She spoke so coolly, and with such perfect confidence, that the other winced.

"There isn't anything more to be said, is there?"

Was this the simple mountain girl, whose voice was now so suave and who was smiling so icily?

There was a pause, during which Miss Treville's trembling hand sought behind her and found the servants' bell cord.

"I am really glad that I called, Miss Treville, for you have succeeded in convincing me that I have no occasion to be disturbed--on Donald's account."

"Miss Webb is going," said Miss Treville, formally, as the maid appeared.

CHAPTER XXIX.

AN INTERLUDE.

All things by immortal power, Near or far, Hiddenly. To each other linked are That thou canst not stir a flower Without troubling a star.

A. QUILLER-COUCH.

Life is so largely a thing of intermingling currents, of interwoven threads, of reacting forces, that it is well-nigh impossible understandingly to portray the life story of one person without occasionally pausing to review, at least briefly, incidents in the lives of others with which it is closely bound up.

So it is with the story of the pilgrimage of Smiles.

While, following her graduation, she was taking a course in district nursing, giving freely of her new powers to the poor and suffering of a great city, and taking, and pa.s.sing, the State examination which gave her the right to place the epigrammatic letters "R.N." after her name, something was happening more than three thousand miles away, of which she had no inkling, and yet which was closely linked with her existence.

Donald had, indeed, written in a manner to minimize his illness, which had been a prolonged and serious one; so much so that he had, greatly against his will, finally come to realize the necessity of his taking a rest from his unremitting toil, and he had agreed to return home for a vacation as soon as he should be well enough to make the long trip.

Depressed by his wholly unaccustomed weakness the doctor sat, a convalescent in his own hospital in Toul, one stifling July day. To his physical debility was added the dragging distress of mind which comes at times to those who are far away and receive no word from home. No letters had reached him for weeks. Removed from the sphere of the abnormal activity which had been his, and with nothing to do but sit and think, Donald had, for some time, been examining his own heart with an introspective gaze more searching than ever before. He felt that he had been, above the average, blessed with happy relationships, deep friendships and a highly trained ability to serve others--and he knew that he could honestly say that he had turned this to full account.

Besides, he was betrothed to a beautiful woman whom many coveted. When his mind reached Marion Treville in its consideration, it stopped to build a dream castle around her, a castle not in Spain, but in America. He had earned the right to rest beside the road awhile, and enjoy the good things of life. Marion was waiting for him at home, and whatever doubts had, at one or another time, entered his mind as to their perfect suitability, one for the other, they had long since been banished. Distance had lent its enchantment, and he had supplied her with the special virtues that he desired. His was a type of mind which held to one thought at a time, and he had always possessed a fixedness of purpose of a kind well calculated to carry through any plan which that mind conceived. Combined, these characteristics made a form of egotism, not one which caused him to overrate himself, but to plough ahead regardless of the strength of the possible opposition. When he returned to America he would marry Marion Treville immediately. No other idea had seriously entered his mind since they had plighted their troth; they had not been quite ready before, that was all, he told himself.

It was in such a frame of mind, and with a growing eagerness for the day when he might start for home to claim his reward, that he received her long-delayed letter. What it said does not matter; but one paragraph summed up her whole confession. "You cannot but agree with me that ours was never the love of a man and woman whose hearts were attuned to one another, and sang in perfect unison. We really drifted into an engagement more because of propinquity than anything else. I am a drone--the product of society at its worst--and you are one of the workers, Donald. I feel quite sure that you will always gain your truest happiness in your work. Although I know how you love children (and I don't), I cannot think of you in the role of a married man, so I do not, deep in my heart, believe that this is going to hurt you very much--certainly I hope not. Indeed, I have a somewhat unpleasant suspicion that some day you are going to bless me for having given you back your freedom."

Donald read the letter through, without allowing his expression to change. Then he started to reread it, stopped, and suddenly crumpled it up in his big fist. A low curse escaped his lips. It was heard by a pa.s.sing nurse, who hurried to him with the question, "Did you call, doctor? Are you in pain?"

"No. Let me alone," was his harsh answer, and the patient girl moved away, with a little shake of her head. The great physician had not been his cheerful, kindly self for some time. Perhaps she surmised, too, that the mail which she had laid in his lap had not been all that he had antic.i.p.ated.

With scarcely a move, he sat, staring in front of him, until the evening shadows had turned the landscape to a dull monotone. Then he slowly arose, and, with his mind so completely bent upon one subject that his body was a thing apart and its weakness forgotten, stepped out into the darkening city.

Time had ceased to exist for him, as he walked the almost deserted streets of Toul like a flesh-and-blood automaton. But the physical exercise brought a quota of mental relief at last, and the cool night air soothed his first burning pain and anger with its unconscious balm. At length he was able to face the truth frankly, and then he suddenly knew that all the time it was not his heart, so much as his pride, which had been hurt.

An hour earlier he would not have admitted a single doubt of his real love for Marion Treville. Now he could not but admit that the initial stab of bitterness was being healed by a real, though inexplicable, sense of relief. He could even say that she had been right. His affection for her had, indeed, been merely the outgrowth of life-long intimacy. It was never the mating call of heart to heart; he had never felt for her the overwhelming pa.s.sion of a lover for the woman in whom, for him, all earthly things are bound up.

His walk became slower; he stopped. The deep blue-black sky had, of a sudden, become the background for a softly glowing mind picture, and there seemed to appear before him the glorious misty eyes, and bewitchingly curved lips of ... Smiles.

Her memory swept over him like a vision, and, even while he felt like a traitor to self, came the wonderful realization that in his home city, toward which his thoughts had so lately been bent, still lived the girl whom he had loved--and had held apart within a locked and closely guarded chamber of his heart--for years. It was as though scales, placed before them by his own will, had dropped from his eyes. He almost cried aloud his self-admission that he had loved her all the years from the first moment when he saw her, a barefoot mountain girl, in Big Jerry's rude cabin.

And he was free! Free to be honest with his own soul, free to tell his Rose of his love, and throw aside the masquerading cloak of adopted brotherhood. How strange it was! The woman whom he had thought to marry was gone from his life like a leaf torn from the binding, and the one whom he had pretended to regard as a sister would become his mate. That such would be the case he did not doubt now, even for an instant. That she had always loved him, he was certain, and, with the warmth of his wooing, he would fan that steady glow of childish affection into the flame of womanly love which should weld their hearts together forever.

The days which followed before he was strong enough to journey to Bordeaux, there to embark for America, seemed to drag by like eternity; but Donald was Westbound at last. He was going home, home to a new life, made perfect by a great love. The deadly submarines of the world's outlaw, lurking under the sea like loathsome phantasies of an evil mind, held no terrors for him, nor could the discomforts caused by the tightly closed hatches and enshrouding burlap, which made the ship a pent-up steambox, until the danger zone was pa.s.sed, depress his spirits.

The steamer crept as had the days on sh.o.r.e; but there came an afternoon when she made port at last, and, spurred by a consuming eagerness, he hastened to his apartment.

He had cabled the news of his departure, and in the mail box were many letters awaiting him. Feverishly, he looked them over for one in her dear handwriting. To his unreasonable disappointment there was none, but there were several which required immediate reading--among them one from his sister Ethel, and one from his old friend, Philip Bentley.

The first contained disquieting news. His little niece, Muriel, had been very ill with typhoid fever and, although Dr. Bentley had pulled her through the sickness successfully, she was still far from well, and apparently not gaining at all.

He opened the other, expecting it to concern the case. But the note did not mention it. It was only a few lines and read: "Dear old Don: I hear that you are 'homeward bound.' Bully! As soon as you reach Boston, and can spare me a moment, I want to talk to you about an important matter.

Call me by telephone, like a good fellow, and I'll run over to your apartment at once and tell you what is on my mind.

Yours, P. B."

CHAPTER x.x.x.

DONALD'S HOMECOMING.

"By the Lord Harry, but I'm glad to see you back again, safe and sound, you good-for-nothing old reprobate."

True to his written statement, Philip had come to Donald's apartment as fast as a taxicab could bring him, after he had heard his old friend's voice over the wire. Now the two men gripped hands, hard, and then--for just a moment--flung their arms around each other's shoulders in a rare outward display of their deep mutual affection.

Then Philip held his senior away at arms' length and said, with masculine candor but with a look of sympathy in his eyes, "Don, you poor devil, you've been killing yourself over there. Don't tell me. I've a mind to appoint myself your physician and order you to bed for a month."

"Good Lord, do I look as bad as that?" laughed the other. "If I do, looks are deceitful, for I feel fit as a fiddle. I need only one thing to make a complete new man of me."

"And that is ...?"

"A secret, at present."

The two seated themselves opposite each other, and Philip continued, "I've managed to keep myself pretty well posted on the work that you've been doing, without knowing any of the details of your life--you're a rotten correspondent. Come, did you have any 'hairbreadth' 'scapes or moving accidents by field and flood?"

"Nary one. My life has been one dead, monotonous waste."

"Like ... the deuce it has. Come, I've got just ten minutes to stay; tell me the whole detailed history of your two years and a half. Knowing your natural verbosity, I should say that it would take you just about half that time, which will leave me the balance for my own few remarks."

"Five minutes? I could tell you the whole history of my life in that time. But, before I start, I want to ask you about my little niece, Muriel? I've just been reading a letter from Ethel, which seems to indicate that they are rather worried about her; but, when I called her by long distance, she either couldn't, or wouldn't tell me anything definite."

"I don't think that there is any real occasion for being disturbed," answered Philip, quietly. "Although I'll confess frankly that things haven't been going just right, and I'm not sorry to have you back and in charge of the case. Muriel made the acquaintance of a typhus bug--the Lord knows how--and, although I succeeded in getting the best of the fever fairly quickly, thanks to the able a.s.sistance of that nurse whom you swear by ..."

"Miss Merriman?"

"Yes, she's a wonder, isn't she? Well, as I said, we took care of the fever, all right; but the cerebral affection has been more persistent, and she hasn't convalesced as you would expect in a twelve-year-old child. She seems to be laboring under a sort of nervous depression, not so much physical as mental ... in fact, a psychos. It's common enough in older people, of course; but hanged if I ever saw anything just like it in a perfectly normal, and naturally happy child."

"H-m-m-m. What are the symptoms?"

"Psychological, all of them. She mopes; seems to take no healthy interest in anything, and, as a result, has no appet.i.te; bursts out crying over the most trivial things--such as the chance of you're being blown up by a submarine on the way home--and frequently for no cause at all. Of course I packed the family off to the sh.o.r.e, as soon as she was able to be moved, in the belief that the change of scene and the sea air would effect a cure, but it hasn't. I can't find a thing wrong with her, physically, nor could Morse. I took him down on my own hook, in consultation, one day. It's a rather unusual case of purely psychological depression, and in my opinion all she needs is ..."

"A generous dose of Smiles," interrupted Donald.

"By thunder, you've struck it," cried Philip, as he gave the arm of his chair a resounding thump. "What an a.s.s I've been not to have thought of that before, particularly as she has been so constantly in my thoughts. It's another case of a thing being too close to one for him to see it."

Donald stiffened suddenly. He held the match, with which he was about to light a cigar, poised in mid-air until the flame reached his fingers, and then blew it out, unused.

"In fact, it was about her, Don, that I was so anxious to see you," the other went on. His own nervousness made him unconscious of the effect which his words had produced on Donald. "Of course, she's practically of legal age now; but I know that she still regards you as her guardian and that in a sense you stand in loco parentis toward her. Certainly she regards your word as law. So I thought that, as she is practically alone in the world, it would be the only right and honorable thing to ... to speak to you, first."

"To speak to me ... first?" echoed Donald, a trifle unsteadily, as he struck another match and watched its flame, with unseeing eyes, until it, too, burned his fingers.

"Yes. Great Scott, can't you guess what I'm driving at? The plain fact is ... is that I love her, Don. I ... I want to marry her."

The words smote the older man's senses like a bolt from a clear sky, and they reeled, although he managed, somehow, to keep outwardly calm.

"You ... you haven't told her ... yet ... that you love her?" he managed to say, after a moment.

"No. At least, not directly; but I guess that she knows it. I wanted, first, to be sure that you would approve ... perhaps even sponsor my suit, for, although I mean, of course, to stand or fall on the strength of my own case, I know that she worships you, as a brother, and might be influenced by your att.i.tude. You understand, don't you, old man?"

Donald nodded, then asked slowly, "Does ... does Smiles love you, Phil?"

"Yes, I think that I can honestly say that I believe she does. Of course no word of love has ever pa.s.sed between us, but ... well, you know how it is."

With a mighty effort of his will, Donald conquered the trembling that had seized upon his body, and--on his third attempt--calmly lit the cigar. But his thoughts were running like a tumultuous millrace. "Blind, egotistical, self-confident fool," they shouted. "That something like this should have happened is the most natural thing in the world, and it has been farthest from your mind."

He remained silent so long that Philip was forced to laugh, a bit uneasily.

"I know well enough that I'm not half worthy of her--no man could be--but I hope that I'm not altogether ineligible, and I'm sure that I love her more than any one else could." At his words Donald winced. "I'll do my best to make her life a happy one, if she'll have me--you know that, old fellow. Well," he laughed again, "say something, can't you? I should almost get the idea that you were jealous, if I didn't also know that that is absurd. Your engagement to Marion Treville ... I suppose that you don't want to talk about that, but you know how deeply I feel for you."

Donald shook himself together, mentally, and made an effort to respond with convincing heartiness, although he found that his words sounded unnaturally, even to his own ears.

"Of course, you have my consent, if it's worth anything. If our little Rose does love you, I am sure that you can make her happy--you're a splendid chap, Phil, and I--and I appreciate what you have done for her while I was away. She wrote me all about it."

He stretched out his hand, and the other started from his chair, and wrung it heartily.

"Thanks, old man. You give me an added quota of courage, and I wish that I might go to her this minute; but I've been called out of town on an important case. I really shouldn't have taken the time even to stop here, but I simply had to see you to-night. Love is an awful thing, isn't it?"

"Yes," he answered, dully. "Love is always impatient ... I know that myself. Perhaps I ... that is, if I can get her ... Rose, I think that I will take her down to Ethel's with me, to-night, and you can ... can see her there. Where is she staying now?"

"With Miss Merriman's family, if she hasn't been called out on a case since morning. She's been doing district nursing, princ.i.p.ally; but she's already had two private cases, you know."

Donald did not, and the realization of how far he had drifted away from his old, intimate a.s.sociation with Smiles' affairs, brought his heart an added stab of pain.

"The number is Back Bay, 4315." He glanced at his watch and then exclaimed, "Heavens, I've got to catch a train at the Trinity Place station in five minutes. Be ready to furnish bail for my chauffeur as soon as he is arrested for over-speeding. 'Night. I'll see you at Manchester in a few days ... that is if ..."

His words trailed off down the corridor, the front door closed and Donald was alone. No, not alone. Philip had gone, but the room was peopled with a mult.i.tude of ghosts and haunting spectres which he had left behind. The doctor had only to close his eyes in order to see them, gibbering and dancing on his hopes, which had been laid low by his friend's eager disclosure. Another loved her, another wanted to marry her, and that other could truthfully say that he believed she cared for him. No spoken words of love may have pa.s.sed between them, but Donald knew well how unessential these were when heart called to heart.

This was his homecoming!

It were as though the eyes of his soul had been permitted, for a brief time, to behold a dazzling celestial light, which had suddenly failed, leaving the darkness blacker than before. The words which he had planned to utter had turned to bitter ashes in his mouth. He had to face the truth squarely. Rose was not, had never been, for him. It had been mere madness for him even to dream of such a thing. Had she not accepted him as a brother, and given him the frank affection of such relationship, which precludes love of the other sort?

His heart hurt and he felt old and weary again. Somewhere, hidden in a cabinet, was a bottle of whiskey, he remembered, and he sought it out and poured himself a generous gla.s.sful. But, when he raised it to his lips, the vision face of Smiles, as she had looked that first night on the mountain, when she told Big Jerry and Judd that "nary a drap o' thet devil's brew would ever be in house of hers," appeared before him, and, with a groan, he set it down, untasted.

Returning to his living-room, he sat a long time in mental readjustment, which was brought about with many a wrench at his heart; and when, at last, his old iron will--which had been weakened a little by illness and further softened by love--had once again been tempered in the crucible of anguish, the lines on his prematurely seamed face were deeper, and in his dark gray eyes was a new expression of pain.

In compliance with his telephoned request, Rose had packed her suit case, and was all ready to accompany him when he arrived at the Merrimans' apartment in a taxicab, to take her with him to the North Station to catch the nine o'clock train. She was irrepressibly the child, for the time being, and in her cheeks bloomed roses so colorful that Gertrude Merriman accused her of painting, while knowing well enough that joy needs no artistry.

"I'm almost too happy," she cried after hearing his voice over the wire, and proceeded to dance around the room, to the impromptu chant, "Donald, dear, is here, is here. Donald, dear, is here."

"Are you going to kiss him?" laughed her friend. But Rose was not to be teased, and answered, "Kiss him? I'll smother him with kisses. Isn't he my brother, and isn't he home again after being away two and a half years?"

When the apartment bell rang, it was Rose who ran to answer it, and whose sweet young voice, saying, "Oh, come up quick," Donald heard thrilling over the wire. His heart leaped, but his will steadied its increased pulsations. It leaped again when he reached the third floor, and the girl of his dreams threw herself upon him with laughter which was suspiciously like weeping, and with the smother of kisses, which she could not restrain nor he prevent, although each burned and seared his very soul.

She backed into the room and pulled him after her by the lapels of his coat; but, as the brighter light struck upon his face, she stopped with widening eyes, through which he could read the troubled question in her mind.

"Oh, my poor big brother. I didn't realize ... I mean, how you must have suffered. Poor dear, you don't have to tell me how ill you have been, so far away from all of us who love you."

Her pitying words drove the last nail in his crucified hopes. Not only were they, all too obviously, merely those of a child who loved him with a sister's love, but they told him how changed, wan and aged he was; one who was, in fact, no longer fitted to mate with radiant youth.

"'Old, ain't I, and ugly?'" He imitated d.i.c.k Deadeye with a laughing voice, but the laugh was not true.

"Old and ugly?" she repeated, in horror. "Donald, how can you? You're tired out, that is all; and as for this--" she lightly touched the sheen of silvery gray at his temples, where the alchemy of Time and stress had made its mark--"it makes you look so ... so distinguished that I am ashamed of my frivolously familiar manner of greeting you. But I just couldn't help it, and I promise not to embarra.s.s you again. Yes, you were embarra.s.sed. I could read it in your face."

There was but a moment for conversation with the others, and they were whirled off to catch the train for the North Sh.o.r.e resort.

When they were seated, face to face, in the Pullman chair car, there came a moment of silence, during which each studied the other covertly. Donald decided that, physically, the girl had not greatly changed from the picture of her which he had borne away in his heart. The pa.s.sing years had merely deepened the charm of the soft, waving hair, whose rich and glinting chestnut strands swept low on her broad forehead and nestled against the nape of her neck; the slender patrician nose and wonderfully shadowed eyes; the smooth contour of cheek and rounded chin; and the tender glory which still trembled, as in the old days, on her sensitive lips. But, in her poise and speech, after the first rush of impetuous childlike eagerness had spent itself, he discovered a new maturity, and he realized that, where he had left a child, he found a woman, whose heart was no longer worn upon her sleeve. True, her grat.i.tude and affection for him were unaltered. They showed in every word and look, and once the thought came to him that he might yet win the castle of Desire, if he should only determine to enter the lists against Philip. The primal man in him cried out against, and might have overcome, his better nature, which whispered that this would be treachery to a friend who had played fair, and was worthy, if there had not always been before his mind the consideration that the fight would be hopeless. Rose was not for him; she loved another.

And the girl? She cheered him with her smile, and loved him for the dangers he had pa.s.sed as he, in the hope of in that subject finding a vent for his emotions, told her of the work he had been doing. But in her heart she was deeply disturbed. The tired, drawn look on his strong face would pa.s.s away, she felt; but the sight of the expression of pain in his eyes gave her thoughts pause. Had Marion Treville's faithlessness struck so deep? At the memory of her interview with the woman, Smiles' own eyes changed, and lost their quiet tenderness.

Morning had come, and the sunlight danced like a myriad host of tiny sprites, clad in cloth of gold over the broad blue bosom of the Atlantic and into the windows of little Muriel's cheerful bedroom. The door opened softly, and Rose, in trim uniform and cap, with its three black bands, slipped into the room, silently motioning the man in the hall outside to keep back out of sight. The child, thin and pale on her snowy bed, turned her head listlessly and looked at the intruder.