Part 18

No. Elizabeth said her father was better already, only he seemed in need of a stimulant. No, she did not want an escort. The night was lovely, and she wouldn't miss her solitary ride home for anything. She was so glad Mrs. Stiles had the whisky. It would be just what her father needed when he waked up.

And when, some hours later, Jacob Stanwood awoke, he found his daughter sitting beside him in the gray dawn.

"Why, Elizabeth!" he said, "is anything the matter? Did I disturb you?"

She leaned toward him, and laid her hand on his.

"You were ill in the night, papa, and asked for a stimulant, and I got it for you."

"A stimulant?" he repeated vaguely. "What stimulant? Where did you get it?"

"I got it at the store. It's whisky."

"Whisky?" he cried, with a sudden, eager gleam.

Elizabeth was enchanted to find that she had done the right thing.

"Here it is, papa," she said, drawing the flask from her pocket, and pouring a little of the contents into a glass that stood ready.

He watched her with that intense, eager gleam.

"Fill it up! Fill it up!" he cried impatiently. "A drop like that is no good to a man."

He was sitting straight up again, just as she found him in the night. He reached his thin hand for the glass, which he clutched tightly. The smell of the liquor was strong in the room. His eyes were glittering with excitement.

The girl stood beside him, contemplating with affectionate delight the success of her experiment. Her utter innocence and unsuspiciousness smote him to the heart. Something stayed his hand so that he did not even lift the glass to his lips. Slowly, with his eyes fixed upon the sweet, young face, he extended his arm out over the side of the bed, the glass shaking plainly in his hold. She did not notice it; she was looking into his face which had softened strangely.

"Elizabeth," he said.

There was a sound of breaking glass, and a strong smell of liquor pouring out upon the floor.

"O papa!" she cried, distressed.

He had sunk back against the pillows, pale with exhaustion. But when she lifted the fragments of the glass, saying: "Isn't it a pity, papa?" he only answered in his usual tone, "There's no harm done, my dear. I don't believe it was just what I needed, after all."

He smiled with a new, indescribable sweetness and weariness.

"I think I could sleep, now," he said.

At noon Stanwood was quite himself again; himself and more, he thought, with some surprise. He would not have owned that it was a sense of victory that had put new life into his veins. Victory over a vulgar passion must partake somewhat of the vulgarity of the passion itself. No, Stanwood was not the man to glory in such a conquest. But he could, at last, glory in this daughter of his.

As she told him with sparkling eyes of her beautiful ride through the night, through the beautiful brooding night, her courage and her innocence seemed to him like a fair, beneficent miracle. But he made no comment upon her story. He only sat in the doorway, looking down the road where he had watched her approach a few weeks ago, and when she said, noting his abstraction, "A penny for your thoughts, papa!" he asked, in a purely conversational tone, "Elizabeth,"--she always loved to hear him say "Elizabeth,"--"Elizabeth, do you think it would make Nick very mad indeed if we were to go snacks?"

"Mad as hops!" she cried.

"Then let's do it!"

Elizabeth beamed.

"And Elizabeth, there's no place like Switzerland in summer. Let's pack up and go!"

"Let us!" she answered, very softly, with only a little exultant tremor on the words.

She never guessed all that she had won that day; she only knew that life stretched on before her, a long, sunny pathway, where she and her father might walk together in the daily and hourly good-comradeship that she loved.