'Smiles' - Eliot H. Robinson (uplifting books for women .txt) 📗
- Author: Eliot H. Robinson
- Performer: -
Book online «'Smiles' - Eliot H. Robinson (uplifting books for women .txt) 📗». Author Eliot H. Robinson
"Accept? Indeed I will, and it makes me mighty happy to realize that I mean something to both of you. I've been playing that she was my sister, but now she will really be as much to me as though she were."
The two men clasped hands again in full understanding, and as a symbol of a trust bestowed and accepted.
At sunrise the following morning Donald once more turned his face toward the valley, whence he had climbed lightheartedly less than two days previous. He had come with a beloved companion. He went alone, save for crowding memories—some bright, but far more black as storm-clouds and shot with malignant flashes of lightning.
His vacation—a travesty on the name—was ended; the castle which his dreams had built on this remote mountain was a shattered ruin. Yet, through the dark series of crowding events, ran a fine thread of gleaming gold, and Donald felt that it had not been broken by his departure. No, it was spun by Destiny to stretch on and on into the unseen future, at once for him a guide-line to a higher manhood, and a tie binding his life to that of the girl whose pathway—starting so far removed from his—had so strangely converged with it.
To continue his hunting trip in another location, with Mike no longer his companion in it, was unthinkable. The empty spaces made the void in his heart unbearable, and he at once returned to Boston and joined his family at their summer home, to their amazement and delight.
But the man now returned to them after little more than a week's absence was vastly different from the one who had left. All marked the alteration in him, and over and over in family council tried, vainly, to account for it, for Donald had withheld far more than he told of his experiences, and minimized what he did tell.
But he knew, as well as they, that a new chord had been struck within him, and by its vibrations his whole life was being tuned anew. Something of the old boyishness and impetuosity was gone, a new purposefulness—not of the will but rather of the spirit—had supplanted it and engendered an unwonted serenity. Was it born of the words of the strange mountain prophet, or the impelling appeal of the no-less-strange mountain child, whose mysterious smile, though seen less frequently than on his first visit, still cast a spell over his senses, even in memory? He could not say.
Whatever uncertainties had disturbed his heart before, when his thoughts had turned upon her, none now remained. The die was cast. Smiles had made her place in his life, and would always occupy it, but merely as a dear charge and comrade. Half-child, half-woman, she still appealed to him in both capacities as perhaps none other ever had; yet he could now admit that fact frankly, and at the same time tell himself that there was, there could be, nothing else.
With the mists of uncertainty dispelled, and his mind purged of the passions which had, so unexpectedly, possessed it, Donald's life returned to its old ruts. His work absorbed him as before, he accepted Marion as more fully a part of his life than she had previously been, and, in so doing, found an unexpected contentment. If, at times, he still felt that she was not all that he might desire, at least she was of his class and he understood her thoroughly.
"My work furnishes enough of romance for me," he sometimes thought. "And, if I want to remain a civilized human being, I had better stick to the life in which I was brought up. I never suspected how much of a 'cave man' I was until I got into the heart of the primitive. Whew! Supposing I had killed Judd that afternoon! There were a few moments when it would have been a pleasure to have done it. Or supposing he had killed me! He wanted to, right enough. Puck was right."
And so, while the months passed, Fortune smiled on the brilliant young physician, and daily laid new tributes of wealth, honor and affection at his feet.
In the mountain cabin it was otherwise.
Changes, born of the travail of tragic happenings, cast their ever-lengthening shadows over Smiles' life, blotting out the golden sunlight of childhood, and overlaying it with the deeper tones of womanhood.
Judd, her companion since baby days, she no longer called "friend," and he, for his part, steadily avoided her and the cabin which had once been a second home to him. Big Jerry, uncomplaining ever, day by day grew more feeble and pain-wracked, and so became more and more a dear burden to her. Only Mr. Talmadge, of her real intimates, remained unchanged in his relations with her, unless it was that in his deep and understanding sympathy he brought her greater spiritual and mental comfort than ever. The other neighbors were kind always, in their rough, well-meaning way; but he was her chief guide and comforter, and in him, and the books which Donald conscientiously sent to her every few weeks, she found the strength to carry forward.
So, in the never-ending tasks which her daily life provided, and which she performed with distress in her heart, but a smile on her lips, Rose saw the weeks come and go, bringing in their slow-moving, but inexorable, train, autumn, fall and another winter.
It was mid-winter. The twilight sky—cold and pale, more green than blue—brought the thought of new-made ice. Stripped long since of their verdure, the wooded Cumberlands lay, like naked, shivering giants, across whose mighty recumbent torsos the biting winds swept relentlessly.
In contrast with the desolation without, inside Big Jerry's cabin all was as bright, warm and homelike as a merry fire, the soft glow of the evening lamp and the presence of the heart of the spot—the girl herself—could make it.
Thankful for the blessings of the cheery home and her grandfather's presence in it still, and softly humming an old ballad which he loved, Rose was busily engaged in preparing an early supper, when she was interrupted by the sound of a low, uncertain knock on the door.
She opened it, wonderingly, and the firelight leaped out into the night and disclosed the unshaven face and gaunt form of Judd.
Save on rare occasions, and then at a distance, she had not seen him since that fateful day on the mountain's summit, when his passionate love and hate, intermingled, had driven him to commit the great offence against the unwritten laws of the feudal clan, by attacking one upon whom the sacred mantle of hospitality had been placed, by which act he had incurred Jerry's enmity, and made himself love's outlaw.
The months had dealt harshly with him. Not only was his clothing frayed and soiled; but his face was so unnaturally pale that the deep-set eyes beneath their lowering black brows seemed to burn like embers, and there were many new lines on his countenance not graven there by wind and weather.
Shocked at the change in him, and suddenly filled with womanly compassion which sounded the knell of anger, Rose called, gently, "Judd! Why, Judd! Come in."
He shook his head. "I reckon I haint welcome in this hyar cabin, Smiles, an' taint on my own ercount thet I comes ter ye."
"Why, what is the trouble?" was her startled inquiry.
"Hit ... hit air leetle Lou. I erlows she's sick er somethin'."
"Lou? Tell me quick, Judd. What is the matter with her?"
"I don't rightly know." The answer was made with obvious distress. "She haint been her sunshiny self fer quite some time, an' ter-night ... wall, she air actin' so sorter ... queer, thet I got skeered."
"I'll go over home with you at once," said Rose, as she hastily caught up and drew a shawl about her head and shoulders. "Grandpap," she called softly through the door to the old man's bedroom, "I'm ergoin' out fer er leetle time. One of ther neighbors air sick. Don't fret, fer I'll be back right soon, dear."
There was a brief, rumbled reply; and, closing the door behind her on the warm comfort within, the girl joined the mountaineer in the crispy evening, now almost dark. She shivered a little, and he marked the involuntary act, and drew back a step.
In silence they walked rapidly up the narrow path, slippery from a recent fall of light snow. Once Rose slipped, and instantly Judd's sinewy arm was about her waist, steadying her. Then, as she regained her balance and started forward, it tightened and drew her suddenly to him in a passionate, crushing embrace. She made no effort to struggle free, or voice her heart's protest against this outrage, but stood with her body rigid and unyielding within the circle of his arm until he slowly released her, mumbling, "I reckon I air plumb ershamed of myself, Smiles. I didn't go fer ter do hit, an' I knows thet I haint deservin' ter tetch so much es ther hem of yo'r skirt."
She did not answer, and neither spoke again until his cabin was reached.
When the door was opened, Smiles caught sight of the child sitting motionless on a stool near the fireplace. Her lips were parted and in her eyes was an odd look of semi-vacuity.
"Lou!" cried Rose, pausing in alarmed astonishment.
A light of recognition sprang into the child's eyes, she stood up a trifle unsteadily, and said, with a low throaty laugh of delight, "Hit air my Smiles. I awful glad ter see...." She started toward her friend; but her course suddenly veered to the left, waveringly, and her wandering gaze fell upon the now sadly battered doll lying in one corner. "To see ye, Mike," was the ending of her sentence, as she trotted to Donald's gift and began to cuddle it.
"Yo' haint erbeen ter see Lou fer er long, long ..." The piping voice trailed off into silence.
"Why, Lou, sweetheart. What is the matter? Don't you know your own Smiles?" pleaded the deeply distressed girl, as she gathered the child to her breast.
The baby's hands dropped the doll unceremoniously and sought her friend's cheeks. Looking up with big eyes into the face drawn close to her own, she replied in a strangely slow, hesitant manner. "In course I remembers ye, Smiles. Yo' air the nurse what lives with ... with thet thar doctor man ... in the big city, whar air monkeys thet ... clumb sticks an' ... an' doll babies what close thar eyes ... an' say ... an' say ... My head hurts me, Smiles, hit do."
She lay still in the loving arms for an instant, and then wriggled free and, sliding to the floor, picked up and began to rock the doll again, the while crooning a wordless lullaby.
With anxiety growing akin to terror, Smiles felt the irregular pulse, as Donald had taught her how to do, and pressed her hand to the pale cheek and forehead.
"She is sick, Judd, and I'm kind of frightened, too. You can't take care of her here, and I mean to take her home with me, right now. I reckon you had better go down to the village and get Dr. Johnston, quick."
The man had started, with words of protest trembling on his lips; but, as his look turned on his little sister, as she now leaned drowsily against the girl's knees, he stifled them unspoken, while a spasm of pain crossed his worn face. With a dull nod of acquiescence he held out his arms to receive the child, whom Rose had lifted
Comments (0)