'Smiles' - Eliot H. Robinson (uplifting books for women .txt) 📗
- Author: Eliot H. Robinson
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The child, a mere gray dot, was apparently fleeing as fast as his sturdy little legs could carry him from the pursuing girl.
In spite of his bitterness of soul, Donald's lips curved into a smile as they formed the words, "Ah, the battle is on, once more. Rose has insisted that they hurry up to the house and Don has said, 'I won't.' Jerusalem, look at him kite it!"
At that instant a tremulous curtain of light was let down from heaven, momentarily, and the two tiny figures were disclosed as clear as by day. He saw the baby dodging adroitly under Smiles' outstretched arms, and heading out onto the narrow pier, to which was attached a float for rowboats.
"He's got his 'mad' up," thought the man, as he veered off a point so as to get a better view. "He isn't afraid of thunder, lightning or of rain—or anything else, and it would be just like him to run right off the ... Great God in heaven, he's done it!" he shouted aloud and sprang to his feet, and almost lost his grip on the straining tiller. Even as he had been thinking, the light had grown again, and he saw the child, halfway down the pier, with a rebellious jerk tear himself loose from the clutching grasp on his blouse, lose his balance, stumble and roll from the incline into the now surging water.
The Water Witch luffed sharply, and her sail snapped with a report like a pistol shot. Without taking his horrified gaze from the unreal picture which the ghastly lightning illumined, Donald instinctively steadied the boat, and, with his powerful body strained forward as though he were urging the craft to greater effort. "God, God, God." The words came through his clenched teeth, half prayer, half curse at the Fate which held him helpless to act—and the wind snatched them from his lips and bore them away, shrieking in malicious madness.
The darkness fell, blotting out the scene. Then the lightning flared again, and, in the brief white second that it lasted, he saw Rose climb onto a bench against the railing of the pier, and leap into the water.
"God, she can't swim a stroke," groaned the man, as he pounded his left hand against the gunwale until the blood came through the abraded skin. Plunged in darkness again, the man, whom Rose had called unimaginative, suffered all the untold agony of soul which had been hers during the moment in which she had been forced to make up her mind and carry out the act, only his anguish was the more intense, for hers was the quick action and his the forced inaction of a man bound to a stake, within full sight of a tragedy being enacted upon a loved one. The distance between the boat and shore was not so great but that he could see everything that was occurring; but, with the wind dead ahead and blowing viciously, he might as well have been in another world for aught that he could do.
The spell of darkness, doubly black after the flash, seemed like an eternity to Donald. In reality it was as brief as the others, yet, when the light came, it disclosed other forms in action. A youth, whom he had vaguely noticed working around a rowboat on the beach as he put out, was plunging into the water, and down the steeply terraced bank, with leaping strides, was running a tall, slender figure clad in light gray. Minute as it was, seen from that distance, Donald recognized it. It was Philip, and his bursting heart gave voice to a cry of welcome and hope. Philip would save Smiles!
"HOLDING THE GIRL IN CLINGING WHITE CLOSE TO HIM"
True, he would save her for himself. He could not keep the thought out of his surge of hope; but the erstwhile bitterness was swept away. Nothing else mattered, if Rose could be saved. Measured by the ticking of a clock, the action was taking place with dramatic speed; but, to his quivering mind, it dragged woefully, and the periods when the light failed caused him to cry aloud.
Suddenly the searchlight of the sky was turned on, dazzlingly, and he saw the unknown youth wading ashore, bearing in his arms a tiny form whose animated arms and legs told the story of baby Don's timely rescue; he saw Ethel running wildly toward them, to gather her offspring into her outstretched arms; he saw Philip on the float, in the act of casting himself prone. Then the picture faded once more and he railed at the ensuing blackness as though it had been a wilful, animate thing. This time it lasted longer, and the man's deep breath came in rasping sobs before the scene was again revealed. Now there were two forms standing unsteadily on the float; two forms that were almost one, for the man in gray was holding the girl in clinging white close to him. Still, she could stand; Smiles was alive, she was saved! And the watcher's lips gave vent to a shout of relief and joy, a shout which ended in a groan. All the power of his masterful will was not enough to make him do that which he longed to—turn his tortured eyes from the picture which spelt life to Rose, and death to all his golden dreams.
Now he saw them moving slowly up the pier, the girl still leaning heavily against the man, and supported by his encircling arm. They paused, and Rose half turned, and slowly waved her hand toward the sea in a reassuring gesture, and Donald whispered, "God bless her. She knows that I have been a witness to the whole thing, and she remembers, thinks of me, even at ... at this time. I cannot see her face, but I know that she is smiling."
The lingering effulgence from a final wave of light vanished; the two forms toiling up the shore blended into the returning shadows; the curtain of darkness fell, and the drama was ended.
"Why could it not have been I?" groaned Donald. The wind, already spent from its brief fury, chortled softly among the shrouds as though it was laughing at him, another mortal made the victim of capricious Fate. Surely it knew that he would have served as well as its agent and would only too gladly have given his very life for Smiles, but it had wilfully sent him away and sent Opportunity to Philip.
Heroes and martyrs; what are they, after all, but the creatures of that whimsical goddess? Most men and most women have within them the courage to dare all things if the occasion comes, but to a few only, chosen, it often seems, by chance, is that occasion granted. Yet, how often has the history of life, both racial and individual, been changed by such an event!
Donald knew his star had sunk below the far horizon and that Philip's had been carried to its zenith. The lover was likewise the rescuer. It were as though the play had been written and the stage set for no other purpose than to bring the romance to its culmination, and, now that this had been accomplished, the useless properties were being removed. The storm was over, ending as quickly as it had begun; the cloud-legions were hurrying eastward overhead to form the setting of another tragedy or farce somewhere else, or to return to the nothing which had given them birth. A few faint flashes and a distant rumble or two marked their passing.
Along the western edge of the world appeared a narrow streak of ruddy light, like burnished copper beneath the blackness above. Blazing forth with the glory of a conqueror, the sun appeared within it, and seemed to poise immovable for an instant 'twixt heaven and earth, while its dazzling rays turned the living waters to molten gold. Then it slowly sank from sight, and, like wraiths of the dying day, the night-shadows began to creep out from the shore, deeper and deeper, nearer and nearer, until they engulfed the little craft and its owner.
With a sudden decision, Donald played out the sheet and put the tiller over. The boat swung around into the path of the wind and fled seaward again. He could not go home, now. He must fight out the battle with self, as it is always fought, alone, and what place could be more fitting than out there in the darkness, on the face of the troubled waters?
Two hours later Donald stumbled, like a strong man physically played out, up the path to the cottage.
Ethel saw him coming, and ran part way down the steps to meet him. With her arms around his neck, she half-sobbed out the words in a choked voice, "Oh, Don. Do you know what has happened? Could you see from your boat? Little Donny? Smiles? Could you see, Don?"
He nodded, dumbly; but his sister kept on, "She couldn't swim, but yet she jumped, instantly, to save him. You see, she thought that she was alone, she didn't know about that boy. Oh, Donald, we must do something for him, something splendid. He saved my baby's life."
Ethel was crying now, and the man forgot his own misery in comforting her.
"But why didn't you come, Donald? You didn't know...."
"Yes, I knew that everything ... was all right. Rose waved to me and called. I ... I couldn't come, Ethel. I can't make you understand."
With the light of understanding breaking in upon her mind, and bringing a flood of sympathy with it, his sister once more drew close and encircled his neck with her arms.
"Where ... where is she?" he asked, as though the words were wrung from him against his will.
"Smiles has gone for a little walk with ... Dr. Bentley, dear," answered Ethel in a manner which she strove to make commonplace. She felt his frame quiver, and, with a motion that was almost rough, he shook off her comforting arms, and mounted the steps, holding to the rail as he did so. He went directly indoors, and to his room, with the instinct of a wounded creature to seek its cave or burrow. Save for a cold, cheerless patch of moonlight on the floor it was dark, and he felt no desire to turn on the lights. For a while he sat, silent and motionless, on the edge of the bed. But he could not stand the closed-in solitude. The place seemed filled with the fragrant presence of the girl who was not there; would never be there. He wanted to smoke, and went to the bureau to fumble blindly for a pipe which he remembered he had left on it. His hand touched something small and glazed, and he drew it sharply away. The something was the little rose jar. Smiles' first gift to him, which had travelled far since that morning on the mountain side, five years before.
The thoughts which would not be stilled repossessed his mind, and drove him out-of-doors again,—through a side door, so that he would not have to speak to his father and Ethel, whose voices he heard in low conversation on the front porch. They ceased for a moment, as though the speakers had heard the sound of his footsteps, and paused to listen. The night was still, so still that the chirp of a cricket under
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