Instead of the Thorn

CHAPTER XXV

THE MAN AND THE MAID

King's improvement was slow, but steady, and the stretch of good weather upon which he happened on arriving at the Cape enabled him to live out-of-doors and was a great factor in his favor.

Miss Barry called on him very early in his stay, bringing with her an appetizing little custard. It was a form of food which King had always detested, but feigning polite enthusiasm he tasted it to please her, and promptly discovered that the gastronomic question was no longer, "What is it?" but merely, "Where is it?" He finished the custard.

Mrs. Porter was a daily visitor, and one afternoon, when they had walked over to the big rock and were resting there, she told him of her own Arcadian retreat beside the spring.

"In such a little while you will be able to walk as far as that," she said. "You will enjoy seeing Miss Barry's cottage, too. Did you know it was her brother's gift?"

King nodded. "She was telling me about it the other day."

The sun had already begun to paint hues of health on his face and his voice was gaining resonance. "I try to visualize Mr. Barry here in his rôle of 'barefoot boy with cheek of tan,' but it's a hard proposition."

"So it is for Linda. She follows up old Jerry or any one else she can find who went to school with her father, and gleans every possible anecdote of his boyhood."

King leaned his head back on the rock and gazed up into space. "Isn't it wonderful here?" he said. "I've thought many times since I arrived of the old woman who, when she first beheld the ocean, exclaimed, 'Thank the Lord, that at last He's let me see enough of something!'"

"Yes, it's emancipation. Linda and I have often remarked that it would seem impossible to have narrow thoughts here. She doesn't wish to intrude, Bertram, but she would like to come to see you."

King met the sweet, questioning expression of his companion's eyes. "I see plainly," he answered with a smile, "that you and I must have it out about Linda. Your persistent references to her each time you come show that she is very much on your mind."

"She is very much on my mind," returned Mrs. Porter gravely. "I wish you would send a kindly message to her by me, and say that you would be glad to see her."

"But I wouldn't, Maud," returned King mildly. "What would you do in that case? Of course, you know the whole situation, and know that Whitcomb with his grand little revelation bouleversed all Linda's fixed ideas."

"Oh, she is so changed, Bertram," exclaimed Mrs. Porter. "She's not the Linda you knew."

"Perhaps; but it's safe to say that she's still – still tremendous. I'm more or less shaky yet; and I must confess that the prospect of an interview with Linda in a cyclone of repentance makes me – well, shrink. It croozles me, if you know what that means. Sort of takes me in the pit of the stomach."

"You're all wrong. She has been through the fire, and she has learned self-control." Mrs. Porter paused to choose her words. "She longs, Bertram – longs for your forgiveness.

"I've nothing to forgive her," he returned pleasantly. "She had plenty of company in the mistake she made."

Something in Mrs. Porter's loving look and wistful eyes caused the speaker to change his tone.

"I won't fence with you, Maud. I told you once I loved Linda. I did, with a depth which seemed to exhaust my power of loving. It's true that one doesn't feel a pin-prick when at the same moment he is struck a mortal blow. The fatal fact was not that Linda blamed me for the sorrow that had fallen upon her. It was that there was no desire on her part to give me a chance: to hear my side of the story: none of the extenuation which one ray of love would have naturally expressed. Instead, there was hatred in her eyes. That was the only thing that mattered."

King leaned back against the rock, breathing fast. "I tell you this, Maud. You're the only person in the world who will know it, and we won't speak of it again. I know Linda so well. I know how this revulsion of feeling would express itself with her. She would like to come over here and wait on me by inches. My wish would be her law; but that would matter no more than her mistake about the Antlers. The essential fact has been revealed, and – nothing else matters."

"Is your present feeling for her dislike, then?" asked Mrs. Porter.

"Certainly not."

"It would be no pain to you to meet her?"

"It would be a bore," returned King gently. "Isn't that enough? Of course, it will have to come some day; but I've been a good deal indulged lately, and I believe in putting off an evil day. I should like Linda to have worked off some of her repentant steam before we meet."

King, his self-possession regained, smiled again into his companion's face. "Whitcomb is devoted to her. Let her work it off on him," he added.

"She will never marry him," said Mrs. Porter.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," was the polite response.

Mrs. Porter leaned toward her companion with her broad, charming smile.

"Bertram King, that's a lie," she remarked slowly.

He winked and lifted his eyebrows.

"There's a lot for you to learn about love," she went on. "To love unselfishly is the best thing that can happen to anybody."

"There's no such thing as unselfish love," declared King.

"Oh, yes there is, and you proved that you experienced it. You put Linda's happiness above your own. You willingly endured injustice to mitigate her pain. Don't you know that your nature was enriched by that? Don't you know that your action, now that she understands it, reflects upon her, and uplifts her nature and her ideals? We can't crystallize, because we're the children of God; and God is Infinite Love, and Love is a divine principle which is ever active. You assume too much when you hold Linda to the narrow development of her school-girl days. You can remain behind your human defenses and refuse to forgive her if you choose – "

"I told you, and honestly, that I have nothing to forgive."

Mrs. Porter shook her head. "God doesn't treat us so when we turn to Him repentantly. He doesn't say there is nothing to forgive and leave us with the sharp thorn unremoved. That sweet sense that God is Love is borne in upon us after a genuine repentance, and gives the consciousness that we shall be upheld if we long to be, and guarded from a repetition of the offense."

"My dear Maud, you're way beyond my depth."

"No, Bertram, I am not. You reflected something of the divine in that tender protecting love you felt for Linda. I don't despair of you. In spite of all the things you have been saying to fortify your human self, I know, for actions speak louder than words, that a very lofty affection once found place in your heart, and that pure flame cannot die because it was a reflection of that which is immortal and eternal. Never mind Linda. God will take care of her, too. Your business is with your own thought, to keep it in a high place, trusting to be led to that happiness which God has prepared for them that love Him, without outlining what that happiness shall consist in."

King drew a long breath and smiled, looking long and affectionately at his companion.

"Isn't she the great little preacher!" he remarked.

"Oh, it's all so simple!" exclaimed Mrs. Porter softly, clasping her hands together. "Why can't everybody see it!"

When she went home to-day, she told Linda nothing of this interview. The girl had ceased to cross-question her friend on her return from these visits; for she never received any satisfaction, and the invitation she longed for never came.

Blanche Aurora was very much alive to the fact that her adored one was the only member of the family who had not called on the convalescent. She was not entirely satisfied to have it so. King's photograph had been framed, and Blanche Aurora in the growing scarcity of wild roses made little bouquets of clover and daisies and placed them between the two pictures, and she noticed that Linda allowed the sharing.

Whitcomb came to call sometimes, but between his attentions to King and the carrying out of Madge's various plans, his time was pretty well occupied.

Late one afternoon Blanche Aurora found Linda in the hammock and alone. She seized her opportunity.

"Say, Miss Linda," she began, "we've got a real good Bavarian cream for Mr. King's supper. 'Tain't convenient for me to take it over. I wonder if you could."

Linda sat up, and regarded the white-aproned short figure. The pink bow atop quivered with the depth of its owner's imaginings and deep-laid schemes. The keen eyes observed that Linda flushed and hesitated.

"Mrs. Porter is still in Portland?" she asked.

"Why, yes, and didn't you know Miss Barry went too? I've got to get their supper, you see; and the cream come out awful good."

Linda rose. "Yes, I'll go," she said quietly; but there was no quiet within.

All the way across the field, her heart hurried. She had never called at the Benslow house. To go for the first time to see King, without his request, and risk his betraying, perhaps, before the others, that she was unwelcome, was an ordeal which she dreaded, but the desire to see him rose above the confusion of her crowding thoughts, and though her hands trembled on the covered bowl she pushed on.

The lovely late afternoon light struck across the field. Bertram King, wandering down from the piazza, noted the golden sheen upon the grass and the majestic cloud-effects in the vast arch above. His near-sighted eyes beheld a white figure advancing in the golden light.

He hastened his steps in welcome.

"Good for you," he cried. "I was getting very tired of myself. There's been an exodus from here to Portland to-day. I know I'm a big boy now, since Whitcomb was willing to leave me. Even Miss Benslow is out and I'm holding the fort."

All the time that his words were calling through the still air, he was walking toward the visitor. Linda's face from doubt grew radiant. The relieved, happy color rose in her cheeks. Her lovely eyes beamed. In her white gown and with her shining, grateful joy, she was very beautiful as her light springing step brought her near and into King's field of vision. His breath caught in the shock and he stood stock-still.

"I'm glad to see you, too, Bertram," she cried. Her eyes were starry, her smile enchanting.

"Why, Linda! I beg your pardon. I thought you were Maud," he exclaimed.

The change in his tone, his blank surprise and ebbing eagerness, set Linda's heart to beating wildly. The stricture in her bosom drew back the radiant promise from her face.

King saw the transformation with a pang. "Forgive my shouting at you like that," he went on, struggling for his self-possession. It was as if Linda's soul had been revealed to him for an instant, joyous, hopeful, humble: the new Linda of whom Maud had spoken.

"You have something for me, I'll wager," he continued. He could see the white napkin trembling in the suddenly unsteady hands. "Let me take it," suiting the action to the word. "I've grown arrogantly used to bowls coming across this field filled with something delicious, designed to upholster these bones."

Linda had made good use of the time he gave her. Her throat was free again. She could speak. "You look better than I expected," she said quietly.

"And you, too, Linda. You do credit to the place." King was trying to regain some of the plans he had formulated for their first interview; but they had been designed to baffle effusiveness, and this girl in the white gown seemed to radiate calm.

"Yes," she returned. "I have Blanche Aurora's word for it that the Bavarian cream in that bowl is good. There has been an exodus to Portland from our house, too, so she asked me to bring it over."

"Awfully good of you," said King, hot with mingled sensations. "There never was any one so spoiled as I."

"I must run back now," said Linda. "I can see that you will soon have the freedom of the neighborhood, and we shall be looking for you at Aunt Belinda's."

"Oh, don't desert me," begged King. It was as if he had obtained the promise of a wonderful gift: the lavish outpouring of a rich nature. A veil had fallen, concealing it: a veil, pure, white, impenetrable. Linda's eyes and voice were friendly, self-possessed.

"Blanche Aurora says snacks are good for you when you're sick and delicate," he went on; "but never have I been reduced to eating a snack alone. It's tea-time, too. Couldn't you make me some tea?"

Linda's dimple appeared. "I'm afraid the duty of a host presses upon you. I'd better not. I've never called at the Benslows'. Besides, you say there's not a chaperone on the place."

"There are the hens," said King eagerly. "Won't they do? You never saw so many in your life. Come. We'll have tea on the piazza. Whitcomb has rigged up an old sail across one end so Boreas shan't strike my frail form too roughly."

He turned back toward the house, beseeching her with his eyes, and Linda followed in silence. "I'm getting to know this bowl," continued King, lifting it and investigating its blue stripes. "It's a magic one, never empty excepting when I get through with it. We'll have two spoons. I'm not stingy."

As they ascended the rickety piazza steps, King continued: "The tea-table is in there in the living-room. I'll get – " he staggered, and stopped. Whitcomb had been right when he said that his friend couldn't yet bear excitement.

Linda, looking up, saw him grow ghastly pale.

"Oh, confound it!" he gasped.

The blue-and-white bowl fell from his hands down among Luella's sweet-pea vines. He managed to take a step toward the steamer chair, collapsed into it, and fainted away ignominiously.

Linda threw herself on her knees beside him. "Bertram, Bertram!" she cried in grief and terror. It was for her father and for her that the strong man had come to this. She slipped her arm around him. In her inexperience she thought he might be dying.

"Oh, Bertram, speak to me!" she cried. There was a pitcher of water on the neighboring table. She dipped her handkerchief into it and dabbed his brow and his fair hair, and softly between dry sobs she called his name. They were alone in the remote, tumbledown house. Even the ocean's mighty grasp of its rocks sounded distant. There was no one to call upon save the invisible Reality, and Linda turned her full heart to the very present help.

In a minute, which seemed to her an hour, consciousness began to return to King. Her arm was around him; she had drawn his cheek against her bosom. As he slowly realized his position and heard her low voice, he seemed again to see Linda as she had come toward him in her white gown across the green gold of the field. Every paining haunting memory was submerged in a strange, ineffable bliss.

Without opening his eyes he spoke her name.

"Yes, Bertram, yes," she responded joyfully.

"I love you, Linda."

Her heart bounded, and he felt it; and she did not change her position.

"I shall always love you. Whitcomb has stirred your gratitude toward me. I don't care for it."

"Yes, I know," answered the girl, still holding him close.

"You wouldn't palm that off on me, would you?"

"I want to be fair" – the response was low. King's hands lay loosely before him. "All that I am sure of is that I belong to you, Bertram."

"Are you certain that's all? It's a good deal, but it's not enough."

Linda's bosom labored. She remembered the longings of the last weeks, the many moments of despair.

"Father loved you so," she uttered.

"That's not enough, either."

She drew herself gently away from him, but remained on her knees. He sat up in the low chair, and their faces were on a level. Into hers returned that look of riches unutterable and her eyes poured their gift into his. She clasped her hands across her breast as she gazed.

The arms that had held him so close and protectingly felt empty.

"I love you, Bertram," she said, the words falling from her lips like a vow.

Instantly the man's loose-lying hands became vital. King clasped her to him. Their cheeks clung together and they kissed.

CHAPTER XXVI

A DIPLOMATIST

Luella Benslow had enjoyed her round of afternoon calls. She had paraded the importance of the guests she was "accommodating" and had swelled with satisfaction in the interest she had elicited.

In this complacent state of mind she was passing near Belinda Barry's cottage on the way home when she observed a strange object on the roof of the shed. The thing, whatever it was, moved, seeming to grow and shrink again before her eyes. Luella owned some spectacles, but they were worn only in private and reposed in these days in the kitchen drawer, from which they occasionally emerged stealthily when some exigency arose like the reading of a label on a spice box.

It was out of her way to go nearer to the cottage, but that mysterious manifestation on the roof of the shed was too great a temptation for flesh and blood to resist.

She changed her route and approached. In a minute the object, recognizing her, rose to its full height and faced her cautious advance.

"For the land's sake!" exclaimed Miss Benslow in a minute more. She stood still.

"Blanche Aurora Martin, what under the canopy are you doin' up there? Don't you know you'll defame them shingles?"

Blanche Aurora looked down on the newcomer, who was dressed in her very best. About her neck hung chains enough to excite the envy of the aborigines. On her head she wore a hat with an ostrich feather which stood up bravely, although its appearance suggested that a sea-bath had been one of its many trying experiences.

"I'll bet Belinda ain't to home," went on Miss Benslow accusingly, and the culprit stood at ease, her arms akimbo.

"I should think you was old enough by this time not to go caperin' around on roofs. What you up there for?"

"Lookin' for my gum," replied Blanche Aurora.

"You needed a spyglass for that, did you?"

Indeed, the accused was balancing a long slender glass on one hip.

"You know the store Miss Barry sets by that glass, and I'll bet she wouldn't let you touch it. Your folks must be all out, the way you're actin'. The idea o' stickin' your gum up on that roof. Get it and come down this minute. It's dretful bad for them shingles."

"Oh, I don't care 'bout my gum anyway. I don't chaw no more 'cause Miss Linda don't like to have me."

With surprising ease and carelessness the speaker dropped to a sitting posture, slid down the low shed roof and landed upright at Miss Benslow's feet.

The visitor started back. "My heart!" she exclaimed, clapping to her breast the hand not burdened with a blue parasol. "A wonder you didn't drop that glass, you naughty girl."

"Oh, dry up!" remarked Blanche Aurora nonchalantly.

"How dare you address me so! Don't you know your sister is in my employ?"

"What's that got to do with the high price o' putty?" inquired the other in a swaggering manner.

"Well!" ejaculated Miss Benslow wrathfully. "Your wonderful Miss Linda don't seem to have improved your manners as much as she has your attire. I hope Letty Martin knows there's nobody at my house that's goin' to rig her up in pink ribbons. We ain't such fools over there: though I guess the Lindsays could buy and sell Linda Barry since her c'lamities, and the gentlemen that I'm accawmodatin' – " Miss Benslow raised her scanty eyebrows impressively – "is simply made o' money! Good gracious," she added in a different tone, "here I am wastin' my time with you, and Mr. King left alone all this time. He might want somethin'!" She turned with an air of pressing business.

Blanche Aurora had pricked up her ears at the last remark.

"Alone?" she repeated, with sudden interest. "Has your folks all gone too?"

The spyglass from the roof had discerned a white gown on the Benslow piazza, but the disturbing question had been to whom it belonged. Mrs. Lindsay or her daughter might have been keeping the invalid company, while Miss Linda wandered away for a walk. The little girl's brain worked fast.

"Say, I'm sorry I was impident to you," she said, with conciliatory meekness.

"Well, you'd better be," snapped Luella, pausing to loosen a point of her parasol from the fringe of her cape.

"Say, you don't need to hurry right off, do you? I'm all alone."

Miss Benslow looked suspiciously at the speaker. It was too much to ask one to believe that saucy Blanche Aurora, with her tip-tilted nose and her bold eyes, was really penitent.

"Yes, I do," she retorted, unmollified. "If this pesky parasol will ever let go that fringe."

"Let me fix it," offered the meek one; and she did fix it so effectively that for almost five minutes more Miss Benslow stood there, fuming.

"Oh, pshaw, let it go!" she exclaimed at last, jerking away; and with the jerk the parasol freed itself.

"Oh, say, Luella – I mean Miss Benslow. I feel so kind o' lonely. You've got a fireless cooker, hain't you? I don't see why you have to hurry so."

"Of course I've got a fireless cooker, and a new blue-flame stove, and a receipt book better than any thing you ever saw."

"Well, I was only goin' to say wouldn't you like some violet perfume on your handkercher? I've got some perfectly ellergunt and you're a-carryin' such a pretty handkercher."

"That there handkercher," announced Miss Benslow proudly, "was brought me by a gentleman, the last time he was to Portland."

"Oh, I didn't know as Mr. King was strong enough to go to Portland," said Blanche Aurora humbly, touching the handkerchief admiringly.

"He ain't," declared the visitor, with a grand air. "'T warn't him. 'T was somebody quite different: somebody that calls me Luella." The visitor giggled. "He asked me if he might."

"I wonder," said Blanche Aurora with an awestruck air, "if it could 'a' ben that spullendid Mr. Whitcomb!"

"Well," returned the other, smiling and bridling, "that's jest who it is. He wants me to call him Fred, but I'm awful shy that way. I may some day, but I haven't yet. You needn't tell nobody, but Madge Lindsay is perfectly crazy over him. She tries to hide it, but she can't from me. I've got eyes and ears. She sings to him on the piazza these moonlight nights and plays on a thing that looks like a big potater-bug. She calls it a bandelin."

"I think you're real smart to get along with such a big family," said Blanche Aurora with the same admiring air.

"Well, I didn't know's I could, fust off; but you see, it was this way. Miss Lindsay she confided in me. Madge was gittin' strong and beginnin' to hanker to git away where things was gay, – the merry whirl, you know – "

Oh, yes; Blanche Aurora's nod, and her close, respectful attention showed that though young and inexperienced she did know.

– "So jest at that crucical time there come this appeal from Fred – I mean Mr. Whitcomb – in Chicago, and Mis' Lindsay says to me, she says, 'I b'lieve if my daughter had her cousin here to play with she'd settle down contented again. I don't want her to go away yet.' Cousin!" – contemptuously – "'T ain't any very near cousin, I guess; and I can tell you she does play with him – and to him – and at him. Oh" – with sudden recollection – "ain't I smart! I must go."

"Well, jest a minute, Miss Benslow. I'll bet it would please Mr. Whitcomb like everything to have that spullendid handkercher smellin' good. Jest come in my room a minute."

Once in the room Luella found her hostess so entertaining that she stayed another ten minutes, admiring the pretty things which closet and dresser revealed, and which under ordinary circumstances their owner would have guarded sedulously from these inquisitive eyes and loquacious lips. However, it was all for Miss Linda. Of course, Blanche Aurora couldn't be certain that her adored one wanted this extra latitude, but her absorption in Linda had made her preternaturally observing; besides, she remembered those sobs.