II
“I think that is all,” said the hurried, jaded doctor to the Northern nurse. “The child is convalescent—you understand about the nourishment?—and you know what to do for Mrs. Leroy? I shall bring some one who will stay with her husband within the hour.”
Outside was the glare of sun upon white sand—a pitiless sun, whose rising and setting seemed the only things done in due order in all the hushed and fever-smitten city. Within was a shaded green gloom and the anguished moaning of a sick woman.
Mildred Fabian, alone with her patients and the one servant who had not deserted the house, faced her work and felt her heart rise with exultation—a singular, sustaining joy that never yet had failed her in the hour of need. The certainty of hard work, the consciousness of danger, the proximity of death—these acted always upon her like some subtle stimulant. If she had tried to explain this, which she did not, she would perhaps have said that at no other time did she have such an overwhelming conviction of the soul’s supremacy as in the hours of human extremity. And this conviction, strongest in the teeth of all that would seem most vehemently to deny it, was to her nothing less than intoxicating.
She was not one of the women to whom there still seems much left in life when love is gone. To be sure, she had the consolations of religion and a certain sweet reasonableness of temperament which prompted her to pick up the pieces after a crash, and make the most of what might be left. But she was obliged to do this in her own way. She was sorry, but she could not do it in her mother’s way.
When she told her family that her engagement was at an end, that she did not care to explain how the break came, and that if they meant to be kind they would please not bother her about it, she knew that her mother would have been pleased to have her take up her old life with a little more apparent enthusiasm for it than she had ever shown before. To be a little gayer, a little more occupied, a little prettier if possible, and certainly a little more fascinating—that was her mother’s idea of saving the pieces. But Mildred’s way was different, and after dutifully endeavoring to carry out her mother’s conception of the conduct proper to the circumstances with a dismal lack of success, she took her own path, which led her through a training school for nurses first, and so, ultimately, to Jacksonville.
The long day wore slowly into night. The doctor had returned very shortly with a man, whether physician or nurse she did not know, whom he left with Mr. Leroy. The little maid, who had been dozing in the upper hall, received some orders concerning the preparation of food which she proceeded to execute. The convalescent child rested well. The sick woman passed from the first to the second stage of the disease and was more quiet. The doctor came again after nightfall. He looked at her charges wearily, and told Mildred that the master of the house would not rally.
“He is my friend, and I can do no more for him,” he said, almost with apathy.
The night passed as even nights in sick-rooms will, and at last it began to grow toward day. The nurse became suddenly conscious of deadly weariness and need of rest. She called the servant and left her in charge, with a few directions and the injunction to call her at need, and then stole down the stairs to snatch, before she rested, the breath of morning air she craved.
As she stood at the veranda’s edge in the twilight coolness and twilight hush watching the whitening sky, there came steps behind her, and turning, she came face to face with Neil Hardesty. She stared at him with unbelieving eyes.
“Yes, it is I,” he said.
“You were with Mr. Leroy?” she asked. “Are you going?”
“My work is over here,” he answered, quietly. “I am going to send—some one else.”
She bent her head a second’s space with the swift passing courtesy paid death by those to whom it has become a more familiar friend than life itself, then lifted it, and for a minute they surveyed each other gravely.
“This is like meeting you on the other side of the grave,” she said. “How came you here? I thought you were in California.”
“I thought you were in Europe.”
“I was for awhile, but there was nothing there I wanted. Then I came back and entered the training school. After this is over I have arranged to join the sisterhood of St. Margaret. I think I can do better work so.”
“Let me advise you not to mistake your destiny. You were surely meant for the life of home and society, and can do a thousand-fold more good that way.”
“You do not know,” she answered, simply. “I am very happy in my life. It suits me utterly. I have never been so perfectly at peace.”
“But it will wear you out,” he murmured.
She looked at him out of her great eyes, surprisedly. It was a look he knew of old.
“Why, I expect it to,” she answered.
There was a little silence before she went on, apparently without effort:
“I am glad to come across you again, for there is one thing I have wanted to say to you almost ever since we parted, and it has grieved me to think I might never be able to say it. It is this. While I do not regret anything else, and while I am sure now that it was best for both of us—or else it would not have happened—I have always been sorry that the break between us came in the way it did. I regret that. It hurts me still when I remember of what I accused you. I am sure I was unjust. No wonder you were bitter against me. I have often prayed that that bitterness might pass out of your soul, and that I might know it. So—I ask your forgiveness for my suspicion. It will make me happier to know you have quite forgiven me.”
He did not answer. She waited patiently.
“Surely”—she spoke with pained surprise—“surely you can forgive me now?”
“Oh, God!”
She looked at his set face uncomprehending. Why should it be with such a mighty effort that he unclosed his lips at last? His voice came forced and hard.
“I—I did it, Mildred. I was the coward that you thought me. I don’t know what insensate fear came over me and took possession of me utterly, but it was nothing to the fear I felt afterwards—for those two weeks—that you might suspect me of it. And when I knew you did I was mad with grief and anger at myself, and yet—it seems to me below contempt—I tried to save my miserable pride. But I have always meant that you should know at last.”
She looked at him with blank uncomprehension.
“I did it,” he repeated, doggedly, and waited for the change he thought to see upon her face. It came, but with a difference.
“You—you did it?” for the idea made its way but slowly to her mind. “Then”—with a rush of feeling that she hardly understood, and an impetuous, tender gesture—“then let me comfort you.”
It was the voice of the woman who had loved him, and not of any Sister of Charity, however gracious, that he heard again, but he turned sharply away.
“God forbid,” he said, and she shrank from the misery in his voice; “God forbid that even you should take away my punishment. Don’t you see? It is all the comfort I dare have, to go where there is danger and to face death when I can, till the day comes when I am not afraid, for I am a coward yet.”
She stretched her hands out toward him blindly. I am afraid that she forgot just then all the boasted sweetness of her present life, her years of training, and her coming postulancy at St. Margaret’s, as well as the heinousness of his offence. She forgot everything, save that this was Neil, and that he suffered.
But all that she, being a woman and merciful, forgot, he, being a man and something more than just, remembered.
“Good-by, and God be with you,” he said.
“Neil!” she cried. “Neil!”
But his face was set steadfastly toward the heart of the stricken city, and he neither answered nor looked back.
The future sister of St. Margaret’s watched him with a heart that ached as she had thought it could never ache again. All the hard-won peace of her patient years, which she thought so secure a possession, had gone at once and was as though it had not been; for he, with all his weaknesses upon him, was still the man she loved.
“Lord, give him back to me!” she cried, yet felt the cry was futile.
Slowly she climbed the stairs again, wondering where was the courage and quiet confidence that had sustained her so short a time ago.
Was it true, then, that heaven was only excellent when earth could not be had? She was the coward now. In her mind there were but two thoughts—the desire to see him again, and a new, appalling fear of death.
She re-entered the sick-room where the girl was watching her patients with awed eyes.
“You need not stay here,” she said, softly. “I cannot sleep now. I will call you when I can.”