From afar Freckles saw them coming. The Angel was standing, waving her hat. He sprang on his wheel and raced, jolting and pounding, down the corduroy to meet them. The Bird Woman stopped the horse and the Angel gave him the bit of print paper. Freckles leaned the wheel against a tree and took the proof with eager fingers. He never before had seen a study from any of his chickens. He stood staring. When he turned his face toward them it was transfigured with delight.
“You see!” he exclaimed, and began gazing again. “Oh, me Little Chicken!” he cried. “Oh me ilegant Little Chicken! I'd be giving all me money in the bank for you!”
Then he thought of the Angel's muff and Mrs. Duncan's hat, and added, “or at least, all but what I'm needing bad for something else. Would you mind stopping at the cabin a minute and showing this to Mother Duncan?” he asked.
“Give me that little book in your pocket,” said the Bird Woman.
She folded the outer edges of the proof so that it would fit into the book, explaining as she did so its perishable nature in that state. Freckles went hurrying ahead, and they arrived in time to see Mrs. Duncan gazing as if awestruck, and to hear her bewildered “Weel I be drawed on!”
Freckles and the Angel helped the Bird Woman to establish herself for a long day at the mouth of Sleepy Snake Creek. Then she sent them away and waited what luck would bring to her.
“Now, what shall we do?” inquired the Angel, who was a bundle of nerves and energy.
“Would you like to go to me room awhile?” asked Freckles.
“If you don't care to very much, I'd rather not,” said the Angel. “I'll tell you. Let's go help Mrs. Duncan with dinner and play with the baby. I love a nice, clean baby.”
They started toward the cabin. Every few minutes they stopped to investigate something or to chatter over some natural history wonder. The Angel had quick eyes; she seemed to see everything, but Freckles' were even quicker; for life itself had depended on their sharpness ever since the beginning of his work at the swamp. They saw it at the same time.
“Someone has been making a flagpole,” said the Angel, running the toe of her shoe around the stump, evidently made that season. “Freckles, what would anyone cut a tree as small as that for?”
“I don't know,” said Freckles.
“Well, but I want to know!” said the Angel. “No one came away here and cut it for fun. They've taken it away. Let's go back and see if we can see it anywhere around there.”
She turned, retraced her footsteps, and began eagerly searching. Freckles did the same.
“There it is!” he exclaimed at last, “leaning against the trunk of that big maple.”
“Yes, and leaning there has killed a patch of dried bark,” said the Angel. “See how dried it appears?”
Freckles stared at her.
“Angel!” he shouted, “I bet you it's a marked tree!”
“Course it is!” cried the Angel. “No one would cut that sapling and carry it away there and lean it up for nothing. I'll tell you! This is one of Jack's marked trees. He's climbed up there above anyone's head, peeled the bark, and cut into the grain enough to be sure. Then he's laid the bark back and fastened it with that pole to mark it. You see, there're a lot of other big maples close around it. Can you climb to that place?”
“Yes,” said Freckles; “if I take off my wading-boots I can.”
“Then take them off,” said the Angel, “and do hurry! Can't you see that I am almost crazy to know if this tree is a marked one?”
When they pushed the sapling over, a piece of bark as big as the crown of Freckles' hat fell away.
“I believe it looks kind of nubby,” encouraged the Angel, backing away, with her face all screwed into a twist in an effort to intensify her vision.
Freckles reached the opening, then slid rapidly to the ground. He was almost breathless while his eyes were flashing.
“The bark's been cut clean with a knife, the sap scraped away, and a big chip taken out deep. The trunk is the twistiest thing you ever saw. It's full of eyes as a bird is of feathers!”
The Angel was dancing and shaking his hand.
“Oh, Freckles,” she cried, “I'm so delighted that you found it!”
“But I didn't,” said the astonished Freckles. “That tree isn't my find; it's yours. I forgot it and was going on; you wouldn't give up, and kept talking about it, and turned back. You found it!”
“You'd best be looking after your reputation for truth and veracity,” said the Angel. “You know you saw that sapling first!”
“Yes, after you took me back and set me looking for it,” scoffed Freckles.
The clear, ringing echo of strongly swung axes came crashing through the Limberlost.
“'Tis the gang!” shouted Freckles. “They're clearing a place to make the camp. Let's go help!”
“Hadn't we better mark that tree again?” cautioned the Angel. “It's away in here. There's such a lot of them, and all so much alike. We'd feel good and green to find it and then lose it.”
Freckles lifted the sapling to replace it, but the Angel motioned him away.
“Use your hatchet,” she said. “I predict this is the most valuable tree in the swamp. You found it. I'm going to play that you're my knight. Now, you nail my colors on it.”
She reached up, and pulling a blue bow from her hair, untied and doubled it against the tree. Freckles turned his eyes from her and managed the fastening with shaking fingers. The Angel had called him her knight! Dear Lord, how he loved her! She must not see his face, or surely her quick eyes would read what he was fighting to hide. He did not dare lay his lips on that ribbon then, but that night he would return to it. When they had gone a little distance, they both looked back, and the morning breeze set the bit of blue waving them a farewell.
They walked at a rapid pace.
“I am sorry about scaring the birds,” said the Angel, “but it's almost time for them to go anyway. I feel dreadfully over having the swamp ruined, but isn't it a delight to hear the good, honest ring of those axes, instead of straining your ears for stealthy sounds? Isn't it fine to go openly and freely, with nothing worse than a snake or a poison-vine to fear?”
“Ah!” said Freckles, with a long breath, “it's better than you can dream, Angel. Nobody will ever be guessing some of the things I've been through trying to keep me promise to the Boss, and to hold out until this day. That it's come with only one fresh stump, and the log from that saved, and this new tree to report, isn't it grand? Maybe Mr. McLean will be forgetting that stump when he sees this tree, Angel!”
“He can't forget it,” said the Angel; and in answer to Freckles' startled eyes she added, “because he never had any reason to remember it. He couldn't have done a whit better himself. My father says so. You're all right, Freckles!”
She reached him her hand, and as two children, they broke into a run when they came closer the gang. They left the swamp by the west road and followed the trail until they found the men. To the Angel it seemed complete charm. In the shadiest spot on the west side of the line, at the edge of the swamp and very close Freckles' room, they were cutting bushes and clearing space for a big tent for the men's sleeping-quarters, another for a dining-hall, and a board shack for the cook. The teamsters were unloading, the horses were cropping leaves from the bushes, while each man was doing his part toward the construction of the new Limberlost quarters.
Freckles helped the Angel climb on a wagonload of canvas in the shade. She removed her leggings, wiped her heated face, and glowed with happiness and interest.
The gang had been sifted carefully. McLean now felt that there was not a man in it who was not trustworthy.
They all had heard of the Angel's plucky ride for Freckles' relief; several of them had been in the rescue party. Others, new since that time, had heard the tale rehearsed in its every aspect around the smudge-fires at night. Almost all of them knew the Angel by sight from her trips with the Bird Woman to their leases. They all knew her father, her position, and the luxuries of her home. Whatever course she had chosen with them they scarcely would have resented it, but the Angel never had been known to choose a course. Her spirit of friendliness was inborn and inbred. She loved everyone, so she sympathized with everyone. Her generosity was only limited by what was in her power to give.
She came down the trail, hand in hand with the red-haired, freckled timber guard whom she had worn herself past the limit of endurance to save only a few weeks before, racing in her eagerness to reach them, and laughing her “Good morning, gentlemen,” right and left. When she was ensconced on the wagonload of tenting, she sat on a roll of canvas as a queen on her throne. There was not a man of the gang who did not respect her. She was a living exponent of universal brotherhood. There was no man among them who needed her exquisite face or dainty clothing to teach him that the deference due a gentlewoman should be paid her. That the spirit of good fellowship she radiated levied an especial tribute of its own, and it became their delight to honor and please her.
As they raced toward the wagon—“Let me tell about the tree, please?” she begged Freckles.
“Why, sure!” said Freckles.
He probably would have said the same to anything she suggested. When McLean came, he found the Angel flushed and glowing, sitting on the wagon, her hands already filled. One of the men, who was cutting a scrub-oak, had carried to her a handful of crimson leaves. Another had gathered a bunch of delicate marsh-grass heads for her. Someone else, in taking out a bush, had found a daintily built and lined little nest, fresh as when made.
She held up her treasures and greeted McLean, “Good morning, Mr. Boss of the Limberlost!”
The gang shouted, while he bowed profoundly before her.
“Everyone listen!” cried the Angel, climbing a roll of canvas. “I have something to say! Freckles has been guarding here over a year now, and he presents the Limberlost to you, with every tree in it saved; for good measure he has this morning located the rarest one of them all: the one in from the east line, that Wessner spoke of the first day—nearest the one you took out. All together! Everyone! Hurrah for Freckles!”
With flushing cheeks and gleaming eyes, gaily waving the grass above her head, she led in three cheers and a tiger. Freckles slipped into the swamp and hid himself, for fear he could not conceal his pride and his great surging, throbbing love for her.
The Angel subsided on the canvas and explained to McLean about the maple. The Boss was mightily pleased. He took Freckles and set out to re-locate and examine the tree. The Angel was interested in the making of the camp, so she preferred to remain with the men. With her sharp eyes she was watching every detail of construction; but when it came to the stretching of the dining-hall canvas she proceeded to take command. The men were driving the rope-pins, when the Angel arose on the wagon and, leaning forward, spoke to Duncan, who was directing the work.
“I believe if you will swing that around a few feet farther, you will find it better, Mr. Duncan,” she said. “That way will let the hot sun in at noon, while the sides will cut off the best breeze.”
“That's a fact,” said Duncan, studying the conditions.
So, by shifting the pins a little, they obtained comfort for which they blessed the Angel every day. When they came to the sleeping-tent, they consulted her about that. She explained the general direction of the night breeze and indicated the best position for the tent. Before anyone knew how it happened, the Angel was standing on the wagon, directing the location and construction of the cooking-shack, the erection of the crane for the big boiling-pots, and the building of the store-room. She superintended the laying of the floor of the sleeping-tent lengthwise, So that it would be easier to sweep, and suggested a new arrangement of the cots that would afford all the men an equal share of night breeze. She left the wagon, and climbing on the newly erected dining-table, advised with the cook in placing his stove, table, and kitchen utensils.
When Freckles returned from the tree to join in the work around the camp, he caught glimpses of her enthroned on a soapbox, cleaning beans. She called to him that they were invited for dinner, and that they had accepted the invitation.
When the beans were steaming in the pot, the Angel advised the cook to soak them overnight the next time, so that they would cook more quickly and not burst. She was sure their cook at home did that way, and the CHEF of the gang thought it would be a good idea. The next Freckles saw of her she was paring potatoes. A little later she arranged the table.
She swept it with a broom, instead of laying a cloth; took the hatchet and hammered the deepest dents from the tin plates, and nearly skinned her fingers scouring the tinware with rushes. She set the plates an even distance apart, and laid the forks and spoons beside them. When the cook threw away half a dozen fruit-cans, she gathered them up and melted off the tops, although she almost blistered her face and quite blistered her fingers doing it. Then she neatly covered these improvised vases with the Manila paper from the groceries, tying it with wisps of marshgrass. These she filled with fringed gentians, blazing-star, asters, goldenrod, and ferns, placing them the length of the dining-table. In one of the end cans she arranged her red leaves, and in the other the fancy grass. Two men, watching her, went away proud of themselves and said that she was “a born lady.” She laughingly caught up a paper bag and fitted it jauntily to her head in imitation of a cook's cap. Then she ground the coffee, and beat a couple of eggs to put in, “because there is company,” she gravely explained to the cook. She asked that delighted individual if he did not like it best that way, and he said he did not know, because he never had a chance to taste it. The Angel said that was her case exactly—she never had, either; she was not allowed anything stronger than milk. Then they laughed together.
She told the cook about camping with her father, and explained that he made his coffee that way. When the steam began to rise from the big boiler, she stuffed the spout tightly with clean marshgrass, to keep the aroma in, placed the boiler where it would only simmer, and explained why. The influence of the Angel's visit lingered with the cook through the remainder of his life, while the men prayed for her frequent return.
She was having a happy time, when McLean came back jubilant, from his trip to the tree. How jubilant he told only the Angel, for he had been obliged to lose faith in some trusted men of late, and had learned discretion by what he suffered. He planned to begin clearing out a road to the tree that same afternoon, and to set two guards every night, for it promised to be a rare treasure, so he was eager to see it on the way to the mills.
“I am coming to see it felled,” cried the Angel. “I feel a sort of motherly interest in that tree.”
McLean was highly amused. He would have staked his life on the honesty of either the Angel or Freckles; yet their versions of the finding of the tree differed widely.
“Tell me, Angel,” the Boss said jestingly. “I think I have a right to know. Who really did locate that tree?”
“Freckles,” she answered promptly and emphatically.
“But he says quite as positively that it was you. I don't understand.”
The Angel's legal look flashed into her face. Her eyes grew tense with earnestness. She glanced around, and seeing no towel or basin, held out her hand for Sears to pour water over them. Then, using the skirt of her dress to dry them, she climbed on the wagon.
“I'll tell you, word for word, how it happened,” she said, “and then you shall decide, and Freckles and I will agree with you.”
When she had finished her version, “Tell us, 'oh, most learned judge!'” she laughingly quoted, “which of us located that tree?”
“Blest if I know who located it!” exclaimed McLean. “But I have a fairly accurate idea as to who put the blue ribbon on it.”
The Boss smiled significantly at Freckles, who just had come, for they had planned that they would instruct the company to reserve enough of the veneer from that very tree to make the most beautiful dressing table they could design for the Angel's share of the discovery.
“What will you have for yours?” McLean had asked of Freckles.
“If it's all the same to you, I'll be taking mine out in music lessons—begging your pardon—voice culture,” said Freckles with a grimace.
McLean laughed, for Freckles needed to see or hear only once to absorb learning as the thirsty earth sucks up water.
The Angel placed McLean at the head of the table. She took the foot, with Freckles on her right, while the lumber gang, washed, brushed, and straightened until they felt unfamiliar with themselves and each other, filled the sides. That imposed a slight constraint. Then, too, the men were afraid of the flowers, the polished tableware, and above all, of the dainty grace of the Angel. Nowhere do men so display lack of good breeding and culture as in dining. To sprawl on the table, scoop with their knives, chew loudly, gulp coffee, and duck their heads as snapping-turtles for every bite, had not been noticed by them until the Angel, sitting straightly, suddenly made them remember that they, too, were possessed of spines. Instinctively every man at the table straightened.
To reach the tree was a more difficult task than McLean had supposed. The gang could approach nearest on the outside toward the east, but after they reached the end of the east entrance there was yet a mile of most impenetrable thicket, trees big and little, and bushes of every variety and stage of growth. In many places the muck had to be filled to give the horses and wagons a solid foundation over which to haul heavy loads. It was several days before they completed a road to the noble, big tree and were ready to fell it.
When the sawing began, Freckles was watching down the road where it met the trail leading from Little Chicken's tree. He had gone to the tree ahead of the gang to remove the blue ribbon. Carefully folded, it now lay over his heart. He was promising himself much comfort with that ribbon, when he would leave for the city next month to begin his studies and dream the summer over again. It would help to make things tangible. When he was dressed as other men, and at his work, he knew where he meant to home that precious bit of blue. It should be his good-luck token, and he would wear it always to keep bright in memory the day on which the Angel had called him her knight.
How he would study, and oh, how he would sing! If only he could fulfill McLean's expectations, and make the Angel proud of him! If only he could be a real knight!
He could not understand why the Angel had failed to come. She had wanted to see their tree felled. She would be too late if she did not arrive soon. He had told her it would be ready that morning, and she had said she surely would be there. Why, of all mornings, was she late on this?
McLean had ridden to town. If he had been there, Freckles would have asked that they delay the felling, but he scarcely liked to ask the gang. He really had no authority, although he thought the men would wait; but some way he found such embarrassment in framing the request that he waited until the work was practically ended. The saw was out, and the men were cutting into the felling side of the tree when the Boss rode in.
His first word was to inquire for the Angel. When Freckles said she had not yet come, the Boss at once gave orders to stop work on the tree until she arrived; for he felt that she virtually had located it, and if she desired to see it felled, she should. As the men stepped back, a stiff morning breeze caught the top, that towered high above its fellows. There was an ominous grinding at the base, a shiver of the mighty trunk, then directly in line of its fall the bushes swung apart and the laughing face of the Angel looked on them.
A groan of horror burst from the dry throats of the men, and reading the agony in their faces, she stopped short, glanced up, and understood.
“South!” shouted McLean. “Run south!”
The Angel was helpless. It was apparent that she did not know which way south was. There was another slow shiver of the big tree. The remainder of the gang stood motionless, but Freckles sprang past the trunk and went leaping in big bounds. He caught up the Angel and dashed through the thicket for safety. The swaying trunk was half over when, for an instant, a near-by tree stayed its fall. They saw Freckles' foot catch, and with the Angel he plunged headlong.
A terrible cry broke from the men, while McLean covered his face. Instantly Freckles was up, with the Angel in his arms, struggling on. The outer limbs were on them when they saw Freckles hurl the Angel, face down, in the muck, as far from him as he could send her. Springing after, in an attempt to cover her body with his own, he whirled to see if they were yet in danger, and with outstretched arms braced himself for the shock. The branches shut them from sight, and the awful crash rocked the earth.
McLean and Duncan ran with axes and saws. The remainder of the gang followed, and they worked desperately. It seemed a long time before they caught a glimpse of the Angel's blue dress, but it renewed their vigor. Duncan fell on his knees beside her and tore the muck from underneath her with his hands. In a few seconds he dragged her out, choking and stunned, but surely not fatally hurt.
Freckles lay a little farther under the tree, a big limb pinning him down. His eyes were wide open. He was perfectly conscious. Duncan began mining beneath him, but Freckles stopped him.
“You can't be moving me,” he said. “You must cut off the limb and lift it. I know.”
Two men ran for the big saw. A number of them laid hold of the limb and bore up. In a short time it was removed, and Freckles lay free.
The men bent over to lift him, but he motioned them away.
“Don't be touching me until I rest a bit,” he pleaded.
Then he twisted his head until he saw the Angel, who was wiping muck from her eyes and face on the skirt of her dress.
“Try to get up,” he begged.
McLean laid hold of the Angel and helped her to her feet.
“Do you think any bones are broken?” gasped Freckles.
The Angel shook her head and wiped muck.
“You see if you can find any, sir,” Freckles commanded.
The Angel yielded herself to McLean's touch, and he assured Freckles that she was not seriously injured.
Freckles settled back, a smile of ineffable tenderness on his face.
“Thank the Lord!” he hoarsely whispered.
The Angel leaned toward him.
“Now, Freckles, you!” she cried. “It's your turn. Please get up!”
A pitiful spasm swept Freckles' face. The sight of it washed every vestige of color from the Angel's. She took hold of his hands.
“Freckles, get up!” It was half command, half entreaty.
“Easy, Angel, easy! Let me rest a bit first!” implored Freckles.
She knelt beside him. He reached his arm around her and drew her closely. He looked at McLean in an agony of entreaty that brought the Boss to his knees on the other side.
“Oh, Freckles!” McLean cried. “Not that! Surely we can do something! We must! Let me see!”
He tried to unfasten Freckles' neckband, but his fingers shook so clumsily that the Angel pushed them away and herself laid Freckles' chest bare. With one hasty glance she gathered the clothing together and slipped her arm under his head. Freckles lifted his eyes of agony to hers.
“You see?” he said.
The Angel nodded dumbly.
Freckles turned to McLean.
“Thank you for everything,” he panted. “Where are the boys?”
“They are all here,” said the Boss, “except a couple who have gone for doctors, Mrs. Duncan and the Bird Woman.”
“It's no use trying to do anything,” said Freckles. “You won't forget the muff and the Christmas box. The muff especial?”
There was a movement above them so pronounced that it attracted Freckles' attention, even in that extreme hour. He looked up, and a pleased smile flickered on his drawn face.
“Why, if it ain't me Little Chicken!” he cried hoarsely. “He must be making his very first trip from the log. Now Duncan can have his big watering-trough.”
“It was Little Chicken that made me late,” faltered the Angel. “I was so anxious to get here early I forgot to bring his breakfast from the carriage. He must have been hungry, for when I passed the log he started after me. He was so wabbly, and so slow flying from tree to tree and through the bushes, I just had to wait on him, for I couldn't drive him back.”
“Of course you couldn't! Me bird has too amazing good sinse to go back when he could be following you,” exulted Freckles, exactly as if he did not realize what the delay had cost him. Then he lay silently thinking, but presently he asked slowly: “And so 'twas me Little Chicken that was making you late, Angel?”
“Yes,” said the Angel.
A spasm of fierce pain shook Freckles, and a look of uncertainty crossed his face.
“All summer I've been thanking God for the falling of the feather and all the delights it's brought me,” he muttered, “but this looks as if——”
He stopped short and raised questioning eyes to McLean.
“I can't help being Irish, but I can help being superstitious,” he said. “I mustn't be laying it to the Almighty, or to me bird, must I?”
“No, dear lad,” said McLean, stroking the brilliant hair. “The choice lay with you. You could have stood a rooted dolt like all the remainder of us. It was through your great love and your high courage that you made the sacrifice.”
“Don't you be so naming it, sir!” cried Freckles. “It's just the reverse. If I could be giving me body the hundred times over to save hers from this, I'd be doing it and take joy with every pain.”
He turned with a smile of adoring tenderness to the Angel. She was ghastly white, and her eyes were dull and glazed. She scarcely seemed to hear or understand what was coming, but she bravely tried to answer that smile.
“Is my forehead covered with dirt?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“You did once,” he gasped.
Instantly she laid her lips on his forehead, then on each cheek, and then in a long kiss on his lips.
McLean bent over him.
“Freckles,” he said brokenly, “you will never know how I love you. You won't go without saying good-bye to me?”
That word stung the Angel to quick comprehension. She started as if arousing from sleep.
“Good-bye?” she cried sharply, her eyes widening and the color rushing into her white face. “Good-bye! Why, what do you mean? Who's saying good-bye? Where could Freckles go, when he is hurt like this, save to the hospital? You needn't say good-bye for that. Of course, we will all go with him! You call up the men. We must start right away.”
“It's no use, Angel,” said Freckles. “I'm thinking ivry bone in me breast is smashed. You'll have to be letting me go!”
“I will not,” said the Angel flatly. “It's no use wasting precious time talking about it. You are alive. You are breathing; and no matter how badly your bones are broken, what are great surgeons for but to fix you up and make you well again? You promise me that you'll just grit your teeth and hang on when we hurt you, for we must start with you as quickly as it can be done. I don't know what has been the matter with me. Here's good time wasted already.”
“Oh, Angel!” moaned Freckles, “I can't! You don't know how bad it is. I'll die the minute you are for trying to lift me!”
“Of course you will, if you make up your mind to do it,” said the Angel. “But if you are determined you won't, and set yourself to breathing deep and strong, and hang on to me tight, I can get you out. Really you must, Freckles, no matter how it hurts, for you did this for me, and now I must save you, so you might as well promise.”
She bent over him, trying to smile encouragement with her fear-stiffened lips.
“You will promise, Freckles?”
Big drops of cold sweat ran together on Freckles' temples.
“Angel, darlin' Angel,” he pleaded, taking her hand in his. “You ain't understanding, and I can't for the life of me be telling you, but indade, it's best to be letting me go. This is my chance. Please say good-bye, and let me slip off quick!”
He appealed to McLean.
“Dear Boss, you know! You be telling her that, for me, living is far worse pain than dying. Tell her you know death is the best thing that could ever be happening to me!”
“Merciful Heaven!” burst in the Angel. “I can't endure this delay!”
She caught Freckles' hand to her breast, and bending over him, looked deeply into his stricken eyes.
“'Angel, I give you my word of honor that I will keep right on breathing.' That's what you are going to promise me,” she said. “Do you say it?”
Freckles hesitated.
“Freckles!” imploringly commanded the Angel, “YOU DO SAY IT!”
“Yis,” gasped Freckles.
The Angel sprang to her feet.
“Then that's all right,” she said, with a tinge of her old-time briskness. “You just keep breathing away like a steam engine, and I will do all the remainder.”
The eager men gathered around her.
“It's going to be a tough pull to get Freckles out,” she said, “but it's our only chance, so listen closely and don't for the lives of you fail me in doing quickly what I tell you. There's no time to spend falling down over each other; we must have some system. You four there get on those wagon horses and ride to the sleeping-tent. Get the stoutest cot, a couple of comforts, and a pillow. Ride back with them some way to save time. If you meet any other men of the gang, send them here to help carry the cot. We won't risk the jolt of driving with him. The others clear a path out to the road; and Mr. McLean, you take Nellie and ride to town. Tell my father how Freckles is hurt and that he risked it to save me. Tell him I'm going to take Freckles to Chicago on the noon train, and I want him to hold it if we are a little late. If he can't, then have a special ready at the station and another on the Pittsburgh at Fort Wayne, so we can go straight through. You needn't mind leaving us. The Bird Woman will be here soon. We will rest awhile.”
She dropped into the muck beside Freckles and began stroking his hair and hand. He lay with his face of agony turned to hers, and fought to smother the groans that would tell her what he was suffering.
When they stood ready to lift him, the Angel bent over him in a passion of tenderness.
“Dear old Limberlost guard, we're going to lift you now,” she said. “I suspect you will faint from the pain of it, but we will be as easy as ever we can, and don't you dare forget your promise!”
A whimsical half-smile touched Freckles' quivering lips.
“Angel, can a man be remembering a promise when he ain't knowing?” he asked.
“You can,” said the Angel stoutly, “because a promise means so much more to you than it does to most men.”
A look of strength flashed into Freckles' face at her words.
“I am ready,” he said.
With the first touch his eyes closed, a mighty groan was wrenched from him, and he lay senseless. The Angel gave Duncan one panic-stricken look. Then she set her lips and gathered her forces again.
“I guess that's a good thing,” she said. “Maybe he won't feel how we are hurting him. Oh boys, are you being quick and gentle?”
She stepped to the side of the cot and bathed Freckles' face. Taking his hand in hers, she gave the word to start. She told the men to ask every able-bodied man they met to join them so that they could change carriers often and make good time.
The Bird Woman insisted upon taking the Angel into the carriage and following the cot, but she refused to leave Freckles, and suggested that the Bird Woman drive ahead, pack them some clothing, and be at the station ready to accompany them to Chicago. All the way the Angel walked beside the cot, shading Freckles' face with a branch, and holding his hand. At every pause to change carriers she moistened his face and lips and watched each breath with heart-breaking anxiety.
She scarcely knew when her father joined them, and taking the branch from her, slipped an arm around her waist and almost carried her. To the city streets and the swarm of curious, staring faces she paid no more attention than she had to the trees of the Limberlost. When the train came and the gang placed Freckles aboard, big Duncan made a place for the Angel beside the cot.
With the best physician to be found, and with the Bird Woman and McLean in attendance, the four-hours' run to Chicago began. The Angel constantly watched over Freckles; bathed his face, stroked his hand, and gently fanned him. Not for an instant would she yield her place, or allow anyone else to do anything for him. The Bird Woman and McLean regarded her in amazement. There seemed to be no end to her resources and courage. The only time she spoke was to ask McLean if he were sure the special would be ready on the Pittsburgh road. He replied that it was made up and waiting.
At five o'clock Freckles lay stretched on the operating-table of Lake View Hospital, while three of the greatest surgeons in Chicago bent over him. At their command, McLean picked up the unwilling Angel and carried her to the nurses to be bathed, have her bruises attended, and to be put to bed.
In a place where it is difficult to surprise people, they were astonished women as they removed the Angel's dainty stained and torn clothing, drew off hose muck-baked to her limbs, soaked the dried loam from her silken hair, and washed the beautiful scratched, bruised, dirt-covered body. The Angel fell fast asleep long before they had finished, and lay deeply unconscious, while the fight for Freckles' life was being waged.
Three days later she was the same Angel as of old, except that Freckles was constantly in her thoughts. The anxiety and responsibility that she felt for his condition had bred in her a touch of womanliness and authority that was new. That morning she arose early and hovered near Freckles' door. She had been allowed to remain with him constantly, for the nurses and surgeons had learned, with his returning consciousness, that for her alone would the active, highly strung, pain-racked sufferer be quiet and obey orders. When she was dropping from loss of sleep, the threat that she would fall ill had to be used to send her to bed. Then by telling Freckles that the Angel was asleep and they would waken her the moment he moved, they were able to control him for a short time.
The surgeon was with Freckles. The Angel had been told that the word he brought that morning would be final, so she curled in a window seat, dropped the curtains behind her, and in dire anxiety, waited the opening of the door.
Just as it unclosed, McLean came hurrying down the hall and to the surgeon, but with one glance at his face he stepped back in dismay; while the Angel, who had arisen, sank to the seat again, too dazed to come forward. The men faced each other. The Angel, with parted lips and frightened eyes, bent forward in tense anxiety.
“I—I thought he was doing nicely?” faltered McLean.
“He bore the operation well,” replied the surgeon, “and his wounds are not necessarily fatal. I told you that yesterday, but I did not tell you that something else probably would kill him; and it will. He need not die from the accident, but he will not live the day out.”
“But why? What is it?” asked McLean hurriedly. “We all dearly love the boy. We have millions among us to do anything that money can accomplish. Why must he die, if those broken bones are not the cause?”
“That is what I am going to give you the opportunity to tell me,” replied the surgeon. “He need not die from the accident, yet he is dying as fast as his splendid physical condition will permit, and it is because he so evidently prefers death to life. If he were full of hope and ambition to live, my work would be easy. If all of you love him as you prove you do, and there is unlimited means to give him anything he wants, why should he desire death?”
“Is he dying?” demanded McLean.
“He is,” said the surgeon. “He will not live this day out, unless some strong reaction sets in at once. He is so low, that preferring death to life, nature cannot overcome his inertia. If he is to live, he must be made to desire life. Now he undoubtedly wishes for death, and that it come quickly.”
“Then he must die,” said McLean.
His broad shoulders shook convulsively. His strong hands opened and closed mechanically.
“Does that mean that you know what he desires and cannot, or will not, supply it?”
McLean groaned in misery.
“It means,” he said desperately, “that I know what he wants, but it is as far removed from my power to help him as it would be to give him a star. The thing for which he will die, he can never have.”
“Then you must prepare for the end very shortly” said the surgeon, turning abruptly away.
McLean caught his arm roughly.
“You look here!” he cried in desperation. “You say that as if I could do something if I would. I tell you the boy is dear to me past expression. I would do anything—spend any sum. You have noticed and repeatedly commented on the young girl with me. It is that child that he wants! He worships her to adoration, and knowing he can never be anything to her, he prefers death to life. In God's name, what can I do about it?”
“Barring that missing hand, I never examined a finer man,” said the surgeon, “and she seemed perfectly devoted to him; why cannot he have her?”
“Why?” echoed McLean. “Why? Well, for many reasons! I told you he was my son. You probably knew that he was not. A little over a year ago I never had seen him. He joined one of my lumber gangs from the road. He is a stray, left at one of your homes for the friendless here in Chicago. When he grew up the superintendent bound him to a brutal man. He ran away and landed in one of my lumber camps. He has no name or knowledge of legal birth. The Angel—we have talked of her. You see what she is, physically and mentally. She has ancestors reaching back to Plymouth Rock, and across the sea for generations before that. She is an idolized, petted only child, and there is great wealth. Life holds everything for her, nothing for him. He sees it more plainly than anyone else could. There is nothing for the boy but death, if it is the Angel that is required to save him.”
The Angel stood between them.
“Well, I just guess not!” she cried. “If Freckles wants me, all he has to do is to say so, and he can have me!”
The amazed men stepped back, staring at her.
“That he will never say,” said McLean at last, “and you don't understand, Angel. I don't know how you came here. I wouldn't have had you hear that for the world, but since you have, dear girl, you must be told that it isn't your friendship or your kindness Freckles wants; it is your love.”
The Angel looked straight into the great surgeon's eyes with her clear, steady orbs of blue, and then into McLean's with unwavering frankness.
“Well, I do love him,” she said simply.
McLean's arms dropped helplessly.
“You don't understand,” he reiterated patiently. “It isn't the love of a friend, or a comrade, or a sister, that Freckles wants from you; it is the love of a sweetheart. And if to save the life he has offered for you, you are thinking of being generous and impulsive enough to sacrifice your future—in the absence of your father, it will become my plain duty, as the protector in whose hands he has placed you, to prevent such rashness. The very words you speak, and the manner in which you say them, prove that you are a mere child, and have not dreamed what love is.”
Then the Angel grew splendid. A rosy flush swept the pallor of fear from her face. Her big eyes widened and dilated with intense lights. She seemed to leap to the height and the dignity of superb womanhood before their wondering gaze.
“I never have had to dream of love,” she said proudly. “I never have known anything else, in all my life, but to love everyone and to have everyone love me. And there never has been anyone so dear as Freckles. If you will remember, we have been through a good deal together. I do love Freckles, just as I say I do. I don't know anything about the love of sweethearts, but I love him with all the love in my heart, and I think that will satisfy him.”
“Surely it should!” muttered the man of knives and lancets.
McLean reached to take hold of the Angel, but she saw the movement and swiftly stepped back.
“As for my father,” she continued, “he at once told me what he learned from you about Freckles. I've known all you know for several weeks. That knowledge didn't change your love for him a particle. I think the Bird Woman loved him more. Why should you two have all the fine perceptions there are? Can't I see how brave, trustworthy, and splendid he is? Can't I see how his soul vibrates with his music, his love of beautiful things and the pangs of loneliness and heart hunger? Must you two love him with all the love there is, and I give him none? My father is never unreasonable. He won't expect me not to love Freckles, or not to tell him so, if the telling will save him.”
She darted past McLean into Freckles' room, closed the door, and turned the key.
Freckles lay on a flat pillow, his body immovable in a plaster cast, his maimed arm, as always, hidden. His greedy gaze fastened at once on the Angel's face. She crossed to him with light step and bent over him with infinite tenderness. Her heart ached at the change in his appearance. He seemed so weak, heart hungry, so utterly hopeless, so alone. She could see that the night had been one long terror.
For the first time she tried putting herself in Freckles' place. What would it mean to have no parents, no home, no name? No name! That was the worst of all. That was to be lost—indeed—utterly and hopelessly lost. The Angel lifted her hands to her dazed head and reeled, as she tried to face that proposition. She dropped on her knees beside the bed, slipped her arm under the pillow, and leaning over Freckles, set her lips on his forehead. He smiled faintly, but his wistful face appeared worse for it. It hurt the Angel to the heart.
“Dear Freckles,” she said, “there is a story in your eyes this morning, tell me?”
Freckles drew a long, wavering breath.
“Angel,” he begged, “be generous! Be thinking of me a little. I'm so homesick and worn out, dear Angel, be giving me back me promise. Let me go?”
“Why Freckles!” faltered the Angel. “You don't know what you are asking. 'Let you go!' I cannot! I love you better than anyone, Freckles. I think you are the very finest person I ever knew. I have our lives all planned. I want you to be educated and learn all there is to know about singing, just as soon as you are well enough. By the time you have completed your education I will have finished college, and then I want,” she choked a second, “I want you to be my real knight, Freckles, and come to me and tell me that you—like me—a little. I have been counting on you for my sweetheart from the very first, Freckles. I can't give you up, unless you don't like me. But you do like me—just a little—don't you, Freckles?”
Freckles lay whiter than the coverlet, his staring eyes on the ceiling and his breath wheezing between dry lips. The Angel awaited his answer a second, and when none came, she dropped her crimsoning face beside him on the pillow and whispered in his ear:
“Freckles, I—I'm trying to make love to you. Oh, can't you help me only a little bit? It's awful hard all alone! I don't know how, when I really mean it, but Freckles, I love you. I must have you, and now I guess—I guess maybe I'd better kiss you next.”
She lifted her shamed face and bravely laid her feverish, quivering lips on his. Her breath, like clover-bloom, was in his nostrils, and her hair touched his face. Then she looked into his eyes with reproach.
“Freckles,” she panted, “Freckles! I didn't think it was in you to be mean!”
“Mean, Angel! Mean to you?” gasped Freckles.
“Yes,” said the Angel. “Downright mean. When I kiss you, if you had any mercy at all you'd kiss back, just a little bit.”
Freckles' sinewy fist knotted into the coverlet. His chin pointed ceilingward while his head rocked on the pillow.
“Oh, Jesus!” burst from him in agony. “You ain't the only one that was crucified!”
The Angel caught Freckles' hand and carried it to her breast.
“Freckles!” she wailed in terror, “Freckles! It is a mistake? Is it that you don't want me?”
Freckles' head rolled on in wordless suffering.
“Wait a bit, Angel?” he panted at last. “Be giving me a little time!”
The Angel arose with controlled features. She bathed his face, straightened his hair, and held water to his lips. It seemed a long time before he reached toward her. Instantly she knelt again, carried his hand to her breast, and leaned her cheek upon it.
“Tell me, Freckles,” she whispered softly.
“If I can,” said Freckles in agony. “It's just this. Angels are from above. Outcasts are from below. You've a sound body and you're beautifulest of all. You have everything that loving, careful raising and money can give you. I have so much less than nothing that I don't suppose I had any right to be born. It's a sure thing—nobody wanted me afterward, so of course, they didn't before. Some of them should have been telling you long ago.”
“If that's all you have to say, Freckles, I've known that quite a while,” said the Angel stoutly. “Mr. McLean told my father, and he told me. That only makes me love you more, to pay for all you've missed.”
“Then I'm wondering at you,” said Freckles in a voice of awe. “Can't you see that if you were willing and your father would come and offer you to me, I couldn't be touching the soles of your feet, in love—me, whose people brawled over me, cut off me hand, and throwed me away to freeze and to die! Me, who has no name just as much because I've no RIGHT to any, as because I don't know it. When I was little, I planned to find me father and mother when I grew up. Now I know me mother deserted me, and me father was maybe a thief and surely a liar. The pity for me suffering and the watching over me have gone to your head, dear Angel, and it's me must be thinking for you. If you could be forgetting me lost hand, where I was raised, and that I had no name to give you, and if you would be taking me as I am, some day people such as mine must be, might come upon you. I used to pray ivery night and morning and many times the day to see me mother. Now I only pray to die quickly and never risk the sight of her. 'Tain't no ways possible, Angel! It's a wildness of your dear head. Oh, do for mercy sake, kiss me once more and be letting me go!”
“Not for a minute!” cried the Angel. “Not for a minute, if those are all the reasons you have. It's you who are wild in your head, but I can understand just how it happened. Being shut in that Home most of your life, and seeing children every day whose parents did neglect and desert them, makes you sure yours did the same; and yet there are so many other things that could have happened so much more easily than that. There are thousands of young couples who come to this country and start a family with none of their relatives here. Chicago is a big, wicked city, and grown people could disappear in many ways, and who would there ever be to find to whom their little children belonged? The minute my father told me how you felt, I began to study this thing over, and I've made up my mind you are dead wrong. I meant to ask my father or the Bird Woman to talk to you before you went away to school, but as matters are right now I guess I'll just do it myself. It's all so plain to me. Oh, if I could only make you see!”
She buried her face in the pillow and presently lifted it, transfigured.
“Now I have it!” she cried. “Oh, dear heart! I can make it so plain! Freckles, can you imagine you see the old Limberlost trail? Well when we followed it, you know there were places where ugly, prickly thistles overgrew the path, and you went ahead with your club and bent them back to keep them from stinging through my clothing. Other places there were big shining pools where lovely, snow-white lilies grew, and you waded in and gathered them for me. Oh dear heart, don't you see? It's this! Everywhere the wind carried that thistledown, other thistles sprang up and grew prickles; and wherever those lily seeds sank to the mire, the pure white of other lilies bloomed. But, Freckles, there was never a place anywhere in the Limberlost, or in the whole world, where the thistledown floated and sprang up and blossomed into white lilies! Thistles grow from thistles, and lilies from other lilies. Dear Freckles, think hard! You must see it! You are a lily, straight through. You never, never could have drifted from the thistle-patch.
“Where did you find the courage to go into the Limberlost and face its terrors? You inherited it from the blood of a brave father, dear heart. Where did you get the pluck to hold for over a year a job that few men would have taken at all? You got it from a plucky mother, you bravest of boys. You attacked single-handed a man almost twice your size, and fought as a demon, merely at the suggestion that you be deceptive and dishonest. Could your mother or your father have been untruthful? Here you are, so hungry and starved that you are dying for love. Where did you get all that capacity for loving? You didn't inherit it from hardened, heartless people, who would disfigure you and purposely leave you to die, that's one sure thing. You once told me of saving your big bullfrog from a rattlesnake. You knew you risked a horrible death when you did it. Yet you will spend miserable years torturing yourself with the idea that your own mother might have cut off that hand. Shame on you, Freckles! Your mother would have done this——”
The Angel deliberately turned back the cover, slipped up the sleeve, and laid her lips on the scars.
“Freckles! Wake up!” she cried, almost shaking him. “Come to your senses! Be a thinking, reasoning man! You have brooded too much, and been all your life too much alone. It's all as plain as plain can be to me. You must see it! Like breeds like in this world! You must be some sort of a reproduction of your parents, and I am not afraid to vouch for them, not for a minute!
“And then, too, if more proof is needed, here it is: Mr. McLean says that you never once have failed in tact and courtesy. He says that you are the most perfect gentleman he ever knew, and he has traveled the world over. How does it happen, Freckles? No one at that Home taught you. Hundreds of men couldn't be taught, even in a school of etiquette; so it must be instinctive with you. If it is, why, that means that it is born in you, and a direct inheritance from a race of men that have been gentlemen for ages, and couldn't be anything else.
“Then there's your singing. I don't believe there ever was a mortal with a sweeter voice than yours, and while that doesn't prove anything, there is a point that does. The little training you had from that choirmaster won't account for the wonderful accent and ease with which you sing. Somewhere in your close blood is a marvelously trained vocalist; we every one of us believe that, Freckles.
“Why does my father refer to you constantly as being of fine perceptions and honor? Because you are, Freckles. Why does the Bird Woman leave her precious work and come here to help look after you? I never heard of her losing any time over anyone else. It's because she loves you. And why does Mr. McLean turn all of his valuable business over to hired men and watch you personally? And why is he hunting excuses every day to spend money on you? My father says McLean is full Scotch-close with a dollar. He is a hard-headed business man, Freckles, and he is doing it because he finds you worthy of it. Worthy of all we all can do and more than we know how to do, dear heart! Freckles, are you listening to me? Oh! won't you see it? Won't you believe it?”
“Oh, Angel!” chattered the bewildered Freckles, “are you truly maning it? Could it be?”
“Of course it could,” flashed the Angel, “because it just is!”
“But you can't prove it,” wailed Freckles. “It ain't giving me a name, or me honor!”
“Freckles,” said the Angel sternly, “you are unreasonable! Why, I did prove every word I said! Everything proves it! You look here! If you knew for sure that I could give you a name and your honor, and prove to you that your mother did love you, why, then, would you just go to breathing like perpetual motion and hang on for dear life and get well?”
A bright light shone in Freckles' eyes.
“If I knew that, Angel,” he said solemnly, “you couldn't be killing me if you felled the biggest tree in the Limberlost smash on me!”
“Then you go right to work,” said the Angel, “and before night I'll prove one thing to you: I can show you easily enough how much your mother loved you. That will be the first step, and then the remainder will all come. If my father and Mr. McLean are so anxious to spend some money, I'll give them a chance. I don't see why we haven't comprehended how you felt and so have been at work weeks ago. We've been awfully selfish. We've all been so comfortable, we never stopped to think what other people were suffering before our eyes. None of us has understood. I'll hire the finest detective in Chicago, and we'll go to work together. This is nothing compared with things people do find out. We'll go at it, beak and claw, and we'll show you a thing or two.”
Freckles caught her sleeve.
“Me mother, Angel! Me mother!” he marveled hoarsely. “Did you say you could be finding out today if me mother loved me? How? Oh, Angel! Nothing matters, IF ONLY ME MOTHER DIDN'T DO IT!”
“Then you rest easy,” said the Angel, with large confidence. “Your mother didn't do it! Mothers of sons such as you don't do things like that. I'll go to work at once and prove it to you. The first thing to do is to go to that Home where you were and get the clothes you wore the night you were left there. I know that they are required to save those things carefully. We can find out almost all there is to know about your mother from them. Did you ever see them?”
“Yis,” he replied.
“Freckles! Were they white?” she cried.
“Maybe they were once. They're all yellow with laying, and brown with blood-stains now” said Freckles, the old note of bitterness creeping in. “You can't be telling anything at all by them, Angel!”
“Well, but I just can!” said the Angel positively. “I can see from the quality what kind of goods your mother could afford to buy. I can see from the cut whether she had good taste. I can see from the care she took in making them how much she loved and wanted you.”
“But how? Angel, tell me how!” implored Freckles with trembling eagerness.
“Why, easily enough,” said the Angel. “I thought you'd understand. People that can afford anything at all, always buy white for little new babies—linen and lace, and the very finest things to be had. There's a young woman living near us who cut up her wedding clothes to have fine things for her baby. Mothers who love and want their babies don't buy little rough, ready-made things, and they don't run up what they make on an old sewing machine. They make fine seams, and tucks, and put on lace and trimming by hand. They sit and stitch, and stitch—little, even stitches, every one just as careful. Their eyes shine and their faces glow. When they have to quit to do something else, they look sorry, and fold up their work so particularly. There isn't much worth knowing about your mother that those little clothes won't tell. I can see her putting the little stitches into them and smiling with shining eyes over your coming. Freckles, I'll wager you a dollar those little clothes of yours are just alive with the dearest, tiny handmade stitches.”
A new light dawned in Freckles' eyes. A tinge of warm color swept into his face. Renewed strength was noticeable in his grip of her hands.
“Oh Angel! Will you go now? Will you be hurrying?” he cried.
“Right away,” said the Angel. “I won't stop for a thing, and I'll hurry with all my might.”
She smoothed his pillow, straightened the cover, gave him one steady look in the eyes, and went quietly from the room.
Outside the door, McLean and the surgeon anxiously awaited her. McLean caught her shoulders.
“Angel, what have you done?” he demanded.
The Angel smiled defiance into his eyes.
“'What have I done?'” she repeated. “I've tried to save Freckles.”
“What will your father say?” groaned McLean.
“It strikes me,” said the Angel, “that what Freckles said would be to the point.”
“Freckles!” exclaimed McLean. “What could he say?”
“He seemed to be able to say several things,” answered the Angel sweetly. “I fancy the one that concerns you most at present was, that if my father should offer me to him he would not have me.”
“And no one knows why better than I do,” cried McLean. “Every day he must astonish me with some new fineness.”
He turned to the surgeon. “Save him!” he commanded. “Save him!” he implored. “He is too fine to be sacrificed.”
“His salvation lies here,” said the surgeon, stroking the Angel's sunshiny hair, “and I can read in the face of her that she knows how she is going to work it out. Don't trouble for the boy. She will save him!”
The Angel laughingly sped down the hall, and into the street, just as she was.
“I have come,” she said to the matron of the Home, “to ask if you will allow me to examine, or, better yet, to take with me, the little clothes that a boy you called Freckles, discharged last fall, wore the night he was left here.”
The woman looked at her in greater astonishment than the occasion demanded.
“Well, I'd be glad to let you see them,” she said at last, “but the fact is we haven't them. I do hope we haven't made some mistake. I was thoroughly convinced, and so was the superintendent. We let his people take those things away yesterday. Who are you, and what do you want with them?”
The Angel stood dazed and speechless, staring at the matron.
“There couldn't have been a mistake,” continued the matron, seeing the Angel's distress. “Freckles was here when I took charge, ten years ago. These people had it all proved that he belonged to them. They had him traced to where he ran away in Illinois last fall, and there they completely lost track of him. I'm sorry you seem so disappointed, but it is all right. The man is his uncle, and as like the boy as he possibly could be. He is almost killed to go back without him. If you know where Freckles is, they'd give big money to find out.”
The Angel laid a hand along each cheek to steady her chattering teeth.
“Who are they?” she stammered. “Where are they going?”
“They are Irish folks, miss,” said the matron. “They have been in Chicago and over the country for the past three months, hunting him everywhere. They have given up, and are starting home today. They——”
“Did they leave an address? Where could I find them?” interrupted the Angel.
“They left a card, and I notice the morning paper has the man's picture and is full of them. They've advertised a great deal in the city papers. It's a wonder you haven't seen something.”
“Trains don't run right. We never get Chicago papers,” said the Angel. “Please give me that card quickly. They may escape me. I simply must catch them!”
The matron hurried to the secretary and came back with a card.
“Their addresses are there,” she said. “Both in Chicago and at their home. They made them full and plain, and I was to cable at once if I got the least clue of him at any time. If they've left the city, you can stop them in New York. You're sure to catch them before they sail—if you hurry.”
The matron caught up a paper and thrust it into the Angel's hand as she ran to the street.
The Angel glanced at the card. The Chicago address was Suite Eleven, Auditorium. She laid her hand on her driver's sleeve and looked into his eyes.
“There is a fast-driving limit?” she asked.
“Yes, miss.”
“Will you crowd it all you can without danger of arrest? I will pay well. I must catch some people!”
Then she smiled at him. The hospital, an Orphans' Home, and the Auditorium seemed a queer combination to that driver, but the Angel was always and everywhere the Angel, and her methods were strictly her own.
“I will take you there as quickly as any man could with a team,” he said promptly.
The Angel clung to the card and paper, and as best she could in the lurching, swaying cab, read the addresses over.
“O'More, Suite Eleven, Auditorium.”
“'O'More,'” she repeated. “Seems to fit Freckles to a dot. Wonder if that could be his name? 'Suite Eleven' means that you are pretty well fixed. Suites in the Auditorium come high.”
Then she turned the card and read on its reverse, Lord Maxwell O'More, M. P., Killvany Place, County Clare, Ireland.
The Angel sat on the edge of the seat, bracing her feet against the one opposite, as the cab pitched and swung around corners and past vehicles. She mechanically fingered the pasteboard and stared straight ahead. Then she drew a deep breath and read the card again.
“A Lord-man!” she groaned despairingly. “A Lord-man! Bet my hoecake's scorched! Here I've gone and pledged my word to Freckles I'd find him some decent relatives, that he could be proud of, and now there isn't a chance out of a dozen that he'll have to be ashamed of them after all. It's too mean!”
The tears of vexation rolled down the tired, nerve-racked Angel's cheeks.
“This isn't going to do,” she said, resolutely wiping her eyes with the palm of her hand and gulping down the nervous spasm in her throat. “I must read this paper before I meet Lord O'More.”
She blinked back the tears and spreading the paper on her knee, read: “After three months' fruitless search, Lord O'More gives up the quest of his lost nephew, and leaves Chicago today for his home in Ireland.”
She read on, and realized every word. The likeness settled any doubt. It was Freckles over again, only older and well dressed.
“Well, I must catch you if I can,” muttered the Angel. “But when I do, if you are a gentleman in name only, you shan't have Freckles; that's flat. You're not his father and he is twenty. Anyway, if the law will give him to you for one year, you can't spoil him, because nobody could, and,” she added, brightening, “he'll probably do you a lot of good. Freckles and I both must study years yet, and you should be something that will save him. I guess it will come out all right. At least, I don't believe you can take him away if I say no.”
“Thank you; and wait, no matter how long,” she said to her driver.
Catching up the paper, she hurried to the desk and laid down Lord O'More's card.
“Has my uncle started yet?” she asked sweetly.
The surprised clerk stepped back on a bellboy, and covertly kicked him for being in the way.
“His lordship is in his room,” he said, with a low bow.
“All right,” said the Angel, picking up the card. “I thought he might have started. I'll see him.”
The clerk shoved the bellboy toward the Angel.
“Show her ladyship to the elevator and Lord O'More's suite,” he said, bowing double.
“Aw, thanks,” said the Angel with a slight nod, as she turned away.
“I'm not sure,” she muttered to herself as the elevator sped upward, “whether it's the Irish or the English who say: 'Aw, thanks,' but it's probable he isn't either; and anyway, I just had to do something to counteract that 'All right.' How stupid of me!”
At the bellboy's tap, the door swung open and the liveried servant thrust a cardtray before the Angel. The opening of the door created a current that swayed a curtain aside, and in an adjoining room, lounging in a big chair, with a paper in his hand, sat a man who was, beyond question, of Freckles' blood and race.
With perfect control the Angel dropped Lord O'More's card in the tray, stepped past his servant, and stood before his lordship.
“Good morning,” she said with tense politeness.
Lord O'More said nothing. He carelessly glanced her over with amused curiosity, until her color began to deepen and her blood to run hotly.
“Well, my dear,” he said at last, “how can I serve you?”
Instantly the Angel became indignant. She had been so shielded in the midst of almost entire freedom, owing to the circumstances of her life, that the words and the look appeared to her as almost insulting. She lifted her head with a proud gesture.
“I am not your 'dear,'” she said with slow distinctness. “There isn't a thing in the world you can do for me. I came here to see if I could do something—a very great something—for you; but if I don't like you, I won't do it!”
Then Lord O'More did stare. Suddenly he broke into a ringing laugh. Without a change of attitude or expression, the Angel stood looking steadily at him.
There was a silken rustle, then a beautiful woman with cheeks of satiny pink, dark hair, and eyes of pure Irish blue, moved to Lord O'More's side, and catching his arm, shook him impatiently.
“Terence! Have you lost your senses?” she cried. “Didn't you understand what the child said? Look at her face! See what she has!”
Lord O'More opened his eyes widely and sat up. He did look at the Angel's face intently, and suddenly found it so good that it was difficult to follow the next injunction. He arose instantly.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “The fact is, I am leaving Chicago sorely disappointed. It makes me bitter and reckless. I thought you one more of those queer, useless people who have thrust themselves on me constantly, and I was careless. Forgive me, and tell me why you came.”
“I will if I like you,” said the Angel stoutly, “and if I don't, I won't!”
“But I began all wrong, and now I don't know how to make you like me,” said his lordship, with sincere penitence in his tone.
The Angel found herself yielding to his voice. He spoke in a soft, mellow, smoothly flowing Irish tone, and although his speech was perfectly correct, it was so rounded, and accented, and the sentences so turned, that it was Freckles over again. Still, it was a matter of the very greatest importance, and she must be sure; so she looked into the beautiful woman's face.
“Are you his wife?” she asked.
“Yes,” said the woman, “I am his wife.”
“Well,” said the Angel judicially, “the Bird Woman says no one in the whole world knows all a man's bignesses and all his littlenesses as his wife does. What you think of him should do for me. Do you like him?”
The question was so earnestly asked that it met with equal earnestness. The dark head moved caressingly against Lord O'More's sleeve.
“Better than anyone in the whole world,” said Lady O'More promptly.
The Angel mused a second, and then her legal tinge came to the fore again.
“Yes, but have you anyone you could like better, if he wasn't all right?” she persisted.
“I have three of his sons, two little daughters, a father, mother, and several brothers and sisters,” came the quick reply.
“And you like him best?” persisted the Angel with finality.
“I love him so much that I would give up every one of them with dry eyes if by so doing I could save him,” cried Lord O'More's wife.
“Oh!” cried the Angel. “Oh, my!”
She lifted her clear eyes to Lord O'More's and shook her head.
“She never, never could do that!” she said. “But it's a mighty big thing to your credit that she THINKS she could. I guess I'll tell you why I came.”
She laid down the paper, and touched the portrait.
“When you were only a boy, did people call you Freckles?” she asked.
“Dozens of good fellows all over Ireland and the Continent are doing it today,” answered Lord O'More.
The Angel's face wore her most beautiful smile.
“I was sure of it,” she said winningly. “That's what we call him, and he is so like you, I doubt if any one of those three boys of yours are more so. But it's been twenty years. Seems to me you've been a long time coming!”
Lord O'More caught the Angel's wrists and his wife slipped her arms around her.
“Steady, my girl!” said the man's voice hoarsely. “Don't make me think you've brought word of the boy at this last hour, unless you know surely.”
“It's all right,” said the Angel. “We have him, and there's no chance of a mistake. If I hadn't gone to that Home for his little clothes, and heard of you and been hunting you, and had met you on the street, or anywhere, I would have stopped you and asked you who you were, just because you are so like him. It's all right. I can tell you where Freckles is; but whether you deserve to know—that's another matter!”
Lord O'More did not hear her. He dropped in his chair, and covering his face, burst into those terrible sobs that shake and rend a strong man. Lady O'More hovered over him, weeping.
“Umph! Looks pretty fair for Freckles,” muttered the Angel. “Lots of things can be explained; now perhaps they can explain this.”
They did explain so satisfactorily that in a few minutes the Angel was on her feet, hurrying Lord and Lady O'More to reach the hospital. “You said Freckles' old nurse knew his mother's picture instantly,” said the Angel. “I want that picture and the bundle of little clothes.”
Lady O'More gave them into her hands.
The likeness was a large miniature, painted on ivory, with a frame of beaten gold. Surrounded by masses of dark hair was a delicately cut face. In the upper part of it there was no trace of Freckles, but the lips curving in a smile were his very own. The Angel gazed at it steadily. Then with a quivering breath she laid the portrait aside and reached both hands to Lord O'More.
“That will save Freckles' life and insure his happiness,” she said positively. “Thank you, oh thank you for coming!”
She opened the bundle of yellow and brown linen and gave only a glance at the texture and work. Then she gathered the little clothes and the picture to her heart and led the way to the cab.
Ushering Lord and Lady O'More into the reception room, she said to McLean, “Please go call up my father and ask him to come on the first train.”
She closed the door after him.
“These are Freckles' people,” she said to the Bird Woman. “You can find out about each other; I'm going to him.”
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