Part 22 (1/2)

The violet eyes flew wider. Old Jerry was certain that he caught a gleam of apprehension in them. She took one faltering step toward him and then stopped, irresolute, apparently. Somehow the mute appeal in that whole poise was too much, even for his outraged dignity. Maybe he had gone a little too far. He attempted to temper the harshness of it.

”Not a-course,” he added deprecatingly, ”meanin' that anything like that would be likely to happen to you. Seein' as you didn't exactly understand, I wouldn't take no steps against you.” And, even more encouragingly, ”I doubt if I'd hev any legal right to proceed against anybody without seeing Den--without seeing the rightful owner first.”

He bit his tongue painfully in covering that slip, but Dryad had not seemed to notice it. She crossed back to the stove and in an absolute silence fell to prodding with a fork beneath steaming lids.

”I really should have thought of that myself,” she murmured pensively.

”After seeing you return from here every afternoon, I should have known he--the place had been left in your care.”

It rather startled him--that half absent-minded statement of hers--it disturbed his confidence in his command of the situation. Sitting there he told himself that he should have realized long ago that she could easily watch the hill road from the door of the little drab cottage huddled at the end of Judge Maynard's acres.

He began to feel guilty again--began to wonder just how much his daily visits to Denny's place had led her to suspect. But Dryad did not wait for any reply. She had turned once more until she was facing him, her lips beginning to curl again, petal-like, at the corners.

”But you would have to interview the real owner first?” she inquired insistently. ”You do think that would be necessary before you could make me leave, don't you?”

He nodded--nodded warily. Something in her bearing put him on his guard. And then, before he knew how it had happened, a little rush had carried her across the room and she was kneeling at his feet, her face upflung to him.

”Then you'll have to interview me,”--the words trembled madly, breathlessly, from her lips. ”You'll have to interview me--because--because I own it all--all--every bit of it!”

And she laughed up at him--laughed with a queer, choking, strained note catching in her throat up into his blankly incredulous face. He felt her thin young arms tighten about him; he even half caught her next hysterical words in spite of his amazement, and for all that they were quite meaningless to him.

”You dear,” she rushed on. ”O, you dear, dear stubborn old fraud! I punished you, didn't I? You were frightened--afraid I'd go! You know you were! As if I'd ever leave until--until--” She failed to finish that sentence. ”But I'll never, never tease you so again!”

Then there came that lightning-like change of mood which always left him breathless in his inability to follow it. The mirth went out of her eyes--her lips drooped and began to work strangely as she knelt and gazed up at him.

”I bought his mortgage,” she told him slowly. ”I bought it from Judge Maynard a week ago with part of the money he gave me for our place there below his. He was very generous. Somehow I feel that he paid me--much more than it was worth. He's always wanted it and--and I--there wasn't any need for me to stay there any more, was there?”

Old Jerry had never seen a face so terribly earnest before--so hungrily wistful--but it was the light that glowed in that kneeling girl's eyes that held him dumb. It left him completely incapable of coherent thought, yet mechanically his mind leaped back to that night, two weeks before, when Young Denny had stumbled and gone floundering to his knees before her, there on that very threshold. The boy's own words had painted that picture for him too vividly for him to forget.

And he knew, without reasoning it out, just from the world of pain there in her eyes, that she, too, at that moment was thinking of that limp figure--of the great red gash across its chin.

”I didn't help him,” she went on, and now her voice was little more than a whisper. ”I went and left him here alone--and hurt--when I should have stayed, that night when he went away. And so I bought it--I bought it because I thought some day he might come back--and need me even more. I thought if he did come--he'd feel as though he had just--come back home! And--and just to be here waiting, I thought, too, might somehow help me to have faith that he would come, some day--safe!”

The old man felt the fiercely tense little arms go slack then. Her head went forward and lay heavy, pillowed in her hands upon his knees.

But he sat there for a full minute, staring down at the thick, s.h.i.+mmering ma.s.s of her hair, swallowing an unaccountable lump that bothered his breathing preparatory to telling her all that he had kept waiting for just that opportunity, before he realized that she was crying. And for an equally long period he cast desperately about for the right thing to say. It came to him finally--a veritable inspiration.

”Why, you don't want to cry,” he told her slowly. ”They--they ain't nothing to worry about now! For if that's the case--if you've gone to work and bought it, why, I ain't got no more jurisdiction over it--none whatever!”

Immediately she lifted her head and gazed long and questioningly at him, but Old Jerry's face was only guilelessly grave. It was more than that--benevolent rea.s.surance lit up every feature, and little by little her br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes began to clear; they began to glisten with that baffling delight that had irritated him so before. She slipped slowly to her feet and stood and gazed down at him. Old Jerry knew then that he would never again see so radiant a face as hers was at that moment.

”I wasn't crying because I was worried,” she said, and she managed not to laugh. ”I've been doing that every night, all night long, for two weeks. That was before I understood--things! But today--this afternoon I found something--read something--that made me understand better.

I--I'm just crying a little tonight because I am so glad.”

Old Jerry couldn't quite fathom the whole meaning of those last words of hers. They surprised him so that all the things he had meant to tell her right then of Young Denny's departure once more went totally out of mind. He wondered if it was the red-headlined account of his first battle that she had seen. No matter how doubtful it was he felt it was very, very possible, for at each day's end he had been leaving Denny's roll of papers there just as he had when the boy was at home.

But the rest of it he understood in spite of the wonder of it all.

Whenever he remembered Young Denny asprawl upon the floor it seemed to him a thing too marvelous for belief, and yet, recalling the light that had glowed radiant in that girl's eyes, he knew it was the only thing left to believe.

He talked it over with himself that night on the way home.