The Bird in the Box

by Mary M. Mears

André was wretched. "And he's here?

"Yes; for a few weeks. Mr. Hart was anxious that the work shouldn't be delayed, so he came here while the shop is being altered."

André said no more. And Rachel exerted herself to dispel his gloom. So contagious was the vitality of her mood that he apparently forgot the incident.

Presently, bidding him gather up the withered roses that littered the path, and taking into her own hands the bunch of fresh blossoms, she led the way to the house and André followed. His old dream, in all its simplicity, once more possessed his heart.

When Rachel arrived at the hospital, John Smith was expecting her. In a clean shirt with his grey hair neatly brushed and his gaunt frame arranged under a spotless sheet, he was eagerly awaiting her. The floor nurse warned her that the interview must be a brief one; the patient could not live more than a day or two.

John Smith's story was substantially what Rachel had surmised it would be, and as he told it with frequent interruptions when the cough racked him, she had difficulty in fixing her thoughts upon him. The vital moment of her own life called her, and try as she would, she could give but a divided attention.

"The fact is, I ain't done just the straight thing by you," he rambled on, "and I'm glad you're as well fixed as you are. It ain't quite the same as if I'd found you in want. However, I've suffered for putting this time off; I've been hectored in ways you wouldn't dream of. Needn't tell me the dead don't take their revenge if you pass over their wishes! I don't mean that they come back or anything of that sort," he interrupted himself, in response to a questioning glance, "but they stick in your mind somehow—you can't forgit how they looked when they told you to do such and such a thing, and you don't do it. But I'll say this much for myself, I meant as much as could be to give you that money when I reached America seventeen years ago, a month or two after your father's death; but I had a hard run of luck, and I used some of it, and then I used more, until it was about all gone. And it was only when I got this cough about three years and a half ago, that I began to think a good bit about Thomas Beckett. Funny too, so long after his death; but I'd see him when I was droppin' off to sleep, and he'd look at me so! But your father didn't do the straight thing either," he broke off with sudden resentment, "for he left your mother, as far as I could gather, to shift for herself.

"As I was saying, perhaps it was my low state of health, but he gave me no rest; seemed as if he was tryin' to say that you needed that money. And finally the thought come to me that perhaps I ought to give your mother at least part of what was owin' her; so I wrote to Old Harbour and you know the rest. You see," he concluded, "when I learned that your mother had been dead more'n twenty years, I was afraid to make myself known. I was fearful some relative or friend'd get after me on your part. So I sent seven hundred dollars along, it was all I'd saved, to that friend of yours whose name the postmaster gave me, and then I left. I went away from the town in Massachusetts where I'd been workin' and I found a job as foreman in a mill in another town. And I thought everything'd be all right then; but do you know, I still dreamed of your father, and the upshot was, that I went to a priest and made a clean breast of the story; and as he told me to do, I worked hard and paid it all up. Yes, I've paid it all up," he finished, "for the balance, the eight hundred dollars that was comin' to you, I deposited in your name in the bank at Old Harbour;" and fumbling in the pocket of his shirt, he handed her a sealed envelope. "There's the deposit slip, and the whole story written out ready to be mailed to you in case I didn't manage to see you," he explained.

His face had grown brighter, had regained a faint expression of health, as the load that had long oppressed his conscience was lifted.

Rachel left the invalid holding admiringly in his bony fingers her bunch of flowers. She reached the door of the ward; then, with a sudden eagerness, she retraced her steps.