Reading for Everybody.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2382, 24 December 1908, Page 10 (Supplement)

Reading for Everybody.

VICTORY.

{By Janies True, Junr., in the New Orleans “Timesr-Demo-crat.”) Throughout the .wild clatter of the storm Dr. West had not slept. Since early evening the wind, rising in violence, had swayed the frail building where he lived and pelted it with angry gusts of rain. His room shook as though the earth trembled. One by one a pile of books fell from a table to the floor. The windows rattled with the rain and vibrated with the sharp reports of thunder; yet, above the din, the old physician heard his name called and sprang up, alert, hastily preparing to f ace the gale. The unfastened door flew open as a flash of lightning briefly. illumined the room and the figure, standing on the threshold. Naked to the waist, hatless, his grey hair matted by the rain, he breathed heavily. Water dripped from his trousers and made little pools at his feet. “Capt. Wilson, isn’t it?” “Yes. Hurry, Doc, for God’s sake! I’m—l’m afraid she’s dyin’.” “Your wife?” “No —no, not my wife,” Wilson replied, his voice softened, yet carrying above the din. “It’s a little girl He paused until a peal of thunder deeper than the rest seemed to madden him. “They were fools!” he shouted irreverently: ‘ ‘Fools I tell ye! Out in the Gulf in .a toy that wa6 never meant outside a locked harbor.” The doctor groped his way through the darkness until his hand rested on Wilson’s arm. “What has happened?” ho asked. “Come, tell me simply.” “A boat hit a rock off Temple Point,” the captain answered, “an’ she went down. She must ’a’ been one of them fancy mahogony tubs with a gas engine in her. I was awake an’ watchin’ when her lights went out, an’ I run. down the Point road callin’ for help, which wasn’t any use. About half a mile down the shore I heard a cry—a child’s crycome over the water above the sound of the wind an’ the poundin’ of the waves. I plunged into the surf an tried to get through; but they fought ane back until my strength was almost gone.” _ - Anot-lier flash of lightning, and the doctor caught a glimpse of the drawn, haggard face , the unconscious pose of body,, bent forward, the straining eyes and arms rigidly extended, as Wilson continued excitedly: “Then I heard her voice again! It seemed like my strength came back all my strength of thirty years ago—an’ I got through into deep water. I swam like a demon, I tell ye; but when the [lightning showed me the little tyke lashed to a cabin door, floating within arm’s length, my strength went again, I guess, for I don’t remember how we made the beach. Then I was runnin’ along the hard 6and with her in my arms. Her little head was on my shoulder, an’ I was wonderin’ if she was still alive. Somehow we got to the house an’ the wife. She’s got her now, an’ I came here. If you’ve ever had a child of your own, Doc, an’ lost it; if you’ve—” “Come! let us be quick,” the doctor interruped, drawing on his coat-; and together they hurried down the narrow stairs that led .to the rooms over Stoneport’s only drug store, to the broad sidewalk along the flooded street.

Dawn had changed the low, eastern clouds from black to a dirty grey. The rain had dwindled to a fine mist that the wind drove in puffs, now warm, now cool, into their faces. As they hurried along the shell road of the Point the surf boomed almost at their feet, while from the right came the quieter murmur of the troubled waters of the bay. “Hurry!” Wilson shouted whenever a gust of wind took the doctor’s breath away and slowed their progress. Then during a lull he muttered 1 : “Nobody saw me fetch her in.' Nobody saw me.” He repeated the phrase again and again. It seemed to possess his tired mind, and he shouted it tauntingly. “Nobody saw me save her!” he shouted almost frenziedly. “Hurry! for God’s sake, Doc! Nobody saw me, I tell ye—not one soul!” The garden about Capt. Wilson’s cottage was in a disorder beyond repair. His tiny grove of fig trees lay unrooted, broken, stripped of leaves. Rose vines had 1 - been torn from the gallery; his grape arbor was demolished —all a riotous tangle; but they hastened up the shell walk, unnoticing the havoc in the half-light. “In there.” Wilson indicated the door with .a trembling hand when they reached the hall. Dr. West entered. Wilson’s wife

was kneeling by tile bed. She raised her face from the covering and glanc- ' ed beseechingly at the physician, then turned her gaze upon the inert child. “I’ve done all I could,” she said; then added, her voice broken with sobs: “She’s so—so like our baby—■ifche same age— three years when she ” Her tear-brimmed eyes widened, a spasm of grief crossed her features as the ghost of her sorrow returned hauntingly out of the dead years,

With his fingers on the fluttering lungs again and again with his own pulse, the old physician compressed the narrow chest and filled the little breath. From his medicine case he mixed a mild stimulent and poured it, drop by drop, between the child’s pale tips. Wilson had thrown a coat over his naked shoulders. He paced the length of the room awkwardly, then out into the hall and back again, staggering when he turned at the door.

“Will she live?” he asked hoarsely, his hand resting heavily on the doctor’s shoulder.

“I hope so. We have done all we could.”

While they both watched a tinge of color slowly swept across the little face.

“She will live!” Wilson cried gladly, and then added quickly, in a differ enttone:

“Nobody knows I saved her—no* body but you, and you won’t tell she’s here, will you, Doc?”

Tlie doctor arose. “You can’t do that, Wilson,” he replied in surprise. “You wouldn’t do that I’m sure.”

The other turned angrily. He spoke very low, and his voice was tense with passion.

“She’s ours, I tell ye,” lie said, “arid if you speak they’ll come an’ take her.away. I saved her. God gave her to me out there in the storm an’ till© night. We can keep her here without bein’ seen for a month or two, then fix up a tale about her bein’ from trie city, an’ nobody’ll ever know.” He glanoed excitedly at the unconscious child, then advanced threateningly, his hands clenched, his oiliest heaving. “She’s ours!” he cried, “an’ you can’t take her away. We’ve been friends for fifteen years, doc, but if you tell, so help me, I’ll kill ye.” “All right, my friend,” Dr. West returned quietly, soothingly. “I will do as you say, until you change your mind. You can trust me. Sleep now, and when you have rested we will find a-way—we will find a way.”

Wilson turned and knelt beside his wife. His body fell forward across the bod, and lie lay there exhausted. The doctor looked out through the window at the waves dashing and shattering themselves on the rocks of tlio Point, stretching like a huge mailed fist into the sea. The clouds were hurrying across the sky in broken masses. Toiling slowly down the road' he saw a group of men bearing rigid burdens wrapped clumsily in Sailcloth. The sight poignantly recalled memories'-of his own life, and he turned away half blinded.

fW almost a lifetime he had fought death; and long ago, as if in retaliation, death liad robbed him, and loft him heartbroken and alone. The child stirred and ho went to her quickly. She opened her eyes and looked about wildly until she saw his sad, kindly face above her. Then she smiled* faintly, turning her head on the pillow, and fell peacefully asleep. He laid his hand upon the shoulder of the woman, who raised a tortured face,, seemed as though she had suffered again all the agonies of motherhood.

“Our little girl will live,” he said softly, hia eyes shining with an odd light.

Once a day a freight, train, with a single, unsteady passenger coach, steamed from the North across the marshes into Stoneport. Twelve hours after the wreck it brought a curious crowd, and half a dozen newspaper men, from a city a hundred miles away. The reporters photographed the little pile of wreckage and the scene of the disaster; they interviewed Dr. West, exaggerating his simple statements, and enlarged to graphs the meagre faVcts he gave them. Then, their work finished, they stood (fibout impatiently while the operator at the station clinked off their lurid stories with hesitating, unaccustomed touch.

Two days later the train brought a solitary passenger, a man with "a band of black felt around his hat, who asked directions of the agent, and hurried up ths street. Ho climbed the narrow steps of Dr. West’s office and waited his turn in the ante-room. “My name is Burns,” he announced in a\ matter of fact way, after the doctor’s patients had gone. “I wired you yesterday.” “You are a relative?”

“Yes, I am his brother. They left St. Louis three weeks ago for a trip down the river and a cruise in the Gulf—a fool-hardy undertaking in a small boat. I knew from the descriptions and pictures here”—touching a bundle of newspapers under his arm—“and l I came at once. There is no doubt.”

Dr. West hesitated, embarrassed. “They were all, then,” he asked finally, “your brother, his wife and the engineer?” “No, there was a child, too, who perished with the rest, although the papers do not mention her.”

; “Suppose the child was saved?” the doctor said quickly. “That’s hardly possible,” smiled the other, and it’s just as well, perhaps, for she would have been left quite liikme but for me, -and I would jb&rfl

been compelled to send her to an institution of some sort. Our only relatives that I know of are' some distant cousins living in England whom I have never seen.” “And your brother’s wife?” - .“She Was raised' by an old aunt, who has died . since they were married.” “But suppose the child was rescued,” the doctor insisted, dreamily. “Suppose she had found a home with a childless couple who loved her beyond anything on earth, and suppose there liad been a lonely old fellow to watch over her through the years, as ho would protect a child of his own.” “That would have been, a very good solution,” the young man replied; “but don’t you think this speculation, is rather ridiculous when I am so certain?” ’“By the way,” the doctor exclaimed, reaching for his hat, “you must excuse me. I have an important call to make at once, but I must seo you again this evening, say at 8 o’clock.” “All right,” Burns answered. “I’ll meet you here. I’m not leaving until to-morrow afternoon.” They shook hands, and the doctor hurried away. For the first time in his life he failed to recognise the friends, who passed, and they looked after him, wondering at his preoccupied air, and the strange, youthful spring of bis step as be turned into the Point road. When ho reached Wilson’s cottage the blinds were drawn, the place was mvtstoriously quiet and looked deserted. He knocked several times before the door was opened very cautiously by the captain. “She’s doin’ fine,” ho whispered, by way of greeting. “Look liere.

All the furniture had been removed from the parlor; a tarpaulin had been spread over the carpet, and white sand had been piled high upon it. Here sat a little girl, building soft pyramids and caverns and fragile walls, using tlie captain’s Sunday hat for a sand bucket.

“In here, Wilson,” the doctor said, turning away regretfully. “1 want to speak with you alone.” He led the way into the room across the hall, and the captain followed, his brows knit with a puzzled frown. “I have good news for you,” the doctor began enigmatically; “the child’s uncle reached town this afternoon.”

Wilson’s face went white. “You didn’t tell him?” he blurted out. “He don’t know?”

“No, I am not going to tell him. 1 have left that for you to do at 8 o’clock -this evening.” “I’ll never do it,” Wilson cried defiantly. “I haven’t changed ray mind, an’ I never wul!” “You will do what is right, I am sure,” said the doctor confidently. “We have been friends for a long time and I have never heard of your doing anything wrong.” “Right or wrong, it makes no difference. I saved her!”

“No; no; my friend,” the doctor corrected him, “neither you nor I nor the one who sent her adrift can justly make that claim. Her little, wavering spark of life was in tlio nands of a higher Power, and He decreed that it should flame again.” Wilson sank on the edge of the bed; his haggard face fell into Iris hands. “Why do you come to take her away?” lie demanded. “She’s happy here.”

“Yes, I am sure she would always bo happy here,” the doctor answered. “I was not thinking of her happiness now, however, but of your own—yours and mine l —and the love between your wife and you.” “I know. She says wo ought to give her up, but it would break her heart, too, an’ wo can’t—wo can’t, I tell ye.” “It was for us three that I came,” the doctor continued. “First for yourself and for her, because lovo could not livo in hearts that are deceitful. Then, I came for myself, also -to keep, if I could, a perfect friendship from being marred by a black stain.”

“I said harsh words the other night,” the captain wavered, “but I—”

“I forgave them.” “ —I felt as if the littlo tyke we tost- when we were young had come back again. But you can’t understand, Doc. You don’t know wliat it is to loso a child, an’ then—” “I have suffered a greater loss than that, Wilson.” The doctor braced his stooped shoulders, taking a deep breath for bis last appeal, and continued : .......

“Your neighbors arid friends have always respected you for an honest man. Have they been mistaken P” He paused, but there was no reply, “They will bolieve a lie from you, and that lie will taunt and mock you. You will know little of the life you wish to rob this child of, yet thoughts and speculations of that life will haunt your mind and make you miserable.” “I have enough to give her everything she wants; and I won’t—” “Yes; but, as I said, we were thinking of ourselves. Do you know that this child, when she grows older, may discover your deception. Then she will bate you. Can you afford it, Wilson ? You. who have always been a good man.” Tiring of-her play, the little girl had wandered across the hall and

opened the door noiselessly. “Dood man,” she lisped, catching the last words. “Dood man.” Wilson sprang up with a cry and clasped the wondering child in his arms. “You’re right, Doc,” he said brokenly. “I guess we’ll—we’ll have to do what’s right.” 1 Doctor West stepped to the window and threw open the closed blinds, flooding the room with the golden, sunset. “He deserves to suffer for a while, at least,” lie mused, looking out beyond the long reach of sand to where the waves tossed and glinted and murmured peacefully. Then another thought crossed his mind : It is the physician’s duty to alleviate suffering when he can—it matters not whether it be tlie pain of the body or the anguish of the heart. “By the way, my friend,” he be*, gan, liis voice trembling, and again his eyes shone with .a strange light—the ethereal light of victory.