“No, I suppose not,” he replied simply, as he sank back on his pillow and turned his bruised face toward the wall.
For some moments he lay in deep thought. The last half-hour in the arbor under the palms came back to him; the tones of Ruth's voice; the casual way in which she returned his devouring glance. She didn't love him; never had loved him; wouldn't ever love him. Anybody could carry another fellow out on his back; was done every day by firemen and life-savers,—everybody, in fact, who happened to be around when their services were most needed. Grateful! Of course the rescued people and their friends were grateful until they forgot all about it, as they were sure to do the next day, or week, or month. Gratitude was not what he wanted. It was love. That was the way he felt; that was the way he would always feel. He who loved every hair on Ruth's beautiful head, loved her wonderful hands, loved her darling feet, loved the very ground on which she walked “Gratitude!” eh! That was the word his uncle had used the day he slammed the door of his private office in his face. “Common gratitude, damn you, Jack, ought to put more sense in your head,” as though one ought to have been “grateful” for a seat at a gambling table and two rooms in a house supported by its profits. Garry had said “gratitude,” too, and so had Corinne, and all the rest of them. Peter had never talked gratitude; dear Peter, who had done more for him than anybody in the world except his own father. Peter wanted his love if he wanted anything, and that was what he was going to give him—big, broad, all-absorbing LOVE. And he did love him. Even his wrinkled hands, so soft and white, and his glistening head, and his dabs of gray whiskers, and his sweet, firm, human mouth were precious to him. Peter—his friend, his father, his comrade! Could he ever insult him by such a mean, cowardly feeling as gratitude? And was the woman he loved as he loved nothing else in life—was she—was Ruth going to belittle their relations with the same substitute? It was a big pin, that which Miss Felicia had impaled him on, and it is no wonder the poor fluttering wings were nigh exhausted in the struggle!
Relief came at last.
“And now what shall I tell her?” asked Miss Felicia. “She worries more over you than she does over her father; she can get hold of him any minute, but you won't be presentable for a week. Come, what shall I tell her?”
Jack shifted his shoulders so that he could move the easier and with less pain, and raised himself on his well elbow. There was no use of his hoping any more; she had evidently sent Miss Felicia to end the matter with one of her polite phrases,—a weapon which she, of all women, knew so well how to use.
“Give Miss Ruth my kindest regards,” he said in a low voice, still husky from the effects of the smoke and the strain of the last half-hour—“and say how thankful I am for her gratitude, and—No,—don't tell her anything of the kind. I don't know what you are to tell her.” The words seemed to die in his throat.
“But she will ask me, and I have got to say something. Come,—out with it.” Her eyes were still on his face; not a beat of his wings or a squirm of his body had she missed.
“Well just say how glad I am she is at home again and that her father is getting on so well, and tell her I will be up and around in a day or two, and that I am not a bit worse off for going to the station yesterday.”
“Anything else?”
“No,—unless you can think of something.”