At the Crossroads Part 56

The summer pa.s.sed, another winter--not so cruel as the last--and the spring came, less violently.

It was early summer when another event shook the none-too-steady Forest. Larry came home!

Jan-an discovered him sitting on a mossy rock, his back against a tree. The girl staggered away from him--she thought she saw a vision.

"It is--you, ain't it?" she gasped.

"What's left of me--yes." There was a strange new note in Rivers's voice.

Jan-an's horror-filled eyes took in the significance of the words.

"Where's--the rest of you?" she gasped.

Larry touched the pinned-up leg of his trousers.

"I paid a debt with the rest," he said, and there was that in his voice that brought Jan-an closer to him.

"Where yer bound for?" she asked, her dull face quivering.

"I don't know. A fellow gave me a lift and dropped me--here."

"You come along home!" Jan-an bent and half lifted Larry. "Lean on me.

There, now, lean heavy and take it easy."

Mary-Clare was sitting in the living-room, sewing and singing, when the sound of steps startled her. She looked up, then her face changed as a dying face does.

"Larry!" she faltered. She was utterly unprepared. She had been kept in ignorance of the little that others knew.

"I--I'm played out--but I can go on." Larry's voice was husky and he drooped against Jan-an. Then Mary-Clare came forward, her arms opened wide, a radiance breaking over her cold white face.

"You have come--home, Larry! Home. Your father's home."

And then Larry's head rested on her shoulder; her arms upheld him, for the crutch clattered to the floor.

"My father's home," he repeated like a hurt child--"that's it--my father's home."

CHAPTER XXII

But beyond that exalted moment stretched the plain, drear days. Days holding subtle danger and marvellous revelations.

Larry, with his superficial gripping of surface things, grew merry and childishly happy. He had paid a debt, G.o.d knew. Shocked by the Maclin exposure, he had been roused to decency and purpose as he had never been before. He felt now that he had redeemed the past, and Mary-Clare's gentleness and kindness meant but one thing to Rivers.

And he wanted that thing. His own partial regeneration had been evolved through hours of remorse and contrition. Alone, under strange skies and during long, danger-filled nights, he had caught a glimpse of his poor, s.h.i.+vering soul, and it had brought him low in fear, then high in hope.

"Perhaps, if I pay and pay"--he had pleaded with the sad thing--"I can win out yet!"

And sitting in the warm, sunny room of the yellow house, Larry began to believe he had! It was always so easy for him to see one small spot.

At the first he was a hero, and the Forest paid homage to him; listened at his shrine and fed his reviving ego. But heroes cloy the taste, in time, and the most thrilling tales wax dull when they are worn to shreds. More and more Larry grew to depend upon Mary-Clare and Noreen for company and upon Jan-an for a never-failing listener to his tales.

Noreen, just now, puzzled Mary-Clare. The child's old aversion to her father seemed to have pa.s.sed utterly from her thought. She was devoted to him; touched his maimed body reverently, and wooed him from the sad moments that presently began to overpower him.

She a.s.sumed an old and protecting manner toward him that would have been amusing had it not been so tragically pathetic.

Every afternoon Larry took a nap, sitting in an old kitchen rocker.

Poised on the arm of the chair, her father's head upon her tiny shoulder, Noreen sang him to sleep.

"You're my baby, daddy-link.u.m, and I'm your motherly. Come, shut your eyes, and lall a leep!"

And Larry would sleep, often to awake with an unwholesome merriment that frightened Mary-Clare.

One late summer afternoon she was sitting with him by the open door.

The beautiful hills opposite were still rich with flowers and green bushes. Suddenly Larry said:

"It's great, this being home!"

"I'm glad home was here for you to come to, Larry." Mary-Clare felt her heart beat quicker--not with love, but the growing fear.

"Are you, honest?"

"Yes, Larry. Honest."

"I wonder." It was the old voice now. "When I lay out there, and crawled along----"

"Please, Larry, we have agreed not to talk of that!"

"Yes, I know, but even then, while I was crawling, I got to thinking what I was crawling back to--and counting the chances and whether it was worth while."

"Please, Larry!"

"All right!" Then, in the new voice: "You're beautiful, Mary-Clare.

Sometimes, sitting here, I get to wondering if I really ever saw you before. Second sight, you know."

"Yes, second sight, Larry."

"And Noreen--she is mine, Mary-Clare." This was flung out defiantly.

"Part yours. Yes, Larry."

"She's a great kid. Old as the hills and then again--a baby-thing."

"We must not strain her, Larry, we cannot afford to put too heavy a load on her. She would bear it until she dropped."