The Cost

VIII.

THE DECISION.

When the sign-board on a station platform said "5.2 miles to St. X," Pauline sank back in her chair in the parlor-car with blanched face. And almost immediately, so it seemed to her, Saint X came into view—home! She fancied she could see the very house as she looked down on the mass of green in which the town was embowered. The train slid into the station, slowed down—there were people waiting on the platform—her father! He was glancing from window to window, trying to catch a glimpse of her; and his expression of almost agonized eagerness made her heartsick. She had been away from him for nearly seven months—long enough to break the habit which makes it impossible for members of a family to know how they really look to each other. How gray and thin his beard seemed! What was the meaning of that gaunt look about his shoulders? What was the strange, terrifying shadow over him? "Why, he's OLD!" The tears welled into her eyes—"He's gliding away from me!" She remembered what she had to tell him and her knees almost refused to support her.

He was at the step as she sprang down. She flew into his arms. He held her away from him and scanned her face with anxious eyes.

"Is my little girl ill?" he asked. "The telegram made me uneasy."

"Oh, no!" she said with a reassuring hug. "Where's mother?"

"She—she's got a—a—surprise for you. We must hurry—she'll be impatient, though she's seen you since I have."

At the curbstone stood the familiar surrey, with Mordecai humped upon the front seat. "I don't see how the colonel ever knowed you," said he, as she shook hands with him. "I never seen the like for growin'."

"But YOU look just the same, Mordecai—you and the surrey and the horses. And how's Amanda?"

"Poorly," replied Mordecai—his invariable answer to inquiries about his wife. She patterned after the old school, which held that for a woman to confess to good health was for her to confess to lack of refinement, if not of delicacy.

"You think I've changed, father?" asked Pauline, when the horses were whirling them home. She was so busily greeting the familiar streets and houses and trees and faces that she hardly heard his reply.

"'I never seen the like for growin','" he quoted, his eyes shining with pride in her. He was a reticent man by nature as well as by training; he could not have SAID how beautiful, how wonderful he thought her, or how intensely he loved her. The most he could do to express himself to her was, a little shyly, to pat her hand—and to LOOK it into Mordecai's back.

She was about to snuggle up to him as a wave of delight at being home again swept over her; but her secret rushed from the background of her mind. "How could I have done it? How can I tell them?" Then, the serene and beautiful kindness of her father's face reassured her.

Her mother was waiting in the open front door as the surrey came up the drive—still the same dear old-young mother, with the same sweet dignity and gentleness.

"Oh, mother, mother!" exclaimed Pauline, leaping from the carriage into her arms. And as they closed about her she felt that sorrow and evil could not touch her; felt just as when she, a little girl, fleeing from some frightful phantom of her own imagining, had rushed there for safety. She choked, she sobbed, she led her mother to the big sofa opposite the stairway; and, sitting there, they held each the other tightly, Pauline kissing her, smoothing her hair, she caressing Pauline and crying softly.

"We've got a surprise for you, Polly," said she, when they were calmer.

"I don't want anything but you and father," replied Pauline.

Her father turned away—and so she did not see the shadow deepen in his face. Her mother shook her head, mischief in her eyes that were young as a girl's—younger far than her daughter's at that moment. "Go into the sitting-room and see," she said.

Pauline opened the sitting-room door. John Dumont caught her in his arms. "Polly!" he exclaimed. "It's all right. They've come round and—and—here I am!"

Pauline pushed him away from her and sank to the floor in a faint.

When she came to herself she was lying on the divan in the sitting-room. Her mother was kneeling beside her, bathing her temples with cold water; her father and her husband were standing, helplessly looking at her. "Send him away," she murmured, closing her eyes.

Only her mother heard. She motioned to the two men to leave the room. When the door closed Pauline sat up.

"He said it was all right," she began feverishly. "What did he mean, mother?" She was hoping she was to be spared the worst part of her ordeal.

But her mother's reply dashed her hopes, made her settle back among the cushions and hide her face. "It IS all right, Polly. You're to have your own way, and it's your father's way. John has convinced him that he really has changed. We knew—that is, I suspected why you were coming, and we thought we'd give you a surprise—give you what your heart was set on, before you had to ask for it. I'm so sorry, dear, that the shock was—"

Pauline lay perfectly still, her face hidden. After a pause: "I don't feel well enough to see him now. I want this day with you and father. To-morrow—to-morrow, we'll—to-day I want to be as I was when I was—just you and father, and the house and the garden."

Her mother left her for a moment and, when she came back, said: "He's gone."

Pauline gave a quick sigh of relief. Soon she rose. "I'm going for father, and we'll walk in the garden and forget there's anybody else in the world but just us three."

At half-past eight they had family prayers in the sitting-room; Pauline kneeling near her mother, her father kneeling beside his arm-chair and in a tremulous voice pouring out his gratitude to God for keeping them all "safe from the snares and temptations of the world," for leading them thus far on the journey.

"And, God, our Father, we pray Thee, have this daughter of ours, this handmaiden of Thine, ever in Thy keeping. And these things we ask in the name of Thy Son—Amen." The serene quiet, the beloved old room, the evening scene familiar to her from her earliest childhood, her father's reverent, earnest voice, halting and almost breaking after every word of the petition for her; her mother's soft echo of his "Amen"—Pauline's eyes were swimming as she rose from her knees.

Her mother went with her to her bedroom, hovered about her as she undressed, helped her now and then with fingers that trembled with happiness, and, when she was in bed, put out the light and "tucked her in" and kissed her—as in the old days. "Good night—God bless my little daughter—my HAPPY little daughter."

Pauline waited until she knew that they were sleeping. Then she put on a dressing-gown and went to the open window—how many springtimes had she sat there in the moonlight to watch, as now, the tulips and the hyacinths standing like fairies and bombarding the stars with the most delicious perfumes.

She sat hour after hour, giving no outward sign of battle within. In every lull came Scarborough's "Be SURE, Pauline!" to start the tumult afresh. When the stars began to pale in the dawn she rose—she WAS sure. Far from sure that she was doing the best for herself; but sure, sure without a doubt, that she was doing her duty to her parents.

"I must not punish THEM for MY sin," she said.

Late the next morning she went to the farthest corner of the garden, to the small summer-house where she had played with her dolls and her dishes, where she had worked with slate and spelling-book, where she had read her favorite school-girl romances, where she had dreamed her own school-girl romance. She was waiting under the friendly old canopy of bark—the posts supporting it were bark-clad, too; up and around and between them clambered the morning-glories in whose gorgeous, velvet-soft trumpets the sun-jewels glittered.

And presently he came down the path, his keen face and insolent eyes triumphant. He was too absorbed in his own emotion especially to note hers. Besides, she had always been receptive rather than demonstrative with him.

"We'll be married again, and do the gossips out of a sensation," he said. Though she was not looking at him, his eyes shifted from her face as he added in a voice which at another time she might have thought strained: "Then, too, your father and mother and mine are so strait-laced—it'd give 'em a terrible jar to find out. You're a good deal like them, Polly—only in a modern sort of way."

Pauline flushed scarlet and compressed her lips. She said presently: "You're sure you wish it?"

"Wish what?"

"To marry me. Sometimes I've thought we're both too young, that we might wait——"

He put his arm round her with an air of proud possession. "What'd be the sense in that?" he demanded gaily. "Aren't you MINE?"

And again she flushed and lowered her eyes and compressed her lips. Then she astonished him by flinging her arms round his neck and kissing him hysterically. "But I DO love you!" she exclaimed. "I do! I DO!"