'Smiles', Eliot H. Robinson [books suggested by elon musk TXT] 📗

the piazza sounded loudly. It was a cheerful little note, and Donald hated it for its cheer, and started hastily away toward the beach.

High above, to the south, the moon was sailing through a sea of clouds, in silent majesty. Moonlit nights he had seen aplenty since that one in the Cumberlands, four summers previous, when he had climbed the mountain, impatient to see once more the strange, smiling child who had so stirred his imagination. In the old days he had loved the soft and majestic radiance. Now he hated it. Had he not lived long in war-ridden France, where every clear night illumined by that orb, which once had been the glory of those who loved, had meant merely the advent of the Hunnish fiends, whose winging visits brought death and devastation to the sleeping towns below?

He had fled from the darkness of his room, but now he craved the darkness again, for, perchance, it might blot out the memory of other nights, beautiful as golden dreams, or hideous as nightmares, when the moon had shone as it did now.

As he made a quick turn about a rocky obstruction in his rapid path, he came almost full upon two others, a man and a woman. On the yielding sand his footfalls had made no sound, and they were unaware of his sudden approach. Donald stopped, and stepped hastily back out of sight; but not before he had seen the man's arms gather the slender form of the girl in close embrace, and seen her lift her sweet young face—tear-bejeweled, but smiling with the tenderness of love—for his kiss.

With the rocks put between him and the two, Donald stood for a moment with clenched fists pressed brutally against his eyes as though to grind out the picture recorded there. Then, with blind but nervous strides, he fled from the spot which, at the one time, held such happiness and such despair.

It was close to midnight when his steps bore him instinctively back to the unlighted house; but this time the exercise and the cool night air had failed to bring relief to his heart. He could not face the idea of tossing for hours on a sleepless bed, and so passed the front door and seated himself within the dark shadows of a corner of the piazza.

"Chirr-r-p, chirr-r-p, chirr-r-p," began a pleasantly shrill little voice beneath him. Over and over it repeated the sound, until the man's feverish imagination had made it into "cheer-up," and he cursed the cricket for its silly advice. So busy was his mind with introspection that he did not hear the door open gently, and the first intimation that he was not alone was brought to him by the sound of a light footstep directly behind him. He turned his head, and saw a dim, ethereally white figure,—Rose.

"I thought that you would never come, Donald," she whispered, as she sank down close by his side on Muriel's little stool, and laid her cool hand on his fevered one. "I have been watching from my window for an hour. I couldn't go to sleep until I had told you something."

With an effort he answered evenly, "I ... I think that I know what it is, Rose."

"You know? But how ...?"

"I saw you ... and Philip, on the beach," he replied, dully.

"You saw ... Oh! And you heard what ...?"

"No. I went away at once, of course. But I did not need to hear. I ... I am glad if you are happy, Smiles."

She was silent for a long moment; then whispered with a note of joy in her low voice that wrung his heart, "Yes, I am very happy, Donald."

"Philip is a splendid fellow."

"You wanted me to ... to marry him, Don?"

"I wanted you to?" He barely succeeded in checking, unspoken, the burning words on his tongue; but this time his voice betrayed him, and, if he had not been resolutely keeping his face turned away from her, he might have seen, even in that dim light, an odd change come into the expression of her lovely face, and seen a wonderfully tender and somewhat mischievous smile touch her lips. All that he did know, however, was that she gave a low, happy laugh, which was like a knife-thrust to his soul.

"Don," she said at length, "I have told no one else of my great secret yet, for I wanted to tell you, first of all. I couldn't go to sleep without telling you, for you have been such a dear confidant and father confessor to me that it seems as though I must tell you everything. I ... I've just got to tell you what has happened. May I?"

The man barely smothered a groan. Must he hear this girl, in her simplicity, talk on and on about the man she loved, and had promised to marry? It struck him, too, as strange that she should be willing to lay bare anything so sacred in a woman's life, but then she was her natural self, and quite different from most girls, in her attitude toward him.

But Rose was speaking quietly, and as though to herself, "Philip has been so sweet and good to me while you were away. You remember that you, yourself, told me that you meant him to take your place as my unofficial protector, and that I should go to him with my perplexities. It would have been better for me if I had followed your advice closer, but now I can laugh at spilt milk."

Rose had already confessed to Donald about her "investment" and been by him cross-examined into an admission of her little charities, which, in their aggregate, had so nearly wiped out her bank account. She could laugh about them now, for she had won to her goal, and already begun to earn a livelihood, but she had carefully hidden in her heart the story of the bitter struggle in which she had engaged to make both ends meet during the last few months of her course, when her mysterious refusals to accept any invitations from Ethel, Miss Merriman or Philip for her free afternoons and evenings, had left them wondering what on earth she was doing. No one guessed that they were spent in earning the few sadly needed dollars which her pride forbade her to borrow from any of them.

"Now I can laugh at spilt milk," Smiles' words echoed in Donald's brain, and hurt. He knew that Philip was fairly well-to-do, and, of course, Rose would want for nothing when she married him. This was the thought which brought the poignant stab.

"It was not strange that I began ... that he became very dear to me, was it, Donald?"

The man shook his head dumbly. He could not answer her in words.

"Perhaps I should not say it; but some time ago I began to guess that ... that he loved me. Not that he said a word, Donald, that is, not until to-day,—and then he didn't say it," she laughed a little. "He wrote it and he ... he asked me to marry him. He said, besides, that he had spoken to you, first, and that you had given your brotherly consent. It was a very sweet letter, Don; the first real love letter that I ever received, think of that!"

Only by clinching his teeth and gripping the arms of the chair could the man repress a groan.

"It was after he had ... had saved my life that ..." She stopped, and broke into her thought with the words, "Oh, Donald, I can never, never forget to-night, and the awful feeling that I had when little Don went into the water. You see, you were far away, and I didn't know about that brave boy on the beach, so I thought that I had got to save him if I could, and I didn't know how I could. And then those black, cold waves going over my head! I was quite sure that I was going to die, and I almost hoped so for ... for I couldn't find Donny."

She leaned her head against his knee and cried a little; but, when he tried to speak, and tell her what had been in his heart, she interrupted hastily with, "Oh, please, let's not speak of it, ever again. I know how you felt, too.

"It was after that that Philip asked me for my answer. I knew what it was going to be, but ..."

Donald could not stand it any longer. "I know. You love him, you are going to marry him, Smiles. It's all right, he is a splendid fellow, dear," he repeated mechanically.

"Yes, he is, and I do love him," she replied quietly; but she could not contain her secret any longer and added, "But a girl can't marry her brother, Donald."

"Her brother? Please, Rose, don't joke."

"It's true!"

"You! Philip's sister? It's impossible, unbelievable!" Yet a surge of mad, uncontrollable joy swept over him, and his heart burst into song.

"Unbelievable, yes. But it's so, Donald, although I can hardly credit it yet, myself."

"But how? Tell me how you found out. What happened?"

"Don't, you're hurting my hand, Donald. I'll tell you all about it as soon as I can, but please don't ask so many questions all at once, and please tell me first that you are glad, that my great secret makes you happy, as it does me."

"Happy? Oh, great heavens! But you? Are you really pleased? You said that you loved him!"

"And so I did, and do ... dearly. But, you see, Donald, although I have cared for him for a long, long while, there was something about my affection that I could not explain, even to myself. It was ... was different, somehow, from what ... from what I felt it must be for the man whom I might marry. Now I know that it was the subconscious call of the blood, the love of a sister for a brother, and never anything else."

Lifted and swayed by a great happiness and reborn hope, Donald laughed aloud.

"Oh, you're a strange little girl, Smiles. I had not realized that you were fully grown up until to-night; but now I know that you are a woman,—a child no longer. My little Rose would never have tried to be so dramatic, nor would she have tried to analyze her love, and label it the call of kin, rather than that of a mate. I used to think that you were a clear crystal in which I might see reflected your very heart and soul, but now you have become a woman and therefore a mystery. Oh, woman, what do you know about love? Not the kind that Philip inspired in you; but the name which burns unquenchable—which purifies and strengthens, or consumes the one who ..." he stopped, surprised at his own rush of words,—and abashed.

The hand, which she had slipped unconsciously into his, trembled and thrilled him.

"Perhaps ... I do ... know it, Donald," came the words, barely audible.

"Smiles! It isn't possible that you ... that I ... Oh, my dear one, don't say anything to make me hope anew, after what I have endured to-night unless ..."

"Do you really care, Don? In that other way, I mean."

He stood unsteadily up; things had become unreal and he could not speak. Smiles, still holding his hand, rose also. The top of her head came just below the level of his eyes; the moonlight across it set her wavy hair to shimmering. She could not lift her eyes to his, but with a brave, low voice, she went on, when she saw that he would not answer.

"All this past week I have been the most brazen of girls, and deliberately given you a hundred chances to tell me, if it were so. I was quite sure that it couldn't be,