Part 33 (1/2)
”Make it soon,” he begged. ”It is terribly lonesome.”
”Two years,” she suggested, wrinkling her brows. ”But if it is too lonesome, we will make it one.”
”You won't go away.” Prince was aghast at the thought.
”I have to,” she told him, caressing his hand with her fingers. ”You know I believe I have a talent, and it says in the Bible if you do not use what is given you, all the other nice things you have may be taken away. So if I don't use that talent, I may lose it and you into the bargain.”
Prince did not understand that, but it sounded reasonable. Whatever Connie said, of course. She had a talent, all right, a dozen,--a hundred of them. He thought she had a monopoly on talents.
”I will go back a while and study and work and get ready to use the talent. I have to finish getting ready first. Then I will come and live with you and you can help me use it. You won't mind, will you?”
”I want you to use it,” he said. ”I'm proud of it. I will take you wherever you wish to go, I will do whatever you want. I'll get a home in Denver, and just manage the business from the outside. I can live the way you like to live and do the things you like to have done; Connie, I know I can.”
Connie reached slowly for her hand-bag. From it she took a tiny note-book and tossed it in the fire.
”Literary material,” she explained, smiting at him. ”I can not write what I have learned in Fort Morgan. I can only live it.”
CHAPTER XXIII
THE SUNNY SLOPE
After Connie's visit, when she had returned to Chicago to finish learning how to write her knowledge, David and Carol with little Julia settled down in the cottage among the pines, and the winter came and the mountains were huge white monuments over the last summer that had died. Later in the winter a nurse came in to take charge of the little family, and although Carol was afraid of her, she obeyed with childish confidence whenever the nurse gave directions.
”I feel fine to-day,” David said to her one morning. ”I think when spring comes I shall be stronger again. It is a good thing to be alive.”
He glanced through the window and looked at Carol, b.u.t.toning Julia's gaiters for the fifth time that morning.
”It is a pretty nice world to most of us,” said the nurse.
”We each have a world of our own, I guess. Mine is Carol and Julia now. I have no grouch at life, and I register no complaint against circ.u.mstances, but I should be glad to live in my little world a long, long time.”
One morning when spring had come, when the white monuments melted and drifted away with the clouds, and when the shadowy canyons and the yellow rocky peaks stood out bare and bright, David called her to him.
”Look,” he said, ”the same old sunny slope. We have been climbing it four years now, a long climb, sometimes pretty rough and rugged for you.”
”It was not, David,--never,” she protested quickly. ”It was always a clear bright path. And we've been finding things to laugh at all the way.”
He pulled her into his arm beside him on the bed. ”We are going to the top of the sunny slope together. Look at the mountain there. We are going up one of those sunny ridges, and sometime, after a while, we will stand at the top, right on the summit, with the sky above and the valleys below.”
She nodded her head, smiling at him bravely.
”I think it is probably very near to Heaven,” he said slowly, in a dreamy voice. ”I think it must be. It is so intensely bright,--see how it cuts into the blue. Yes, it must be right at the gates of Heaven. We will stand right there together, won't we?”
”David,” she whispered.
”This is what I want to say. After that, there will be another way for you to go, on the other side. Look at the mountains, dear. See, there are other peaks beyond, with alternating slopes of suns.h.i.+ne and canyons of shadow. It is much easier to stick to the sunny slopes when there are two together. It is very easy to stagger off into the shadows, when one has to travel alone. But, Carol, don't you go into the shadows. I want to think always that you are staying in the suns.h.i.+ne, on the slopes, where it is bright, where Julia can laugh and play, where you can sing and listen to the birds. Stick to the sunny slopes, dear, even when you are climbing alone.”