The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding Page 11

  CHAPTER VIII

  "SHADOWS OF THE WORLD APPEAR"

  THE long July days slipped by, and Lloyd, looking back on them asHildegarde looked into her magic glass, saw only pleasant scenesmirrored in their memory. The fortunate things, the smiling faces, thepleasant happenings were hers, and for a time even other people'stroubles, those shadows of the world that are always with us, left herdaily outlook undimmed.

  Like Hildegarde, too, she went on with her weaving, but whollyunconscious that the shuttle of her thoughts was shaping her web to fitthe shoulders of the dark-eyed knight who came oftenest. Mrs. Shermansaw it and was troubled.

  "Jack," she said to her husband one afternoon, when he had come out fromtown earlier than usual, and they were wandering around the shadygrounds together, planning some improvements, "I'm afraid those Spanishlessons are a mistake. Lloyd is seeing entirely too much of Mr.Harcourt. He is here morning, noon and night."

  Mr. Sherman gave a quick glance towards the tennis court where the twowere finishing a lively game. "Don't you worry, Elizabeth," was hisplacid answer. "It isn't as if she'd never been used to such devotion.She's never known anything else. Malcolm and Keith used to spend fullyas much time with her, and Rob Moore fairly lived over here."

  "Yes, but this is different," protested Mrs. Sherman. "They were mereboys, and she dominated them, but Leland Harcourt is a man, and anexperienced one socially, and he is dominating her. I can see it in herquick deference to his opinions, and her evident desire to please him.Not evident to him, perhaps, but plain enough to me. I've been thinkingthat it might be a good thing for us to go to the springs for awhile orto the sea-shore or some place where she'd meet other people. In a quietlittle country place like this a man like Leland Harcourt looms up bigon a young girl's horizon; a girl just out of school, eager for newinterests. It isn't wise in us to allow her to be restricted just to hissociety, when we could so easily give her the safe-guard of contrasts."

  Mr. Sherman looked down at his wife with an indulgent smile.

  "Don't you worry," he repeated. "Lloyd will do a lot of romanticday-dreaming probably, but she has my 'yard-stick' and I have herpromise."

  "But Jack, I verily believe the child thinks he measures up to all yourrequirements. And really there is nothing one can urge against hischaracter. It's more a matter of temperament. I am sure she couldn't behappy with him. She's just at the romantic age now to be very muchimpressed with that kind of a man. If she were older she would see hisshallowness--his lack of purpose, his intense selfishness. I don't thinkthat we ought to shut our eyes to the possible outcome of this constantcompanionship we are allowing."

  "Well," he answered hesitatingly, slow to acknowledge his wife'sdistrust of Lloyd's judgment, yet quick to see the wisdom of her pointof view. "Maybe you are right. But," he added wistfully, "I had hoped tokeep her home this summer. She has been away at school so long--andshe'll be in town so much next winter if she makes her debut. Wait tillI have had a talk with her before you plan any trips."

  "But don't you see," urged Mrs. Sherman, "it is something toointangible to discuss. To speak to her about it now, to make anyopposition to him at all, may quicken her interest in him and make herchampion his cause. That would be fatal, and yet it's just as dangerousto wait. Love at that age is like a fog. It comes creeping up sogradually that you don't realize what is enveloping you, till you'recompletely lost in it, and all the rest of the world shut out."

  "You speak from experience?" he said teasingly.

  "You know very well," she confessed laughingly, "what a befogged state_I_ was in. All papa's breathing out of 'threatening and slaughter'didn't make the slightest difference. I was blind and deaf to everythingbut you. And I'd want Lloyd to be the same," she added hastily, "if youwere as unreasonable as papa was then. But the circumstances are toodifferent to be compared. I'm simply warning you that the LittleColonel's name was not lightly given. She has not only all mydetermination in her makeup, but her grandfather's as well."

  Here the gardener met them, and the conversation dropped. The next halfhour was spent in consultation over some changes to be made in theconservatory.

  When they went back to the house Leland Harcourt had gone, and Lloyd wasjust stepping into Doctor Shelby's buggy, which was drawn up in front ofthe house. The old doctor waited for them to come within hearingdistance before he leaned out and called:

  "I'm just borrowing the Little Colonel for awhile. There's a case overat Rollington that needs the attention of her King's Daughters Circle,and I'm taking her over to investigate it. We'll be home before dark."

  "All right," called Mr. Sherman, waving his hat as Lloyd looked back atthem with a smile and a flutter of her handkerchief. During the winterthat Lloyd had joined the Circle, and in the summer vacations following,it had been a matter of frequent occurrence for the old doctor to takeher with him on such errands. Remembering how interested Lloyd hadbecome in many of the cases, Mrs. Sherman breathed a sigh ofthankfulness, hoping that this might prove to be one that would enlisther sympathies and occupy so much of her time that it would make aserious break in the Spanish lessons.

  It had been a happy afternoon for Lloyd. If she had stopped and tried torecall what made it so, she could not have mentioned any particularthing. To be young and well and filled with the same glow that made thesummer day a joy was enough, but to feel that some one whose opinion shevalued very much found her charming, and said so with every glance ofhis dark eyes, was more than enough. It made her cup of happinesscomplete and brimmed it over.

  The doctor was pouring out a tale of somebody's woes, but the trace of asmile lingered on her lips as she made a polite attempt to listen. Shecould not quite shut out the thought of that last game of tennis, andthe trivial pleasantries that had gone to make up the sum of her greatcontent. There was a dreamy, far-away look in her eyes as she listened.The Spanish serenade that Leland Harcourt had sung before he left keptrepeating itself over and over, a sort of undercurrent to what thedoctor was saying. She beat time to it with her finger-tips on the sideof the buggy. Once it rose so insistently that she lost what the doctorwas saying, and came to herself with a start when a familiar namearrested her attention.

  "Ned Bannon's wife!" she repeated in astonishment. "You suahly can'tmean that it's Ida Shane who's sick ovah in that tumbledown cottage ofthe McCarty's!"

  "I surely do," he answered. "She didn't want to come back to this partof the country, goodness knows. She remembers what a commotion it raisedwhen she eloped from the Seminary with Ned, five years ago. But Ned hasscarcely drawn a sober breath for the last year. She's sure of gettingneedlework here, and with little Wardo to consider there was nothing forher to do but put her pride in her pocket and come."

  "Little Wardo!" breathed Lloyd wonderingly. The ride seemed full ofsurprises.

  "Yes, she has a little son about four years old, I judge. And it is onhis account that I have asked the help of the King's Daughters. He'llhave to be taken away from her till she's better, for she is morbidlysensitive about keeping Ned's failings from him. She has never allowedhim to find out that his father is a drunkard. She makes a hero of himto the little fellow. Seems to think that he'll blame her for giving himsuch a father by marrying a man whom she had been warned would bring hernothing but trouble and disgrace. She's desperately ill, and of coursein her weak condition she magnifies the matter. It has become a maniawith her."

  "Poah Violet!" exclaimed Lloyd in distress, her thoughts flying back tothe scene in the school orchard five years ago, when watching theglimmer of the pearl on Ida's white hand in the moonlight she had beenthrilled by her whisper: "He says that's what my life means to him--apearl; and that my influence can make him the man I want him to be. Oh,Princess! I'd give my life to keep him straight!"

  Not even an echo of the serenade was in her memory now. Her knowledge ofIda's nearness seemed to bring her old school-friend actually beforeher: the faint odour of violets, the shy glance of her appealing violeteyes under the long lashes, the bewitc
hing dimple at the corner of hermouth, the flash of her rings, the sweep of her long skirts, the softhair gleaming under the big-plumed picture hat, more than all the air ofromance and mystery that surrounded her because of the pearl and thesecret engagement to her "Edwardo."

  "I hadn't intended for her to see you," said the doctor, when herexclamations and questions revealed to him the intimacy that had onceexisted between them. "But under the circumstances it will be the bestthing I can do. I'll go in first and prepare her for the meeting,however. She thinks she hasn't a friend left on earth, on account of herunhappy marriage. Everybody warned her against it."

  The front door stood open, and Lloyd sat down on the broken step towait. It seemed impossible that she was going to find Ida, theembodiment of daintiness and refinement, in this dilapidated old place.The whitewash had long ago dropped in scales from the rough walls. Thewindow-panes were broken, the shutters sagging, half the pickets off thefence. Not a spear of grass ventured up in the barren yard, where a rankunpruned peach-tree struggled for its life in the baked earth. The housestood so near the road that the thick summer dust rolled insuffocatingly whenever a vehicle passed.

  "How can people exist in such an awful desolate, forsaken spot?" shewondered, looking around with a shudder of disgust. That Ida, daintybeauty-loving Ida, who scorned everything that was common and coarse,should be lying inside in that dark room was more than she couldbelieve.

  A wagon rattled by, and she put her handkerchief up to her face, stifledby the cloud of dust that rose in its wake. When she ventured to takeit down again and draw a long breath, a chubby, barefooted child wasstanding in the path in front of her, regarding her curiously. The wagonmade so much noise that she had not heard his bare feet pattering aroundthe house. She gave a little start of surprise, then smiled at him, forhe was an attractive little fellow, despite the fact that his face wassmeared with the remains of the bread and jam he had just been enjoyingat one of the neighbours, and his gingham apron was in rags. He hadcaught it on the barb wire fence as he climbed through.

  As he smiled back at her shyly from under his long lashes, Lloyd'sinterest quickened, for there was no mistaking the likeness of thoseviolet eyes and the dimple that came at the corner of his cupid's bow ofa mouth. They were so like Ida's that she smiled and said confidently,"You're Wardo. Aren't you!"

  He nodded gravely, then after another long silent scrutiny, turned awayto pour the sand out of the old tin can he was carrying, in a pile underthe peach-tree. If it had not been for the jam and the dirt Lloyd wouldhave caught him up and kissed him, he was such a dear little thing, witha thatch of short golden curls. But her fastidious dislike of touchinganything dirty made her draw back. It was well for the furtherance oftheir acquaintance that she did so. He was not accustomed to caressesfrom strangers. He accepted her presence on the door-step withoutquestion, and presently, as the moments passed and she made no movementtowards him, he went up to her with friendly curiosity.

  "Is you got a sand-pile to your house?" he asked.

  "No," she confessed, feeling that he would consider her lacking on thataccount and that she must hasten to mention other attractions. "But Ihave a red and green bird that can talk, and a little black pony named'Tarbaby.' It's so little that there's nobody at my house now smallenough to ride it. So it stays all day long in the field and eatsgrass."

  "I'm little enough to ride it," he began confidently.

  Just then the doctor came out, and she sprang up, her heart throbbing."I'm going now for the nurse," he said in a low tone. "She's due on thenext train. Keep her as quiet as possible. Of course you'll have to lether free her mind, but promise her almost anything to soothe her. I'llbe back in quarter of an hour."

  Frightened at being left alone with such a weight of responsibilitythrust upon her, Lloyd tiptoed into the house. In the dim light shealmost stumbled over the cot on which Ned Bannon lay in a drunkenstupor, and her first glance at the bed beyond made her draw back indismay. She never would have recognized the white face on the pillow asIda's, had it not been for the appealing eyes turned towards her.

  Five years of poverty and illness and neglect had changed the prettylittle school-girl into a faded, care-worn woman. She had been cryingever since she was taken sick, and now was so weak and hysterical thatshe caught at Lloyd with a cry, and clung to her sobbing.

  "Oh, it kills me to have you find me this way!" she gasped, "when I'vetried so long to hide what we've come to. But I'm glad you've come, forthe baby's sake! Oh, Lloyd, what's going to become of my little Wardo!"

  It was several minutes before she could talk coherently, and then shebegan to sob out the story of her married life, her miserable failure toreform Ned. Lloyd tried to stop her presently, thinking she wasbecoming delirious, but she might as well have tried to stop a hightide.

  "Oh, I have been so proud!" she sobbed. "I couldn't tell anybody. Icouldn't tell you now if I wasn't afraid that I might die, like thatpoor woman across the street last night. She's left five littlechildren. But I can't leave my little Wardo like that!" she broke outdesperately. "I _know_ he has inherited Ned's awful appetite. I muststay and help him fight it, _for it's all my fault_. I gave him such afather. A father that he can never be proud of! A father that will beonly a disgrace to him! Oh, why didn't somebody warn me that it was notonly a husband I was choosing but my little Wardo's father! Nobody evertold me _that_, and I was so young I never thought of any one butmyself. And now the poor little innocent soul will have to suffer for itall his life long!"

  She was throwing herself about so wildly that Lloyd was frightened, androse from her chair to call one of the neighbours. But she could notbreak away. Ida caught at her dress and held her fast in her frenziedclasp.

  "But I tell you I won't let him grow up to be like that!" she cried withher eyes glaring wildly at the drunken man on the cot across the room."I'll kill him with my own hands first, while he is little and good. Godwould understand, wouldn't he? He couldn't blame me for trying to savemy baby! But if he did I'd have to do it anyway. I'd have to do it andtake the punishment. I can't have my little Wardo grow up to be like_that_."

  The sound of his name brought the child to the door. He came patteringin, and climbing up on the bed beside his mother, stroked her face withhis dirty little dimpled hand. The soft touch quieted Ida in an instant,and with an effort to speak calmly she looked up at Lloyd.

  "The doctor said the baby must go away for awhile, for fear of thefever. But I can't give him up to just anybody, Lloyd. The neighbourshave been good and kind, but I'm afraid he might find out from some ofthe children about Ned--you know. But with you--Oh, Lloyd, would it beasking too much if--"

  She stopped with her question half uttered, but the imploring look inher eyes was a prayer that Lloyd could not resist, and she held out herarms toward the little figure cuddled up on the bed.

  "I'll take him till you're better," she promised impulsively.

  The tears welled up in Ida's eyes again. She was so weak the least thingstarted them.

  "He's never been away from me a single night in his life," she saidbrokenly. "I couldn't give him up to anybody but you." Then seeing thefrightened look that crept into the child's face as he listened to theconversation which he but half understood, she wiped her eyes and smiledat him tremulously.

  "Dear little son, you want to help mother get well, don't you, lamb?Then go with mother's dearest friend for awhile. She'll take care of youwhile the good doctor makes me well. And she'll tell you stories andmake you have such a happy time."

  "And let you ride on the black pony," broke in Lloyd eagerly, anxious toclear away the troubled pucker on the child's face that came at mentionof a separation.

  "An' hear the wed and gween bird talk!" he added himself, his facelighting up at the thought. Then he laid his plump little hand on Ida'shot cheek to compel her attention. It was a gesture she loved, and shekissed his fingers passionately as he said with an eager voice, "She hasa bird that can talk, muv'ah. I'll go and hear what it say
s an' n'enI'll come back an' tell you."

  Evidently his idea of separation was based on the length of theneighbourhood visits he had made, and he accepted Lloyd's invitationwillingly, expecting a speedy return.

  "Let's go wite away, Dea'st Fwend," he exclaimed, wriggling down off thebed. "I'll get my hat."

  If anything had been needed to complete Lloyd's surrender to the littlefellow's charms, it was the sweet way in which he gave her the title"Dearest Friend." That was what his mother had called her, and hethought it was her name. She caught him up and kissed him, despite thejam streaks and the dirt.

  "Come on and have yoah face washed and yoah curls brushed, so we'll beall ready when the buggy comes back," she said, hurrying to make himpresentable before his mood could change.

  As she gathered his clothes together and packed them for the shortjourney in a dress box which she found under the bed, it made an achegrip her throat to see how Ida had thrown the shield of her mother-lovearound him in every way possible. There was no mark of poverty here.She had cut up her own clothes, relics of a happier time, to make thelittle linen suits that were so pretty and becoming. No child in theValley was better clad, or looked so much like a little aristocrat, aslong as she was able to give him her daily attention.

  He was so accustomed to being washed and brushed and dressed that hemade no objection to what most children of that age consider anunnecessary process, and when Lloyd went about it with unpractisedfingers, he gravely corrected her mistakes, and laughed when she made aplay of the buttonholes being hungry mouths, that swallowed the buttonsin a hurry. Never in her life had she exerted herself so much to beentertaining, for she wanted to take him away without a scene. Shewanted, too, for him to look his best, that he might win his own way atThe Locusts. She thought with a trifle of uneasiness that her impulsiveact might not meet her family's entire approval.

  Ida's separation from him was a painful one, for she realized hercondition, and knew that it was possible that this might be her lastsight of him. As Lloyd turned away with her parting cry ringing in herears, "Oh, be good to him! Be good to him!" a great tenderness sprang upin her heart for the child who put his hand in hers so trustingly, andtrotted away beside her obediently at his mother's bidding. At the cothe stopped to clamber up and kiss the red face, burrowed down in thepillows in a sodden sleep. "My poor farvah's sick too," he explainedlooking up at her, as if bespeaking sympathy for him also.

  Once in the buggy, while they waited for the doctor to unfasten thehitch-rein, he reached up and put his hand on her cheek in his babyfashion to ask her a question. The touch brought the tears to her eyes,it was so confiding, and she was still so shaken by the scene she hadjust witnessed. In a great throb of tenderness for the helpless littlebody given over to her care, she drew him closer, with a hasty kiss onthe top of his curly head.

  "Dea'st Fwend," he said, smiling up at her as if he understood thereason of her sudden caress. Then he cuddled his head against hershoulder in a satisfied way, saying, "Tell me again what the wed andgween bird says."

  As they drove in at the entrance gate to The Locusts, Lloyd recalled anexperience she had not thought of in years; an autumn day, when only ababy herself, not yet six, she had been left to make her way alone upthis same avenue. She had never spent a night away from her mother, andshe was to stay a week alone with her grandfather, who did not know howto sing her to sleep and kiss her eye-lids down so she wouldn't beafraid of the black shadows in the corners. Here by this very gate shehad stood, assailed by such a great ache of loneliness and homesicknessthat she was sure she would die if she had to endure it another moment.And there was the spot where, rustling around in the dead leaves, Fritzhad found the little gray glove her mother had dropped when she stoopedto kiss her good-bye.

  As she remembered how she had carried that glove, all week, rolled up ina little wad in her pocket, to help her to be good and not to cry, sheresolved that Wardo should not have the same experience if any effort ofhers could prevent it. She would devote her time to him night and dayand keep him so happily employed, there would be no time for "the sorryfeelin's" that had been her childish undoing. There was no care oraccustomed tenderness he should miss.

  It was nearly dark when she reached home, and so afraid was she that thenightfall itself would make Wardo homesick, that she began to providefor his entertainment even before she made any explanation to herastonished family.

  "FOR ONCE THE RED AND GREEN BIRD WAS ON ITS GOODBEHAVIOUR."]

  "Oh, Papa Jack," she called. "Please find the parrot right away forWardo to see, then I'll explain everything."

  For once the red and green bird was on its good behaviour, and began toshow off as soon as it was brought to the front. While Wardo watched it,wide-eyed and absorbed, Lloyd gave an excited and tearful account of hervisit to Ida. The old Colonel said something about the fever and thedanger of infection, but when she had finished her story nobody else hadthe heart to show displeasure at what she had done.

  "And I won't let him be a trouble to anybody!" she added. "I'll takecare of him every bit myself, and keep him out of the way."

  As Mrs. Sherman watched her leading the child up-stairs, talking to himat every step to keep his thoughts diverted from home, and then heardher giving orders to Walker about her old high chair and little whitecrib to be brought down from the attic, she turned to Mr. Sherman with asigh of relief.

  "She's found her own antidote for the Spanish lessons, Jack. We won'thave to go away to the springs or the mountains now, I'm sure."