Peter Part 26

"His head, or his heart?" she asked with a knowing smile, dropping her still spotless skirts. "Both are broken; the last into smithereens. It is hopeless. He will never be any better. Oh, Peter, what a mess you have made of things!"

"What have I done?" he laughed.

"Got these two people dead in love with each other,--both of them--Ruth is just as bad--and no more chance of their ever being married than you or I. Perfectly silly, Peter, and I have always told you so--and now you will have to take the consequences."

"Beautiful--beautiful!" chuckled Peter; "everything is coming my way. I was sure of Jack, for he told me so, but Ruth puzzled me. Did she tell you she loved him?"

"No, stupid, of course she did not. But have I not a pair of eyes in my head? What do you suppose I got up for this morning at such an unearthly hour and went over to--Oh, such an awful place!--to see that idiot? Just to tell him I was sorry? Not a bit of it! I went to find out what was going on, and now I know; and what is to become of it all n.o.body can tell. Here is her father with every penny he has in the world in this work--so Holker tells me--and here are a lot of damages for dead men and Heaven knows what else; and there is Jack Breen with not a penny to his name except his month's wages; and here is Ruth who can marry anybody she chooses, bewitched by that boy--and I grant you she has every reason for he is as brave as he can be, and what is better he is a gentleman.

And there lies Henry MacFarlane blind as a bat as to what is going on!

Oh!--really, Peter, there cannot be anything more absurd."

During the outbreak Peter stood leaning on his umbrella, a smile playing over his smooth-shaven face, his eyes snapping as if at some inwardly suppressed fun. These were the kind of outbursts Peter loved. It was only when Felicia was about to come over to your way of thinking that she talked like this. It was her way of hearing the other side.

"Dreadful!--dreadful!" sighed Peter, looking the picture of woe. "Love in a garret--everybody in rags,--one meal a day--awful situation!

Something's got to be done at once. I'll begin by taking up a collection this very day. In the meantime, Felicia, I'll just keep on to Jack's and see how his arm's getting on and his head. As to his heart,--I'll talk to Ruth and see--"

"Are you crazy, Peter? You will do nothing of the kind. If you do, I will--"

But Peter, his hat in the air, was now out of hearing. When he reached the mud line he turned, drew his umbrella as if from an imaginary scabbard, made a military salute, and, with a suppressed gurgle in his throat, kept on to Jack's room.

Somehow the suns.h.i.+ne had crept into the old fellow's veins this morning.

None of Miss Felicia's pins for him!

Ruth, from her place by the sitting-room window, had seen the two talking and had opened the front door, before Miss Felicia's hand touched the bell. She had already subjected Peter to a running fire of questions while he was taking his coffee and thus had the latest intelligence down to the moment when Peter turned low Jack's light and had tucked him in. He was asleep when Peter had peered into his cramped room early this morning, and the bulletin therefore could go no further.

"And how is he, aunty?" Ruth asked in a breathless tone before the front door could be closed.

"Getting on splendidly, my dear. Slept pretty well. It is a dreadful place for any one to be in, but I suppose he is accustomed to it by this time."

"And is he no worse for coming to meet us, Aunt Felicia?" Ruth asked, her voice betraying her anxiety. She had relieved the old lady of her cloak now, and had pa.s.sed one arm around her slender waist.

"No, he doesn't seem to be, dearie. Tired, of course--and it may keep him in bed a day or two longer, but it won't make any difference in his getting well. He will be out in a week or so."

Ruth paused for a moment and then asked in a hesitating way, all her sympathy in her eyes:

"And I don't suppose there is anybody to look after him, is there?"

"Oh, yes, plenty: Mrs. Hicks seems a kind, motherly person, and then Mr.

Bolton's sister runs in and out." It was marvellous how little interest the dear woman took in the condition of the patient. Again the girl paused. She was sorry now she had not braved everything and gone with her.

"And did he send me any message, aunty?" This came quite as a matter of form--merely to learn all the details.

"Oh, yes,--I forgot: he told me to tell you how glad he was to hear your father was getting well," replied Miss Felicia searching the mantel for a book she had placed there.

Ruth bit her lips and a certain dull feeling crept about her heart.

Jack, with his broken arm and bruised head rose before her. Then another figure supplanted it.

"And what sort of a girl is that Miss Bolton?" There was no curiosity--merely for information. "Uncle Peter was so full of her brother and how badly he had been hurt he hardly mentioned her name"

"I did not see her very well; she was just coming out of her brother's room, and the hall was dark. Oh, here's my book--I knew I had left it here."

"Pretty?" continued Ruth, in a slightly anxious tone.

"No,--I should say not," replied the old lady, moving to the door.

"Then you don't think there is anything I can do?" Ruth called after her.

"Not now."

Ruth picked up Miss Felicia's wrap from the chair where that lady had thrown it, mounted the stairs, peered from between the pots of geraniums screening a view of the street with the Hicks Hotel dominating one corner, wondered which window along the desolate front gave Jack light and air, and with whispered instructions to the nurse to be sure and let her know when her father awoke, shut herself in her room.

As for the horrible old ogre who had made all the trouble, nipping off buds, skewering b.u.t.terflies and otherwise disporting herself after the manner of busybodies who are eternally and forever poking their thin, pointed noses into what doesn't concern them, no hot, scalding tears, the Scribe regrets to say, dimmed her knowing eyes, nor did any unbidden sigh leap from her old heart. Foolish young people ought to thank her really for what she had done--what she would still try to do--and they would when they were a year older.

Poor, meddling Miss Felicia! Have you forgotten that night thirty years ago when you stood in a darkened room facing a straight, soldierly looking man, and listened to the slow dropping of words that scalded your heart like molten metal? Have you forgotten, too, the look on his handsome face when he uttered his protest at the persistent intermeddling of another, and the square of his broad shoulders as he disappeared through the open door never to return again?

CHAPTER XVII

Some of the suns.h.i.+ne that had helped dry the muddy road, making possible the path between Jack's abode and MacFarlane's hired villa--where there was only room for Miss Felicia, Peter still occupying his cell at Mrs.

Hicks's, but taking his meals with Ruth, so that he could be within call of MacFarlane when needed--some of this same suns.h.i.+ne, I say, may have been responsible for the temporary drying up of Ruth's tears and the establis.h.i.+ng of various ways of communication between two hearts that had for some days been floundering in the deeps. Or, perhaps, the rebound may have been due to the fact that Peter had whispered something in Jack's ear, or that Ruth had overheard Miss Felicia praising Jack's heroism to her father--it was common talk everywhere--or it may have been that the coming of spring which always brings hope and cheer--making old into new, may have led to the general lighting up of the gloom that had settled over the house of MacFarlane and its dependents; but certain it is that such was the case.

MacFarlane began by taking a sudden change for the better--so decided a change that he was out of his room and dressed on the fifth day (although half his coat hid his broken arm, tightly bandaged to his side). He had even talked as far as the geraniums in the window, through which he could not only see Jack's hotel, but the big "earth fill" and mouth of The Beast beyond.

Then Bolton surprised everybody by appearing outdoors, his hand alone in a sling. What was left of the poor shanty men, too, had been buried, the dreadful newspaper articles had ceased, and work was again in full blast.

Jack, to be sure, was still in his room, having swallowed more gas and smoke than the others, badly scorching his insides, as he had panted under the weight of MacFarlane's body. The crisis, however, brought on by his imprudence in meeting Ruth at the station, had pa.s.sed, and even he was expected to be out in a few days.

As for Miss Felicia, although she had blown hot and blown cold on Ruth's heart, until that delicate instrument stood at zero one day and at fever heat the next, she had, on the whole, kept up an equable temperature, and meant to do so until she shook the dust of Corklesville from her dainty feet and went back to the clean, moist bricks of her garden.

And as for Peter! Had he not been a continuous joy; cheering everybody; telling MacFarlane funny stories until that hara.s.sed invalid laughed himself, unconscious of the pain to his arm; bringing roses for the prim, wizened-up Miss Bolton, that she might have a glimpse of something fresh and alive while she sat by her brother's bed. And last, and by no means least, had he not the morning he had left for New York, his holiday being over, taken Ruth in his arms and putting his lips close to her ear, whispered something into its pink sh.e.l.l that had started northern lights dancing all over her cheeks and away up to the roots of her hair; and had she not given him a good hug and kissed him in return, a thing she had never done in her whole life before? And had he not stopped on his way to the station for a last hand-shake with Jack and to congratulate him for the hundredth time for his plucky rescue of MacFarlane--a subject he never ceased to talk about--and had he not at the very last moment, told Jack every word of what he and Ruth talked about, with all the details elaborated, even to the hug, which was no sooner told than another set of northern lights got into action at once, and another hug followed; only this time it took the form of a hearty hand-shake and a pat on Peter's back, followed by a big tear which the boy tried his best to conceal? Peter had no theories detrimental to penniless young gentlemen, pursued by intermeddling old ladies.

And yet with all this there was one corner deep down in Ruth's heart so overgrown with "wonderings" and "whys," so thick with tangled doubts and misgivings, that no cheering ray of certainty had yet been able to pierce it. Nor had any one tried. Miss Felicia, good as she was and loving as she had been, had done nothing in the pruning way--that is, nothing which would let in any suns.h.i.+ne radiating from Jack. She had talked about him, it is true; not to her, we may be sure, but to her father, saying how handsome he had grown and what a fine man he was making of himself. She had, too, more than once commented--and this before everybody--on his good manners and his breeding, especially on the way he had received her the first morning she called, and to his never apologizing for his miserable surroundings, meagre as they were--just a theodolite, his father's portrait and half a dozen books alone being visible, the white walls covered with working plans.

But when the poor girl had tried to draw from her some word that was personal to himself, or one that might become personal--and she did try even to the verge of betraying herself, which would never have done--Miss Felicia had always turned the subject at once or had pleaded forgetfulness. Not a word could she drag out of this very perverse and determined old lady concerning the state of the patient, nothing except that he was "better," or "doing nicely," or that the bandage was being shortened, or some other commonplace. Uncle Peter had been kinder. He understood--she saw that in his eyes. Still even Uncle Peter had not told her all that she wanted to know, and of course she could not ask him.

Soon a certain vague antagonism began to a.s.sert itself toward the old lady who knew so much and yet who said so little! who was too old really to understand--no old person, in fact, could understand--that is, no old woman. This proved, too, that this particular person could never have loved any other particular person in her life. Not that she, Ruth, loved Jack--by no manner of means--not in that way, at least. But she would have liked to know what he said, and how he said it, and whether his eyes had lost that terrible look which they wore when he turned away at the station to go back to his sick bed in the dingy hotel. All these things her Aunt Felicia knew about and yet she could not drag a word out of her.

What she ought to have done was to go herself that first night, bravely, honestly, fearlessly as any friend had a right to do; go to him in his miserable little hotel and try to cheer him up as Miss Felicia, and perhaps Miss Bolton, had done. Then she might have found out all about it. Exactly what it was that she wanted to find out all about--and this increased her perplexity--she could not formulate, although she was convinced it would help her to bear the anxiety she was suffering. Now it was too late; more than a week had pa.s.sed, and no excuse for going was possible.

It was not until the morning after Peter's departure,--she, sitting alone, sad and silent in her chair at the head of her father's breakfast table (Miss Felicia, as was her custom, had her coffee in her room), that the first ray of light had crept into her troubled brain. It had only shone a brief moment,--and had then gone out in darkness, but it held a certain promise for better days, and on this she had built her hopes.

"I am going to send for Breen to-morrow, Ruth," her father had said as he kissed her good-night. "There are some things I want to talk over with him, and then I want to thank him for what he did for me. He's a man, every inch of him; I haven't told him so yet,--not to his face,--but I will to-morrow. Fine fellow is Breen; blood will always tell in the end, my daughter, and he's got the best in the country in his veins. Looks more like his father every day he lives."

She had hardly slept all night, thinking of the pleasure in store for her. She had dressed herself, too, in her most becoming breakfast gown--one she had worn when Jack first arrived at Corklesville, and which he said reminded him of a picture he had seen as a boy. There were pink rosebuds woven in its soft texture, and the wide peach-blossom ribbon that bound her dainty waist contrasted so delightfully, as he had timidly hinted, with the tones of her hair and cheeks.

It was the puffy, bespectacled little doctor who shut out the light.