III.
Albert sank into a feverish sleep that night, with a vague perception of four figures in the room—Maud, her mother, Hartley, and the young doctor. When he awoke fully in the morning his head felt prodigiously hot and heavy.
It was early dawn, and the lamp was burning brightly. Outside, a man's feet could be heard on the squealing snow—a sound which told how still and cold it was. A team passed with a jingle of bells.
Albert raised his head and looked about. Hartley was lying on the sofa, rolled up in his overcoat and some extra quilts. He had lain down at last, worn with watching. Albert felt a little weak, and fell back on his pillow, thinking about the strange night he had passed—a night more filled with strange happenings than the afternoon.
His sleep had been broken by the most vivid and exciting dreams, and through these visions had moved the figures of Hartley, the doctor, and Maud and her mother. He had a confused idea of the night, but a very clear idea of the afternoon. He could see the sidewalks lined with faces, the sun shining on the snow, the old sorrel's side-flung head and open mouth; the sleigh rose under him again, and he felt the reins burn through his hands.
As the light grew in the room his mind cleared, and he began to feel quite like himself again. He lifted his muscular arm and opened and shut his hand, saying aloud in his old boyish manner:
"I guess I'm all here."
"What's that?" called Hartley, rolling out of bed. "Did you ask for anything?"
"No—yes; gimme some water, Jim; my mouth is dry as a powder mill."
"How yeh feelin', anyway, pardner?" said Hartley, as he brought the water.
"First rate, Jim; I guess I'll be all right."
"Well, I guess you'd better keep quiet."
Albert rose partly, assisted by his friend, and drank from the glass a moment; then fell back on his pillow.
"I don't feel s' well when I sit up."
"Well, don't, then; stay right there where you are. Oh-um!" gaped Hartley, stretching himself; "it's about time f'r breakfast, I guess. Want y'r hands washed and y'r hair combed?"
"I guess I ain't reduced to that yet."
"Well, I guess y' be, old man. Now keep quiet, or have I got t' make yeh?" he asked in a threatening tone which made Albert smile. He wondered if Hartley hadn't been sitting up most of the night; but if he had, he showed little effect of it, for he began to sing a comic song as he pulled on his boots.
He threw on his coat next, and went out into the kitchen, returning soon with some hot water, with which he began to bathe the wounded boy's face and hands as tenderly as a woman.
"There; now I guess you're in shape f'r grub—feel any like grub?—Come in," he called in answer to a knock on the door.
Mrs. Welsh entered.
"How is he?" she whispered anxiously.
"Oh, I'm all right," cried Albert. "Bring me a plate of pancakes, quick!"
Mrs. Welsh turned to Hartley with a startled expression, but Hartley's grin assured her.
"I'm glad to find you so much better," she said, going to his bedside. "I've hardly slep', I was so much worried about you."
It was very sweet to feel her fingers in his hair, as his mother would have caressed him.
"I guess I hadn't better take off the bandages till the doctor comes, if you're comfortable.—Your breakfast is ready, Mr. Hartley, and I'll bring something for Albert."
Another knock a few minutes later, and Maud entered with a platter, followed closely by her mother, who carried some tea and milk.
Maud came forward timidly, but when he turned his eyes on her and said in a cheery voice, "Good morning, Miss Welsh!" she flamed out in rosy color and recoiled. She had expected to see him pale, dull-eyed, and with a weak voice, but there was little to indicate invalidism in his firm greeting. She gave place to Mrs. Welsh, who prepared his breakfast. She was smitten dumb by this turn of affairs; she hardly dared look at him as he sat propped up in bed. The crimson trimming on his shirt-front seemed like streams of blood; his head, swathed in bandages, made her shudder. But aside from these few suggestions of wounding, there was little of the horror of the previous day left. He did not look so pale and worn as the girl herself.
However, though he was feeling absurdly well, there was a good deal of bravado in his tone and manner, for he ate but little, and soon sank back on the bed.
"I feel better when my head is low," he explained in a faint voice.
"Can't I do something?" asked the girl, her courage reviving as she saw how ill and faint he really was. His eyes were closed and he looked the invalid now.
"I guess you better write to his folks."
"No; don't do that," he said, opening his eyes; "it will only do them harm an' me no good. I'll be all right in a few days. You needn't waste your time on me; Hartley'll wait on me."
"Mr. Lohr, how can you say such cruel——"
"Don't mind him now," said Mrs. Welsh. "I'm his mother now, and he's goin' to do just as I tell him to—ain't you, Albert?"
He dropped his eyelids in assent, and went off in a doze. It was all very pleasant to be thus treated. Hartley was devotion itself, and the doctor removed his bandages with the care and deliberation of a man with a moderate practice; besides, he considered Albert a personal friend.
Hartley, after the doctor had gone, said with some hesitation:
"Well, now, pard, I ought to go out and see a couple o' fellows I promised t' meet this morning."
"All right, Jim; all right. You go right ahead on business; I'm goin' t' sleep, anyway, and I'll be all right in a day or two."
"Well, I will; but I'll run in every hour 'r two and see if you don't want something. You're in good hands, anyway, when I'm gone."
"Won't you read to me?" pleaded Albert in the afternoon, when Maud came in with her mother to brush up the room. "It's getting rather slow business layin' here like this. Course I can't ask Jim to stay and read all the time, and he's a bad reader, anyway; won't you?"
"Shall I, mother?"
"Why, of course, Maud!"
So Maud got a book, and sat down over by the stove, quite distant from the bed, and read to him from "The Lady of the Lake," while the mother, like a piece of tireless machinery, moved about the house at the never-ending succession of petty drudgeries which wear the heart and soul out of so many wives and mothers, making life to them a pilgrimage from stove to pantry, from pantry to cellar, and from cellar to garret—a life that deadens and destroys, coarsens and narrows, till the flesh and bones are warped to the expression of the wronged and cheated soul.
Albert's selfishness was in a way excusable. He enjoyed beyond measure the sound of the girl's soft voice and the sight of her graceful head bent over the page. He lay, looking and listening dreamily, till the voice and the sunlit head were lost in his deep, sweet sleep.
The girl sat with closed book, looking at his face as he slept. It was a curious study to her, a young man—this young man, asleep. His brown lashes lay on his cheek; his facial lines were as placid as a child's. As she looked she gained courage to go over softly and peer down on him. How boyish he seemed! How little to be feared! How innocent, after all!
As she studied him she thought of him the day before, with closed eyes, a ghastly stream of blood flowing down and soaking her dress. She shuddered. His hands, clean and strong and white, lay out on the coverlet, loose and open, the fingers fallen into graceful lines. Abruptly, a boy outside gave a shout, and she leaped away with a sudden spring that left her pale and breathless. As she paused in the door and looked back at the undisturbed sleeper, she smiled, and the pink came back into her thin face.
Albert's superb young blood began to assert itself, and on the afternoon of the second day he was able to sit in his rocking chair before the fire and read a little, though he professed that his eyes were not strong, in order that Maud should read for him. This she did as often as she could leave her other work, which was "not half often enough," the invalid grumbled.
"More than you deserve," she found courage to say.
Hartley let nothing interfere with the book business, and the popular sympathy for Albert he coined into dollars remorselessly.
"You take it easy," he kept saying to his partner; "don't you worry—your pay goes on just the same. You're doing well right where you are. By jinks! biggest piece o' luck," he went on, half in earnest. "Why, I can't turn around without taking an order—fact! Turned in a book on the livery bill—that's all right. We'll make a clear hundred dollars out o' that little bump o' yours."
"Little bump! Say, now, that's——"
"Keep it up—put it on! Don't get up in a hurry. I don't need you to canvass, and I guess you enjoy this 'bout as well." He ended with a sly wink and cough.
Yes; the convalescence was delicious; afterward it grew to be one of the sweetest weeks of his life. Maud reading to him, bringing his food, and singing for him—yes; all that marred it was the stream of people who came to inquire how he was getting along. The sympathy was largely genuine, as Hartley could attest, but it bored the invalid. He had rather be left in quiet with Walter Scott and Maud, the drone of the long descriptive passages being a sure soporific.
He did not say, as an older person might, that she was not to be held accountable for what she did under the stress and tumult of that day; but he unconsciously did so regard her actions, led to do so by the changed conditions. In the light of common day it was hurrying to be a dream.
At the end of a week he was quite himself again, though he still had difficulty in wearing his hat. It was not till the second Sunday after the accident that he appeared in the dining room for the first time, with a large traveling cap concealing the suggestive bandages. He looked pale and thin, but his eyes danced with joy.
Maud's eyes dilated with instant solicitude. The rest sprang up in surprise, with shouts of delight, as hearty as brethren.
"Ginger! I'm glad t' see yeh!" said Troutt, so sincerely that he looked almost winning to the boy. The rest crowded around, shaking hands.
"Oh, I'm on deck again."
Ed Brann came in a moment later with his brother, and there was a significant little pause—a pause which grew painful till Albert turned and saw Brann, and called out:
"Hello, Ed! How are you? Didn't know you were here."
As he held out his hand, Brann, his face purple with shame and embarrassment, lumbered heavily across the room and took it, muttering some poor apology.
"Hope y' don't blame me."
"Of course not—fortunes o' war. Nobody to blame; just my carelessness.—Yes; I'll take turkey," he said to Maud, as he sank into the seat of honor at the head of the table.
Then the rest laughed and took seats, but Brann remained standing near Albert's chair. He had not finished yet.
"I'm mighty glad yeh don't lay it up against me, Lohr; an' I want 'o say the doctor's bill is all right; you un'erstand, it's all right."
Albert looked at him a moment in surprise. He knew this, coming from a man like Brann, meant more than a thousand prayers from a ready apologist; it was a terrible victory, and he made it as easy for his rival as possible.
"Oh, all right, Ed; only I'd calculated to cheat him out o' part of it—that is, turn in a couple o' Blaine's 'Twenty Years' on the bill."
Hartley roared, and the rest joined in, but not even Albert perceived all that it meant. It meant that the young savage had surrendered his claim in favor of the man he had all but killed. The struggle had been prodigious, but he had snatched victory out of defeat; his better nature had conquered.
No one ever gave him credit for it; and when he went West in the spring, people said his love for Maud had been superficial. In truth, he had loved the girl as sincerely as he had hated his rival. That he could rise out of the barbaric in his love and hate was heroic.
When Albert went to ride again, it was on melting snow, with the slowest horse Troutt had. Maud was happier than she had been since she left school, and fuller of color and singing. She dared not let a golden moment pass now without hearing it ring full, and she did not dare to think how short this day of happiness might be.