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Page 75
"I've located Taurus. See, just over that tree top. And there is its red
eye, Aldebaran. I wanted you to see what a jolly twinkle he has
to-night."
It was the first direct reference he had made to the story, and Mary
waited expectantly for him to go on.
"Don't you worry, little pard," he said, after a pause. "I've known all
along how you felt about me. But I'm not knocked quite out of the game,
even if I am such a wreck. I felt so until I had that talk with L�pe, as
if there was no use of my cumbering the ground any longer. But I found
out a lot from him. The men want me back. They don't understand the new
boss at all. They will do anything for me. So even if I can't walk I can
be worth at least half a man to the Company, in just being on the spot
to interpret and to keep things running smoothly. I could attend to the
correspondence, too, for my head and hands are all right. I know I am as
helpless as a baby yet, but if you'll just stand by me, and keep up that
treatment, and help me get my strength back, I'll make good, some way or
another, just as well as Aldebaran did. By the bloodstone on my
watch-fob!" he added, laughingly. "How is that for a fine swear?"
The old hopeful note in his voice made his helplessness more pathetic
than ever to Mary, but she answered gaily, "You know I'll stand by you
till 'the last cock crows and the last trump blows!' _You_ didn't have
to be born in Mars month to make undaunted courage the jewel of your
soul."
Perched on the arm of his chair she sat watching the red star for a
moment, thinking of the events which had led to his resolution. "It's
queer, isn't it," she said aloud. "I almost drove Norman away this
afternoon with his beast and his train of little Mexicans. I was so out
of patience with him for bringing them here. But how is one to know an
Opportunity when it comes in a chicken-coop disguised as a Wild-cat?"
CHAPTER XV
KEEPING TRYST
An hundred times that summer, Jack made the story of Aldebaran his own.
He had his rare, exalted moments, when all things seemed possible; when
despite his helpless body his spirit walked erect, and faced his future
for the time undaunted. He had his daily struggle with the host of hurts
which cut him to the quick, the reminders of his thwarted hopes and
foiled ambitions. Then, too, there were times when the only way he could
keep up his courage was to repeat grimly through set teeth, "Tis only
one hour at a time that I am called on to endure. By the bloodstone that
is my birthright, I'll keep my oath until the going down of one more
sun." Before the summer was over it came to pass that more than one
soul, given fresh courage by his brave example, looked upon him as the
villagers had upon Aldebaran: "A poor, maimed creature in his outward
seeming, and yet so blithely does he bear his lot it seems a kingly
spirit dwells among us."
Mary's letters to Joyce began to take on a cheerful tone that was vastly
encouraging to the toiler in the studio.
"We have revised Emerson," she wrote one July morning. "It is fully as
true to say, 'If one can make a better garden, show a bigger circus or
put up a more cheerful front to Fate than his neighbours, though he
build his house in Lone-Rock, the world will make a beaten track to his
door.' The path it has made to ours is a wide one. The boys swarm here
all hours of the day, to Norman's delight, the summer campers make our
garden the Mecca of their morning pilgrimages, and the cheerful front we
put up to Fate seems to be the magnet that draws them back again in the
afternoons.
"Really, our shady front porch reminds me sometimes of a popular Summer
Resort piazza, it is so gay and chatty. The ladies of the camp come over
nearly every day and bring their sewing and fancy work, and Huldah and I
serve tea. It would do you good to see how mamma enjoys Mrs. Levering
and Mrs. Seldon. They're like the friends she used to have back in
Plainsville, and this is the first really good social time she has had
since we left there.
"Professor Levering and Professor Seldon seem to find Jack so
congenial. They talk to him by the hour on the scientific subjects he
loves. It is a Godsend to him to have such a diversion. Mrs. Levering
said to me this morning that he is a daily wonder to them all, and a
rebuke as well. 'We think _we_ have troubles,' she said, 'until we come
over here. Then you make them seem so insignificant that we are ashamed
to label them troubles. Oh, you Wares; I never saw such a family! You
fairly radiate cheerfulness. I wish you'd tell me how you do it.'
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