“Open that blind wide, and put back that heavy curtain,” the doctor said to the frightened nurse, who quickly obeyed his orders, and then waited to see what would happen next.
Max was talking and counting on his fingers till he came to twenty.
“Yes, twenty, that’s it,” he said; “that’s the way the paper read; just twenty years of age, and Dick and I are six years older. Dick loved her, too; he ought to have married her. Dick was a trump.”
“What does he say? What does he say? O Richard, what does he say?” Mrs. West almost screamed, as she bent down so low that the hot fever breath lifted her silver hair.
Richard made no answer, nor was there need, for the mother instinct recognized the boy, the wayward, wandering Robert, mourned for as dead during so many dreary years, while the mother-love, forgetting all the past, cried out, “My boy, my boy, my Robert, my child! God has given you back to me at last! Praised be His name!”
For an instant something like reason flashed over the wasted face, but it passed away, and to the mother’s continued murmurings of love there came only incoherent mutterings of the mountains, the mines, and stocks which seemed to have been substituted for the thoughts of the twenty years and the trump of a Dick, now ministering to the mother, who had fainted and was carried from the room. But she did not stay away long. Her place was by Robert, she said, and she went back to his side, saying to those around her, “He is my boy: he left me years ago, but I have found him at last.”
People gossip in California as well as elsewhere, and the hotel was soon full of surmises and wonder, as people repeated to each other that the man known as Max was Robert West, who had taken another name and come among them, for what reason none could guess. The doctor and his mother knew the people would talk, but they did not heed it during the days when with agonizing suspense they hung over the bed of the prodigal, watching for some token of amendment, and praying that the erring one might not be taken from them now and leave the past a darker mystery than ever. He did not talk a great deal, but when he did it was mostly of home scenes in which Anna and Dick were always associated.
Once when they sat alone and Mrs. West was resting in her room, Richard said to Robert, who had spoken of Anna as of some one there with him, “You mean your wife, Anna West; you know you married her privately.”
For an instant the wild eyes flashed in Richard’s face, and then the delirious man replied, “Did she tell you so?”
“Not exactly, but I inferred as much, for when she lay dying, she said, ‘Call my baby for his father,’ and when I whispered ‘Robert,’ she nodded assent. They are both dead now, Anna and little Robin. Your wife, your baby, which never saw its father,” Richard continued, wishing to impress some idea upon his brother’s mind.