Maybe Dick would leave him here among strangers — who were as nice as they could be, of course — and take her home to Boston, take her next summer to Back of the Moon, take her fishing at Anticosti, take her with him to all the places to which he and Danny had planned to go. That would be pretty terrible, but he mustn’t let them know he minded. Just because he was crippled, that didn’t mean he had any right to boss their two lives. He would send them away to have their good times together, just as he had sent Dick away this summer.
Only perhaps when he was stronger he could sometimes go with them and not be too much of a bother. He would be able to walk on crutches by then, and perhaps after college he could become a writer, like Dick. You didn’t have to be able to walk, to write books.
During the next two or three days Danny convinced himself that he could avoid hindering their happiness. No one wanted an invalid hung around his neck all the time, and he certainly didn’t want to be a burden to them. They would be happy, and so would he.
One evening a telegram announced they would arrive next day. As long as the hour of their coming had been uncertain, Danny had been able to think pretty clearly and to plan how gladly he would greet them, so that not even Dick should guess the terror he had felt; but now in the imminence of their arrival he was just plain scared again! If she were the sort of girl some men thought beautiful, all made up, with red fingernails and a red mouth, it would be pretty awful. During the daylight hours before they came, he lay still, trembling terribly, perspiring, cold with lonely terror of the unknown; and when at last he heard Dick’s voice along the corridor, heard them coming nearer and nearer his door, he shut his eyes tight, dreadfully afraid that he was going to cry; and he did not open his eyes again till they were in the room.
Then he saw Dick, and instantly the fear all went out of him; for Dick looked so well, fit and lean and strong; and Dick’s eyes were dear and bright, and his whole face was different, glowing with a transfiguring peace and content. Then Dick bent over him, saying huskily, ‘Hi, Danny!’ and leaning down to kiss him; and Danny flung his arms around Dick’s neck and hugged him tight, and they were both laughing with tears in their eyes, Danny’s small body straining up to Dick’s; and oh, but Dick felt good in his arms!
Then Dick said: ‘And here she is, Danny!’ He still held Danny with one arm, sitting on the edge of Danny’s bed, and with the other hand he caught hers and drew her near. ‘This is Ellen, Danny.’
Danny looked at her, suddenly shy, conscious of the fact that he was in his nightgown, swept by the modest embarrassment of which only a boy of thirteen is capable. She was so wonderfully beautiful, just as Dick had said; but Danny was terribly afraid she would make a fuss over him, call him, ‘You poor boy,’ or kiss him or gush over him or something. But she didn’t! She just held out her hand and said, ‘Hi, Danny!’ exactly as Dick had done, and he gripped her hand gratefully, and said: ‘Good morning; Ellen.’ And he smiled a little, and she smiled; and he knew at once that she was all right, and that he was going to love her just as much as Dick did.
– II –
That winter was for Danny so brimming with happiness that there was a singing in him all day long. Love and tender care surrounded him, and each day brought or seemed to bring some small measure of new strength to his wasted legs. He gained victories in the battle to recapture as much of life as he could ever hope to seize; and in addition he could watch and share in the enriching happiness which Dick and Ellen found together. Just to see them was like swallowing a great draft of delicious, warming wine. They seemed to shine. Their eyes were bright and clear, the whites faintly tinged with blue; their smooth cheeks were full and glowing; their heads were high and laughter sang in their tones and in their every word. They walked together through the world as though the world were theirs and all desired things in it; and Danny took Ellen into his heart to share Dick’s place there, because she and Dick were so clearly one.
It was as Dick had promised it would be. There were three of them now, and life was twice as much fun as when there had been only two.
Dick was working again, absorbed once more in the novel which he had laid aside when Danny fell ill and to which since then he had not turned at all. To it he gave every morning; but Ellen came to Danny as early as the routine of his treatment would permit and stayed with him till Dick appeared. Then they were all a while together, till Dick took Ellen away to lunch. In the afternoons, as soon as Danny was well enough, and if the day were fine, they drove for hours; and they were sometimes grave and serious together, having long talk of people and of places, of passions and of power, of the thoughts in a man’s head and of the serenity that underlay the scurry of the world. But on other days they were gay and jolly, talking nonsense and laughing all together, not because what they said was particularly funny, but because they were happy and this happiness could become a merry madness with no sense in it at all.
When Ellen and Danny were alone, she asked him many questions about Dick, as though she could never hear enough of him she loved; and Danny liked nothing better than to talk to her endlessly about this big brother of his, searching back through his life under her hungry questions for every smallest memory. More than once he said laughingly: ‘Gosh, you just want to know all about him, don’t you?’ and she nodded, smiling, her eyes shining.
‘M-hm,’ she assented, through closed lips. ‘Yes, I do. I’m jealous, you see! I’m terribly jealous of all the years when I didn’t know Richard, and of all the people who did know him then, and of everything he did and said and thought from the very first, when he was a baby. So now tell me. . . .’
And she winnowed his memory with a wind of questions. Danny had heard his mother tell anecdotes of Dick’s childhood, and he had to repeat them all to Ellen now. She wished to know what Dick had looked like when he was a baby and a little boy; and Danny had seen pictures of him and tried to describe them, and he promised to find these old photographs when they all went back to Boston together. She asked about their house in Boston, and about the cabin at Back of the Moon; and Danny told her how beautiful the lake was, and he told her about Leick who always took care of him and Dick there, and he told her about the trout brook that flowed into the lake, and about the great trout which the lake itself occasionally yielded, if you knew just where to drop your fly, above the spring hole where the water was icy cold. Her appetite for these details was insatiable.
‘I bet you just ask so many questions because you know I love to talk about Dick,’ he said one day, and she answered with a laughing intensity:
‘No! I don’t do it for you. I do it for myself! want every bit of him, of his whole life! I want to have it all!’
But they did not always talk about Dick. She told him about herself. and about her father, and about all the things they had used to do together; and she might read to him for hours on end. Her low musical tones were sweet and pleasing to his ear, so that sometimes he forgot to listen to what she read, content to watch her, to watch the sun in her hair and glinting on her cheek, to watch her lips move as she shaped the words, and her breast stir with her easy breathing, and the way her hair lay across her brow. Sometimes she caught him at this, and laughingly protested that he was not listening; and he grinned redly and confessed: ‘I forgot to! Just looking at you is more fun than any book.’ He thought he could never have imagined anyone so completely beautiful and so altogether charming as she was.
These two began to have small secrets, plans designed for Dick’s pleasure and delight, which they concerted between them and perfected till the time came to astonish him with some wonderful surprise. Thus when Danny began to practice on his crutches they did not tell Dick, till one day Danny, already up and dressed and ready when they heard Dick coming, went proudly on his crutches to meet Dick at the door; and Dick was so surprised that for a moment he could not speak, and his eyes filled, and he and Danny and Ellen all had a good laughing cry together! There were other such surprises, though there were none so
big as that one. Danny’s strength, in arms and body, was slowly returning, and he now swam regularly in the pool; and one day he and Ellen planned that next summer at Back of the Moon, if the doctors would let him go there, he would practice till he was strong and then some day he would swim clear across the lake! They decided not to tell Dick beforehand, but just do it and surprise him.
There was only one break in that happy winter. In February, Mrs. Berent and Ruth came south to spend some time at Sea Island; and Dick and Ellen decided to go down for a week end with them. Danny, when they asked his consent, felt a secret pang; but he stifled it. He must never let them see that he was unhappy when they went away. So he told them to go, to stay as long as they wished; and Dick asked doubtfully:
‘Are you sure you mean it, youngster? I hate leaving you even for a day; and if you feel the same way about having us go, just say the word and we’ll stay right here!’
Danny hesitated, and he was tempted; but then he saw that Ellen wanted to go, so he laughed at Dick and said jocosely: ‘Nuts to you! I can get along without you, all right! Don’t think you’re so darned important! Give them my love. I’ll bet they’re swell!’ He was as convincing as possible, and he saw the relief in Ellen’s eyes, though Dick’s were thoughtful still.
They had expected to be three days gone, but Dick telephoned Monday morning to ask whether it was all right for them to stay on another day or two, and Danny said of course it was. Yet he reflected miserably, after Dick had hung up: ‘Maybe he’ll call up again and say they want to stay even longer. Maybe they’ll stay away a week, or a month. Maybe they won’t ever come back at all!’
But he told himself he was a darned fool to think such things, and sure enough, on Wednesday evening they returned, brown from the sun, and Danny thought they were the two most beautiful and wonderful people he had ever seen.
In March Ruth and Mrs. Berent, driving north on a leisurely schedule, stopped over for a week end at the hotel; and Danny found Mrs. Berent and her sharp tongue tremendously funny. He liked Ruth too.
‘She’s not as pretty as you are, of course,’ he told Ellen after they were gone. ‘But she certainly is swell! You can feel a sort of warmness in her, feel her liking you. Dick likes her a lot, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Ellen agreed. ‘Ruth’s sweet as she can be!’ But he felt she was sorry he had liked Ruth, and he wondered why.
– III –
In the back of Danny’s mind, as winter turned to spring and the early southern summer began to flow richly across the hills, lay a single question: Would he be well enough to go this summer with Dick and Ellen to Back of the Moon? At first, he and Ellen had often talked about the camp there. Danny loved the place, and liked to tell her about it; but little by little, because he was thinking of it so constantly, and hoping so dreadfully that he could go with them, he put a seal on his lips and never spoke of it unless she or Dick led him to do so. He wanted to go to the lake more than he had ever wanted anything in the world. Everyone here was wonderful to him, and he was grateful to them, but it wasn’t like being at home; and Back of the Moon, though they had never done more than spend there some of the summer months, was home to him much more truly than the house in Boston.
Yet no matter how much he wanted to go, if it were best for him to stay here he would stay and not complain and never let anyone know his longing. This was his determination and he held to it; and when Back of the Moon was mentioned he was careful not to allow his eagerness to appear.
Sometimes when they were all three together, Dick talked to Ellen about Back of the Moon, telling her its charms, describing the routine of their lives there; but as summer drew near, Dick and Ellen began to avoid the subject, and Danny knew this meant there was doubt whether he would be well enough to go. He felt that he was running a race against an opponent whom he could not see, so that he could never be sure whether he were ahead or behind, gaining or losing ground. The worst of it was that this was a race in which the harder you tried, the more poorly you ran. To get better, it was necessary to be calm and serene, and to do what he was told, neither more nor less; and this was hard when he felt all the time that he must hurry, hurry, hurry!
Then one day when he and she were alone together, Ellen brought up the subject which filled his thoughts so constantly. ‘I want to talk to you about something, Danny dear,’ she said tenderly. He knew what was in her mind even before she went on: ‘It’s about this summer.’ He did not speak, and she took his hands in hers, leaning near him, and explained: ‘You see, Richard is homesick for Back of the Moon. He’s worked hard all winter here, but now he’s beginning to bog down. The novel isn’t going so well. He needs to go back there where he loves to be, to go at it fresh and renewed again.’
Danny nodded. ‘Sure,’ he agreed, and kept his voice as steady as he could. ‘Dick always got more work done there than anywhere else!’
‘But you see,’ she confessed. ‘He hates leaving you here, so far away; and Doctor Mason isn’t sure the life there would be the best thing for you.’
Danny wetted his lips. ‘I thought I was getting along pretty well.’
‘You are, darling,’ she assured him. ‘But that’s a rugged life up there — and a hard trip in. You’d have trouble getting up and down those steep paths on your crutches. Richard says he and Leick can carry you, but I’ve told Doctor Mason about the place, how far it is from the nearest town, and what it’s like after you get there.’ He wished she hadn’t told Doctor Mason that. ‘Richard doesn’t realize how hard it will be for you,’ she went on. ‘And how hard it will be for him and Leick, taking care of you.’
‘I guess it would be pretty bad, all right.’ He spoke in careful tones.
‘Of course,’ she added, ‘Richard hates to leave you, thinks you’d be unhappy here alone; but I know how brave you are, and I know how you love Richard, and I know you want him to do what’s best for him and for his work.’
‘Sure!’
She kissed him fondly. ‘You’re sweet, Danny! If it turns out that you’d better stay here, you’ll make Richard go, just the same, won’t you? And we’ll all be together again in the fall, when we come back down here.’
There was a lump like a rock in his throat, and a stinging in his eyes; but he said steadily: ‘Sure! I’m fine here. This is the place for me, all right, till I get so I’m not such a bother to people.’
She told him he was wonderful, brave and strong as a man; but he was glad she did not kiss him again, for if she had, he would certainly have cried. There was a wail of terror in his heart; and he told himself hopelessly that if Dick and Ellen, who were all his world, went away and left him here, he would surely die.
After that day, no matter how hard he tried, he could not be as jolly and as gay as he wanted to be for Dick. Then one day Doctor Mason came to him and talked with him for an hour, wisely and gently, probing with delicate questions. He was a man full of understanding, as much concerned with the minds of his patients as with their bodies. Danny, thinking of Ellen, leaned backward to be fair in admitting the hardships he might face at Back of the Moon, till the doctor said in tones curiously stern:
‘You mustn’t feel that Mrs. Harland doesn’t want you with them there, Danny.’
‘Oh, I don’t,’ Danny cried. ‘I know she’s just thinking what’s best for me.’
The doctor smiled, and he led Danny to tell him about the cabin and the lake, and about the things he and Dick had used to do there; and as Danny talked his eyes began to shine again. Doctor Mason watched him and listened to him and made him talk on and on, and once he said:
‘You and Dick have always had a lot of fun together, haven’t you?’
‘We sure have,’ Danny agreed. ‘We’ve hardly ever been separated since my mother died.’
The doctor nodded, his eyes almost grim. ‘I don’t think it would be good medicine to separate you now. No matter what anyone says!’ Danny thought he seemed to be talking to himself. ‘And as for Back of th
e Moon, you’re better just from talking about it.’ He asked with a quizzical smile: ‘Suppose I made you stay in bed, take a good rest for a few days? Would you mind?’
‘No, sir,’ Danny told him. ‘I’ll do whatever you say.’ His heart pounded with happy understanding.
That afternoon he heard Dick and Ellen arrive, heard their voices in the corridor; but then one of the nurses spoke to them in a low tone, and instead of coming straight to Danny they went away from him toward Doctor Mason’s office. A little later Danny heard them coming, heard Dick walking fast and eagerly; and his throat filled with a deep excitement, and then they appeared in the door.
Ellen stayed there, watching these two; and Danny saw her over Dick’s shoulder and he had never seen her look as she was looking now. There was something puzzlingly like anger in her eyes. But then he forgot her, for Dick said in a great voice:
‘Well, Danny, old man, take care of yourself, this next week. Store up a lot of strength! Because a week from today we’re starting for Back of the Moon!’
Danny’s eyes filled. ‘Oh golly, golly, golly!’ he whispered in breathless happiness, grinning from ear to ear. Dick laughed aloud, and then Ellen came to Dick’s side, her eyes now alight with fondness, and she said tenderly:
‘Isn’t that wonderful, Danny dear?’
5
DURING those months — almost a year — at Warm Springs, Harland was like a man intoxicated. Ellen fitted herself to his moods as a dog does to its master’s wishes, eager to do with him whatever he wished to do, equally happy to be idle with him at his desire. He discovered new wonders in her every day. Her beauty was a continuing delight, yet even in their richest hours, with the impersonal mind of the novelist he sometimes thought their rôles were reversed; that she was the eager lover, he the consenting mistress; that her passionate abandonments were more profound than his. She might be lost in ardent raptures while he was almost calm, and to see her thus moved filled him with a proud tenderness.
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