Oh, I should like to know how I'm ever going to make you understand
how much I love you!"
Pillow and all, she caught him to her breast one long second; then
she was gone.
Freckles lay dazed with
astonishment. At last his amazed eyes
searched the room for something approaching the human to which he
could
appeal, and falling on his mother's
portrait, he set it
before him.
"For the love of life! Me little mother," he panted, "did you
hear that? Did you hear it! Tell me, am I living, or am I dead and
all heaven come true this minute? Did you hear it?"
He shook the frame in his
impatience at receiving no answer.
"You are only a pictured face," he said at last, "and of course you
can't talk; but the soul of you must be somewhere, and surely in this
hour you are close enough to be
hearing. Tell me, did you hear that?
I can't ever be telling a living soul; but
darling little mother,
who gave your life for mine, I can always be talking of it
to you! Every day we'll talk it over and try to understand the
miracle of it. Tell me, are all women like that? Were you like me
Swamp Angel? If you were, then I'm understanding why me father
followed across the ocean and went into the fire."
CHAPTER XX
Wherein Freckles returns to the Limberlost, and Lord O'More Sails
for Ireland Without Him
Freckles' voice ceased, his eyes closed, and his head rolled back
from
exhaustion. Later in the day he insisted on
seeing Lord and
Lady O'More, but he fainted before the
resemblance of another man
to him, and gave all of his friends a terrible fright.
The next morning, the Man of Affairs, with a heart filled with
misgivings,
undertook the
interview on which Freckles insisted.
His fears were without cause. Freckles was the soul of honor
and simplicity.
"Have they been telling you what's come to me?" he asked without
even
waiting for a greeting.
"Yes," said the Angel's father.
"Do you think you have the very worst of it clear to your understanding?"
Under Freckles'
earnest eyes the Man of Affairs answered soberly:
"I think I have, Mr. O'More."
That was the first time Freckles heard his name from the lips
of another. One second he lay
overcome; the next, tears filled his
eyes, and he reached out his hand. Then the Angel's father understood,
and he clasped that hand and held it in a strong, firm grasp.
"Terence, my boy," he said, "let me do the talking. I came here
with the understanding that you wanted to ask me for my only child.
I should like, at the proper time, to regard her marriage, if she
has found the man she desires to marry, not as losing all I have,
but as gaining a man on whom I can depend to love as a son and to
take
charge of my affairs for her when I
retire from business.
Bend all of your energies toward rapid
recovery, and from this hour
understand that my daughter and my home are yours."
"You're not forgetting this?"
Freckles lifted his right arm.
"Terence, I'm sorrier than I have words to express about that,"
said the Man of Affairs. "It's a damnable pity! But if it's for me
to choose whether I give all I have left in this world to a man
lacking a hand, or to one of these gambling, tippling, immoral
spendthrifts of today, with both hands and feet off their souls,
and a
rotten spot in the core, I choose you; and it seems that my
daughter does the same. Put what is left you of that right arm to
the best uses you can in this world, and never again mention or
feel that it is
defective so long as you live. Good day, sir!"
"One minute more," said Freckles. "Yesterday the Angel was telling
me that there was money coming to me from two sources. She said
that me
grandmother had left me father all of her fortune and her
house, because she knew that his father would be cutting him off,
and also that me uncle had set aside for me what would be me
father's interest in his father's estate.
"Whatever the sum is that me
grandmother left me father, because
she loved him and wanted him to be having it, that I'll be taking.
'Twas hers from her father, and she had the right to be giving it
as she chose. Anything from the man that
knowingly left me father
and me mother to go cold and hungry, and into the fire in misery,
when just a little would have made life so beautiful to them, and
saved me this crippled body--money that he willed from me when he
knew I was living, of his blood and on
charity among strangers, I
don't touch, not if I
freeze,
starve, and burn too! If there ain't
enough besides that, and I can't be earning enough to fix things
for the Angel----"
"We are not discussing money!" burst in the Man of Affairs.
"We don't want any blood-money! We have all we need without it.
If you don't feel right and easy over it, don't you touch a cent
of any of it."
"It's right I should have what me
grandmother intinded for me
father, and I want it," said Freckles, "but I'd die before I'd
touch a cent of me grandfather's money!"
"Now," said the Angel, "we are all going home. We have done all we
can for Freckles. His people are here. He should know them. They are
very
anxious to become acquainted with him. We'll
resign him to them.
When he is well, why, then he will be
perfectly free to go to
Ireland or come to the Limberlost, just as he chooses. We will go
at once."
McLean held out for a week, and then he could
endure it no longer.
He was heart hungry for Freckles. Communing with himself in the
long, soundful nights of the swamp, he had
learned to his
astonishment that for the past year his heart had been circling the
Limberlost with Freckles. He began to wish that he had not left him.
Perhaps the boy--his boy by first right, after all--was being neglected.
If the Boss had been a
nervous old woman, he scarcely could have
imagined more things that might be going wrong.
He started for Chicago, loaded with a big box of goldenrod, asters,
fringed gentians, and
crimson leaves, that the Angel carefully had
gathered from Freckles' room, and a little, long
slender package.
He
traveled with
biting, stinging
jealousy in his heart. He would
not admit it even to himself, but he was
unable to remain longer
away from Freckles and leave him to the care of Lord O'More.
In a few minutes' talk, while McLean awaited
admission to Freckles'
room, his
lordship had chatted genially of Freckles' rapid
recovery, of his delight that he was unspotted by his early
surroundings, and his desire to visit the Limberlost with Freckles
before they sailed; he expressed the hope that he could prevail
upon the Angel's father to place her in his wife's care and have
her education finished in Paris. He said they were
anxious to do
all they could to help bind Freckles' arrangements with the Angel,
as both he and Lady O'More regarded her as the most
promising girl
they knew, and one who could be fitted to fill the high position in
which Freckles would place her.
Every word he uttered was pungent with
bitterness to McLean. The
swamp had lost its
flavor without Freckles; and yet, as Lord O'More
talked, McLean
fervently wished himself in the heart of it. As he
entered Freckles' room he almost lost his
breath. Everything was changed.
Freckles lay beside a window where he could follow Lake Michigan's
blue until the
horizon dipped into it. He could see big soft
clouds, white-capped waves, shimmering sails, and puffing steamers
trailing billowing banners of
lavender and gray across the sky.
Gulls and curlews wheeled over the water and dipped their wings in
the foam. The room was filled with every
luxury that taste and
money could introduce.
All the tan and sunburn had been washed from Freckles' face in
sweats of agony. It was a smooth, even white, its brown rift
scarcely showing. What the nurses and Lady O'More had done to
Freckles' hair McLean could not guess, but it was the most
beautiful that he ever had seen. Fine as floss, bright in color,
waving and crisp, it fell around the white face.
They had
gotten his arms into and his chest covered with a finely
embroidered, pale-blue silk shirt, with soft, white tie at the throat.
Among the many changes that had taken place during his absence,
the fact that Freckles was most
attractive and
barely escaped
being handsome remained almost unnoticed by the Boss, so great
was his
astonishment at
seeing both cuffs turned back and the
right arm in view. Freckles was using the maimed arm that
previously he always had hidden.
"Oh Lord, sir, but I'm glad to see you!" cried Freckles, almost
rolling from the bed as he reached toward McLean. "Tell me quick,
is the Angel well and happy? Can me Little Chicken spread six feet
of wing and sail to his mother? How's me new father, the Bird
Woman, Duncans, and Nellie--
darling little high-stepping Nelie?
Me Aunt Alice is going to choose the hat just as soon as I'm mended
enough to be going with her. How are all the gang? Have they found
any more good trees? I've been thinking a lot, sir. I believe I can
find others near that last one. Me Aunt Alice thinks maybe I can,
and Uncle Terence says it's likely. Golly, but they're nice,
ilegant people. I tell you I'm proud to be same blood with them!
Come closer, quick! I was going to do this
yesterday, and somehow
I just felt that you'd surely be coming today and I waited.
I'm selecting the Angel's ring stone. The ring she ordered for me
is finished and they sent it to keep me company. See? It's an
emerald--just me color, Lord O'More says."
Freckles flourished his hand.
"Ain't that fine? Never took so much comfort with anything in
me life. Every color of the old swamp is in it. I asked the Angel
to have a little shamrock leaf cut on it, so every time I saw it I'd
be thinking of the `love, truth, and valor' of that song she was
teaching me. Ain't that a beautiful song? Some of these days I'm
going to make it echo. I'm a little afraid to be doing it with me
voice yet, but me heart's tuning away on it every
blessed hour.
Will you be looking at these now?"
Freckles tilted a tray of unset stones from Peacock's that would
have ransomed several
valuable kings. He held them toward McLean,
stirring them with his right arm.
"I tell you I'm glad to see you, sir" he said. "I tried to tell me
uncle what I wanted, but this ain't for him to be mixed up in,
anyway, and I don't think I made it clear to him. I couldn't seem
to say the words I wanted. I can be telling you, sir."
McLean's heart began to thump as a lover's.
"Go on, Freckles," he said assuringly.
"It's this," said Freckles. "I told him that I would pay only three
hundred dollars for the Angel's stone. I'm thinking that with what
he has laid up for me, and the bigness of things that the Angel did
for me, it seems like a stingy little sum to him. I know he thinks
I should be giving much more, but I feel as if I just had to be
buying that stone with money I earned meself; and that is all I
have saved of me wages. I don't mind paying for the muff, or the
drexing table, or Mrs. Duncan's things, from that other money, and
later the Angel can have every last cent of me
grandmother's, if
she'll take it; but just now--oh, sir, can't you see that I have to
be buying this stone with what I have in the bank? I'm feeling that
I couldn't do any other way, and don't you think the Angel would
rather have the best stone I can buy with the money I earned meself
than a finer one paid for with other money?"
"In other words, Freckles," said the Boss in a husky voice, "you
don't want to buy the Angel's ring with money. You want to give for
it your first awful fear of the swamp. You want to pay for it with
the
loneliness and heart
hunger you have suffered there, with last
winter's freezing on the line and this summer's burning in the sun.
You want it to stand to her for every hour in which you risked your
life to fulfill your contract
honorably. You want the price of that
stone to be the fears that have chilled your heart--the sweat and
blood of your body."
Freckles' eyes were filled with tears and his face quivering with feeling.
"Dear Mr. McLean," he said, reaching with a
caress over the Boss's
black hair and his cheek. "Dear Boss, that's why I've wanted you so.