Peter Part 27

"No, your father has still one degree of fever," he grumbled, with a wise shake of his bushy head. "No--n.o.body, Miss MacFarlane,--do you understand? He can see n.o.bODY--or I won't be responsible," and with this the crabbed old fellow climbed into his gig and drove away.

She looked after him for a moment and two hot tears dropped from her eyes and dashed themselves to pieces on the peach-blossom ribbon.

But the sky was clearing again--she didn't realize it,--but it was.

April skies always make alternate lights and darks. The old curmudgeon had gone, but the garden gate was again a-swing.

Ruth heard the tread on the porch and drawing back the curtains looked out. The most brilliant sunbeams were but dull rays compared with what now flashed from her eyes. Nor did she wait for any other hand than her own to turn the k.n.o.b of the door.

"Why, Mr. Breen!"

"Yes, Miss Ruth," Jack answered, lifting his hat, an unrestrained gladness at the sight of her beauty and freshness illumining his face.

"I have come to report for duty to your father."

"But you cannot see him. You must report to me," she laughed gayly, her heart br.i.m.m.i.n.g over now that he was before her again. "Father was going to send for you to-day, but the doctor would not let him. Hush! he musn't hear us."

"He would not let me go out either, but as I am tired to death of being cooped up in my room, I broke jail. Can't I see him?" he continued in a lower key. He had his coat off and had hung it on the rack, she following him into the sitting-room, absorbing every inch of his strong, well-knit body from his short-cropped hair where the bandages had been wound, down to the sprained wrist which was still in splints. She noted, too, with a little choke in her throat, the shadows under the cheek bones and the thinness of the nose. She could see plainly how he had suffered.

"I am sorry you cannot see father." She was too moved to say more. "He still has one degree of fever."

"I have two degrees myself," Jack laughed softly,--"one records how anxious I was to get out of my cell and the other how eager I was to get here. And now I suppose I can't stay."

"Oh, yes, you can stay if you will keep as still as a mouse so father can't hear you," she whispered, a note of joy woven in her tones.

She was leading him to the sofa as she spoke. He placed a cushion for her, and took his place beside her, resting his injured hand, which was in a sling, on the arm. He was still weak and shaking.

"Daddy is still in his room," she rattled on nervously, "but he may be out and prowling about the upstairs hall any minute. He has a heap of things to talk over with you--he told me so last night--and if he knew you were here nothing would stop him. Wait till I shut the door. And now tell me about yourself," she continued in a louder voice, regaining her seat. "You have had a dreadful time, I hear--it was the wrist, wasn't it?" She felt she was beginning badly; although conscious of her nervous joy and her desire to conceal it, somehow it seemed hard for her to say the right thing.

"Oh, I reckon it was everything, Miss Ruth, but it's all over now." He was not nervous. He was in an ecstasy. His eyes were drinking in the round of her throat and the waves of glorious hair that crowned her lovely head. He noticed, too, some tiny threads that lay close to her ears: he had been so hungry for a glimpse of them!

"Oh, I hope so, but you shouldn't have come to the station that day,"

she struggled on. "We had Uncle Peter with us, and only a hand-bag, each of us,--we came away so suddenly."

"I didn't want you to be frightened about your father. I didn't know that Uncle Peter was with you; in fact, I didn't know much of anything until it was all over. Bolton sent the telegram as soon as he got his breath."

"That's what frightened us. Why didn't YOU send it?" she was gaining control of herself now and something of her old poise had returned.

"I hadn't got MY breath,--not all of it. I remember his coming into my room where they were tying me up and bawling out something about how to reach you by wire, and he says now that I gave him Mr. Grayson's address. I cannot remember that part of it, except that I--Well, never mind about that--" he hesitated turning away his gaze--the memory seemed to bring with it a certain pain.

"Yes,--tell me," she pleaded. She was too happy. This was what she had been waiting for. There was no detail he must omit.

"It was nothing, only I kept thinking it was you who were hurt," he stammered.

"Me!" she cried, her eyes dancing. The ray of light was breaking--one with a promise in it for the future!

"Yes,--you, Miss Ruth! Funny, isn't it, how when you are half dead you get things mixed up." Oh, the stupidity of these lovers! Not a thing had he seen of the flash of expectation in her eyes or of the hot color rising to her cheeks. "I thought somebody was trying to tell your father that you were hurt, and I was fighting to keep him from hearing it. But you must thank Bolton for letting you know."

Ruth's face clouded and the sparkle died out in her eyes. What was Mr.

Bolton to her, and at a time like this?

"It was most kind of Mr. Bolton," she answered in a constrained voice.

"I only wish he had said something more; we had a terrible day. Uncle Peter was nearly crazy about you; he telegraphed and telegraphed, but we could get no answer. That's why it was such a relief to find you at the station."

But the bat had not finished banging his head against the wall. "Then I did do some good by going?" he asked earnestly.

"Oh, indeed you did." If he did not care whether she had been hurt or not, even in his delirium, she was not going to betray herself. "It was the first time anybody had seen Uncle Peter smile; he was wretched all day. He loves you very dearly, Mr. Breen."

Jack's hand dropped so suddenly to his side that the pain made him tighten his lips. For a moment he did not answer.

"Then it was only Uncle Peter who was anxious, was it? I am glad he loves me. I love him, too," he said at last in a perfunctory tone--"he's been everything to me."

"And you have been everything to him." She determined to change the subject now. "He told me only--well,--two days ago--that you had made him ten years younger."

"Me?--Miss Ruth!" Still the same monotonous cadence.

"Yes."

"How?"

"Well,--maybe because he is old and you are young." As she spoke her eyes measured the width of his shoulders and his broad chest--she saw now to what her father owed his life--"and another thing; he said that he would always thank you for getting out alive. And I owe you a debt of grat.i.tude, too, Mr. Breen;--you gave me back my dear daddy," she added in a more a.s.sured tone. Here at last was something she could talk unreservedly about. Something that she had wanted to say ever since he came.

Jack straightened and threw back his shoulders: that word again! Was that all that Ruth had to say?

"No, Miss Ruth, you don't." There was a slight ring of defiance now. "You do not owe me anything, and please don't think so, and please--please--do not say so!"

"I don't owe you anything! Not for saving my father's life?" This came with genuine surprise.

"No! What would you have thought of me, what would I have thought of myself had I left him to suffocate when I could just as well have brought him out? Do you think I could ever have looked you in the face again? You might not have ever known I could have saved him--but I should have hated myself every hour of my life. Men are not to be thanked for these things; they are to be despised if they don't do them.

Can't you see the difference?"

"But you might have been killed, too!" she exclaimed. Her own voice was rising, irritation and disappointment swaying it. "Everybody says it was a miracle you were not."

"Not a miracle at all. All I was afraid of was stumbling over something in the dark--and it was nearly dark--only a few of the rock lights burning--and not be able to get on my feet again. But don't let us talk about it any more."

"Yes--but I will, I MUST. I must feel right about it all, and I cannot unless you listen. I shall never forget you for it as long as I live."

There was a note of pathos in her voice. Why did he make it so hard for her, she thought. Why would he not look in her face and see? Why would he not let her thank him? "Nothing in the world is so precious to me as daddy, and never will be," she went on resolutely, driving back the feeling of injustice that surged up in her heart at his att.i.tude--"and it is you, Mr. Breen, who have given him back to me. And daddy feels the same way about it; and he is going to tell you so the minute he sees you," she insisted. "He has sent you a lot of messages, he says, but they do not count. Please, now won't you let me thank you?"

Jack raised his head. He had been fingering a ta.s.sel on the end of the sofa, missing all the play of feeling in her eyes, taking in nothing but the changes that she rang on that one word "grat.i.tude." Grat.i.tude!--when he loved the ground she stepped on. But he must face the issue fairly now:

"No,--I don't want you to thank me," he answered simply.

"Well, what do you want, then?" She was at sea now,--compa.s.s and rudder gone,--wind blowing from every quarter at once,--she trying to reach the harbor of his heart while every tack was taking her farther from port.

If the Scribe had his way the whole coast of love would be lighted and all rocks of doubt and misunderstanding charted for just such hapless lovers as these two. How often a twist of the tiller could send them into the haven of each other's arms, and yet how often they go ash.o.r.e and stay ash.o.r.e and worse still, stay ash.o.r.e all their lives.

Jack looked into her eyes and a hopeless, tired expression crossed his face.

"I don't know," he said in a barely audible voice:--"I just--please, Miss Ruth, let us talk of something else; let me tell you how lovely your gown is and how glad I am you wore it to-day. I always liked it, and--"

"No,--never mind about my gown; I would rather you did not like anything about me than misunderstand me!" The tears were just under the lids;--one more thrust like the last and they would be streaming down her cheeks.