The next few days were given up to indolence and apathy. But at the end of the week the soul of her stirred. A letter from Lloyd came saying that he hoped she had the little boy with her, and this reminded her of her forgotten promise to Dr. Lavendar.
But it was not until the next Monday afternoon that she roused herself sufficiently to give much thought to the matter. Then she decided to go down to the Rectory and see the child. It was another dark day of clouds hanging low, bulging big and black with wind and ravelling into rain along the edges. She hesitated at the discomfort of going out, but she said to herself, dully, that she supposed she needed the walk.
As she went down the hill her cheeks began to glow with the buffet of the wind, and her leaf-brown eyes shone crystal clear from under her soft hair, crinkling in the mist and blowing all about her smooth forehead. The mist had thickened to rain before she reached the Rectory, and her cloak was soaked, which made Dr. Lavendar reproach her for her imprudence.
"And where are your gums?" he demanded. When she confessed that she had forgotten them, he scolded her roundly.
"I"ll see that the little boy wears them when he comes to visit me,"
she said, a comforted look coming into her face.
"David? David will look after himself like a man, and keep you in order, too. As for visiting you, my dear, you"d better visit him a little first. I tell you--stay and have supper with us to-night?"
But she protested that she had only come for a few minutes to ask about David. "I must go right home," she said nervously.
"No, no. You can"t get away,--oh!" he broke off excitedly--"here he is!" Dr. Lavendar"s eagerness at the sight of the little boy who came running up the garden path, his hurry to open the front door and bring him into the study to present him to Mrs. Richie, fussing and proud and a little tremulous, would have touched her, if she had noticed him. But she did not notice him,--the child absorbed her. She could not leave him. Before she knew it she found herself taking off her bonnet and saying she would stay to tea.
"David," said Dr. Lavendar, "I"ve got a bone in my leg; so you run and get me a clean pocket-handkerchief."
"Can I go up-stairs like a crocodile?" said David.
"Certainly, if it affords you the slightest personal satisfaction,"
Dr. Lavendar told him; and while the little boy crawled laboriously on his stomach all the way up-stairs, Dr. Lavendar talked about him. He said he thought the child had been homesick just at first; he had missed his sister Janey. "He told me "Janey" gave him "forty kisses"
every night," said Dr. Lavendar; "I thought that told a story--" At that moment the crocodile, holding a handkerchief between his teeth, came rapidly, head foremost, down-stairs. Dr. Lavendar raised a cautioning hand;--"Mustn"t talk about him, now!"
There was a quality in that evening that was new to Helena; it was dull, of course;--how very dull Lloyd would have found it! A childlike old man asking questions with serious simplicity of a little boy who was full of his own important interests and anxieties;--the feeding of Danny, and the regretful wonder that in heaven, the little dog would not be "let in."
"Who said he wouldn"t?" Dr. Lavendar demanded, fiercely, while Danny yawned with embarra.s.sment at hearing his own name.
"You read about heaven in the Bible," David said, suddenly shy; "an"
it said outside were dogs;--an" some other animals I can"t remember the names of."
Dr. Lavendar explained with a twinkle that shared with his visitor the humor of those "other animals" itemized in the Revelations. It was a very mild humor; everything was mild at the Rectory; the very air seemed gentle! There was no apprehension, no excitement, no antagonism; only the placid commonplace of goodness and affection.
Helena could not remember such an evening in all her life. And the friendship between youth and age was something she had never dreamed of. She saw David slip from his chair at table, and run around to Dr.
Lavendar"s side to reach up and whisper in his ear,--oh, if he would but put his cheek against hers, and whisper in her ear!
The result of that secret colloquy was that David knelt down in front of the dining-room fire, and made a slice of smoky toast for Dr.
Lavendar.
"After supper you might roast an apple for Mrs. Richie," the old minister suggested. And David"s eyes shone with silent joy. With anxious deliberation he picked out an apple from the silver wire basket on the sideboard; and when they went into the study, he presented a thread to Mrs. Richie.
"Tie it to the stem," he commanded. "You"re pretty slow," he added gently, and indeed her white fingers blundered with the unaccustomed task. When she had accomplished it, David wound the other end of the thread round a pin stuck in the high black mantel-shelf. The apple dropped slowly into place before the bars of the grate, and began--as everybody who has been a child knows--to spin slowly round, and then, slowly back again. David, squatting on the rug, watched it in silence.
But Mrs. Richie would not let him be silent. She leaned forward, eager to touch him--his shoulders, his hair, his cheek, hot with the fire.
"Won"t you come and sit in my lap?"
David glanced at Dr. Lavendar as though for advice; then got up and climbed on to Mrs. Richie"s knee, keeping an eye on the apple that bobbed against the grate and sizzled.
"Will you make me a little visit, dear?"
David sighed. "I seem to visit a good deal; I"d like to belong somewhere."
"Oh, you will, one of these days," Dr. Lavendar a.s.sured him.
"I"d like to belong to you," David said thoughtfully.
Dr. Lavendar beamed, and looked proudly at Mrs. Richie.
"Because," David explained, "I love Goliath."
"Oh," said Dr. Lavendar blankly.
"It"s blackening on one side," David announced, and slid down from Mrs. Richie"s knee to set the apple spinning again.
"The red cheek is beginning to crack," said Dr. Lavendar, deeply interested; "smells good, doesn"t it, Mrs. Richie?"
"Have you any little boys and girls?" David asked, watching the apple.
"Come and climb on my knee and I"ll tell you," she bribed him.
He came reluctantly; the apple was spinning briskly now under the impulse of a woolly burst of pulp through the red skin.
"Have you?" he demanded.
"No, David."
Here his interest in Mrs. Richie"s affairs flagged, for the apple began to steam deliciously. Dr. Lavendar, watching her with his shrewd old eyes, asked her one or two questions; but, absorbed in the child, she answered quite at random. She put her cheek against his hair, and whispered, softly: "Turn round, and I"ll give you forty kisses."
Instantly David moved his head away. The snub was so complete that she looked over at Dr. Lavendar, hoping he had not seen it. "I once knew a little baby," she said, trying to hide her embarra.s.sment, "that had curly hair the color of yours."
"It has begun to drip," said David briefly. "Does Alice live at your house?"
"_Alice!_"
"The gentleman--your brother--said Alice was nineteen. I thought maybe she lived at your house."
"No, dear. Look at the apple!"
David looked. "Why not?"
"Why, she lives at her own house, dear little boy." "Does she pay you a visit?"
"No. David, I think the apple is done. Why didn"t you roast one for Dr. Lavendar?"
"I had to do it for you because you"re company. Why doesn"t she pay you a visit?"
"Because--oh, for a good many reasons. I"m afraid must go home now."
The child slipped from her knee with unflattering haste. "You"ve got to eat your apple first," he said, and ran to get a saucer and spoon.
With great care the thread was broken and the apple secured. Then David sat calmly down in front of her to watch her eat it; but after the first two or three mouthfuls, Dr. Lavendar had pity on her, and the smoky skin and the hard core were banished to the dining-room.
While the little boy was carrying them off, she said eagerly, that she wanted him.