East of the Shadows

by Mrs. Hubert Barclay

CHAPTER XII

PROGRESS

"The days are made on a loom whereof the warp and woof are past and future time."—EMERSON.

The improvement in Francis Heathcote's condition in the days which followed was, so the doctor and nurses declared, phenomenal. Robert Gale ceased to tug at his beard in angry perplexity, and melted into something which might almost have been called jocularity, as he watched the man gaining in health and strength. "Splendid! Splendid!" he would say, rubbing his hands together in satisfaction. "Go on as you are going, and you'll see the last of me soon."

And as the days went by, peacefully and seemingly uneventfully, the time she spent with Francis became more and more the pivot on which Philippa's whole mind and thought turned. Day by day, almost hour by hour, he appeared to gain visibly in vigour. The cheerfulness and high spirits which had characterised him in an unusual degree before his accident, returned to him; and she marvelled increasingly at the almost boyish gaiety which he evinced at times. There were moments when she had perforce to remind herself of the long years of loneliness and deprivation through which he had passed. They seemed to have left no mark on him. And yet she could not think they were forgotten, for once—it was at her second visit to him—he spoke at some length of his illness. Not, however, with any bitterness or annoyance, but merely as one might mention a curious experience through which one had lived, and for which one was little or none the worse.

"It is all so muddled to me. Sometimes it seems as if I had waited years for the sight of your face, and then again it would seem only the day before that I had seen you. Sometimes I saw you so clearly that I thought you were in the room, only I never could get you to speak to me. And I never could touch you. The moment I thought you were coming nearer you went away altogether. That was what bothered me. I suppose it was imagination or some kind of delirium, but it was rather dreadful, for when I couldn't see you everything was swallowed up in a horrible darkness. It was only when you came that there was daylight at all, the rest was a dreadful night."

"Don't talk of it," she had begged him, "it is over now." And seeing that the subject distressed her he had not spoken of it again.

Philippa found no difficulty in amusing him, or distracting his attention from anything which her intuition warned her might lead to dangerous questioning. She sang to him, and read to him, choosing lighter stories from the magazines, and preferably those in which the plot was laid in other countries or in previous centuries. He showed no signs of bewilderment when such events as the Indian Mutiny or the French Revolution were mentioned, and the girl could not be sure whether he listened without comprehending, for the mere pleasure of hearing her voice and knowing her companionship, or whether some feeling of half-shamed reticence prevented his acknowledging that he had never heard of these things before.

Perhaps, again, the mention of them awoke echoes which had long been silent, and dragged forgotten facts out of oblivion to the light of day—just as one may enter a room which has been closely sealed for years, and see objects once familiar but long since absolutely forgotten, shrouded in dust and dim with disuse, but of which the sight instantly recalls every trifling association.

Sometimes he would comment upon the situations or characters in a story, frequently making fun of them and their peculiarities, and at others he would bid her lay down the book and talk to him instead. He found the greatest pleasure in the time they spent together, when Philippa would take up her embroidery and sit beside him, and he would lie on the sofa with his eyes on her, watching her every movement as her dexterous needle slipped rapidly through the canvas.

He was thoughtful of her, never omitting to question her as to whether she had been out, and constantly bidding her not to give up all her own amusements for his sake. He did not speak a great deal of his love, but his devotion showed itself plainly in a hundred different ways—in his deep gratitude for any slight service rendered—in his look of gladness when she came—in the inflexion of his voice, and so on. He seemed determined not to peril his new-found joy, or weary her by any protestations.

It was all quite easy, and Philippa was conscious of a great content, which she attributed to the reaction from her anxiety lest she should fail in the thing she had undertaken, and the natural pride which a nurse may legitimately feel when she sees a patient making strides on the road of convalescence.

She had received a letter from Marion, who wrote from a heart evidently torn with misgivings as to the wisdom of the course Philippa was pursuing. Her words were affectionate and guarded, but doubt and even disapproval could easily be read between the lines. She wrote of the grave dangers which must presently confront her friend, of the moment which must surely come when it would be impossible to go on without acknowledging the truth, and the word which might have been said at once would have to be spoken. She earnestly begged her to withdraw herself altogether, to leave the nursing of Francis Heathcote to others. The pain she would now cause would be nothing to the pain which would be his later when her daily presence had become a delightful habit with him—and so on, and so on. She reiterated the Major's regret that Philippa should have been drawn into the affair while a guest in their house, and particularly during their absence. Her pity for Francis was intense, but that did not alter her fixed opinion that Philippa was not doing the best or the kindest thing by assisting to deceive him; for that was what it really amounted to. She knew Philippa's power of sympathy, and her loving heart had no doubt blinded her to what was wise and right.

The girl read the letter carefully, but even if the arguments contained in it might have moved her to a different decision had they come earlier, they arrived too late to be of any value whatever. She told herself that it was only natural that Marion should feel as she did—that no one who was not on the spot, who had not seen Francis, could possibly judge of what was best for him—and that the wisdom of her decision had been amply proved by the marvellous improvement in his health. As for grave dangers in the future, they did not trouble her; she could only think of each moment as it came.

She answered the letter, assuring Marion of her affection, and regretting they could not see the matter in the same light, and repeating her conviction that had her friend been there she would undoubtedly have acted in the same way. Then she dismissed the question from her mind. This was not the moment for looking back and wondering what would have happened if she had acted differently.

If she had wondered at all, it was to marvel why she had hesitated, for now she could not see that any alternative had been practicable; but she was not one of those unfortunate people who are forever looking back, forever apprehensive, forever haunted by doubts as to whether they have done the right thing; on the contrary, she possessed sound stability of purpose and a power of acting on her own convictions, fearlessly accepting any responsibility they entailed.

It is true that in this affair she had found an unusual difficulty in arriving at a decision, but once having made up her mind, she was not likely to be affected by the opinion of others. Having chosen her path she would tread it without faltering. Her time was fully occupied with details which, although in themselves trifling, were of importance to her great objective—gathering flowers for Francis' room—collecting scraps of news—trying over new songs to sing to him—planning fresh ways to interest and amuse him.

And then, without warning, came some days of grave anxiety, for the advance which had been so steady seemed suddenly arrested, and Francis lost as much ground in a day as he had gained in a week. It was hard to account for it. The weather, which had been warm and sunny, had changed, and heavy storms of rain and a close thundery atmosphere prevailed. This might have affected the patient, or, did this relapse mean that his condition had been one of superficial strength induced by sheer power of will? The doctor resumed his usual ferocity of manner and refused to be questioned. For hours he and Philippa sat beside the bed, watching a feeble, flickering spark of life—so feeble that it seemed that every moment it must be extinguished; but gradually—very gradually—the distressing symptoms decreased, a little colour returned to the face which had looked so lifeless, and again hope grew strong.

At last there came a day when the doctor pronounced himself satisfied that, for the time at least, danger was over.

It was Francis himself who suggested a little later that Philippa should, as he put it, take a day off. Days and nights of watchfulness and unremitting care leave their mark even on the most robust, and although the girl denied that she felt any fatigue, it was evident to him that she was looking white and strained. The very idea that she should in any way suffer through her devotion to him distressed him so greatly that Philippa agreed, and it was arranged that she should spend the whole day in the open air, and that on the following day the plan should be reversed—she should spend it with him and the nurse should take a holiday.

"Why don't you ride?" Francis asked. "It must be weeks since you have been in the saddle. You, who spend half your days riding, of course you must miss it."

She made some evasive reply and he did not urge her further, to her relief; for she did not care particularly about riding, whereas it had been more than a pastime—indeed almost a passion—with Philippa the first.

The storms which had swept Bessmoor from end to end for many days in succession had passed over, leaving behind them just a few dark clouds, drifting in broken masses across a sky of deepest blue, and throwing deep shadows here and there across the moor—ever-varying elusive shadows which only accentuated the brilliancy of the sunshine where it fell upon the warm colours of the ling, which was just coming into blossom, for the blooming time of the bell heather was over.

There was a buoyancy and freshness in the air doubly welcome after the sultry depression which was in tune with Philippa's mood—in tune with the exhilaration of spirit of which she was conscious. The clouds had passed—the sun was shining—away with gloomy forebodings—Francis was really better. And having schooled herself to live only in the present and take no thought for the morrow, she was able to say, with no slight feeling of contentment, that all was well.

She had not seen Isabella Vernon since the day she had visited her cottage, and she had decided that since Francis had forbidden her presence in the house, she would spend the day with the woman whom she was beginning to call her friend.

She had thought a good deal of Isabella since their last meeting, and in some curious fashion her thoughts had brought her more intimately near. There seemed to be no particular reason why this should be so, for Philippa was not in the habit of tumbling into friendship; but in the long hours which she had spent beside Francis' bedside, Isabella had been constantly in her mind. Was it, perhaps, because she had been so closely connected with the past of the man, that past which was so inextricably fused with the present? Was it of that past that Isabella had spoken when she had emphatically repeated, "I do not want to forget!" And if this was so—— She could not tell. All she knew was that in some mysterious way it had become quite clear to her that Isabella had come into her life, and had come to stay.