Johnnie answered at random, for she was suddenly horrified to see Dr.
Lowell and Mary d.i.c.key themselves come out of the post-office. Before she could send them a frantic signal of warning, the doctor came toward the cart.
"How do you do, Mrs. Waters?" said he, holding out his hand.
Shandon brought her startled eyes from little Danny"s face. The child, with little eager grunts and frowning concentration, was busy with the clasp of her pocketbook, and her big, gentle hand had been guarding it from his little, wild ones. The sight of the doctor"s face brought back her bitterest memories with a sick rush, at a moment when her endurance was strained to the utmost. HE had decreed that Dan should be operated on, HE had decided that she should not be with him, HE had come to tell her that the big, protecting arm and heart were gone forever--and now he had an early b.u.t.tercup in his b.u.t.tonhole, and on his lips the last of the laughter that he had just been sharing with Mary d.i.c.key! And Mary, the picture of complacent daintiness, was sauntering on, waiting for him.
Shandon was not a reasonable creature. With a sound between a snarl and a sob she caught the light driving whip from its socket and brought the lash fairly across the doctor"s smiling face. As he started back, stung with intolerable pain, she lashed in turn the nervous horse, and in another moment the cart and its occupants were racketing down the home road again.
"And now we never WILL git no closer to Shandon Waters!" said Johnnie Larabee, regretfully, for the hundredth time. It was ten days later, and Mrs. Larabee and Mrs. Ca.s.s Dinwoodie were high up on the wet hills, gathering cream-colored wild iris for the d.i.c.key wedding that night.
"And serve her right, too!" said Mrs. Dinwoodie, severely. "A great girl like that lettin" fly like a child."
"She"s--she"s jest the kind to go crazy, brooding as she does," Mrs.
Larabee submitted, almost timidly. She had been subtly pleading Shandon"s cause for the past week, but it was no use. The last outrage had apparently sealed her fate so far as Deaneville was concerned. Now, straightening her cramped back and looking off toward the valleys below them, Mrs. Larabee said suddenly:
"That looks like Shandon down there now."
Mrs. Dinwoodie"s eyes followed the pointing finger. She could distinguish a woman"s moving figure, a mere speck on the road far below.
"Sure it is," said she. "Carryin" Dan, too."
"My goo"ness," said Johnnie, uneasily, "I wish she wouldn"t take them crazy walks. I don"t suppose she"s walking up to town?"
"I don"t know why she should," said Mrs. Dinwoodie, dryly, "with the horses she"s got. I don"t suppose even Shandon would attempt to carry that great child that far, cracked as she seems to be!"
"I don"t suppose we could drive home down by the marsh road?" Johnnie asked. Mrs. Dinwoodie looked horrified.
"Johnnie, are you crazy yourself?" she demanded. "Why, child, Mary"s going to be married at half-past seven, and there"s the five-o"clock train now."
The older matron made all haste to "hitch up," sending not even another look into the already shadowy valley. But Johnnie"s thoughts were there all through the drive home, and even when she started with her beaming husband and her four young children to the wedding she was still thinking of Shandon Waters.
The d.i.c.key home was all warmth, merriment, and joyous confusion. Three or four young matrons, their best silk gowns stretched to bursting over their swelling bosoms, went busily in and out of the dining-room. In the double parlors guests were gathering with the laughter and kissing that marked any coming together of these hard-working folk. Starched and awed little children sat on the laps of mothers and aunts, blinking at the lamps; the very small babies were upstairs, some drowsily enjoying a late supper in their mothers" arms, others already deep in sleep in Mrs. d.i.c.key"s bed. The downstairs rooms and the stairway were decorated with wilting smilax and early fruit-blossoms.
To Deaneville it seemed quite natural that Dr. Lowell, across whose face the scar of Shandon Waters" whip still showed a dull crimson, should wait for his bride at the foot of the hall stairway, and that Mary"s attendants should keep up a continual coming and going between the room where she was dressing and the top of the stairs, and should have a great many remarks to make to the young men below. Presently a little stir announced the clergyman, and a moment later every one could hear Mary d.i.c.key"s thrilling young voice from the upper hallway:
"Arnold, mother says was that Dr. Lacey?"
And every one could hear Dr. Lowell"s honest, "Yes, dear, it was," and Mary"s fluttered, diminishing, "All right!"
Rain began to beat noisily on the roof and the porches. Johnnie Larabee came downstairs with Grandpa and Grandma Arnold, and Rosamund Dinwoodie at the piano said audibly, "Now, Johnnie?"
There was expectant silence in the parlors. The whole house was so silent in that waiting moment that the sound of sudden feet on the porch and the rough opening of the hall door were a startlingly loud interruption.
It was Shandon Waters, who came in with a bitter rush of storm and wet air. She had little Dan in her arms. Drops of rain glittered on her hanging braids and on the shawl with which the child was wrapped, and beyond her the wind snarled and screamed like a disappointed animal.
She went straight through the frightened, parting group to Mrs.
Larabee, and held out the child.
"Johnnie," she said in a voice of agony, utterly oblivious of her surroundings, "Johnnie, you"ve always been my friend! Danny"s sick!"
"Shandon,--for pity"s sake!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed little Mrs. Larabee, reaching out her arms for Danny, her face shocked and protesting and pitying all at once, "Why, Shandy, you should have waited for me over at the hotel," she said, in a lower tone, with a glance at the incongruous scene. Then pity for the anguished face gained mastery, and she added tenderly, "Well, you poor child, you, was this where you was walking this afternoon? My stars, if I"d only known! Why on earth didn"t you drive?"
"I couldn"t wait!" said Shandon, hoa.r.s.ely. "We were out in the woods, and Lizzie she gave Danny some mushrooms. And when I looked he--his little mouth--" she choked. "And then he began to have sorta cramps, and kinda doubled up, Johnnie, and he cried so queer, and I jest started up here on a run. He--JOHNNIE!" terror shook her voice when she saw the other"s face, "Johnnie, is he going to die?" she said.
"Mushrooms!" echoed Mrs. Larabee, gravely, shaking her head. And a score of other women looking over her shoulder at the child, who lay breathing heavily with his eyes shut, shook their heads, too.
"You"d better take him right home with me, dearie," Mrs. Larabee said gently, with a significant glance at the watching circle. "We oughtn"t to lose any time."
Dr. Lowell stepped out beside her and gently took Danny in his arms.
"I hope you"ll let me carry him over there for you, Mrs. Waters," said he. "There"s no question that he"s pretty sick. We"ve got a hard fight ahead."
There was a little sensation in the room, but Shandon only looked at him uncomprehendingly. In her eyes there was the dumb thankfulness of the dog who knows himself safe with friends. She wet her lips and tried to speak. But before she could do so, the doctor"s mother touched his arm half timidly and said:
"Arnold, you can"t very well--surely, it"s hardly fair to Mary--"
"Mary--?" he answered her quickly. He raised his eyes to where his wife-to-be, in a startled group of white-clad attendants, was standing halfway down the stairway.
She looked straight at Shandon, and perhaps at no moment in their lives did the two women show a more marked contrast; Shandon muddy, exhausted, haggard, her sombre eyes sick with dread, Mary"s always fragile beauty more ethereal than ever under the veil her mother had just caught back with orange blossoms. Shandon involuntarily flung out her hand toward her in desperate appeal.
"Couldn"t you--could you jest wait till he sees Danny?" she faltered.
Mary ran down the remaining steps and laid her white hand on Shandon"s.
"If it was ten weddings, we"d wait, Shandon!" said she, her voice thrilling with the fellowship of wifehood and motherhood to come.
"Don"t worry, Shandon. Arnold will fix him. Poor little Danny!" said Mary, bending over him. "He"s not awful sick, is he, Arnold? Mother,"
she said, turning, royally flushed, to her stupefied mother, "every one"ll have to wait. Johnnie and Arnold are going to fix up Shandon"s baby."
"I don"t see the slightest need of traipsing over to the hotel," said Mrs. d.i.c.key, almost offended, as at a slight upon her hospitality.
"Take him right up to the spare room, Arnold. There ain"t no noise there, it"s in the wing. And one of you chil"ren run and tell Aggie we want hot water, and--what else? Well, go ahead and tell her that, anyway."
"Leave me carry him up," said one big, gentle father, who had tucked his own baby up only an hour ago. "I"ve got a kimmoner in my bag," old Mrs. Lowell said to Shandon. "It"s a-plenty big enough for you. You git dry and comfortable before you hold him." "Shucks! Lloydy ate a green cherry when he wasn"t but four months old," said one consoling voice to Shandon. "He"s got a lot of fight in him," said another. "My Olive got an inch screw in her throat," contributed a third. Mrs. Larabee said in a low tone, with her hand tight upon Shandon"s shaking one, "He"ll be jest about f.a.gged out when the doctor"s done with him, dearie, and as hungry as a hunter. Don"t YOU git excited, or he"ll be sick all over again."
Crowding solicitously about her, the women got her upstairs and into dry clothing. This was barely accomplished when Mary d.i.c.key came into the room, in a little blue cotton gown, to take her to Danny.
"Arnold says he"s got him crying, and that"s a good sign, Shandon,"
said Mary. "And he says that rough walk pro"bly saved him."
Shandon tried to speak again, but failed again, and the two girls went out together. Mary presently came back alone, and the lessened but not uncheerful group downstairs settled down to a vigil. Various reports drifted from the sick-room, but it was almost midnight before Mrs.
Larabee came down with definite news.
"How is he?" echoed Johnnie, sinking into a chair. "Give me a cup of that coffee, Mary. That"s a good girl. Well, say, it looks like you can"t kill no Deaneville child with mushrooms. He"s asleep now. But say, he was a pretty sick kid! Doc" looks like something the cat brought home, and I"m about dead, but Danny seems to feel real chipper.
And EAT! And of course that poor girl looks like she"d inherited the earth, as the Scriptures say. The ice is what you might call broken between the whole crowd of us and Shandon Waters. She"s sitting there holding Danny and smiling softly at any one who peeks in!" And, her voice thickening suddenly with tears on the last words, Mrs. Larabee burst out crying and fumbled in her unaccustomed grandeur for a handkerchief.
Mary d.i.c.key and Arnold Lowell were married just twenty-four hours later than they had planned, the guests laughing joyously at the wilted decorations and stale sandwiches. After the ceremony the bride and bridegroom went softly up stairs, and the doctor had a last approving look at the convalescent Danny.
Mary, almost oppressed by the sense of her own blessedness on this day of good wishes and affectionate demonstration, would have gently detached her husband"s arm from her waist as they went to the door, that Shandon might not be reminded of her own loss and aloneness.
But the doctor, glancing back, knew that in Shandon"s thoughts to-day there was no room for sorrow. Her whole body was curved about the child as he lay in her lap, and her adoring look was intent upon him. Danny was smiling up at his mother in a blissful interval, his soft little hand lying upon her contented heart.