Leerie Part 25

And Sheila smiled down at him again with the old luminous smile.

When he was sufficiently mended to look about him and take reckoning of what had happened, he asked first for the ring that he had bought for that long-before wedding and that he had carried ever since with him. And he asked, second, for the chaplain.

Sheila drew the gold chain from about her neck and dangled the ring in front of his nose. "I took it when we cut off your coat that night, and I've kept it handy ever since. The chaplain's handy, too. He's promised--any hour of the day or night. Shall we send for him--now?"

Peter nodded.

The nurse turned to go, hesitated, and then came back to the cot. Peter thought he had never seen her eyes so full of wonder.

"Man o' mine, maybe you won't want me when you know I almost let you go, that I intended to let you die to save first a French lad that came in with you."

Peter grinned. "Same old Leerie! Well, we're quits, sweetheart, and I'm glad to have it off my conscience. Sort of did the same thing myself.

Rushed off in the sh.e.l.ling to bring in that same poor chap--he'd got a bullet in his leg--and all the time I knew I ought to be thinking of you first and hanging on to safety. Funny, isn't it, how something queer gets you in the midst of it all and you do the last thing in the world you want to do? A year or two and the whole thing will be unexplainable."

Sheila bent over and laid her lips to Peter's. She knew that in a year--in a century--they would still understand why they had done these things, and she was glad they had both paid their utmost for the love and happiness that she knew was theirs now for all time.

Peter broke on her reverie with a chuckle. "Remember old Hennessy saying once that he believed you would give me away with everything else--if you thought anybody else needed me more? He'd certainly wash his hands of the pair of us."

"Hennessy's an old dear. I'll get the chaplain, and afterward let's send Hennessy the first--and the best--cable he's ever had. Sort of owe it to him, don't we?"

Without any of the original splendor of decorations, collation, and attire, with no one but the chaplain to marry them and the chief to bless them, Sheila O'Leary came into her own at last. As for Peter--he looked as Hennessy described him on the day the Brookses came home--"wi' one eye on the thruest la.s.s G.o.d ever made an' the other on Paradise."

AFTERWORD

I thought I had to have a better ending to the story than the sc.r.a.ps of things I had made over from Leerie's letters and what Peter had told me.

So I went to Hennessy.

It was midwinter. I found him cracking the ice on the pond to let the swans in for a cold bath.

"'Tis not docthor's ordthers," he grinned by way of explanation; "but they get so blitherin' uneasy there's no housin' them. That's the why I give them a bit of a cold nip onct the while--sure 'tis good threatment for us all--an' then they settle down."

I huddled deeper into a fur coat and tried to agree with Hennessy.

"Did ye see Leerie, then, since she came home?"

"Have you?"

He shirred his lips into an ecstatic pucker and whistled triumphantly.

"Wasn't I always sayin' she'd marry the finest gentleman in the land, same as the King o' Ireland's only daughter, and go dandtherin' off to a fine home of her own?"

"And she has."

"She has that."

"And so the story's told, Hennessy."

"Told nothin'. Sure, it isn't half told--it isn't more than half begun, just."

"But you can't end a book that way. You have to end with an ending."

"'Tis the best way to end a book, then. Haven't ye taken the la.s.s over the worst o' the road an' aren't ye leavin' her with the best ahead?"

"But what is there left--to find along the way? She's found her work--that's over with. She's found her man--that's over with. She's found love--that's over--"

Hennessy interrupted me almost viciously. I think he wanted to prod me instead of the ice. "What kind of talkin' is that for a person who thries to write books about real folk? Ye harken to me. Do ye think because love is found 'tis over with? Sure, Leerie's only caught a whiff of it yet--'tis naught but budded for her. By an' by there come the blossom of it an' the fruit of it. An' when death maybe withers it for a spell--'twill be but a winther-time promise to bud an' blossom again in the Counthry Beyond. There's no witherin' to love like hers. An' do ye think because she has her man found there's no pretty fancy or adventure still waitin' them along the way? An' do ye think Leerie's work will ever be done? Tell me that!"

The shirr tightened into something like contempt. Hennessy looked down upon me with undisguised pity.

"Did ye ever know Leerie at all, at all, I'm wondtherin'--to be savin'

things like that? Don't ye know for the likes o' her there'll be childher--Saint Anthony send them a nestful!" He crossed himself to further the wish. "An' over an' above the time it takes tendin' an' lovin'

them an' rearin' them into the finest parcel o' youngsters G.o.d ever made--wi' the help o' their parents--there'll be time left to light the way for every poor, sorry soul within a hundred miles o' her. Ye can take my word for it; an' if she never did another stroke o' work so long as she lived--bein' Leerie, just, would be enough."

"You may be right, Hennessy, but it's still no way to end a book."

He came a step nearer and shook a warning finger at me. "Will ye listen?

Faith, I'm wondtherin' sometimes that folk read your books when ye have so little sense wi' the endin' o' them. Don't ye know that a book that ends wi' the end is a dead book entirely? An' who cares to be readin' a dead book? Tell me that."

His contempt changed to commiseration. I might have been Brian Boru, the gray swan, the way he looked at me.

"The right way of endin' is with a beginnin'--the beginnin' o' something bigger an' betther an' sweeter. 'Tis like ye were takin' a friend with ye up a high hill--showin' him all the pretty things along the way. Then just afore ye get to the top--an' afore ye can look over an' see what's waitin'

beyond--ye leave him, sayin', 'Go ye alone an' find whatever ye are most wishin' for.'"

He stopped, pushed his hat back and pulled his forelock as if for more inspiration. "Do ye see? Just be leavin' it to folk the world over. They can read in a betther endin' than ye can be writin' in in a hundthred years. An' let Leerie be as I'm tellin' ye--wi' the road windin' over the hill an' out o' sight. Sure the two of us know what she'll be findin'

there; an' do ye think the readers have less sense than what we have?"

THE END