The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding

She was throwing herself about so wildly that Lloyd was frightened, and rose from her chair to call one of the neighbours. But she could not break away. Ida caught at her dress and held her fast in her frenzied clasp.

"But I tell you I won't let him grow up to be like that!" she cried with her 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. God would understand, wouldn't he? He couldn't blame me for trying to save my baby! But if he did I'd have to do it anyway. I'd have to do it and take 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 pattering in, and climbing up on the bed beside his mother, stroked her face with his 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 the fever. But I can't give him up to just anybody, Lloyd. The neighbours have been good and kind, but I'm afraid he might find out from some of the children about Ned – you know. But with you – Oh, Lloyd, would it be asking too much if – "

She stopped with her question half uttered, but the imploring look in her eyes was a prayer that Lloyd could not resist, and she held out her arms 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 thing started them.

"He's never been away from me a single night in his life," she said brokenly. "I couldn't give him up to anybody but you." Then seeing the frightened look that crept into the child's face as he listened to the conversation which he but half understood, she wiped her eyes and smiled at 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 you while the good doctor makes me well. And she'll tell you stories and make you have such a happy time."

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

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

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

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

If anything had been needed to complete Lloyd's surrender to the little fellow'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 he thought it was her name. She caught him up and kissed him, despite the jam streaks and the dirt.

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

As she gathered his clothes together and packed them for the short journey in a dress box which she found under the bed, it made an ache grip her throat to see how Ida had thrown the shield of her mother-love around 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 the little linen suits that were so pretty and becoming. No child in the Valley was better clad, or looked so much like a little aristocrat, as long as she was able to give him her daily attention.

He was so accustomed to being washed and brushed and dressed that he made no objection to what most children of that age consider an unnecessary process, and when Lloyd went about it with unpractised fingers, he gravely corrected her mistakes, and laughed when she made a play of the buttonholes being hungry mouths, that swallowed the buttons in a hurry. Never in her life had she exerted herself so much to be entertaining, for she wanted to take him away without a scene. She wanted, too, for him to look his best, that he might win his own way at The Locusts. She thought with a trifle of uneasiness that her impulsive act might not meet her family's entire approval.

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

Once in the buggy, while they waited for the doctor to unfasten the hitch-rein, he reached up and put his hand on her cheek in his baby fashion 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 had just witnessed. In a great throb of tenderness for the helpless little body given over to her care, she drew him closer, with a hasty kiss on the top of his curly head.

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

As they drove in at the entrance gate to The Locusts, Lloyd recalled an experience she had not thought of in years; an autumn day, when only a baby herself, not yet six, she had been left to make her way alone up this same avenue. She had never spent a night away from her mother, and she was to stay a week alone with her grandfather, who did not know how to sing her to sleep and kiss her eye-lids down so she wouldn't be afraid of the black shadows in the corners. Here by this very gate she had stood, assailed by such a great ache of loneliness and homesickness that 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, Fritz had found the little gray glove her mother had dropped when she stooped to kiss her good-bye.

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

It was nearly dark when she reached home, and so afraid was she that the nightfall itself would make Wardo homesick, that she began to provide for his entertainment even before she made any explanation to her astonished family.

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

For once the red and green bird was on its good behaviour, and began to show 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 her visit to Ida. The old Colonel said something about the fever and the danger of infection, but when she had finished her story nobody else had the heart to show displeasure at what she had done.

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

As Mrs. Sherman watched her leading the child up-stairs, talking to him at every step to keep his thoughts diverted from home, and then heard her giving orders to Walker about her old high chair and little white crib to be brought down from the attic, she turned to Mr. Sherman with a sigh of relief.

"She's found her own antidote for the Spanish lessons, Jack. We won't have to go away to the springs or the mountains now, I'm sure."

CHAPTER IX

MORE SHADOWS

From that first night, Wardo had the entire household at his feet. Lloyd scarcely touched her own dinner in her anxiety to anticipate his wants. He was very near tears sometimes, when his furtive glances around the table showed only strange faces, but he was "a game little chap" as the Colonel said, and "a credit to whoever had taught him his manners."

He could not be induced to speak save in whispers, when Lloyd put a protecting arm around the high chair where he sat, and with an indulgent smile leaned over with her ear almost touching his lips. Before the dinner was over he fell asleep, worn out by the unusual excitement of the day, his curly head laid confidingly on "Dea'st Fwend's" shoulder.

"Sh!" whispered Lloyd warningly to the coloured man who came in to change the plates for dessert. "Wait a minute. Carry him up-stairs first, please, Papa Jack. If I can get him undressed without waking him he'll miss one homesick crying spell anyhow."

Leland Harcourt came just as she had accomplished the task, and Betty tiptoed into the room to tell her. Lloyd looked down at the little white-gowned figure in the crib, and shook her head as it stirred restlessly. "I'll stay with him," offered Betty.

"No, I must wait till I'm suah he's sound asleep. You explain to Mistah Harcourt, please, and I'll come down aftah awhile. Oh, Betty! Isn't he a darling? It's going to be moah fun taking care of him than dressing dolls used to be!"

It wasn't so much fun next morning, however, when he cried to be taken to his mother. Every sob that shook the little shoulders tore Lloyd's heart also, for remembering the violence of her own childish grieving, she put herself into Wardo's place so completely that she cried too. Then everybody in the house rose to the occasion. Papa Jack brought out Tarbaby, and walked him up and down the avenue as long as Wardo was pleased to sit in the saddle. Mrs. Sherman took him to the stables to see half a dozen gray kittens that had made their home in the hay, and Walker carried him pick-a-back to look at the calves.

After that the old Colonel unsheathed his sword and got out his spurs, and started to tell the bloodiest battle tales he knew, and when they did not meet with the approval he expected, he actually invented a game of bear, which they played in his den. They played it till Wardo began shrieking with thrills of real fear at the fearsome growling and the big fur gloves thrust at him from behind the leather couch. He grew so nervous and excited that the Colonel was at a loss to know how to calm the whirlwind he had unintentionally stirred up.

It was Betty who came to the rescue. She led him down to the orchard, and taking him on her lap in the old swing, swung him so high up into the top of the apple-tree that they could look over and see the eggs in a blue-bird's nest. Then little by little she stopped their swinging, till presently they were swaying very gently back and forth near the ground, and she had charmed him into quietness with one of the old tales that she used to tell Davy, about the elves who live in the buttercups and ride far miles on the bumblebees.

Glancing up towards the house, she saw Leland Harcourt mounting the steps. It was the hour for Lloyd's lesson. So although she had intended to spend the morning outlining a magazine story which she had in mind, she took a fresh grip on the swing rope, and began another tale.

That was the way Wardo's entertainment went on for the next few days. He was not allowed an idle moment in which to think of going home. So what with all these amusements and the novelty of constant attention from his elders, it was not long before he developed into a veritable little tyrant, demanding attention every moment of his waking hours. But when her unremitting service grew irksome Lloyd had only to think of Ida, tossing helpless and delirious at the mercy of the wasting fever. Her daily visits to the cottage kept her in full realization of the seriousness of the case, and a deeper feeling of tenderness swept over her whenever she came back to Wardo after one of these visits, for each time she knew that the dreaded crisis was nearer, and she could not bear to think of his being left motherless.

"It will just kill him!" she thought with tears in her eyes, as she watched the pitiful quivering of his mouth and the manly attempt to choke back his sobs, whenever Ida's name was mentioned. So to make sure that he was happily employed she took him wherever she went, except on that one short drive which she made daily to Rollington. When she and Betty spent the day at The Beeches or the Cabin, he was one of the party. When Miss Marks had another expedition to finish her Garden Fancies, he was included in the group, and a charming picture he made, as with a butterfly net in his hand, he stooped to point to the figures on the old sun-dial, that marked the flight of the happy summer.

It was from this expedition that they drove back one evening in the early August twilight. He had been asleep most of the way home, but roused up as the carriage turned in at the gate. Betty, leaning forward in her seat, drew a long breath.

"Oh, smell the lilies!" she exclaimed, looking across the lawn to where they stood, like tall white ghosts in the twilight. "How heavenly sweet! Such a delicious ending to such a nice day. Do you know, Lloyd, I've been feeling all the way home as if I were going to hear from my book to-night. The publishers have had plenty of time to read it since I sent it. I feel it in my bones that there'll be a letter waiting for me."

"How do you feel fings wif your bones, Betty?" asked Wardo, sleepily raising his curly head from Lloyd's shoulder.

"Oh, I couldn't make you understand," she answered. "It's just a sort of happy flutter all through you that tells you something nice is going to happen."

"What's flutter?" asked the tireless questioner, but Betty paid no heed. The carriage had reached the steps, and with a spring she was out, calling eagerly as she stepped into the broad path of light streaming across the porch from the hall door, "Any mail for me, godmother?"

"Nothing but a package," answered Mrs. Sherman, coming out to meet them. "And it will keep. Better run on in and eat your dinner first. Cindy has been keeping it hot for you all."

But Betty could not wait. As she darted into the hall Mrs. Sherman turned to Lloyd, who was half dragging, half lifting the sleepy Wardo up the steps.

"Poor little girl," she said in a low tone. "I wanted to put off her disappointment as long as possible, and not spoil her happy day with such an ending. Her manuscript has come back from the publishers."

"Oh, mothah!" exclaimed Lloyd in distress. "You don't mean that they've refused it! They suahly couldn't have done that! Maybe they've just sent it back for her to make some changes in it."

Betty's voice in the door stopped her. As long as she lived, Lloyd never again smelled the odour of August lilies when they were heavy with dew, that she did not see the tragic misery of Betty's white face as it appeared that moment in the light of the hall lamp.

"They've sent it back, godmother," she said in a low even tone. "It wasn't good enough. It's all a miserable mistake to think that I can write, for I put the very best of myself into this and it is a failure."

"No! No!" began Lloyd, but Betty would not wait for any attempted comfort. "I don't want any dinner," she said, then with her mouth twitching piteously as she fought back the tears, she ran up-stairs, and they heard the door close and the key turn in the lock.

Nobody ever knew what went on behind that locked door, for Betty was as quiet in her griefs as she was in her joy and made no audible moan. She threw herself across the foot of the bed and lay there staring out of the window in the hopelessness of utter defeat. The katydids shrilling in the Locusts seemed to fill the night with an unbearable discord. She put her hands over her ears to shut out the hateful sound. It seemed to her that nothing mattered any more. As she slowly recalled all her months of painstaking work, the keen pleasure that each hour of it had afforded her was turned into bitterness by the thought that it had proved a failure.

Only once before had she felt such hopelessness. That was at the first house-party, when she thought she was doomed to be blind. They had brought her the newspaper containing her first published poem. It was called "Night," and as they guided her finger over the page that it might rest proudly on the place where her name was printed, she had faltered, "It's going to be such a long night, and there are no stars in this one!"

Now the outlook seemed even more hopeless, bereft of the star of her great hope. The ambition to be an author had been a part of her so long, that it seemed even more indispensable than her eye-sight.

The slow hot tears began to drop down on her pillow after awhile, tears of mortification as well as disappointment. The girls would have to know. She had been foolish to make such a parade of her attempt. She should have waited. But then she had been so sure that her story was a good one. That was the hardest part to bear, that she had been so mistaken. It would have been easier, she thought bitterly, if her rebuffs had come earlier; if some of her first contributions had been returned. But the way had been made so easy for her. Her very first poems had been accepted, printed, praised. Everybody had predicted success, everybody expected great things of her, even old Bishop Chartley. The girls at school had openly proclaimed her as a genius, the teachers had praised every effort and urged her to greater, the whole Valley looked upon her as one set apart by a special gift.

Was it any wonder, she asked herself, that she had come to believe in her own ability. It was as if she had been urged down a flowery path by each one she met, to find that every guide was mistaken, and that the way they pointed out ended in a dismal slough of disappointment.

Presently she heard Wardo's little feet on the stairs, pattering up to bed, and his voice raised in his ceaseless questioning; then a little later Lloyd's voice singing him to sleep. After that there was the sound below of people coming and going, Leland Harcourt's laugh and the scrape of wheels on the gravelled drive.

She felt a dull throb of gratitude that the family left her alone.

A long time after she heard the closing and locking of doors, and then steps again on the stairs. Some one stopped outside her door.

"Good-night, Betty deah."

"Good-night," she answered in a voice which she tried to keep steady, but there was a sob in it, and divining that the kindest thing would be not to notice it, Lloyd choked back the word of sympathy she longed to speak, and went on to her room.

Nearly an hour after Betty got up, and lighting her lamp, sat down at the desk where the rejected manuscript lay. Turning it over listlessly, she read a paragraph here and there, trying to see it through the eyes of the publisher who had returned it. If he had sent merely a printed notice of refusal, such as she had been told was customary, stating impersonally that it was returned with regret because unavailable, she would have started it off again at daybreak to another place, knowing that what does not fill the special need of one firm may be seized with alacrity by another. But this man had taken the trouble to explain why it was unavailable.

Now, in the light of that explanation, she wondered with burning cheeks how she could have thought for one instant that it was good. She could see, herself, that it was crude and childish and ineffectual; not the style in which it was written. Betty was sure of her ability there. She was as conscious that her diction and composition measured up to the best standards, as an athlete is conscious of his strength. It was her view-point of life that had amused the great publisher. He hadn't ridiculed it in words, but she felt his covert smile at her schoolgirl attempt to deal with the world's big problems, and the knowledge that he had been amused cut her like a knife.

Pushing the package aside, she took out the last volume of her diary, and from force of habit made an entry, the record of the return of her manuscript. "It has come back to me, the little bark that the girls launched so gaily, with ceremony and good wishes. It has come back a shipwreck! It was almost easier to face blindness than it is to face this failure. How can I give up this hope that has grown with my growth till it means more than everything else in the world to me? How can I live all the rest of my life without it? Somehow for years I have felt that the Lord wanted me to write. The feeling was like the King's call to Edryn, and I have gone on answering it as he did:

"'Oh list!

Thou heart and hand of mine, keep tryst,

Keep tryst or die!'

"Of course it would be folly for me to go on now, when it has been proved beyond all doubt that I am not able to keep the great tryst worthily, and yet – life seems so empty with this one high hope and purpose taken out of it, that I am not brave enough to face it cheerfully."

It had long been a habit of Betty's, formed in the early days at the Cuckoo's Nest, to comfort herself when things went wrong by imagining how much worse they might have been. Now there was a drop of consolation in the fact that she had never displayed her pride in her book to any but the girls. It had been a temptation to show it to her godmother and Papa Jack and the Colonel, especially after the girls had applauded it so enthusiastically; but the wish for them to see it at its best had made her withhold it in its manuscript form. The climax of her triumph was to be when she placed in their hands a real, full-fledged book. Their criticism might have spared her the humiliation of a rejected manuscript, but she acknowledged to herself that it was easier to have the sentence passed on it by a stranger than by the three whose opinion she valued most.

Tiptoeing noiselessly around the room in order not to disturb any one at that late hour, she undressed slowly, and creeping into bed sobbed herself to sleep. Betty had always been a sensible little soul, taking her small troubles like a philosopher, and next morning, when she was awakened by the first bird-calls and lay watching the light creep up the wall, the old childish habit of thought asserted itself, bringing an unexpected balm to her sore heart. She had always loved allegories. At the Cuckoo's Nest she had helped herself over all the rough places in her road by imagining that she was Christian in "Pilgrim's Progress," and that no matter how hard a time she was having then, the House Beautiful and the Delectable Mountains and the City of the Shining Ones lay just ahead.

Now in her greater trouble it was the allegory of Edryn that brought comfort, because he, too, had heard the King's call and striven to keep tryst, and she remembered that when he knelt to receive his knighthood, something else besides pearls and diamonds flashed on his vestment above his heart, to form the letters "semper fidelis."

"An amethyst glowed on his breast in purple splendour to mark his patient meeting with Defeat!"

"Maybe without that amethyst he couldn't have spelled all the motto perfectly," thought Betty. She sat up in bed, her face alight with the inspiration of the thought. She had met defeat and she had fallen into a grievous Dungeon of Disappointment, but she needn't stay in it. She sprang out of bed echoing Edryn's words: "Full well I know that Heaven always finds a way to help the man who helps himself, and even dungeon walls must harbour help for him who boldly grasps the first thing that he sees and makes it serve him!"

It was a brave way to begin the day, and it carried her over the first part of it so cheerfully that Mrs. Sherman began to think that she had overestimated Betty's disappointment. It surely could not have been as overwhelming as she imagined. She did not know how many times that day Betty's courage failed her. Edryn's high-sounding words seemed like a hollow mockery and she brooded over the failure till she began to grow morbid and ultra-sensitive.