CHAPTER XXVII
I COME INTO MY OWN
It was long before I realized that that white, bandaged thing lying on the bed before me was my hand. I gazed at it curiously for a while and stirred it slightly to make sure,—what a mighty effort that little motion cost me!—and then I became aware that a breeze was passing across my face, and a peculiar thing about it was that it came and went regularly like the swinging of a pendulum. And when I raised my eyes to see what this might mean, I found myself looking straight into the astonished face of Sam, my boy.
He stared at me for a moment, his eyes starting from his head, and then with a loud cry he dropped the fan he had been wielding and ran from the room, clapping his hands together as he went, as I had heard negroes do under stress of great excitement. What could it mean? Again my eyes fell upon the queer, bandaged thing which must be my hand. Had there been an accident? I could not remember, and while my mind was still wrestling with the question in a helpless, flabby way, I heard the swish of skirts at the door, and there entered who but Dorothy!
"Why, Dorothy!" I cried, and then stopped, astonished at the sound of my own voice. It was not my voice at all,—I had never heard it before,—and it seemed to come from a great way off. And what astonished me more than anything else was that Dorothy did not seem in the least surprised by it.
"Yes, Tom," she said, and she came to the bedside and laid her hand upon my head. Such a cool, soft little hand it was. "Why, the fever is quite gone! You will soon be well again."
I tried to raise my hand to take hers, but it lay there like a great dead weight, and I could scarcely move it. I know not what it was, but at the sight of her standing there so strong and brave and sweet, and the thought of myself so weak and helpless, the tears started from my eyes and rolled down my cheeks in two tiny rivulets. She seemed to understand my thought, for she placed one of her hands in mine, and with the other wiped my tears away. I love to think of her always as I saw her then, bending over me with infinite pity in her face and wiping my tears away. The moment of weakness passed, and my brain seemed clearer than it had been.
"Have I been ill?" I asked.
"Very ill, Tom," she said. "But now you will get well very quickly."
"What was the matter with me, Dorothy?"
She looked at me a moment and seemed hesitating for an answer.
"I think you would better go to sleep now, Tom," she said at last, "and when you wake again, I will tell you all about it."
"Very well," I answered submissively, and indeed, at the time, my brain seemed so weary that I had no wish to know more.
She gently took her hand from mine and went to a table, where she poured something from a bottle into a glass. I followed her with my eyes, noting how strong and confident and beautiful she was.
"Drink this, Tom," she said, bringing the glass back to the bed and holding it to my lips. I gulped it down obediently, and then watched her again as she went to the window and drew the blind. She came back in a moment and sat down in the chair from which I had startled Sam. She picked up the fan which he had dropped, and waved it softly to and fro above me, smiling gently down into my face. And as I lay there watching her, the present seemed to slip away and leave me floating in a land of clouds.
But when I opened my eyes again, it all came back to me in an instant, and I called aloud for Dorothy. She was bending over me almost before the sound of my voice had died away.
"Oh, thank God!" I cried. "It was only a dream, then! You are safe,
Dorothy,—there were no Indians,—tell me it was only a dream."
"Yes, I am quite safe, Tom," she answered, and took my hand in both of hers.
"And the Indians?" I asked.
"Were frightened away by Colonel Washington and his men, who killed many of them."
I closed my eyes for a moment, and tried to reconstruct the drama of that dreadful night.
"Dorothy," I asked suddenly, "was Brightson killed?"
"Yes, Tom," she answered softly.
I sighed.
"He was a brave man," I said. "No man could have been braver."
"Only one, I think," and she smiled down at me tremulously, her eyes full of tears.
"Yes, Colonel Washington," I said, after a moment's thought. "Perhaps he is braver."
"I was not thinking of Colonel Washington, Tom," and her lips began to tremble.
I gazed at her a moment in amazement.
"You do not mean me, Dorothy?" I cried. "Oh, no; I am not brave. You do not know how frightened I grow when the bullets whistle around me."
She laid her fingers on my lips with the prettiest motion in the world.
"Hush," she said. "I will not listen to such blasphemy."
"At least," I protested, "I am not so brave as you,—no, nor as your mother, Dorothy. I had no thought that she was such a gallant woman."
"Ah, you do not know my mother!" she cried. "But you shall know her some day, Tom. Nor has she known you, though I think she is beginning to know you better, now."
There were many things I wished to hear,—many questions that I asked,—and I learned how Sam had galloped on until he reached the fort, how he had given the alarm, how Colonel Washington himself had ridden forth twenty minutes later at the head of fifty men,—all who could be spared,—and had spurred on through the night, losing the road more than once and searching for it with hearts trembling with fear lest they should be too late, and how they had not been too late, but had saved us,—saved Dorothy.
"And I think you are dearer to the commander's heart than any other man," she added. "Indeed, he told me so. For he stayed here with you for three days, watching at your bedside, until he found that he could stay no longer, and then he tore himself away as a father leaves his child. I had never seen him moved so deeply, for you know he rarely shows emotion."
Ah, Dorothy, you did not know him as did I! You had not been with him at Great Meadows, nor beside the Monongahela, nor when we buried Braddock there in the road in the early morning. You had not been with him at Winchester when wives cried to him for their husbands, and children for their parents, nor beside the desolated hearths of a hundred frontier families. And of a sudden it came over me as a wave rolls up the beach, how much of sorrow and how little of joy had been this man's portion. Small wonder that his face seemed always sad and that he rarely smiled.
Dorothy had left me alone a moment with my thoughts, and when she came back, she brought her mother with her. I had never seen her look at me as she looked now, and for the first time perceived that it was from her Dorothy got her eyes. She stood in the doorway for a moment, gazing down at me, and then, before I knew what she was doing, had fallen on her knees beside my bed and was kissing my bandaged hand.
"Why, aunt!" I cried, and would have drawn it from her.
"Oh, Tom," she sobbed, and clung to it, "can you forgive me?"
"Forgive you, aunt?" I cried again, yet more amazed. "What have you done that you should stand in need of my forgiveness?"
"What have I done?" she asked, and raised her face to mine. "What have I not done, rather? I have been a cold, hard woman, Tom. I have forgot what right and justice and honor were. But I shall forget no longer. Do you know what I have here in my breast?" she cried, and she snatched forth a paper and held it before my eyes. "You could never guess. It is a letter you wrote to me."
"A letter I wrote to you?" I repeated, and then as I saw the superscription, I felt my cheeks grow hot. For it read, "To be delivered at once to Mrs. Stewart."
"Ay," she said, "a letter you wrote to me, and which I should never have received had you not forgot it and left it lying on my table in my study at Riverview. Can you guess what I felt, Tom, when they brought it to me here, and I opened it and read that you had gone to the swamp alone amongst those devils? I thought that you were dead, since the letter had been delivered, and the whole extent of the wrong I had done you sprang up before me. But they told me you were not dead,—that Colonel Washington had come for you, and that you had ridden hastily away with him. I could guess the story, and I should never have known that you had saved the place but for the chance which made you forget this letter."
I had tried to stop her more than once. She had gone on without heeding me, but now she paused.
"It was nothing," I said. "Nothing. There was no real danger. Thank Long.
He was with me. He is a better man than I."
"Oh, yes," she cried, "they are all better men than you, I dare say! Do not provoke me, sir, or you will have me quarreling with you before I have said what I came here to say. Can you guess what that is?" and she paused again, to look at me with a great light in her eyes.
But I was far past replying. I gazed up at her, bewildered, dazzled. I had never known this woman.
"I see you cannot guess," she said. "Of course you cannot guess! How could you, knowing me as you have known me? 'Tis this. Riverview is yours, Tom, and shall be always yours from this day forth, as of right it has ever been."
Riverview mine? No, no, I did not want Riverview. It was something else I wanted.
"I shall not take it, aunt," I said quite firmly. "I am going to make a name for myself,—with my sword, you know," I added with a smile, "and when I have once done that, there is something else which I shall ask you for, which will be dearer to me—oh, far dearer—than a hundred Riverviews."
What ailed the women? Here was Dorothy too on her knees and kissing my bandaged hand.
"Oh, Tom, Tom," she cried, "do you not understand?"
"Understand?" I repeated blankly. "Understand what, Dorothy?"
"Don't you remember, dear, what happened just before the troops came?"
"Oh, very clearly," I answered. "The Indians got Brightson down and stabbed him, and just then you sprang up and cried the troops were coming, and sure enough, there they were just entering the clearing, and the Indians paused only for one look and then fled down the stairs as fast as they could go. 'T was you who saved us all, Dorothy."
"Oh, but there was something more!" she cried. "There was one Indian who did not run, Tom, but who stopped to aim at me. I saw him do it, and I closed my eyes, for I knew that he would kill me, and I heard his gun's report, but no bullet struck me. For it was you whom it struck, dear, through your hand and into your side, and for long we thought you dying."
"Yes," I said, "but you see I am not dying, nor like to die, dear
Dorothy, so that I may still rejoin the troops erelong."
She was looking at me with streaming eyes.
"Do you mean that I am not going to get well, Dorothy?" I asked, for I confess her tears frightened me.
"Oh, not so bad as that, dear!" she cried. "Thank God, not so bad as that! But your hand, Tom, your right hand is gone. You can never wield a sword again, dear, never go to war. You will have to stay at home with me."
I know not how it was, but she was in my arms, and her lips were on mine, and I knew that was no more parting for us.