“Is it you?” she whispered. “Is it really you?”
A warm, rosy beam of sunshine slipped in through the window and fell across the bed, and the rest of us tiptoed out, leavin’ the Friar alone with the gift of life which the Dawn had brought back to him.
[CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR—TY JONES NODS HIS HEAD]
It was a week after this before Olaf could see properly again. The doctor was wild to take Olaf back East and hold doin’s with him; but Olaf wouldn’t listen to it. He hated to have people take him for a freak, and said it wasn’t any fault of his that he saw the way he did. The doctor said ’at what Olaf saw was called the aurora; he said that science had been tryin’ to locate it, but hadn’t found any way to do it, and that it was some sort o’ rays shootin’ out from this which had put the inflammation into Olaf’s eyes.
Olaf had had one of his teeth filled when he was young, and ever since that he’d been suspicious o’ science; so he just clouded up his face when they tried to devil him into bein’ an experiment, and they couldn’t do anything with him. The Friar might have been able to, but the Friar would have sent his own eyes East by freight before he’d have asked Olaf to do a single thing he didn’t want to do. The ignorant allus scoff at the idee of Olaf seein’ the soul-flame; but the edicated allus take a serious interest which seems mighty funny—don’t it?
From the very moment Janet opened her eyes and smiled up at the Friar that mornin’ she continued to improve. The doctor listened to all that was told him about her havin’ pains in the top of her head and not bein’ right intellectually, and he said she must have had a blow there at some former time which had probably formed a tumor on the brain or knocked off a few splinters of bone into it, and that in removin’ the pressure, she had been put into perfect order again.
She had the smoothest voice I had ever heard, and I just doted on hearin’ her speak the Friar’s name, John Carmichael. I had a legal right to use the name John, myself; but it allus had the feel of a stiff collar to me, so I was glad enough to have it forgotten. But when Janet spoke the words John Carmichael, why, it cleared up the atmosphere and started a little breeze. She didn’t recall how she had come to Cross Crick, nor anything much which had happened to her since the night in Berlin. She said she had took singin’ lessons in a place called Italy, and had expected to reach grand opery.
She had sung for pay whenever she got a chance, in order to get money enough to go on with her studies, and was gettin’ what I’d call mighty lucrative wages at the Winter Garden; but was all the time bothered by a lot o’ foreign dudes who had the desire to make love, but not the capacity. She said her manager had introduced an Austrian count for advertizin’ purposes, and she had finally consented to eat a meal with him; but had been taken sick and had fallen. This was when she had bumped her head and she never got clear in it again until that morning when she had hovered between goin’ out with the night or comin’ back with the dawn.
She said she had a hazy, dreamlike remembrance of havin’ tried all kinds o’ work after this; but couldn’t tell the real from the unreal; and she didn’t have any recollection of how she had come to the ranch. We never mentioned Ty Jones to her for she was comin’ along like a colt on grass, and we didn’t want to risk any set-back. She said she still had it on her mind that she had lost something precious; but she couldn’t make out what it could have been, and the Friar allus told her not to worry, but to just rest herself back to complete strength.
Oscar and Tom Simpson had turned the corner, and it was only a question of time when they’d be all right again—which was true of all the others except Ty and Prometheus. Ty wouldn’t speak to us at all, though he didn’t seem to suffer to amount to anything. The doctor said he might live for years, or he might slip away at a moment’s notice; but either way, he was doomed to be paralyzed for the rest of his life; while the’ wasn’t any hope for Promotheus at all.