They had no sooner reached the head of the stairs than a second tinkle came rippling fairy-like the length of the white-finished hall from a room at the end facing the West. Miss Van Patten paused. But the orange-colored cat preceded them and stepped daintily over the sill.
“Shall we follow her Highness?” whispered Barnes.
The girl shrank back a little.
“If we fail?” she gasped.
“Then,” answered Barnes, “there’ll be nothing left but to explain.”
“Would he ever forgive us? Would he ever trust us again?”
“That comes later,” he reminded her. “We haven’t failed yet.”
“So much depends upon you!”
“Much more depends upon him. If his hunger for the boy is great enough, he will forget everything but the fact that he has at last something tangible—something to grasp.”
Again her eyes grew big as she studied him with the feeling that not until this very moment had she ever seen him before. Here in the intimacy of the upper chambers the boldness of the act oppressed her. Before, it had seemed only a theory, but now it became an actuality. He himself felt it. It would have taken little to have turned him back. But at this moment the orange-colored cat returned for them. Then the father called. Time was pressing. She took the lead but Barnes with a quicker pace stepped ahead of her.
At the door, he paused. He saw a large room bathed in the glow of the setting sun. In one corner stood a large four-posted bed. The white counterpane stood out like a snow-sheeted pool among evergreens. Bolstered up with fat pillows he saw a face that would have served for a model of a saint’s. He had but a second to study it and make his decision, but that was time enough. It was a child’s face grown old. White-bearded though it was, it was still a child’s face. All the man-fret was smoothed out of it, all the world marks rubbed away. He seemed more like a son lying there than a father. His eyes were closed and one thin arm lay outside the clothes by his side. His face was turned towards the door. The cat leaped upon the counterpane and instantly the father raised his head.
Barnes strode to his side as the cry escaped. He placed a strong hand upon the thin arm. The eyes though they remained closed seemed to strain in that direction. The lips moved.
“My son!” he trembled.
Barnes bowed his head. That was a cry to go to a man’s heart. He could not answer it. He felt the gentle fingers play up his arm to his hair. He felt them flutter over his forehead, his cheeks, his chin. Then, kneeling, he waited for the second cry. It came charged with such feeling as to bring a strain to his throat.
“My son!”
There was no doubt in it. It was a wild, glad, embracing sob. It was the utterance of an empty heart suddenly filled. He was breathing rapidly from the excitement, but he freed his other hand and with the two clung almost fiercely to the boy’s arm.
“You’ve come back,” he whispered.
“Yes,” answered Barnes, finding his voice, “I’ve come back.”
The voice for a second seemed to startle the old man. His hold relaxed. The girl who had crept to the other side of him raised her head with her eyes fixed on Barnes, scarcely breathing. The old man’s eyelids fluttered as though he were straining to force them open.
“I’ve come back,” repeated Barnes.
“I can feel you, but your voice—Oh, it’s enough now that I can feel you! I’ve often heard your voice, lying here but—but my hands were always empty.”
The girl breathed again. Barnes met her eyes. He nodded encouragement. It was as he had thought; the fact of a living tangible presence here was enough to dispel all minor doubts.
“You’ve been gone so long,” faltered the father, “I—I had forgotten. I expected to see you as you were when you left.”
“I was a boy when I left,” answered Barnes.
“Yes, yes, and I was not boy enough. You—you forgive, Joe?”
“It is for you to forgive, father.”
“Your voice has grown kinder. Eleanor—you are my eyes. Help me to see him as he is to-day. He is taller?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“He is tanned?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“I can see him! I can see him! He has grown handsome, my boy, eh?”
She met Barnes’ eyes steadily.
“Yes,” she answered, “I think you could say that.”
“Where is Philomela?” he demanded suddenly. “She should be here to see my boy.”
“She is downstairs, Daddy. She—she was a bit overcome.”
“What wonder? This goes to one’s head.”
He lay back upon the pillows, his breath coming brokenly. Barnes feared for him.
“I must not stay long, father,” he ventured. “You must rest a little. I’ll come up later.”
He felt the sudden grip of Van Patten’s fingers upon his arm.
“There is so much for you to tell. I’ve lost five years out of your life.”
“There are all the days to come.”
“There must be many—many to make up for the days that have gone.”
“I will try to bring back those days to you.”
“You are glad to be home again, eh?”
“Yes,” Barnes answered truthfully. “You make me glad to be here.”
“There are so many things,” he faltered. “But your aunt must see you. She is not as strong as I am. I—I am afraid she is failing a little.”
“You will rest now?”
“Yes, I can rest now. Boy, you have brought me home.”
Barnes pressed the feeble hand and rose.
“Shall I send John to you?” asked the daughter. “Do you need anything?”
“Nothing more,” he answered, as he sank back wearily among the pillows. He looked like a man who had come to the end of a long journey.
Barnes started out.
“You’ll be downstairs? You’ll be where I can call you?”
“Yes,” answered Barnes.
The girl stopped and kissed her father’s thin lips. He reached up his hand and smoothed her hair a moment. Then his arm fell and he seemed to sleep, dropping off quickly as a child does.
Aunt Philomela had not moved. When the two came in again, she glanced up swiftly.
“Well?” she asked eagerly.
“Yes,” answered Barnes. “It is well.”
“Then you were successful in your deception?”
Miss Van Patten crossed to her aunt’s side and kissed her gray hair. She kept her face hidden there for a moment.
“Aunt! Aunt!” she choked. “If you could have seen!”
Between anger, shame, and relief Aunt Philomela’s lips trembled. But she answered sharply,
“Thank the Lord I was saved from all active participation.”
“If you could have heard his glad cry!”
“I should have been ashamed.”
But in spite of her answer the corners of her mouth grew less tense and the little patches of rose upon her cheeks returned again. Barnes felt glad of that. With her spirit up, she seemed less formidable.
“He accepted you without suspicion?” she inquired of Barnes as though she could not yet believe it.
“In such blind heart-hunger as his,” he answered, “there is little room for suspicion.”
“Truly,” she answered tartly, “my brother must be quite blind.”
As a relief from the tension of the last few minutes, Aunt Philomela’s sharp tongue came as a relish to Barnes. He had never in his life passed a more uncomfortable quarter of an hour.
“There are worse things in the world than blindness,” he suggested.
Miss Van Patten raised her head.
“I was afraid—almost afraid that father’s eyes would open and he would see again.”
“Only a guilty conscience could inspire such a fear,” snapped Aunt Philomela.
“Don’t you want to have him happy?” challenged her niece. “He is sleeping now—the first time for two days.”
“We used to give him powders to make him sleep and forget. Isn’t this a better way?”
“Sleeping powders, my dear, do not operate upon the whole family!”
Barnes smiled.
“Am I so dull?” he asked.
“I was referring to their dream properties rather than their soporific,” Aunt Philomela answered with some magnanimity and yet with suspicious point, too.
“There is a distinction between dreaming and sleeping,” he admitted.
“A clear distinction.”
“It might mark all the difference between a poet and a bore.”
“There is little harm in bores,” declared Aunt Philomela.
“You flatter me.”
“You have drawn a wrong deduction.”
“Then you flatter me still more. I had never thought of myself as a poet. However, if you fear the dreams—an old man’s dreams—it is not too late to withdraw.”
“I should call it a great deal too late.”
“No,” he answered decidedly. “I’ll frame some sort of an excuse for returning to Alaska to-morrow. It may be a bit clumsy but I can make it answer.”
“You’re an adept at that sort of thing.”
“It is for you to decide what we shall do,” he insisted.
The little old lady hesitated. She disliked very much being cornered in such fashion. But Barnes had caught the worry in the girl’s eyes and realized the necessity of having this settled at once.
“It is already decided,” she fenced.
“Only as far as this. He has his dreams for to-day. That is something. To-morrow is not decided.”
Miss Van Patten started. Barnes waited relentlessly.
“I—I don’t know,” faltered Aunt Philomela.
Still he waited. Miss Van Patten started to interpose but he checked her with a glance. The silence grew oppressive.
“You have no right,” squirmed Aunt Philomela.
“Exactly,” he interposed. “You alone have the right.”
“Then,” she snapped. “I suppose we must.”
“I think it’s the only way,” he agreed quietly.
Miss Van Patten embraced her aunt excitedly.
“I knew you’d approve,” she cried.
“Upon compulsion,” interjected Aunt Philomela.
“No,” warned Barnes, “I refuse to have it so.”
“Of circumstances,” added the aunt quickly.
“Which prompt us to every act,” threw in Barnes.
“Wise and unwise,” commented the aunt grimly.
Barnes allowed the matter to drop leaving Aunt Philomela with the last word which she accepted in an unmistakable spirit of victory.
The girl was all activity at once.
“We must show Mr. Barnes to Joe’s room and then supper will be ready,” she exclaimed.
As she met her aunt’s eyes she blushed with pretty embarrassment but she immediately tripped out of the room and soon returned with John.
“John,” she ordered. “You will make Mr. Joe’s room ready at once. You will follow him?” she asked, turning to Barnes.
It was neatly done. With a bow to Aunt Philomela, Barnes made his exit.
The room to which he was led had been prepared for weeks. It faced the East. It was large and was furnished with a huge black walnut bed, a cool matting of green, a great high-boy with brass handles, and a bureau with drawers two feet deep. White dimity curtains fluttered at the windows. But for the moment John interested him more than the homely furnishings.
John was as stoical as an English butler. He was short, stout, and of that non-committal middle age which ranges between twenty-five and forty. He met one’s eyes with a sort of timid stare and a suggestion that he knew and he would tell. There was a nodding mystery about him. He made Barnes feel like searching the room to see what it was that the man silently hinted might be concealed. John was a piquer of curiosity—a caballer with the unknown.
“John,” suggested Barnes after the man had thrown back the spread, shown him his bath, and glanced about significantly for his baggage. “John, I think you’d better look under the bed.”
John obeyed and stared so long into a dark corner there, that Barnes took a position on his knees beside him.
“Did you see anything move?” he inquired.
“Move? Where, sir?” John gasped.
“Over there. A sort of—Thing.”
“Good Lord, sir!”
“I may have been mistaken,” Barnes admitted, “but perhaps we’d better examine the closets.”
John crossed the room with some hesitation and with many backward glances. He opened the closet door the matter of a foot and peered in. Barnes coughed. John darted back.
“Anything there, John?”
“What—what did you expect, sir?”
“A sort of—Thing.”
“No, sir,” answered John eagerly and with conviction, moving deeper into the room. “There’s nothing of that sort there, sir.”
“You see,” explained Barnes. “I’ve just come from the frozen North. There are many strange things there—very strange things.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You may go.”
John accepted his dismissal with alacrity.
“If there are to be mysteries here,” commented Barnes to himself. “We may as well have them picturesque.”