A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill
Twice during the summer Donald had come to Thornwood, and on both
occasions Miss Lady had been seized with an unreasoning fear, not
only of him, but of herself. She had received him under the depressing
chaperonage of Mr. Gooch and Mrs. Ivy, and she remembered now how Connie
had taken possession of him on both occasions. But even if Connie's
transitory affections were temporarily engaged, surely Donald was not
encouraging her!
A low whistle from the path below made her look down. It was Connie and
she was stepping very cautiously as if trying to elude somebody.
“Miss Lady!” she called softly. “Aren't you coming down again?”
“No, I'm going to bed.”
“Don't go yet. I'm coming up. I want to tell you something.”
A moment later Connie opened the door, and closed it carefully behind
her.
“Is Bertie asleep?”
“Yes.”
“It's all over!” she announced tragically. “Gerald and I have had an
awful quarrel, and he swears he'll never live to see another dawn.”
“Of course he won't, I doubt if he has ever seen one. What's his
trouble?”
“Everything! He wants me to sit at his feet every hour in the day and
adore him, and how can I adore a man who is afraid of a bumblebee, and
can't drive, and sleeps with an umbrella over his head to shut out the
light? I just simply can't stand him another minute!”
“But, Connie, you were so crazy about him, you wouldn't listen to a word
against him.”
“I know it. I've been a perfect little idiot.” Connie was sobbing now
on Miss Lady's shoulder. “The first time I saw him he'd just gotten
home from Europe. He was playing at a concert. Everybody said he was
a genius, and his eyes were so wonderful, and I had never seen anybody
like him. The more he snubbed me the crazier I got about him. It wasn't
until Cousin Don came back that I saw him as he really is.”
Miss Lady patted the heaving shoulders, but said nothing.
“And the very minute,” Connie continued tempestuously, “that I began to
feel differently, Gerald began to like me. He has worked himself up to
a terrible pitch, and doesn't want me out of his sight for a minute. I
feel as if I'd been living on chocolate creams for three months!”
“Connie!” Miss Lady took the tear-stained face between her hands. “I'm
glad it isn't Gerald. I'm glad from the bottom of my heart, but are you
sure it isn't somebody else?”
Connie's blue eyes, never very steadfast, shifted uneasily, and Miss
Lady went on earnestly:
“Are you quite sure you aren't doing just what you did before, getting
infatuated, and making yourself miserable over some one who doesn't care
for you?”
“But he does!” burst out Connie indignantly; “he cares for me more than
for anybody in the world!”
“How do you know?”
“He's told me so! There--I oughtn't to have told! I swore I wouldn't
until after the trial. But you won't breathe it, Miss Lady? Promise you
won't even ask me to tell you anything more?”
Miss Lady looked at her strangely.
“I know everybody is going to disapprove,” Connie went on recklessly,
“and say horrid things about him. But I don't care if you will just
stand by me. And you will, won't you?”
Twice Miss Lady tried to speak before the words would come, then:
“Yes,” she whispered almost breathlessly, “yes, I promise to stand by
you,--and by him.”
After Connie had gone she went back to her seat on the railing and
stared out into the gathering night. For the first time in her life the
dark immensity terrified her. The beacon lights by which she had steered
were no longer visible. The great lonely sea of life lay about her, and
she had lost her course.
“Daddy!” she whispered in terror, “Daddy help me!”
But only the faint cry of a whippoorwill in the valley below answered
her call. A trembling seized her and feeling her way to the bed where
Bertie lay, she crept in beside him, cuddling the soft, warm little body
close, and checking her sobs that they might not wake him. Long after
the whippoorwill had ceased its plaint, she lay there staring into the
darkness, waiting for the dawn.
CHAPTER XXVII
The autumn sun struggled palely through the windows of the Children's
Hospital, and sent a beam across the high narrow bed where Chick
Flathers lay, suspiciously watching the proceedings of the attendant
nurses. He was not at all sure that he had done right in coming. For two
days he had been made to stay in bed, and this morning he had suffered
his third bath and been deprived of his breakfast. His being there
at all was merely a concession to friendship. Mis' Queerington had
persuaded him. He wouldn't have come for the Other One, the fat one who
smiled and talked about The Willows Awful Home. He wouldn't even come
for Aunt 'Telia, but Mis' Queerington was different; she understood
fellows. She had said that the doctors would fix his throat so that he
could yell louder than any boy on Billy-goat Hill! All the suppressed
yells of a dozen years quivered on his lips at the thought of it!
“Chick, here's a orange and some cookies I brought you.” It was Aunt
'Telia who sat down by the bed and took his hand. “If you ever get
well Aunt 'Tella's going to take you to the circus, or the seashore, or
somewheres.”
The seashore presented no concrete idea, so Chick preferred to dwell
upon the circus, but even that alluring prospect could not hold his
attention while so many disturbing things were taking place about him.
One nurse had felt his pulse, another had put a glass tube in his mouth,
and now a third was wheeling in a curious little bed on wheels.
He turned restlessly from the black-browed, anxious face bending over
him to the door where Mrs. Queerington was entering. But he knew by
experience that it would be some time before she reached him. All those
other sick duffers would want her to talk to them, and the nurses
would stop her, and the young house-doctor would claim a flower for his
buttonhole. Chick hated them all indiscriminately. It seemed an hour
before her bright, reassuring face bent over him, and he heard her say:
“It won't be long, now, Chicky Boy. Dr. Wyeth will be here soon, and
they will give you a ride on this funny little wagon. I wonder what
Skeeter Sheeley is doing about this time? Going to school, I expect.”
This diverted Chick marvelously. The thought of Skeeter having to spend
the morning in the schoolroom, made his own lot less hard.
“Is Number Seventeen prepared for the operation?” he heard some one ask,
and at the same moment Aunt 'Tella's fingers closed on his like a vise.
Then the big doctor, who had brought him there, appeared at the foot of
his bed.
“Ah, Mrs. Queerington!” he was saying, “the very sight of you ought to
hearten up these youngsters. But you are still paler than I like to see
you. Been overdoing again?”
She shook her head. “I'm all right, but what about your patient?”
The doctor stroked his chin and appeared to be interested in the
ceiling. “Some rather grave complications. Very anemic. Very little
to work on. Possibly an even chance. However--” he shrugged his broad
shoulders. “Has he any people?”
“No, except this foster-aunt who supports him. Myrtella!”
But Myrtella had turned her back at sight of the doctor, and refused to
look up.
Chick narrowly watching the two speakers at the foot of the bed,
and trying vainly to understand what they were saying about him, was
relieved when Dr. Wyeth handed Miss Lady a book and said lightly:
“You see that I, like everybody else, have fallen a victim to 'Khalil
Samad.' I understand it is already in its tenth edition. Young Morley
has a career before him, if he gets through this trial. Do you know when
it is set for?”
“November the sixth.”
“So soon as that? Well, I don't know the young man, but I hope he'll be
cleared. I want him to write some more books for me to read. I'm sorry
Kinner has charge of the prosecution. He'd rather convict an innocent
man than a guilty one. All right, my boy, I guess we are ready.”
“Don't try to get up!” admonished the nurse to Chick; “I'll lift you
over.”
But Chick scorned assistance. Hadn't he only last week valiantly bucked
the center in a football game between the Bean Alley Busters, and
the Shanty Boat Bums, and, covered with mud and blood and glory, been
carried from the field? They needn't think because he was little and
thin and couldn't talk that he was a baby! He got himself on to the
wheeled stretcher, but refused to lie down.
“Let him sit up then,” said Mrs. Queerington. “He likes to see where he
is going, don't you, Chick? Here goes our automobile! Honk! Honk!”
The nurse wheeled him through the tall, gloomy halls, while Myrtella
shambled at one side, clinging to his hand, and wiping her eyes. Miss
Lady flitted along on the other, telling him about the new football that
was going to be on his bed when he woke up.
Then they halted, and Myrtella bent over him wildly. “Chick!” she cried,
her face suddenly contorted, “look at me just once more! Tell me you
fergive me, Chicky! Oh, if they kill you--!”
The stretcher was shoved hastily into the elevator and the door closed
on everybody but Chick and the nurse and the orderly.
It was about that time that Chick decided to lie down. Where were they
taking him? What were they going to do with him? What did Aunt 'Tella
mean by those strange words? Where had Mis' Squeerington gone? With
sudden quaking terror he looked at the nurse and broke into hoarse
interrogatory sounds.
“Here we are!” she cried soothingly, as the elevator came to a halt.
“And here's Dr. Wyeth waiting for us.”
“Well, my little man,” said the large figure in white, taking a small
cold hand in his large strong one, “we are going to put you to sleep and
when you wake up, it will be all over. You are pretty game, aren't you?”
Chick, trying very hard to keep his knees from shaking the sheet, nodded
emphatically.
“I thought so,” lied the doctor cheerfully, looking into the
terror-stricken eyes. “I can almost always tell when a fellow's made out
of the right sort of stuff. You don't wear false teeth, do you?”
Chick's sudden, toothless smile revealed the futility of this question.
“That's good. No danger of your swallowing them. Now suppose you put
this funnel over your mouth and take a big breath. That's right! Another
one! That's right, once more!”
Chick felt a hot, sweet air rush into his throat, and began to choke.
But the doctor's voice kept saying insistently, “Once more!” “Once more,
my boy!” And the doctor thought he was game.
He shut his eyes and tried not to be afraid, but fearful things were
happening! His skin was leaving his body; and he was going up in the
air; lights danced before his eyes and he was suddenly in a terrible
hurry about something. He had never been in such a hurry before! He was
leaving doctors and nurses far below, he could hear their voices growing
fainter every moment. Then suddenly the lights began to dance again, and
the hurry came back, and all the breath was being squeezed out of him.
No, he couldn't be game any longer! He must fight! Savagely, blindly,
dumbly he struggled against this awful unknown thing that was mastering
him. Then, after a last agonizing effort he sank helplessly into the
abyss of sleep.
Meanwhile, on the floor below, sitting on the cold bare steps beside the
door of the elevator, two white-faced women waited anxiously. All was
silent in the high, narrow corridor except for the footsteps of passing
nurses, and the occasional sharp cry of pain, or groan of weariness from
some suffering patient.
“That's him!” cried Myrtella hysterically as one of these cries reached
her.
“No, no. He is sound asleep by this time. He won't know anything until
it is all over.” Then as another cry brought Myrtella to her feet, Miss