now if you'll just give me a perfectly good handkerchief I'll consider that the reception committee is ready. Thank you. It must be almost time for them, isn't it?"
For a young man who usually spent comparatively little of his time in attentions to members of the other sex, but who was accustomed, nevertheless, to be entirely at his ease with them, King acknowledged to himself that he felt a curious excitement mounting in his veins as the light footsteps of his guests approached.
Mrs. Burns came first into his line of vision, wearing white from head to foot, for it was early June and the weather had grown suddenly to be like that of midsummer. Behind her followed not the black figure King's memory had persistently pictured, but one also clad in white—the very simple white of a plain linen suit, with a close little white hat drawn over the bronze-red hair. Under this hat the eyes King remembered glowed warmly, and now there was health in the face, which was so much more charming than the one he recalled that for a moment he could hardly believe the two the same. Yet—the profile, as she looked at Mrs. Burns, who spoke first, was the one which had been stamped on his mind as one not to be forgotten.
She was looking at him now, and there was no pity in her bright glance—he could not have borne to see it if it had been there. She came straight up to the bed, her hand outstretched—her gloves were in the other, as if she were on her way downstairs, as he presently found she was. She spoke in a full, rich voice, very different from the weary one he had heard before.
"Do you know me?" she asked, smiling.
"Almost I don't. Have you really been ill, or did you make it all up?"
"I'm beginning to believe I did. I feel myself as if it must be all dream. How glad I am to find you able to be dressed. Doctor Burns says you will go home to-day, too."
"This evening, I believe. I thought you were not going till then either."
"This very hour." She glanced at Mrs. Burns. "My good fairy begged that I might go early, because it is her little son's birthday. I am to be at a real party; think of that!"
"The Little-Un's or Bob's?" King asked his other visitor.
Bob was an adopted child, taken by Burns before his marriage, but the little Chester's parents made no difference between them, and a birthday celebration for the older boy was sure to be quite as much of an occasion as for the two-year-old.
"Bob's," Mrs. Burns explained. "He is ten; we can't believe it. And he has set his heart on having Miss Linton at home for his party. He has read her little book almost out of its covers, and she has been doing some place-cards for his guests—the prettiest things!" Ellen opened a small package she was carrying and showed King the cards.
He gazed at them approvingly. "They're the jolliest I ever saw; the youngsters will be crazy over them. For a convalescent it strikes me Miss Linton has been the busiest known to the hospital."
"You, yourself, have kept me rather busy, Mr. King," the girl observed.
"So I have. I'm wondering what I'm to do when you are at Doctor Burns's and I at home."
She smiled. "I shall be there only a week if I keep on gaining as fast as I am now."
"A fortnight," interpolated Mrs. Burns, "is the earliest possible date of your leaving us. And not then unless we think you fit."
"Did you ever know of such kindness?" Anne Linton asked softly of King. "To a perfect stranger?"
He nodded. "Nothing you could tell me of their kindness could surprise me. About that fortnight—would it be asking a great deal of you to keep on sending me that daily note?"
"Isn't there a telephone in your own room at home?" she asked.
"Yes—how did you know?"
"I guessed it. Wouldn't a little telephone talk do quite as well—or better—than a letter?"
"It would be very nice," admitted King. "But I should hate to do without the letter. The days are each a month long at present, you know, and each hour is equal to twenty-four. Make it a letter, too, will you, please?"
Miss Linton looked at Mrs. Burns. "Do you think circumstances still alter cases?" she inquired.
Her profile, as King caught it again, struck him as a perfect outline. To think of this girl starting out again, travelling alone, selling books from door to door!
"I think you will be quite warranted in being very good to Mr. King—while his hours drag as he describes," Ellen assented cordially.
"As soon as I can sit up at any sort of decent angle I can do a lot of work on paper," King asserted. "Then I'll make the time fly. Meanwhile—it's all right."
They talked together for a little, then King sent for Franz, who came and played superbly, his eager eyes oftenest on Jordan King, like those of an adoring and highly intelligent dog. Anne watched Franz, and King watched Anne. Mrs. Burns, seeming to watch nobody, noted with affectionate and somewhat concerned interest the apparent trend of the whole situation. She could not help thinking, rather dubiously, of Mrs. Alexander King, Jordan's mother.
And, as things happen, it was just as Franz laid down his bow, after a brilliant rendering of a great concerto, that Mrs. Alexander King came in. She entered noiselessly, a slender, tall, black-veiled figure, as scrupulously attired in her conventional deep mourning as if it were not hot June weather, when some lightening of her sombre garb would have seemed not only rational but kind to those who must observe her.
"Oh, mother!" King exclaimed. "In all this heat? I didn't expect you. I'm afraid you ought not to have come."
She bent over him. "The heat has nothing to do with my feelings toward my son. I couldn't neglect you, dear."
She greeted Ellen cordially, who presented Miss Linton. King lost nothing of his mother's polite scrutiny of the girl, who bore it without the slightest sign of recognizing it beyond the lowering of her lashes after the first long look of the tall lady had continued a trifle beyond the usual limit. Book agent though she might be, Miss Linton's manner was faultless, a fact King noted with curious pride in his new friend—whom, though he himself was meeting her for but the second time, he somehow wanted to stand any social test which might be put upon her. And he well knew that his lady mother could apply such tests if anybody could.
In his heart he was saying that it seemed hard luck, he must say good-bye to Anne Linton in that mother's presence. There was small chance to make it a leave-taking of even ordinary good fellowship beneath that dignified, quietly appraising eye, to say nothing of endowing it with a quality which should in some measure compensate for the fact that it might be a parting for a long time to come. However much or little the exchange of notes during these last weeks might have come to mean to Jordan King, aside from the diversion they had offered to one sorely oppressed of mind and body, he resented being now forced to those restrained phrases of farewell which he well knew were the only ones that would commend him to his mother's approval.
Mrs. Burns and Miss Linton rose to go, summoned by Red Pepper himself, who was to take them. In the momentary surge of greeting and small talk which ensued, King surreptitiously beckoned Anne near. He looked up with the direct gaze of the man who intends to make the most of the little that Fate sends him.
"Letters are interesting things, aren't they?" he asked.
"Very. And when they are written by a man lying on his back, who doesn't know when he is down, they are stimulating things," she answered; and there was that in the low tone of her voice and the look of her eyes which was as if she had pinned a medal for gallantry on the breast of the black silk robe.
Mrs. Alexander King looked at her son—and moved nearer. She addressed Anne. "I am more than glad to see, Miss Linton," said she, "that you are fully recovered. Please let me wish you much success in your work. I suppose we shall not see you again after you leave Mrs. Burns."
"No, Mrs. King," responded Anne's voice composedly. "Thank you for that very kind wish."
She turned to the prostrate one once more. She put her hand in his, and he held it fast for an instant, and, in spite of his mother's gaze, it was an appreciable instant longer than formality called for.
"I shall hope to see you again," he said distinctly, and the usual phrase acquired a meaning it does not always possess.
Then they were gone, and he had only the remembrance of Anne's parting look, veiled and maidenly, but the comprehending look of a real friend none the less.
"My dear boy, you must be quite worn out with all this company in this exhausting weather," murmured Mrs. King, laying a cool hand on a decidedly hot brow.
The brow moved beneath her hand, on account of a contraction of the smooth forehead, as if with pain. "I really hadn't noticed the weather, mother," replied her son's voice with some constraint in it.
"You must rest now, dear. People who are perfectly well themselves are often most inconsiderate of an invalid, quite without intention, of course."
"If I never receive any less consideration than I have had here, I shall do very well for the rest of my life."
"I know; they have all been very kind. But I shall be so relieved when I can have you at home, where you will not feel obliged to have other patients on your mind. In your condition it is too much to expect."
Jordan King was a good son, and he loved his mother deeply. But there were moments when, as now, if he could have laid a kind but firm hand upon her handsome, emotional mouth, he would have been delighted to do so.
CHAPTER VIII
EXPERT DIAGNOSIS
"What would you give for a drive with me this morning?" Burns surveyed his patient, now dressed and downstairs upon a pillared rear porch, wistfulness in his eyes but determination on his lips.
"Do you mean it?"
"Yes. We may as well try what that back will stand. Most of the drive will be sitting still in front of houses, anyhow, and in your plaster jacket you're pretty safe from injury."
"Thank heaven!" murmured Jordan King fervently.
Two minutes later he was beside Burns in the Doctor's car, staring eagerly ahead, lifting his hat now and then as some one gave him interested greeting from passing motor. More than once Burns was obliged to bring his car to a short standstill, so that some delighted friend might grasp King's hand and tell him how good it seemed to see him out. With one and all the young man was very blithe, though he let them do most of the talking. They all told him heartily that he was looking wonderfully well, while they ignored with the understanding of the intelligent certain signs which spoke of physical and mental strain.
"Your friends," Burns remarked as they went on after one particularly pleasant encounter, "seem to belong to the class who possess brains. I wish it were a larger class. Every day I find some patient suffering from depression caused by fool comments from some well-meaning acquaintance."
"I've had a few of those, too," King acknowledged.
"I'll wager you have. Well, among a certain class of people there seems to be an idea that you can't show real sympathy without telling the victim that he's looking very ill, and that you have known several such cases which didn't recover. I have one little woman on my list who would have been well long ago if she hadn't had so many loving friends to impress her with the idea that her case was desperate. I talk Dutch to such people now and then, when I get the chance, but it doesn't do much good. Sometimes I get so thundering mad I can't stand it, and then I rip out something that makes me a lasting enemy."
"You get some comfort out of the explosion, anyhow," King commented, with a glance at the strong profile beside him. "Besides, you may do more good than you know. Anybody who had had a good dressing down from you once wouldn't be likely to forget it in a hurry."
Burns laughed at this, as they stopped in front of a house. King had a half-hour wait while his friend was inside. The car stood in heavy shade, and he was very comfortable. He took a letter from his pocket as he sat, a letter which looked as if it had been many times unfolded, and read it once more, his face very sober as his eyes followed the familiar lines:
I was very, very sorry to go away without seeing you to say good-bye after our interesting correspondence. Mrs. Burns and I had such a pleasant visit with your mother, in your absence, that we felt rewarded for our call, and it was good to know that you could be out, yet of course we were very disappointed. I do hope that all will go well with you, and that very rapidly, for I can guess how eager you are to be at work.
Of course once I am off on my travels I shall have no time for letters. No, that isn't quite frank, is it? Well, I will be truthful and say honestly that I am sure it is not best that I should keep on writing. I am glad if the letters have, as you say, helped you through the worst of the siege; they surely have helped me. But now—our ways part. Sometime I may give you a hail from somewhere—when I am lonely and longing to know how you get on. And sometime I may be back at my old home. But wherever I am I shall never forget you, Jordan King, for you have put something into my life which was not there before and I am the better for it. As for you—your life will not be one whit the less big and efficient for this trying experience; it will be bigger, I think, and finer. I am glad, glad I have known you.
Anne Linton.
For the hundredth time King felt his heart sink as he thought of that prevented last interview. His mother had prevented it. It was perfectly true that he was out, and away from home—out in a wheeled chair, which had been pushed by Franz through a gap in the hedge between the Kings' lawn and the Wentworths' next door. Just on the other side of that hedge the chair had paused, where Sally Wentworth, his friend of long standing, was serving tea to a little group of young people, all intimates and all delighted to have the invalid once more in their midst. Under the group of great copper beeches which made of that corner of the Wentworth lawn a summer drawing room, King had sat in his chair drinking tea and listening to gay chatter—and wondering why he had not been able to get Anne Linton on the telephone so far that day. And at that very time, so he now bitterly reflected, she and Mrs. Burns had made their call upon him, only to be told by Mrs. King that he was "out."
His mother was unquestionably a lady, and she had told the truth; he could not conceive of her doing otherwise. He knew that she undoubtedly, quite as Anne had said, had made the call a pleasant one. But she had known that he was within a stone's throw of the house, and that he would be bitterly disappointed not to be summoned. She had not mentioned to him the fact of the call at all until next day—when Anne Linton had been gone a full two hours upon her train. Then, when he had called up Mrs. Burns, in a fever of haste to learn what had happened and what there might yet be a chance of happening, he had discovered that Ellen herself had tried three times to get him, upon the telephone, and had at last realized—though this she did not say—that it was not intended that she should.
King understood his mother perfectly. She would scorn directly to deceive him, yet to intrigue quietly but effectively against him in such a case as this she would consider only her duty. She had seen clearly his interest in the stranger, unintroduced and unvouched for, taken in by kind people in an emergency, and though showing unquestionable marks of breeding, none the less a stranger. She had feared for him, in his present vulnerable condition; and she had done her part in preventing that final parting which might have contained elements of danger. That was all there was to it.
For the present King was helpless, and there could be no possible use in reproaching his mother for her action—or lack of action. Once let him get up on his feet, his own master once more—then it would be of use to talk. And talk he would some day. Also he would act. Meanwhile—
Red Pepper Burns came out of the house and scrutinized his friend and patient closely as he approached. "Want to go on, or shall I take you home?" he inquired.
"Take me on—anywhere—everywhere! Something inside will break loose if you don't." King spoke with a smothered note of irritation new to him in Burns's experience.
"You've about reached the limit, have you?" The question was straightforward, matter-of-fact in tone, but King knew the sympathy behind it.
"I rather have," the young man admitted. "I'm ashamed to own it."
"You needn't be. It's a wonder you haven't reached it sooner; I should have. Well, if you stand this drive pretty well to-day you ought to come on fast. With that back, you may be thankful you're getting off as easily as you are."
"I am thankful—everlastingly thankful. It's just—"
"I know. Blow off some of that steam; it won't hurt you. Here we are on the straight road. I'll open up and give you a taste of what poor Henley felt the first time his crippled body and his big, uncrippled spirit tasted the delight of 'Speed.' Remember?"
"Indeed I do. Oh, I'm not complaining. You understand that, Red?"
"Of course I understand—absolutely. And I understand that you need just what I say—to blow off a lot of steam. Hurt you or not, I'm going to let loose for a couple of miles and blow it off for you."
In silence, broken only by the low song of the motor as it voiced its joy in the widening license to show its power, the two men took the wind in their faces as the car shot down the road, at the moment a clear highway for them. King had snatched off his hat, and his dark hair blew wildly about his forehead, while his eyes watched the way as intently as if he had been driving himself, though his body hardly tensed, so complete was his confidence in the steady hands on the wheel. Faster and faster flew the car, until the speed indicator touched a mark seldom passed by King himself at his most reckless moments. His lips, set at first, broke into a smile as the pointing needle circled the dial, and his eyes, if any could have seen them, would have told the relief there was for him in escape by flight, though only temporary, from the grinding pull of monotony and disablement.
At the turn ahead appeared obstruction, and Burns was obliged to begin slowing down. When the car was again at its ordinary by no means slow pace, King spoke:
"Bless you for a mind reader! That was bully, and blew away a lot of distemper. If you'll just do it again going back I'll submit to the afternoon of a clam in a bed of mud."
"Good. We'll beat that record going back, if we break the speedometer. Racing with time isn't supposed to be the game for a convalescent, but I'm inclined to think it's the dose you need, just the same. I expect, Jord, that the first time you pull on a pair of rubber boots and go to climbing around a big concrete dam somewhere your heart will break for joy."
"My heart will stand anything, so that it's action."
"Will it? I thought it might be a bit damaged. It's had a good deal of reaction to stand lately, I'm afraid."
There was silence for a minute, then King spoke:
"Red, you're a wizard."
"Not much of a one. It doesn't take extraordinary powers of penetration to guess that a flame applied to a bundle of kindling will cause a fire. And when you keep piling on the fuel something's likely to get burned."
"Did I pile on the fuel?"
"You sure did. If there had been gunpowder under the kindling you could have expected an explosion—and a wreck."
"There's no wreck."
"No? I thought there might be—somewhere."
King spoke quickly. "Do you think I carried it too far?"
"I think you carried it some distance—for an invalid's diversion."
The young man flushed hotly. "I was genuinely interested and I saw no harm. If there's any harm done it's to myself, and I can stand that. I'm not conceited enough to imagine that a broken-backed cripple could make any lasting impression."
Burns turned and surveyed his companion with some amusement. "Do you consider that a description of yourself?"
"I certainly do." Jordan King's strong young jaw took on a grim expression.
"Know this then"—Burns spoke deliberately—"there's not a sane girl who liked you well enough before your accident to marry you who wouldn't marry you now."
"That's absurd. Women want men, not cripples."
"You're no cripple. Stop using that term."
"What else? A man condemned to wear a plaster jacket for at least a year." King evidently did his best not to speak bitterly.
"Bosh! Suppose the same thing happened to me. Would you look on me askance for the rest of my days, no matter what man's job I kept on tackling? Besides, the plaster jacket's only a precaution. You wouldn't disintegrate without it."
King looked at Red Pepper Burns and smiled in spite of himself. "I'm glad to hear that, I'm sure. As for looking at you askance—you are you, R.P. Burns."
"Apply the same logic to yourself. You are you, and will continue to be you, plus some assets you haven't had occasion to acquire before in the way of dogged endurance, control of mind, and such-like qualities, bred of need for them. You will be more to us all than you ever were, and that's saying something. And the back's going to be a perfectly good back; give it time. As for—if you don't mind my saying it—that invalid's diversion, I don't suppose it's hurt you any. What I'm concerned for is the hurt it may have done somebody else. I don't need to tell you that it wasn't possible for Ellen and me to have that little girl on our hearts all that time and not get mightily interested in her. She's the real thing, too, we're convinced, and we care a good deal what happens to her next."
Jordan King drew a deep breath. "So do I."
Burns gave him a quick look. "That's good. But you let her go away without making sure of keeping any hold on her. You don't know where she is now."
King shot him a return look. "That wasn't my fault. That was hard luck."
"I don't think much of luck. Get around it."
"I'll do my best, I promise you. But I wish you'd tell me—"
"Yes?"
"—why you should think I had done her any harm. Heaven knows I wouldn't do that for my right arm!"
"She didn't make a sign—not one—of any injury, I assure you. She's a gallant little person, if ever there was one—and a thoroughbred, though she may be as poor as a church mouse. No, I should never have guessed it. She went away with all sails set and the flags flying. All I know is what my wife says."
"Please tell me."
"I'm not sure it will be good for you." Burns smiled as he drew up beside a house. "However—if you will have it—she says Miss Anne Linton took away with her every one of your numerous letters, notes, and even calling cards which had been sent with flowers. She also took a halftone snapshot of you out at the Coldtown dam, cut from a newspaper, published the Sunday after your accident. The sun was in your eyes and you were scowling like a fiend; it was the worst picture of you conceivable."
"Girls do those things, I suppose," murmured King with a rising colour.
"Granted. And now and then one does it for a purpose which we won't consider. But a girl of the type we feel sure Miss Linton to be carefully destroys all such things from men she doesn't care for—particularly if she has started on a trip and is travelling light. Of course she may have fooled us all and be the cleverest little adventuress ever heard of. But I'd stake a good deal on Ellen's judgment. Women don't fool women much, you know, whatever they do with men."
He disappeared into a small brown house, and King was left once more with his own thoughts. When Burns came out they drove on again with little attempt at conversation, for Burns's calls were not far apart. King presently began to find himself growing weary, and sat very quietly in his seat during the Doctor's absences, experiencing, as he had done many times of late, a sense of intense contempt for himself because of his own physical weakness. In all his sturdy life he had never known what it was to feel not up to doing whatever there might be to be done. Fatigue he had known, the healthy and not unpleasant fatigue which follows vigorous and prolonged labour, but never weakness or pain, either of body or of mind. Now he was suffering both.
"Had about enough?" Burns inquired as he returned to the car for the eighth time. "Shall I take you home?"
"I'm all right."
Burns gave him a sharp glance. "To be sure you are. But we'll go home nevertheless. The rest of my work is at the hospital anyhow."
As they were approaching the long stretch of straight road to which King had looked forward an hour ago, but which he was disgusted to find himself actually rather dreading now, a great closed car of luxurious type, and bearing upon its top considerable travelling luggage, slowed down as it neared, and a liveried chauffeur held up a detaining hand. Burns stopped to answer a series of questions as to the best route toward a neighbouring city. There were matters of road mending and detours to be made plain to the inquirers, so the detention occupied a full five minutes, during which the chauffeur got down and came to Burns's side with a road map, with which the two wrestled after the fashion usually made necessary by such aids to travel.
During this period Jordan King underwent a disturbing experience. Looking up with his usual keen glance, one trained to observe whatever might be before it, he took in at a sweep the nature of the party in the big car. That it was a rich man's car, and that its occupants were those who naturally belonged in it, there was no question. From the owner himself, an aristocrat who looked the part, as not all aristocrats do, to those who were presumably his wife, his son, and daughters, all were of the same type. Simply dressed as if for a long journey, they yet diffused that aroma of luxury which cannot be concealed.
The presumable son, a tall, hawk-nosed young man who sat beside the chauffeur, turned to speak to those inside, and King's glance followed his. He thus caught sight of a profile next the open window and close by him. He stared at it, his heart suddenly standing still. Who was this girl with the bronze-red hair, the perfect outline of nose and mouth and chin, the sea-shell colouring? Even as he stared she turned her head, and her eyes looked straight into his.
He had seen Miss Anne Linton only twice, and on the two occasions she had seemed to him like two entirely different girls. But this girl—was she not that one who had come to visit him in his room at the hospital, full of returning health and therefore of waxing beauty and vigour?
For one instant he was sure it was she, no matter how strange it was that she should be here, in this rich man's car—unless—But he had no time to think it out before he was overwhelmed by the indubitable evidence that, whoever this girl was, she did not know him. Her eyes—apparently the same wonderful eyes which he could now never forget—looked into his without a sign of recognition, and her colour—the colour of radiantly blooming youth—did not change perceptibly under his gaze. And after that one glance, in which she seemed to survey him closely, after the manner of girls, as if he were an interesting specimen, her eyes travelled to Red Pepper Burns and rested lightly on him, as if he, too, were a person of but passing significance to the motor traveller looking for diversion after many dusty miles of more or less monotonous sights.
King continued to gaze at her with a steadiness somewhat indefensible except as one considers that all motorists, meeting on the highway, are accustomed to take note of one another as comrades of the road. He was not conscious that the other young people in the car also regarded him with eyes of interest, and if he had he would not have realized just why. His handsome, alert face, its outlines slightly sharpened by his late experiences, his well-dressed, stalwart figure, carried no hint of the odious plaster jacket which to his own thinking put him outside the pale of interest for any one.
But it could not be Anne Linton; of course it could not! What should a poor little book agent be doing here in a rich man's car—unless she were in his employ? And somehow the fact that this girl was not in any man's employ was established by the manner in which the young man on the front seat spoke to her, as he now did, plainly heard by King. Though all he said was some laughing, more or less witty thing about this being the nineteenth time, by actual count since breakfast, that a question of roads and routes had arisen, he spoke as to an equal in social status, and also—this was plainer yet—as to one on whom he had a more than ordinary claim. And King listened for her answer—surely he would know her voice if she spoke? One may distrust the evidence of one's eyes when it comes to a matter of identity, but one's ears are not to be deceived.
But King's ears, stretched though they might be, metaphorically speaking, like those of a mule, to catch the sound of that voice, caught nothing. She replied to the young man on the front seat only by a nod and a smile. Then, as the chauffeur began to fold up his road map, thanking Burns for his careful directions, and both cars were on the point of starting, the object of King's heart-arresting scrutiny looked at him once again. Her straight gaze, out of such eyes as he had never seen but on those two occasions, met his without flinching—a long, steady, level look, which lasted until, under Burns's impatient hand, the smaller car got under motion and began to move. Even then, though she had to turn her head a little, she let him hold her gaze—as, of course, he was nothing loath to do, being intensely and increasingly stirred by the encounter with its baffling hint of mystery. Indeed, she let him hold that gaze until it was not possible for her longer to maintain her share of the exchange without twisting about in the car. As for King, he did not scruple to twist, as far as his back would let him, until he had lost those eyes from his view.
CHAPTER IX
JORDAN IS A MAN
When King turned back again to face the front his heart was thumping prodigiously. Almost he was certain it had been Anne Linton; yet the explanation—if there were one—was not to be imagined. And if it had been Anne Linton, why should she have refused to know him? There could have been little difficulty for her in identifying him, even though she had seen him last lying flat on his back on a hospital bed. And if there had been a chance of her not knowing him—there was Red Pepper.
It was Anne. It could not be Anne. Between these two convictions King's head was whirling. Whoever it was, she had dared to look straight into his eyes in broad daylight at a distance of not more than four feet. He had seen into the very depths of her own bewildering beauty, and the encounter, always supposing her to be the person of whom he had thought continuously for four months, was a thing to keep him thinking about her whether he would or no.
"Anything wrong?" asked Burns's voice in its coolest tones. "I suspect I was something of an idiot to give you such a big dose of this at the first trial."
"I'm all right, thank you." And King sat up very straight in the car to prove it. Nevertheless, when he was at home again he was not sorry to be peremptorily ordered to lie supine on his back for at least three hours.
It was not long after this that King was able to bring about the thing he most desired—a talk with Mrs. Burns. She came to see him one July day, at his request, at an hour when he knew his mother must be away. With her he went straight to his point; the moment the first greetings were over and he had been congratulated on his ability to spend a few hours each day at his desk, he began upon the subject uppermost in his thoughts. He told her the story of his encounter with the girl in the car, and asked her if she thought it could have been Miss Linton.
She looked at him musingly. "Do you prefer to think it was or was not?" she asked.
"Are you going to answer accordingly?"
"Not at all. I was wondering which I wanted to think myself. I wish I had been with you. I should have known."
"Would you?" King spoke eagerly. "Would you mind telling me how?"
"I can't tell you how. Of course I came to know her looks much better than you; it really isn't strange that after seeing her only twice you couldn't be sure. I don't think any change of dress or environment could have hidden her from me. The question is, of course, why—if it was she—she should have chosen not to seem to know you—unless—"
"Yes—"
She looked straight at him. "Unless—she is not the poor girl she seemed to be. And that explanation doesn't appeal to me. I have known of poor girls pretending to be rich, but I have never, outside of a sensational novel, known a rich girl to pretend to be poor, unless for a visit to a poor quarter for charitable purposes. What possible object could there be in a girl's going about selling books unless she needed to do it? And she allowed me—" She stopped, shaking her head. "No, Jordan, that was not our little friend—or if it was, she was in that car by some curious chance, not because she belonged there."
"So you're going on trusting her?" was King's abstract of these reflections. He scanned her closely.
She nodded. "Until I have stronger proof to the contrary than your looking into a pair of beautiful eyes. Have you never observed, my friend, how many pairs of beautiful eyes there are in the world?"
He shook his head. "I haven't bothered much about them, except now and then for a bit of nonsense making."
"But this pair you, too, are going to go on trusting?"
"I am. If that girl was Miss Linton she had a reason for not speaking. If it wasn't"—he drew a deep breath—"well, I don't know exactly how to explain that!"
"I do," said Ellen Burns, smiling. "She thought she would never see you again, and she yielded to a girlish desire to look hard at—a real man."
It was this speech which, in spite of himself, lingered in King's mind after she was gone, for the balm there was in it—a balm she had perfectly understood and meant to put there. Well she guessed what his disablement meant to him—in spite of the hope of complete recovery—how little he seemed to himself like the man he was before.
Certainly it was nothing short of real manhood which prompted the talk he had with his mother one day not long after this. She brought him a letter, and she was scrutinizing it closely as she came toward him. He was fathoms deep in his work and did not observe her until she spoke.
"Whom can you possibly have as a correspondent in this town, my son?" she inquired, her eyes upon the postmark, which was that of a small city a hundred miles away. It was one in which lived an old school friend of whom she had never spoken, to her recollection, in King's hearing, for the reason that the family had since suffered deep disgrace in the eyes of the world, and she had been inexpressibly shocked thereby.
King looked up. He was always hoping for a word from Anne Linton, and now, suddenly, it had come, just a week after the encounter with the girl in the car—which had been going, as it happened, in the opposite direction from the city of the postmark. He recognized instantly the handwriting upon the plain, white business envelope—an interesting handwriting, clear and black, without a single feminine flourish. He took the letter in his hand and studied it.
"It is from Miss Linton," he said, "and I am very glad to hear from her. It is the first time she has written since she went away—over two months ago."
He spoke precisely as he would have spoken if it had been a letter from any friend he had. It was like him to do this, and the surer another man would have been to try to conceal his interest in the letter the surer was Jordan King to proclaim it. The very fact that this announcement was certain to rouse his mother's suspicion that the affair was of moment to him was enough to make him tell her frankly that she was quite right.
He laid the letter on the desk before him unopened, and went on with his work. Mrs. King stood still and looked at him a moment before moving quietly away, and disturbance was written upon her face. She knew her son's habit of finishing one thing before he took up another, but she understood also that he wished to be alone when he should read this letter. She left the room, but soon afterward she softly passed the open door, and she saw that the letter lay open before him and that his head was bent over it. The words before him were these: