Part 45

Dinky-Dunk's letter, which reached me Monday, was very short and almost curt. It depressed me for a day. I tried to fight against that feeling, when it threatened to return yesterday, and was at Peter's piano shouting to the kiddies:

"Coon, Coon, Coon, I wish my color'd fade! Coon, Coon, Coon, I'd like a different shade!"

when Struthers carried in to me, with a sort of triumphant and tight-lipped I-told-you-so air, a copy of the morning's Los Angeles Examiner. She had it folded so that I found myself confronting a picture of Lady Alicia Newland, Lady Alicia in the "Teddy-Bear" suit of an aviator, with a fur-lined leather jacket and helmet and heavy gauntlets and leggings and the same old audacious look out of the quietly smiling eyes, which were squinting a little because of the sunlight.

Lady Allie, I found on perusing the letter-press, had been flying with some of the North Island officers down in San Diego Bay. And now she and the Right Honorable Lieutenant-Colonel Brereton Ainsley-Brook, of the British Imperial Commission to Canada, were to attempt a flight to Kelly Field Number Two, at San Antonio, in Texas, in a De Haviland machine. She had told the Examiner reporter who had caught her as she stood beside a naval sea-plane, that she "loved" flying and loved taking a chance and that her worst trouble was with nose-bleed, which she'd get over in time, she felt sure. And if the Texas flight was a success she would try to arrange for a flight down to the Canal at the same time that the Pacific fleet comes through from Colon.

"Isn't that 'er, all over?" demanded Struthers, forgetting her place and her position and even her aspirate in the excitement of the moment. But I handed back the paper without comment. For a day, however, Lady Allie has loomed large in my thoughts.

Sunday the Thirteenth

It will be two weeks to-morrow since I've had a line from Dinky-Dunk. The world about me is a world of beauty, but I'm worried and restless and Edna Millay's lines keep running through my head:

"...East and West will pinch the heart That can not keep them pushed apart; And he whose soul is flat--the sky Will cave in on him by and by!"

Wednesday the Sixteenth

Peter has written to me saying that unless he hears from me to the contrary he thinks he can arrange to "run through" to the Coast in time for the Rose Tournament here on New Year's Day. He takes the trouble to explain that he'll stay at the Alexandria in Los Angeles, so there'll be no possible disturbance to me and my family routine.

That's so like Peter!

But there's been no word from Dinky-Dunk. The conviction is growing in my mind that he's not at Alabama Ranch.

Monday the Twenty-first

A letter has just come to me this morning from Whinstane Sandy, written in lead-pencil. It said, with an orthography all its own, that Duncan had been in bed for two weeks with what they thought was pneumonia, but was up again and able to eat something, and not to worry. It seemed a confident and cheerful message at first, but the oftener I read it the more worried I became. So one load was taken off my heart only to make room for another. My first decision was to start north at once, to get back to Alabama Ranch and my Dinky-Dunk as fast as steam could take me. I was still the sharer of his joys and sorrows, and ought to be with him when things were at their worst. But on second thought it didn't seem quite fair to the kiddies, to dump them from midsummer into shack-life and a sub-zero climate. And always, always, always, there were the children to be considered. So I wired Ed Sherman, the station-agent at Buckhorn, asking him to send out a message to Duncan, saying I was waiting for him in Pasadena and to come at once....

I wonder what his answer will be? It's surrender, on my part. It's capitulation, and Dinky-Dunk, of course, will recognize that fact. Or he ought to. But it's not this I'm worrying over. It's Duncan himself, and his health. It gives me a guilty feeling.... I once thought that I was made to heal hearts. But about all I can do, I find, is to bruise them.

Thursday the Twenty-fourth

A telegram of just one word has come from Duncan, dated at Calgary. It said: "Coming." I could feel a little tremble in my knees as I read it. He must be better, or he'd never be able to travel. To-morrow will be Christmas Day, but we've decided to postpone all celebration until the kiddies' daddy is on the scene. It will never seem much like Christmas to us Eskimos, at eighty-five in the shade. And we're temporarily subduing that red-ink day to the eyes of the children by carefully secreting in one of Peter's clothes-closets each and every present that has come for them.

Sunday the Twenty-seventh

Dinky-Dunk is here. He arrived this morning, and we were all at the station in our best bib-and-tucker and making a fine show of being offhanded and light-hearted. But when I saw the porter helping down my Diddums, so white-faced and weak and tired-looking, something swelled up and burst just under my floating ribs and for a moment I thought my heart had had a blow-out like a tire and stopped working for ever and ever. Heaven knows I held my hands tight, and tried to be cheerful, but in spite of everything I could do, on the way home, I couldn't stop the tears from running slowly down my cheeks. They kept running and running, as though I had nothing to do with it, exactly as a wound bleeds. The poor man, of course, was done out by the long trip. He was just blooey, and saved himself from being pitiful by shrinking back into a shell of chalky-faced self-sufficiency. He has said very little, and has eaten nothing, but had a sleep this afternoon for a couple of hours, out in the patio on a chaise-longue. It hurt him, I think, to find his own children look at him with such cold and speculative eyes. But he has changed shockingly since they last saw him. And they have so much to fill up their little lives. They haven't yet reached the age when life teaches them they'd better stick to what's given them, even though there's a bitter tang to its sweetness!

Wednesday the Thirtieth

It is incredible, what three days of rest and forced feeding at my implacable hands, have done for Dinky-Dunk. He is still a little shaky on his pins, if he walks far, and the noonday sun makes him dizzy, but his eyes don't look so much like saucers and I haven't heard the trace of a cough from him all to-day. Illness, of course, is not romantic, but it plays its altogether too important part in life, and has to be faced. And there is something so disturbingly immuring and depersonalizing about it! Dinky-Dunk appears rather in a world by himself. Only once, so far, has he seemed to step back to our every-day old world. That was when he wandered into the Blue Room in the East Wing where little Dinkie has been sleeping. I was seated beside his little lordship's bed singing:

"The little pigs sleep with their tails curled up,"

and when that had been exhausted, rambling on to

"The sailor being both tall and slim, The lady fell in love with him,"

when pater familias wandered in and inquired, "Whyfore the cabaret?"

I explained that Dinkie, since coming south, had seemed to demand an even-song or two before slipping off.

"I see that I'll have to take our son in hand," announced Dinky-Dunk--but there was just the shadow of a smile about his lips as he went slowly out and closed the door after him.

To-night, when I told Dinky-Dunk that Peter would in all likelihood be here to-morrow, he listened without batting an eyelash. But he asked if I'd mind handing him a cigarette, and he studied my face long and intently. I don't know what he saw there, or what he concluded, for I did my best to keep it as noncommittal as possible. If there is any move, it must be from him. That sour-inked Irishman called Shaw has said that women are the wooers in this world. A lot he knows about it!... Yet something has happened, in the last half-hour, which both disturbs and puzzles me. When I was unpacking Dinky-Dunk's second trunk, which had stood neglected for almost four long days, I came across the letter which I thought I'd put away in the back of the ranch ledger and had failed to find.... And he had it, all the time!