"It"s him; I"m sure of it," said Mrs. Hale, with a suppressed smile.
Kate threw open the door smartly, to the extreme discomfiture of a tall, dark figure that already had slunk away from it. For all that, he was a good-looking enough fellow, with a moustache as long and almost as flexible as a ringlet. Kate could not help noticing also that his hand, which was nervously pulling the moustache, was white and thin.
"Excuse me," he stammered, without raising his eyes, "I was looking for--for--the old lady. I--I beg your pardon. I didn"t know that you--the young ladies--company--were here. I intended--I only wanted to say that my friend--" He stopped at the slight smile that pa.s.sed quickly over Mrs. Hale"s mouth, and his pale face reddened with an angry flush.
"I hope he is not worse," said Mrs. Hale, with more than her usual languid gentleness. "My mother is not here at present. Can I--can WE--this is my sister--do as well?"
Without looking up he made a constrained recognition of Kate"s presence, that embarra.s.sed and curt as it was, had none of the awkwardness of rusticity.
"Thank you; you"re very kind. But my friend is a little stronger, and if you can lend me an extra horse I"ll try to get him on the Summit to-night."
"But you surely will not take him away from us so soon?" said Mrs. Hale, with a languid look of alarm, in which Kate, however, detected a certain real feeling. "Wait at least until my husband returns to-morrow."
"He won"t be here to-morrow," said the stranger hastily. He stopped, and as quickly corrected himself. "That is, his business is so very uncertain, my friend says."
Only Kate noticed the slip; but she noticed also that her sister was apparently unconscious of it. "You think," she said, "that Mr. Hale may be delayed?"
He turned upon her almost brusquely. "I mean that it is already snowing up there;" he pointed through the window to the cloud Kate had noticed; "if it comes down lower in the pa.s.s the roads will be blocked up. That is why it would be better for us to try and get on at once."
"But if Mr. Hale is likely to be stopped by snow, so are you," said Mrs. Hale playfully; "and you had better let us try to make your friend comfortable here rather than expose him to that uncertainty in his weak condition. We will do our best for him. My sister is dying for an opportunity to show her skill in surgery," she continued, with an unexpected mischievousness that only added to Kate"s surprised embarra.s.sment. "Aren"t you, Kate?"
Equivocal as the young girl knew her silence appeared, she was unable to utter the simplest polite evasion. Some unaccountable impulse kept her constrained and speechless. The stranger did not, however, wait for her reply, but, casting a swift, hurried glance around the room, said, "It"s impossible; we must go. In fact, I"ve already taken the liberty to order the horses round. They are at the door now. You may be certain," he added, with quick earnestness, suddenly lifting his dark eyes to Mrs.
Hale, and as rapidly withdrawing them, "that your horse will be returned at once, and--and--we won"t forget your kindness." He stopped and turned towards the hall. "I--I have brought my friend down-stairs. He wants to thank you before he goes."
As he remained standing in the hall the two women stepped to the door.
To their surprise, half reclining on a cane sofa was the wounded man, and what could be seen of his slight figure was wrapped in a dark serape. His beardless face gave him a quaint boyishness quite inconsistent with the mature lines of his temples and forehead. Pale, and in pain, as he evidently was, his blue eyes twinkled with intense amus.e.m.e.nt. Not only did his manner offer a marked contrast to the sombre uneasiness of his companion, but he seemed to be the only one perfectly at his ease in the group around him.
"It"s rather rough making you come out here to see me off," he said, with a not unmusical laugh that was very infectious, "but Ned there, who carried me downstairs, wanted to tote me round the house in his arms like a baby to say ta-ta to you all. Excuse my not rising, but I feel as uncertain below as a mermaid, and as out of my element," he added, with a mischievous glance at his friend. "Ned concluded I must go on. But I must say good-by to the old lady first. Ah! here she is."
To Kate"s complete bewilderment, not only did the utter familiarity of this speech, pa.s.s unnoticed and unrebuked by her sister, but actually her own mother advanced quickly with every expression of lively sympathy, and with the authority of her years and an almost maternal anxiety endeavored to dissuade the invalid from going. "This is not my house," she said, looking at her daughter, "but if it were I should not hear of your leaving, not only to-night, but until you were out of danger. Josephine! Kate! What are you thinking of to permit it? Well, then I forbid it--there!"
Had they become suddenly insane, or were they bewitched by this morose intruder and his insufferably familiar confidant? The man was wounded, it was true; they might have to put him up in common humanity; but here was her austere mother, who wouldn"t come in the room when Whisky d.i.c.k called on business, actually pressing both of the invalid"s hands, while her sister, who never extended a finger to the ordinary visiting humanity of the neighborhood, looked on with evident complacency.
The wounded man suddenly raised Mrs. Scott"s hand to his lips, kissed it gently, and, with his smile quite vanished, endeavored to rise to his feet. "It"s of no use--we must go. Give me your arm, Ned. Quick! Are the horses there?"
"Dear me," said Mrs. Scott quickly. "I forgot to say the horse cannot be found anywhere. Manuel must have taken him this morning to look up the stock. But he will be back to-night certainly, and if to-morrow--"
The wounded man sank back to a sitting position. "Is Manuel your man?"
he asked grimly.
"Yes."
The two men exchanged glances.
"Marked on his left cheek and drinks a good deal?"
"Yes," said Kate, finding her voice. "Why?"
The amused look came back to the man"s eyes. "That kind of man isn"t safe to wait for. We must take our own horse, Ned. Are you ready?"
"Yes."
The wounded man again attempted to rise. He fell back, but this time quite heavily. He had fainted.
Involuntarily and simultaneously the three women rushed to his side. "He cannot go," said Kate suddenly.
"He will be better in a moment."
"But only for a moment. Will nothing induce you to change your mind?"
As if in reply a sudden gust of wind brought a volley of rain against the window.
"THAT will," said the stranger bitterly.
"The rain?"
"A mile from here it is SNOW; and before we could reach the Summit with these horses the road would be impa.s.sable."
He made a slight gesture to himself, as if accepting an inevitable defeat, and turned to his companion, who was slowly reviving under the active ministration of the two women. The wounded man looked around with a weak smile. "This is one way of going off," he said faintly, "but I could do this sort of thing as well on the road."
"You can do nothing now," said his friend, decidedly. "Before we get to the Gate the road will be impa.s.sable for our horses."
"For ANY horses?" asked Kate.
"For any horses. For any man or beast I might say. Where we cannot get out, no one can get in," he added, as if answering her thoughts. "I am afraid that you won"t see your brother to-morrow morning. But I"ll reconnoitre as soon as I can do so without torturing HIM," he said, looking anxiously at the helpless man; "he"s got about his share of pain, I reckon, and the first thing is to get him easier." It was the longest speech he had made to her; it was the first time he had fairly looked her in the face. His shy restlessness had suddenly given way to dogged resignation, less abstracted, but scarcely more flattering to his entertainers. Lifting his companion gently in his arms, as if he had been a child, he reascended the staircase, Mrs. Scott and the hastily-summoned Molly following with overflowing solicitude. As soon as they were alone in the parlor Mrs. Hale turned to her sister: "Only that our guests seemed to be as anxious to go just now as you were to pack them off, I should have been shocked at your inhospitality. What has come over you, Kate? These are the very people you have reproached me so often with not being civil enough to."
"But WHO are they?"
"How do I know? There is YOUR BROTHER"S letter."
She usually spoke of her husband as "John." This slight shifting of relationship and responsibility to the feminine mind was significant.
Kate was a little frightened and remorseful.
"I only meant you don"t even know their names."
"That wasn"t necessary for giving them a bed and bandages. Do you suppose the good Samaritan ever asked the wounded Jew"s name, and that the Levite did not excuse himself because the thieves had taken the poor man"s card-case? Do the directions, "In case of accident," in your ambulance rules, read, "First lay the sufferer on his back and inquire his name and family connections"? Besides, you can call one "Ned" and the other "George," if you like."
"Oh, you know what I mean," said Kate, irrelevantly. "Which is George?"
"George is the wounded man," said Mrs. Hale; "NOT the one who talked to you more than he did to any one else. I suppose the poor man was frightened and read dismissal in your eyes."
"I wish John were here."
"I don"t think we have anything to fear in his absence from men whose only wish is to get away from us. If it is a question of propriety, my dear Kate, surely there is the presence of mother to prevent any scandal--although really her own conduct with the wounded one is not above suspicion," she added, with that novel mischievousness that seemed a return of her lost girlhood. "We must try to do the best we can with them and for them," she said decidedly, "and meantime I"ll see if I can"t arrange John"s room for them."
"John"s room?"
"Oh, mother is perfectly satisfied; indeed, suggested it. It"s larger and will hold two beds, for "Ned," the friend, must attend to him at night. And, Kate, don"t you think, if you"re not going out again, you might change your costume? It does very well while we are alone--"