XI

BROWN'S PRESENT WORLD

When Miss Forrest returned from her survey of the kitchen she had come straight to the corner of the hearth where Brown stood, and had taken the chair beside the one he had lately occupied. He was therefore beside her when he sat down to drink his coffee with his guests. At a moment when Webb Atchison and Sue Breckenridge were engaged in a bit of controversy over the relative merits of varying methods of coffee making, Helena Forrest turned to Brown, who had been looking into the fire without speaking.

"I hope you don't really mind our coming up here to-night," she said.

"Mind it? If I did, I couldn't blame you, for you came against your will," he answered--and his eyes were no longer upon the fire.

"Without my consent, but not, perhaps, against my will."

He regarded her intently. She met his look without turning aside.

"You felt a curiosity to see the hermit in his cell," was his explanation of the matter.

She nodded. "Of course. Who wouldn't, after such reports as Mrs.

Breckenridge brought back?"

"And now that you have seen him--you are consumed with pity?"

"No. If I am consumed with anything it is with envy."

His low laugh spoke his disbelief. She read it in the sound and in the way his gaze left her face and went back to the fire.

"You don't think I mean that," said she.

"Hardly."

"Why not?"

"It is--inconceivable."

"Why?"

Her face, turned toward him, invited him to look at it again, but he did not--just then.

"Because you are--Helena Forrest," he answered.

"And what is she, please, in your opinion?"

"An inhabitant of another world than that I live in."

"A world of which you have an even poorer opinion than you used to have when you lived in it yourself!"

He smiled. "Anyhow, I am no longer in it. Nor ever shall go back."

A startled look pa.s.sed over her face. "You don't mean that you intend to stay here--forever?"

"Not quite that. But I mean to do this sort of work, rather than the sort I began with. To do it I must live much as I am living now, where ever that may be. Now--what about the envy of me you profess?"

He turned, still smiling, at the little sound he caught from her half-closed lips.

"Are you happy in such a decision?" she murmured.

"Do I look like an unhappy man?"

She shook her head. "That's what I have been noticing about you ever since I came. You did look unhappy when you went away. Now, you don't.

And it is the look on your face which gives me the sense of envy."

Brown gave one quick glance at the rest of the party. "Do you mean to say," he questioned, very low, "that you are not happy?"

"Does that seem so strange?"

"It might very naturally seem so, to one who knows what you have to make you the happiest of the happy."

"You yourself didn't find happiness among similar surroundings," she said, looking at him intently.

"Similar?" The thought seemed to amuse him.

"Well, weren't they similar? At any rate we were in the same world, and you say now we are not."

"We are so far apart," said he evenly, "that we can only signal to each other. And even then--neither is familiar with the other's code!"

"Oh!" she exclaimed, and a strange expression showed in her eyes. "What a hard, hard thing for you to say! It doesn't sound like you."

"Hard?" he questioned, with a contraction of the brows. "It is substantially what you yourself once said. If it was true then, it must be true now."

Moved by some impulse the two looked at each other searchingly, Donald Brown's face grave but tense, Helena Forrest's full of a proud pain. Clearly they were not understanding each other's code now--so much was evident.

At this instant, without warning, the outer door flew open. Mrs. Kelcey, her round red face disordered, her breath coming short, stood upon the threshold and spoke pantingly, without regard to the company a.s.sembled:

"Mr. Brown, sor! The baby's dyin--the sthranger child. It was took all of a suddint. Would ye moind comin' to say a bit of a prayer over him?

Father McCarty's away, or I wouldn't ask it."

She was gone with the words. With the first sentence Brown had sprung to his feet. As Mary Kelcey vanished he turned to Doctor Brainard.

"Come, Doctor," he said, with a beckoning hand. "While I say the bit of a prayer you try what you can do to keep the baby here!"

The eminent physician rose rather slowly to his feet. "It's probably no use," he demurred. "The woman knows."

"The Lord knows, too," declared Brown, with a propelling hand on his friend's arm: "knows that you're here to give the child a chance.

Come! Hurry!"

The two went out. Doctor Brainard would have stayed for his hat and overcoat, but Brown would brook no delay.

Left behind, the party by the fire looked at one another with faces sobered. Hugh Breckenridge consulted his watch.

"It's time we were off," he declared. "The Doctor's going to stay anyway, and it's no use waiting for Don to come back."