VIII
Patty half started to her feet and lifted her eyes to the plumy wall of green above her, her lips parted to answer, a wonderful light in her eyes and a wonderful color in her cheeks. Then she suddenly remembered, and sank noiselessly back into her seat, turning fearful eyes in Miss Cole’s direction, every muscle tense, her very breath bated. But a reassuring more lurched suddenly and abruptly into line, and Patty relaxed a fraction, with another furtive glance upward, very, very cautiously. It seemed to her that the simple lifting of her eyelashes made a noise like thunder and her heart was beating so wildly it almost choked her. She felt so frightened and so deceptive, and so disappointed. How good it was to hear his voice again! If only she might answer! If only she could go down to him and they might have pleasant converse and wander about this lovely mountain as they used to walk in those good days so long ago! Was there any possible way she could explain her situation without involving the honor of her family? Her heart clamored wildly for permission to lead her willing feet down that sunlit piney way, but Duty, writ large, stood in her way. If what she was doing was questionable in any way, at least no one should ever find it out until her father knew it all and told her what to do. She could not explain and therefore she must remain unknown.
The minutes beat themselves away, and she heard a strong quick step on the path above. She had to put her hand on her lips with one finger against her throat to keep from crying out, so eager was she to answer that call. And now it came again and made her heart leap up once more to answer:
“Patty! Patty Merrill! I say, you are coming down, aren’t you?” And then his voice dropped away as voices did in that quiet nook, and it might have been anybody, calling to anybody else, and gone on by to meet item. If she sat quite still and went on with her reading, Miss Cole would never suspect that she had been called, not even if she had been awake. Patty settled back laboriously in her chair and tried to look relaxed and natural with her magazine open to an advertisement of brick houses upside down, but she was holding her breath and with every heart-beat something was crying out within her that she was letting the opportunity of meeting her old-time friend go by. She might never have it again on this earth. He had drifted out of her ken these five years. She did not even know where he was living now, for her old aunt had died the winter after her visit, and there were no other ties. For some strange reason the correspondence which they had promised each other had been broken up, partly by her mother, who had discouraged her writing to boys while she was so young, especially to that boy whom she styled as “back country,” and partly because of the lade of an answer to her own first letter. She had buried deep in her heart the hurt that had come after all the weeks and months of waiting for it, and tried to make pride hide her disappointment, but something in his voice, as he called, had obliterated all her resolves to be cool if she ever met him again. Somehow his voice had commenced just where they left off when they were children and in her lonely wandering state the appeal of it was very great.
Nevertheless, she held herself quiet, and waited till she heard the steps no more. Waited longer till she knew he must have decided he had made a mistake and gone on, waited with white face and sad drooping lashes on her cheeks.
Miss Cole awoke abruptly with a sort of snort, and looked at Patty keenly with a frown, as if she would read her through and through, but Patty arose and tried to cover her confusion by a bustling attention to shawls and pillows and a magazine that had fallen.
Miss Cole wanted to go in at once. It was growing cold. She had stayed out altogether too long now. Yet she would go by the lower path, which was much longer, and when Patty with glowing cheeks and downcast eyes finally acquiesced and followed her bearing pillows and shawls and other paraphernalia, they arrived at the patch of sunlight below to find it uninhabited and lonely and Miss Cole puffed and scolded all the way back up the incline as if it had been Patty’s fault that they went down.
When they got back to the hotel Miss Cole said she would write some letters, and she sent Patty down to the office three times to see if the afternoon mail had come yet. Patty found it trying, but managed a roundabout way and used her eyes instead of her tongue, returning undiscovered. In fact, the young man who was the innocent cause of all this disturbance was walking several miles down the mountain very rapidly and trying to make up his mind what he would do next. He had made the experiment of calling out from the sheltered path after he had seen the girl who looked like his old friend go down in that direction, because it seemed a very good way to test out whether it was really his friend or only someone who resembled her, without making an embarrassing situation. She had not answered, and of course he had made a mistake, but somehow he felt more disappointed than the circumstances merited. After all, he had been very well content these three years he had been away in a foreign land. Why should he have such an ungovernable desire to see a girl who had not chosen to answer his many insistent letters, and who had so promptly forgotten him after their pleasant summer together? Of course she had been his beloved mother's admiration, and that probably was the psychology of the thing. He wanted his mother, missed her more every minute he stayed in this land of his birth, and his soul cried out for anything that had been dear to her or associated with her. He was foolish to think any girl could help fill his mother's place in his need! Perhaps after all it would be a wild goose chase to run away out West to find her. Why should he? Not now, anyway, not until after his tryst had been kept. Then he would know what he was going to do. That was only a week off anyway. Scarcely time for a western trip. He would get away to-morrow, if possible, or the next day at the latest. He had no relish for the sort of life his uncle was leading, and no love for the selfish old man who seemed to desire to own him body and soul probably to satisfy more selfish fancies. It disgusted him to be flaunted around like a hero, and stood up before the hotel ladies as a kind of tame pet. If it were not for the pitifulness in the old man's eyes sometimes he would go without hesitation, but something seemed to say to him that he must wait a little longer and fulfill whatever exaggerated duty had brought him here. Then he might go freely and without compunction.
He walked far down the mountain that afternoon, until the long shadows fell into the deep pool of silence in the valley, and the fragrant darkness warned him that he must go back if he did not wish to be lost on the mountainside.
He emerged from the quiet blackness of the trail at the top with a feeling of deep sadness upon him, and went straight to his room, where he found an anxious summons from the old servant. Hespur had been vibrating between his master's room and the nephew's for the last two hours, and his haggard face showed how hard his task had been. Treeves hurried to answer the call to his uncle's presence and found the old man writhing on his bed in a fit brought on by excessive anger:
“You had no right, you young rapscallion——!” he blustered furiously, his face growing purpler as he saw the young man at last. “You had no right to go off without letting anybody know ——!”
“There! There, Master! Mister Treeves, Master!” soothed old Hespur laboriously. "The young master he didn't realize how set you was on havin' him——!”
Treeves, furious at the injustice of the old man, yet alarmed by the condition into which he had worked himself, set himself to explain and soothe even as the servant was doing. He had wandered farther than he realized and dark caught him suddenly. The paths were obscure, and he had gone out of his way in returning. Unconsciously, as he went on talking in a gentle tone as one talks to babies and very sick people, something of the spirit of the serving man came upon him and he was able to understand how Hespur had stood all the abuse and toil during the years, and how the master had become an old child, his charge to love and protect even against himself.
There was no going down to dinner that night. A doctor was summoned and the room settled into the quiet of a sick room until at last the old tyrant slept and his nephew and servant were free to go to their rest.
After
