HURRYING down through the grounds, and vaulting over the low boundary fence, Dearing approached the gate of the Barry cottage just as Dora came out. Pretty as she had been in girlhood, she was rarely beautiful as a fully developed woman. And to-day, as ever, Dearing stood before her in absolute awe of her rare, exquisite, and appealing personality.
“She’s had another attack, Wynn!” Dora said, with a brave effort to steady her faltering voice. “I really thought she was dying, and I suppose I screamed. She looked so bad for a few moments! Her face turned purple, and she lost consciousness. She came to herself a moment ago, and is still awake. Will you see her?”
He went to the sick woman’s room on tiptoe. Seated in a chair at the head of the bed, and waving a palm-leaf fan to and fro, to keep the flies from his grandmother’s face, was Lionel, his great, serious eyes, so like his mother’s, filled with anxiety. He rose as Dearing entered, and moved round to the other side of the bed, but he still waved the fan and stood staring anxiously.
“I thought I was gone that time, Doctor Wynn,” Mrs. Barry said, with a wan smile, as he took her hand to test her pulse.
“Well, you certainly are far from it now,” he laughed, reassuringly. “I believe it would take a regiment of soldiers to put you out of business. That was only a fainting spell brought on by too close confinement to the house. You must get out more; that’s all you need. Now, take a good nap and you will be all right.” He nodded and smiled reassuringly at Dora, who stood at the foot of the bed. She followed him from the room, seeing that he wished to speak to her.
“She is all right now,” he told her. “She is doing very well. It is only a sluggish liver, due to lack of exercise. Let her sleep as long as she will now, and I’ll send you a tonic which will brace her up. There is nothing really to fear. She has a splendid constitution in all other respects.”
Dora sank into a chair as if utterly overcome with relief, and he stood looking at her in blended admiration and sympathy.
Aside from her beauty of face and form, there was a ripeness of intellect and character in her face, which had come to her from the years of isolated suffering which she had undergone.
“You are so kind to me, Wynn,” she said, with a faint, sad smile. “You have always been the best friend we ever had.”
“Why, what are you talking about?” Dearing said, lightly and with a flush. “Any other jack-leg country doctor would have taken care of you fully as well.”
“You have done hundreds of thoughtful things,” she cried. “You have left nothing undone that could possibly help us. Oh, you are too good! You haven’t allowed my poor mother to pay you one penny for your services in all these years. She has tried and tried to make you take it till she has almost given up in despair.”
“I haven’t done anything really worth while, Dora,” he said, lightly. “You see, you live right at hand, too, and it is no trouble at all to jump over your fence and mine. I couldn’t take money from a next-door neighbor under those circumstances. You just wait until you really need a doctor, and then I’ll send in a bill as long as my arm.”
“You can’t help being good,” Dora said, feelingly, her wonderful violet eyes filling. “Your great heart simply went out to us in our trouble, and you have determined to help us in every way possible. Mother thinks all the world of you, and Lionel actually believes you are some sort of god.”
“Well, he’s badly fooled, I tell you!” Dearing laughed. “But speaking of him, I must lecture you good and hard. You are not treating the child at all right. He oughtn’t to be cooped up here in this little yard like he is. It is too small. A growing boy like that needs room, and plenty of it.”
“Oh, you don’t understand!” Dora sighed, while a look of deepest pain tortured her mobile face. “I couldn’t bear to have him running around a neighborhood as—as heartless as this one is. He is so observant, and has such an inquiring mind, and people are so—so cruel, so utterly unforgiving. But you are trying to change the subject. You think I have no money with which to pay a doctor’s bill.” She laughed suddenly and mysteriously as she went on: “I believe I’ll let you into a secret. I’ll show you something. Come into the parlor.”
She led him, with graceful step and bearing, through the little central passage of the cottage to the parlor door, and they entered together. She laughed like a merry child; it was the sweet, rippling laugh he remembered so well as belonging to his youth and hers, as she pointed to the easel before a window. On it was a good water-color picture of a child at play on the grass near a stream, with a pastoral scene sketched in the background.
“Oh,” he exclaimed, admiringly, “that’s the best you’ve shown me! It is very, very good.”
“That’s only one of many,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “I wanted something to occupy my mind after I gave up music, and I began these studies merely as an experiment. I worked for a year while Lionel was a baby just to—you know, Wynn—just to forget!” He was silent, being unable to formulate any reply that was appropriate to the delicate situation, and she went on simply, and still in the winsome tone which had always appealed to him so strongly.
“Then—now comes the best part—one day I happened to read the advertisement of an Atlanta dealer who was in need of such things, and I forwarded some sketches I had done. They were bad—oh, so bad—and he wrote that he would not offer them to his customers, but he encouraged me to keep on. Then I worked harder, and finally I sent him some pictures of children—little pickaninnies, brown as chestnuts, little white ragamuffins, babies in old-fashioned, crude, box-cradles like the mountain people have, and he sold them. Think of that! He actually sold them! I have not signed any of them. He has written me several times begging that I should do so, but I have always refused. He has agreed not to use my name at all, and I believe he has kept his word. The whole thing has made me—almost happy. Wynn, I saw your face after your first successful operation, and didn’t understand then what it meant to you, but I do now. The day that dealer’s letter came, and his money followed by express, in a big wax-sealed envelope—well, it was the happiest moment of my life-I sang; I talked to myself; I danced. I told Baby all about it as I hugged him in my arms. I had, as they say, discovered myself. Here I was, cut off from intercourse with everybody in my home town, but God hadn’t wholly forsaken me. He had given me something to make up for what I’d lost—a way of speaking to the big outer world.”
“I see, and I congratulate you with all my heart,” Dearing said, as he stood watching the shifting tones in her expressive face. “I understand you better now. I got in the habit of listening for your piano at night, when everything was still, and I fancied I could read your various moods. A long time ago you played too sadly; really it used to get next to me, and make me worry about you; but of late there has been more hope and cheerfulness in your music, and it did me a lot of good. I understand you better now. I have always thought that creative work was the most satisfying and uplifting occupation possible, and now I am sure of it.”
“And I am getting better and better prices, too,” Dora said, modestly. “My agent sends my things everywhere, even to far-off New York and Boston. I don’t do them so fast now, for I try harder and I think they are better. Now, you will send me your bill, won’t you?”
“I shall certainly be hoping that somebody will get really sick under this roof,” he laughed, evasively, “for I’d like to get a whack at your roll of cash, but so far my dealings have been only with your mother, and she doesn’t make it interesting. She was good to me when I was a boy. I used to crawl over the back fence when she was making jelly and jam in the kitchen, and I collected some fees then that did me more good than any I have since received. She performed the first surgical operation on me, too, that I ever had. I was barefoot, and while trying to hide from some other boys I stuck a rusty nail through my big toe. She heard me yelling and came to my assistance. She extracted the nail, washed out my wound, filled it with turpentine—the only ............