And whistling airily, Peter passed up the little path to the cottage.
CHAPTER XIX
PIPER AND AUTHOR
Up at the White House Lady Anne Garland was entertaining Millicent Sheldon. The entertainment to Lady Anne proved somewhat weighty. The carefully mended Millicent was a different person from the one she had previously known. Her whole aspect was altered in Anne’s eyes. She no longer saw her, as Millicent no doubt saw herself, a calm gracious Madonna, stretching out healing hands to a weary humanity. To Anne she was simply a very ordinary woman who had failed the man she had once loved—or professed to love—in his need.
And Anne suddenly realized that for all Millicent’s grand and noble statements she had no use for failures. Let a man have his foot firmly planted on the ladder of success, albeit on the lowest rung, Millicent spoke of him with gracious condescension, held out the hand of friendship to [Pg 194]him. Those who had fallen from the ladder, or who were struggling towards it with little chance of reaching it, were not in her eyes worth a moment’s consideration. Truly the cracks were horribly, terribly conspicuous, and Anne had much ado to prevent Millicent from recognizing that she perceived them. She looked forward to the day of Millicent’s departure with a guilty hopefulness, a secret longing which she felt was almost indecent in a hostess. And then something happened to delay that day.
Dickie, the solemn-eyed Dickie, fell ill. It was one of those sudden swift illnesses of childhood that grip the hearts of parents with a terrible fear, and Anne and Millicent, who loved the small boy as if he were their own, watched the little fever-stricken body with grave anxiety, and dreaded to think what news the next mail to India might not carry.
The villagers came daily to inquire. Voices were hushed when the child’s name was mentioned. Peter alone, to whom no one ever spoke, did not know of the illness. He only wondered why Dickie, who had escaped his vigilant nurse more than once, did not come to the cottage.
And then one day, when the fever was running high, Dickie began a plaint, a piteous little moaning for the Piper. Backwards and forwards on the pillow tossed the small fevered head; the dry lips called ceaselessly to the Piper to come and pipe to him. In some vague way Dickie had confounded him with the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and wanted Peter to take him through the mountain and show him sparrows brighter than peacocks and horses with eagles’ wings. Peter had told Dickie many a tale of fancy during his visit to the cottage.
“Who is it he wants?” asked the doctor sharply, watching the child. “Can no one fetch him?”