Sunny Slopes Part 24

When a man of action, of energy, of boundless enthusiasm is tossed aside, strapped with iron bands to a little white cot on a screened porch with a view of a sunburned mesa reaching off to the mountains, unless he is of the biggest, and finest, his personality can not survive. David's did. Months of helplessness lay behind him, a life of inaction lay before him. He could walk a half block or so, he could go driving with kind neighbors who invited him, but every avenue of service was closed, every form of expression denied him. He had hoped to live a full, good, glowing life. And there he lay.

It is not work which tells the caliber of man, but idleness.

Month followed month, now there were bitter winds and blinding snows, now the hot sun scorched the yellow sand of the mesa, now the mountains were high white clouds of snow, now the fields of green alfalfa showed on a few distant foothills, and the canyons were green with pines.

Otherwise there was no change.

But the summers in New Mexico were crus.h.i.+ngly, killingly hot, and so the st.u.r.dy-hearted health chasers left the 'dobe cottage, packed their few possessions and moved up into Colorado. And while David waited patiently in the hotel, Carol set forth alone and found a small cottage with sleeping porch, cleanly and nicely furnished, rent reasonable, no objections to health seekers. And she and David moved into their new home.

And the old life of Albuquerque began again, meals, nourishments and medicines alternating through the days.

In the summer of the third year, Carol wrote to Connie:

"Haven't you been saving up long enough? We do so want to see you, and Colorado is beautiful. We haven't the long mesa stretching up to the sunny slopes as it was in New Mexico, but from our tiny cottage we can look right over the city to the mountains on the other side, and the sunny slopes are there. So please count your pennies. They give summer rates you know."

Connie went down to Mount Mark the night she received that letter, spending half the night in the train, and talked it over with the family. Without a dissenting voice, they said she ought to go. Ten days later, Carol and David were exulting over Connie's letter.

"Yes, thank you, I am coming. In fact, I was only waiting for the word from you. So I shall start on Monday next, C., B. & Q., reaching Denver Tuesday afternoon at 2:30. Be sure and meet me.

"I nearly lost my job, too. I went to Mr. Carver and said I wanted a vacation. He said 'All right, when and how long?' I said, 'Beginning next Monday.' He nodded. 'To continue six weeks.' He nearly died.

He asked what kind of an inst.i.tution for the feeble-minded I thought this was. I said I hadn't solved it yet. He reminded me that I have already had one week's vacation, and three days on two different occasions. He said he hired people to work, not to visit their relatives at his expense. He said I had one week of vacation coming.

And I interrupted to say I didn't expect any salary during that time, I just wanted him to hold my position for me. He said he was astonished I didn't ask him to discontinue publication during my absence. Finally he said I might have one week on full pay, and one week without pay, and that was enough for a senator.

"So I went to my machine and wrote out a very literary resignation which I handed to him. I know the business now, and I have met a lot of publishers, so I was safe in resigning. I knew I could get another position in three days. He tore the resignation up, and said he wished I could outgrow my childishness.

"Before luncheon, he said he had a good idea. We were away behind in clippings for filling and he suggested that I take a big bundle of exchanges with me, and clip while I vacated. Also I could doubtless find the time to write a thousand or so words a week and send it in, and then I might go on full pay for six weeks. Figuratively I fell upon his neck and kissed him,--purely figuratively, for his wife has a most annoying way of dropping in at unexpected hours,--and I am getting the most charming new clothes made up, so David will think I am prettier than you. Now don't withdraw the invitation, for I shall come anyhow."

Carol considered herself well schooled in the art of emotional restraint, but when she finished reading those blessed words--which to her ears, so hungry for the voices of home, sounded like an extract from the beat.i.tudes--she put her head on the back of David's hand and gulped audibly. And she admitted that she must certainly have cried, save for the restraining influence of the knowledge that crying made her nose red.

In the meantime, back in Iowa, the Starrs in their separate households, were running riot. Never was there to be such a wonderful visit for anybody in the world. Jerry and Prudence bundled up their family, and got into a Harmer Six and drove down to Mount Mark, where they ensconced themselves in the family home and announced their intention of staying until Connie had gone. As soon as Fairy heard that, she hastened home too, full of the glad tiding that she had found a boy she wanted to adopt at last. Lark and Jim neglected the farm shamefully, and all the women of the neighborhood were busy making endless little odds and ends of dainty clothing for Carol, who had lived ready-made during the three years of their domicile in the shadowland of suns.h.i.+ne.

A hurried letter was despatched to David's doctor, asking endless questions, pledging him to secrecy, and urging him to wire an answer C.

O. D. Little Julia was instructed as to her mother's charms and her father's virtues far beyond the point of her comprehension. And Jerry spent long hours with Connie in the car, explaining its mechanism, and making her a really proficient driver, although she had been very skilful behind the wheel before. Also, he wrote long letters to his dealer in Denver, giving him such a host of minute instructions that the bewildered agent thought the "old gent in Des Moines had gone daft."

Carol wrote every day, pitifully, jubilantly, begging Connie to hurry and get started, admonis.h.i.+ng her to take a complete line of snapshots of every separate Starr, to count each additional gray hair in darling father's head, and to locate every separate dimple in Julia's fat little body. And every letter was answered by every one of the family, who interrupted themselves to urge everybody else not to give anything away, and to be careful what they said. And they all cried over Julia, and over Carol's letters, and even cried over the beautiful a.s.sortment of clothes they had acc.u.mulated for Carol, using Lark as a sewing model.

Twenty minutes after the train left Mount Mark, came a telegram from Carol: "Did she get off all right? Did anything happen? Wire immediately." And the whole family rushed off to separate rooms to weep all over again.

But Aunt Grace walked slowly about the house, gathering up blocks, and headless dolls, and tailless dogs, and laying them carefully away in a drawer until little Julia should return to visit the family in Mount Mark.

For the doctor had said it was all right to restore the baby to her heart-hungering parents in the mountain land. Carol was fairly strong, David was fairly well. The baby being healthy, and the parents being sanitary, the danger to its tiny lungs was minimized,--and by all means send them the baby.

So Julia was arrayed in matchless garments destined to charm the eyes of the parents, who, in their happiness, would never realize it had any clothes on at all, and Connie set out upon her journey with the little girl in her charge.

On Tuesday morning, Carol was a mental wreck. She forgot to salt David's eggs, and gave him codeine for his cough instead of tonic tablets for his appet.i.te. She put no soda in the hot cakes, and made his egg-nog of b.u.t.termilk. She laughed out loud when David was asking the blessing, and when he wondered how tall Julia was she burst out crying, and then broke two gla.s.ses in her energetic haste to cover up the emotional outbreak. Altogether it was a most trying morning. She was ready to meet the train exactly two hours and a half before it was due, and she combed David's hair three times, and whenever she couldn't sit still another minute she got up and dusted the railing around the porch, brushed off his lounging jacket, and rearranged the roses in the vase on his table.

"David, I honestly believe I was homesick. I didn't know it before. I got along all right before I knew she was coming, but now I want to jump up and down and shout. Why on earth didn't she take an earlier train and save me this agony?"

At last, in self-defense, David insisted that she should start, and, too impatient to wait for cars and to endure their stopping at every corner, she walked the two miles to the station, arriving breathless, perspiring and flushed. Even then she was thirty minutes ahead of time, but finally the announcer called the train, and Carol stationed herself at the exit close to the gate to watch the long line of travelers coming up from the subway. No one noticed the slender woman standing so motionless in the front of the waiting line, but the angels in Heaven must have marked the tumult throbbing in her heart, and the happiness stinging in her bright eyes.

Then--she leaned forward. That was Connie of course,--she caught her breath, and tears started to her eyes. Yes, that was Connie, that tall slim girl with the s.h.i.+ning face,--and oh, kind and merciful Providence, that must be her own little Julia trudging along beside her, the fat white face turning eagerly from side to side, confident she was going to know that mother on sight, just because they had told her a mother was what most belonged to her.

Carol twisted her hands together, wringing her gloves into a shred.

She moistened her dry lips, and blinked desperately to crowd away those tears. Yes, it was Connie, the little baby sister she used to tease so mercilessly, and Julia, the little rosebud baby she had wanted so many nights. She could not bear to let those ugly tears dim her sight for one minute, she dare not miss one second of that feast to her hungering eyes.

The two sisters who had not seen each other for nearly four years, looked into each other's faces, Carol's so pleadingly hungry for the vision of one of her own, Connie's so strongly sweet and rea.s.suring.

Instinctively the others drew away, and the little group, the red-capped attendant trailing in the rear, stood alone.

"Julia, this is your mama," said Connie, and the wide blue eyes were lifted wonderingly into those other wide blue eyes so like them,--the mother eyes that little Julia had never known. Carol, with an inarticulate sob dropped on her knees and gathered her baby into her arms.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Carol, with an inarticulate sob, gathered her baby in her arms.]

Julia, who had been told it was to be a time of laughter, or rejoicing, of utter gaiety, marveled at the pain in the face of this mother and patted away the tears with chubby hands, laughing with excitement. By the time Carol could be drawn from her wild caressing of the rosebud baby, she was practically helpless. It was Connie who marshaled them outside, tipped the red-capped attendant, waved a hand to the driver waiting across the street, directed him about the baggage, and saw to getting Carol inside and seated.

Only once Carol came back to earth, "Mercy, Connie, taxis cost a fortune out here."

"This isn't a taxi," said Connie, "it is just a car."

But Carol did not even hear her answer, for Julia, enchanted at being so lavishly enthroned in the attention of any one, lifted her lips for another noisy kiss, and Carol was deaf to the rest of the world.

Her one idea now was to get this precious, wonderful, matchless creature home to David as quickly as possible.

"Hurry, hurry," she begged. "Make him go faster, Connie."

"He can't," said Connie, laughing. "Do you want to get us pinched for speeding the first thing?"

And Julia, catching the word, immediately pinched both her auntie and her mama, to show them she knew what they were talking about. And Carol was stricken dumb at the wonderful, unbelievable cleverness of this remarkable infant.

When the car stopped before her cottage, she forgot her manners as hostess, she forgot the baggage, and the driver, and even sister Connie. She just grabbed Julia in her arms and rushed into the cottage, back through the kitchen to the sleeping porch in the rear, and stood gloating over her husband.

"Look, look, look," she chanted. "It is Julia, she is ours, she is here." David sat up in bed, his breath coming quickly.

Carol, like a G.o.ddess of plenty dispensing royal favors, dumped the smiling child on the bed and David promptly seized her.

By this time Connie had made her arrangements with the driver, and escorted herself calmly into the house, trailing the family to the porch, gently readjusting Julia who was nearly turned upside down by the fervor of her papa and mama, and informed David that she wanted to shake hands. Thus recalled, David did shake hands, and looked pleased when she commented on how well he was looking. But in her heart, Connie, the young, untouched by sorrow, alive with the pa.s.sion for work, was crying out in resentment. Big, buoyant, active David reduced to this. Carol, radiant, glowing, gleaming Carol,--this subdued gentle woman with the thin face and dark circles beneath her eyes. "Oh, it is wrong," thought Connie,--though she still smiled, for hearts are marvelous creations, holding such sorrow, and hiding it well.

When their wraps were removed, Julia sat on David's table, with David's hand squeezing her knees, and Carol clutching her feet, and with Connie, big and bright, sitting back and watching quietly, and telling them startling and imaginary tales of the horrors she had encountered on the train. David was entranced, and Carol was enchanted. This was their baby, this brilliant, talented, beautiful little fairy,--and Carol alternately nudged David's arm and tapped his shoulder to remind him of the dignity of his fatherhood.

But in one little hour, she remembered that after all, David was her job, and even crowy, charming little Julia must not crowd him aside, and she hastened to prepare the endless egg-nog. Then from the kitchen window she saw the auto, still standing before their door.

"Oh, my gracious!" she gasped. "We forgot that driver."

She got her purse and hurried outside, but the driver was gone, and only the car remained. Carol was too ignorant of motor-cars to observe that it was a Harmer Six, she only wondered how on earth he could go off and forget his car. She carried the puzzle to David, and he could not solve it.

"Are you able to walk at all, David?" asked Connie.