The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding

by Annie F. Johnston

  CHAPTER IX

  MORE SHADOWS

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

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

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

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

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

  It wasn't so much fun next morning, however, when he cried to be takento his mother. Every sob that shook the little shoulders tore Lloyd'sheart 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 outTarbaby, and walked him up and down the avenue as long as Wardo waspleased to sit in the saddle. Mrs. Sherman took him to the stables tosee half a dozen gray kittens that had made their home in the hay, andWalker 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 theydid not meet with the approval he expected, he actually invented a gameof bear, which they played in his den. They played it till Wardo beganshrieking with thrills of real fear at the fearsome growling and the bigfur gloves thrust at him from behind the leather couch. He grew sonervous and excited that the Colonel was at a loss to know how to calmthe 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 intothe top of the apple-tree that they could look over and see the eggs ina blue-bird's nest. Then little by little she stopped their swinging,till presently they were swaying very gently back and forth near theground, and she had charmed him into quietness with one of the old talesthat she used to tell Davy, about the elves who live in the buttercupsand ride far miles on the bumblebees.

  Glancing up towards the house, she saw Leland Harcourt mounting thesteps. It was the hour for Lloyd's lesson. So although she had intendedto 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. Hewas not allowed an idle moment in which to think of going home. So whatwith all these amusements and the novelty of constant attention from hiselders, it was not long before he developed into a veritable littletyrant, demanding attention every moment of his waking hours. But whenher unremitting service grew irksome Lloyd had only to think of Ida,tossing helpless and delirious at the mercy of the wasting fever. Herdaily visits to the cottage kept her in full realization of theseriousness of the case, and a deeper feeling of tenderness swept overher whenever she came back to Wardo after one of these visits, for eachtime she knew that the dreaded crisis was nearer, and she could not bearto think of his being left motherless.

  "It will just kill him!" she thought with tears in her eyes, as shewatched the pitiful quivering of his mouth and the manly attempt tochoke back his sobs, whenever Ida's name was mentioned. So to make surethat he was happily employed she took him wherever she went, except onthat one short drive which she made daily to Rollington. When she andBetty spent the day at The Beeches or the Cabin, he was one of theparty. When Miss Marks had another expedition to finish her GardenFancies, 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 figureson the old sun-dial, that marked the flight of the happy summer.

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

  "Oh, smell the lilies!" she exclaimed, looking across the lawn to wherethey 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'vebeen feeling all the way home as if I were going to hear from my bookto-night. The publishers have had plenty of time to read it since I sentit. 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, sleepilyraising his curly head from Lloyd's shoulder.

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

  "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 streamingacross 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 hasbeen keeping it hot for you all."

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

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

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

  Betty's voice in the door stopped her. As long as she lived, Lloyd neveragain 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 itappeared that moment in the light of the hall lamp.

  "They've sent it back, godmother," she said in a low even tone. "Itwasn't good enough. It's all a miserable mistake to think that I canwrite, 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 attemptedcomfort. "I don't want any dinner," she said, then with her mouthtwitching piteously as she fought back the tears, she ran up-stairs, andthey heard the door close and the key turn in the lock.

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

  Only once before had she felt such hopelessness. That was at the firsthouse-party, when she thought she was doomed to be blind. They hadbrought her the newspaper containing her first published poem. It wascalled "Night," and as they guided her finger over the page that itmight rest proudly on the place where her nam
e was printed, she hadfaltered, "It's going to be such a long night, and there are no stars inthis one!"

  Now the outlook seemed even more hopeless, bereft of the star of hergreat 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, tearsof mortification as well as disappointment. The girls would have toknow. She had been foolish to make such a parade of her attempt. Sheshould have waited. But then she had been so _sure_ that her story wasa good one. That was the hardest part to bear, that she had been somistaken. It would have been easier, she thought bitterly, if herrebuffs had come earlier; if some of her first contributions had beenreturned. But the way had been made so easy for her. Her very firstpoems had been accepted, printed, praised. Everybody had predictedsuccess, everybody expected great things of her, even old BishopChartley. The girls at school had openly proclaimed her as a genius, theteachers had praised every effort and urged her to greater, the wholeValley looked upon her as one set apart by a special gift.

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

  Presently she heard Wardo's little feet on the stairs, pattering up tobed, and his voice raised in his ceaseless questioning; then a littlelater Lloyd's voice singing him to sleep. After that there was the soundbelow of people coming and going, Leland Harcourt's laugh and the scrapeof 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 thensteps 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 benot to notice it, Lloyd choked back the word of sympathy she longed tospeak, and went on to her room.

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

  Now, in the light of that explanation, she wondered with burning cheekshow she could have thought for one instant that it was good. She couldsee, herself, that it was crude and childish and ineffectual; not thestyle in which it was written. Betty was sure of her ability there. Shewas as conscious that her diction and composition measured up to thebest standards, as an athlete is conscious of his strength. It was herview-point of life that had amused the great publisher. He hadn'tridiculed it in words, but she felt his covert smile at her schoolgirlattempt to deal with the world's big problems, and the knowledge that hehad 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 hermanuscript. "It has come back to me, the little bark that the girlslaunched so gaily, with ceremony and good wishes. It has come back ashipwreck! It was almost easier to face blindness than it is to facethis failure. How can I give up this hope that has grown with my growthtill it means more than everything else in the world to me? How can Ilive all the rest of my life without it? Somehow for years I have feltthat the Lord wanted me to write. The feeling was like the King's callto 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 beenproved beyond all doubt that I am not able to keep the great trystworthily, and yet--life seems so empty with this one high hope andpurpose taken out of it, that I am not brave enough to face itcheerfully."

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

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

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

  "_An amethyst glowed on his breast in purple splendour to mark hispatient meeting with Defeat!_"

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

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

  Late that afternoon Mrs. Sherman met her in the back hall with themanuscript in her hands. She was on her way to put it in the kitchenstove. Promptly rescuing it, Mrs. Sherman finally obtained herreluctant consent to let her read it.

  "It is your right," said Betty bitterly, "no matter how much ithumiliates me. You have done everything for me, lavished everything onme as if I were really your daughter, and I have disappointed you atevery turn. I couldn't be the brilliant social success you hoped for, itwas useless to try. And I couldn't be the success in literature you hada right to expect, though I did try that with all my soul, mind andstrength. I've been thinking about it all day, and I made up my mind atlast, that I'd burn up that miserable story that I wasted so many monthson, and then I'd go to you and tell you that under the circumstances itwould be better for me to go away, and not be an expense to you anylonger. As long as there was a prospect o
f my amounting to somethingsome day that would make you proud of me, that would repay you in partfor all you've done, I didn't mind deepening my obligation to you, but_now_--"

  She turned to the window to hide her face, but the next instant shefound herself sitting on the top stair with her head on her godmother'sshoulder, listening to such loving remonstrances that they should havedriven away the last vestige of her bitter self-condemnation. It didhelp wonderfully to hear that her godmother and Papa Jack were notdisappointed in _her_ though grieved for her disappointment; that theyloved her for her own dear little self alone, and not for the thingsthey hoped she would achieve, and that they couldn't let her go away,for nobody could ever fill the place of their dear little daughterBetty.

  She wiped her eyes after awhile and smiled like an April day, but shestill persisted that she must go away somewhere and teach if only toprove that she was good for something.

  Much troubled by her evident distress, Mrs. Sherman finally went to talkthe matter over with the old Colonel. Mr. Sherman was away from home.Several days after she called Betty into her room.

  "Papa has read your manuscript," she said, "and he thinks it would be agood thing to let you have your own way, and go off somewhere forawhile. He says that in his opinion your writing shows unusual promise,and that its only lack is the lack of nearly all young writers, yourignorance of life. You must know more of the world before you can have amessage for it that it will stop to listen to. You must live and growand gain experience, and he thinks the best way for you to do all that,is to depend on your own resources for awhile, and that the kindestthing we can do is to open the cage and give the little bird a chance totry its own wings. It will never learn to fly as long as we keep ithedged about so carefully.

  "He finally convinced me by quoting that legend of 'Camelback Mountain'to me. He says you are like Shapur now, a vendor of salt who as yet canonly follow in the train of others--write what has already been written.You haven't _the wares_ with which to gain a royal entrance to the Cityof your Desire. You need some desert of waiting in which to learn thesecret of Omar's alchemy."

  "I know," said Betty. "I know now what my writing lacks--the attar thatgained him his royal entrance." She quoted softly, "'And no man fillshis crystal vase with it until he has first been pricked by the world'sdisappointments and bowed by its tasks.'"

  "Oh, Betty, my dear little girl," said Mrs. Sherman taking the earnestface between her hands and looking down fondly into the trusting browneyes raised to hers. "I suppose it's true, but I can't help wanting tosave you from the pricks and the burdens. Still I won't stand in yourway. Go ahead, little Shapur, and may the golden gates swing wide foryou, for I know you'll force them open some day, with the filling ofyour crystal vase."

  A quarter of an hour later Betty was hurrying down the road in happyhaste, a telegram in her hand for Warwick Hall. It was to Madam Chartleyasking if she knew of any vacant position for teachers, in any of theschools of her acquaintance.