The other two looked at each other, smiling joyously.
"He"s getting well," said Ellen Burns.
"No doubt of it in the world," agreed Jordan King.
"Sit down here where I can look at you both," commanded the convalescent. "Jord, isn"t my wife something to look at in that blue frock she"s wearing? I like these things she melts into evenings, like that smoky blue she has on now. It seems to satisfy my eyes."
"Not much wonder in that. She would satisfy anybody"s eyes."
"That"s quite enough about me," Ellen declared. "The thing that"s really interesting is that your eyes are brighter to-night, Red, than they have been for two long months. I believe it"s getting downstairs."
"Of course it is. Downstairs has been a mythical sort of place for a good while. I couldn"t quite believe in it. I"ve thought a thousand times of this blue couch and these pillows. I"ve thought of that old grand piano of yours, and of how it would seem to hear you play it again. Play for me now, will you, Len?"
She sat down in her old place, and his eyes watched her hungrily, as King could plainly see. To the younger man the love between these two was something to study and believe in, something to hope for as a wonderful possibility in his own case.
When Ellen stopped playing Burns spoke musingly. Speech seemed a necessity for him to-night--happiness overflowed and must find expression.
"I"ve had a lot of stock advice for my patients that"ll mean something I understand for myself now," he said. He sat almost upright among the blue pillows, his arm outstretched along the back of the couch, his long legs comfortably extended. It was no longer the att.i.tude of the invalid but of the well man enjoying earned repose. "I wonder how often I"ve said to some tired mother or too-busy housewife who longed for rest: "If you were to become crippled or even forbidden to work any more and made to rest for good, how happy these past years would seem to you when you were tired because you had accomplished something." I can say that now with personal conviction of its truth. It looks to me as if to come in dog-tired and drop into this corner with the memory of a good job done would be the best fun I"ve ever had."
"I know," King nodded. "I learned that, too, last spring."
"Of course you did. And now, instead of going to work, I"ve got to take this blamed sea voyage of a month. Van and Leaver are pretty hard on me, don"t you think? The consolation in that, though, is that my wife needs it quite as much as I do. I want to tan those cheeks of hers. Len, will you wear the brown tweeds on shipboard?"
"Of course I will. How your mind seems to run to clothes to-night. What will Your Highness wear himself?"
"The worst old clothes I can find. Then when I get back I"ll go to the tailor"s and start life all over again, with the neatest lot of stuff he can make me--a regular honeymoon effect." Burns laughed, lifting his chin with the old look of purpose and power touching his thin face.
"I"m happy to-night," he went on; "there"s no use denying it. I"m not sorry, now it"s over, I"ve had this experience, for I"ve learned some things I"ve never known before and wouldn"t have found out any other way. I know now what it means to be down where life doesn"t seem worth much, and how it feels to have the other fellow trying to pull you out.
I know how the whisper of a voice you love sounds to you in the middle of a black night, when you think you can"t bear another minute of pain.
Oh, I know a lot of things I can"t talk about, but they"ll make a difference in the future. If I don"t have more patience with my patients it"ll be because memory is a treacherous thing, and I"ve forgotten what I have no business to forget--because the good Lord means me to remember!"
CHAPTER XVI
WHITE LILACS AGAIN
It was the first day of May. Burns and Ellen had not been at home two days after their return from the long, slow sea voyage which had done wonders for them both, when Burns received a long-distance message which sent him to his wife with his eyes sparkling in the old way.
"Great luck, Len!" he announced. "I"m to get my first try-out in operating, after the late unpleasantness, on an out-of-town case. Off in an hour with Amy for a place two hundred miles away in a spot I never heard of--promises to be interesting. Anyhow, I feel like a small boy with his first kite, likely to go straight off the ground hitched to the tail of it."
"I"m glad for you, Red. And I wish"--she bit her lip and turned away--"it may be a wonderful case."
"That"s not what you started to say." He came close, laid a hand on either side of her face, and turned it up so that he could look into it, his lips smiling. "Tell me. I"ll wager I know what you wish."
"No, you can"t."
"That you could go with me--to take Amy"s place and a.s.sist."
A flood of colour poured over her face, such a telltale, significant colour as he had rarely seen there before. She would have concealed it from him, but he was merciless. A strange, happy look came into his own face. "Len, don"t hide that from me. It"s the one thing I"ve always wished you"d show, and you never have. I"m such a jealous beggar myself I"ve wanted you to care--that way, and I"ve never been able to discover a trace of it."
"But I"m not really jealous in the way you think. How could I be?--with not the slightest cause. It"s only--envy of Amy because she is--so necessary to you. O Red, I never, never meant to say it!"
"I"d rather hear you say it than anything else on earth. I"d like to hear you own that you were mad with jealousy, because I"ve been eaten up with it myself ever since I first laid eyes on you. Not that you"ve ever given me a reason for it, but because it"s my red-headed nature. Now I must go; but I"ll take your face with me, my Len, and if I do a good piece of work it"ll be for love of you."
"And of your work, Red. I"m not jealous of that; I"m too proud of it."
"I know you are, bless you."
Then he was off, all his old vigour showing in his preparations for the hurried trip, and as he went away Ellen felt as might those on sh.o.r.e watching a l.u.s.ty life-saver put off in a boat to pull for a sinking ship.
Burns and Amy Mathewson were away three days, during which Red kept Ellen even more closely in touch with himself than usual, by means of the long wire. When he returned it was with the bearing of a conqueror, for the case had tried his regained mettle and he had triumphed more surely than he could have hoped.
"The hand"s as good as new, Len, and the touch not a particle affected.
Van"s a trump, and I stopped on the way out to tell him so. He was pleased as a boy; think of it, Len--my ancient enemy and my new good friend! And the case is fine as silk. They"ve a good local man to look after it till I come again, which will be Thursday. And I"m going to drive there--and take you--and Jord King and Jord"s mother. How"s that for a plan?"
"It sounds very jolly, Red, but will the Kings go? And why Mrs. King?
Will she care to?"
"Because I"ve found some old friends of hers in the place, though I"ll not tell her whom. Besides, I want to keep on her right side, for reasons. And Jord"s back has been bothering him lately and I"ve prescribed a rest. We"ll take the Kings" limousine and go in state.
It"ll be arranged in five minutes, see if it won"t. By the way, Jord says Aleck"s new arm is really going to do him some service besides improving his looks."
He pulled her away to the telephone and held her on his knee while he talked to Jordan King, giving her a laughing hug, when, to judge by the things he was saying into the transmitter, he had brought about his effect.
"Yes, I know I sound crazy," he admitted to King, "but you must give something to a man who has been buried alive and dug up again. I"ve taken this notion and I"m going to carry it through. Mrs. King will enjoy every foot of the way, and you and I will jump out and pick apple blossoms for the ladies whenever they ask. It"s a peach of a plan, and the whole idea is to minister to my pride. I want to arrive in a great prince of a car like yours and impress the natives down there. See? Yes, go and put it up to your mother, and then call me up. Don"t you dare say no!"
"No wonder he"s astonished," Ellen commented while they waited. "For you, who are never content except when you"re at the steering wheel, to ask Jordan, who is another just like you, to elect to travel in a limousine with a liveried chauffeur--well, I admit I am puzzled myself."
"Why, it"s simple enough. I want to take you and Mrs. Alexander King.
She wouldn"t go a step in Jord"s roadster at his pace. And if she would, and we went in pairs, Jord would be always wanting to change off and take you with him--and as you very well know I"m not made that way. Stop guessing, Len, and prepare yourself to break down Mrs. King"s opposition, if she makes any--which I don"t expect."
Mrs. King made no opposition, or none which her son thought best to convey to the Burnses, and the trip was arranged.
"Is there a good hotel in the place?" Ellen asked.
"No hotel within miles--nor anything else. We"re to stay overnight with the family. You won"t mind. They can put us up pretty comfortably, even if not just as we"re accustomed to be." Burns"s eyes were twinkling, and he refused to say more on the subject.
It did not matter. It was early May, and the world was a wilderness of budding life, and to go motoring seemed the finest way possible to get into sympathy with spring at her loveliest. And although Ellen would have much preferred to drive alone with her husband in his own car, she found herself antic.i.p.ating the affair, as it was now arranged, with not a little curiosity to stimulate her interest. Mrs. Alexander King, for her son"s sake, was sure to be a complaisant and agreeable companion, and Ellen was glad to feel that such a pleasure might come her way.
"This is great stuff!" exulted Jordan King early on Thursday morning as the big, shining car, standing before Burns"s door, received its full complement of pa.s.sengers. "Mother and I are tremendously honoured, aren"t we, mother?"
"Even though we had the audacity to invite ourselves and ask for this magnificent car?" Burns inquired, grasping Mrs. Alexander King"s gloved hand, and smiling at her as her delicate face was lifted to him with a look of really charming greeting. He knew well enough that she liked him in spite of certain pretty plain words he had said to her in the past, and he had prepared himself to make her like him still better on this journey together. "I"m the one who is responsible, you know. I"ve merely broken out in a new place."
"We appreciate your caring to include us in your party," Mrs. King said cordially. "The car is all too little used, for Jordan prefers his own, and I go about mostly in the small coupe. I have never taken so long a drive as you plan, and it will doubtless be a pleasant experience. I see so little of my son I am happy to be with him on such a trip."