Fairy Fingers / A Novel

by Anna Cora Ogden Mowatt Ritchie

There was no appeal from Madeleine's decision. She exerted a mild authority which was too potent for argument.

After Gaston departed, Madeleine, for a brief space, left Maurice alone with his father. When she stole back to her place at the head of the bed, she was attired in a white cambric wrapper, lightly girded at the waist; a blue shawl of some soft material fell in graceful folds about her form. She had entered with such a soundless step, that when Maurice saw her sitting before him, he started, and his breath grew labored, as though, for a second, he fancied that he gazed upon some unreal shape. The flowing white drapery, and the delicate azure folds of the shawl helped the illusion, which her musical voice would scarcely have dispelled, but for the sense of reality produced by the words she uttered.

"It is just eleven; that is the hour at which the medicine was to be given."

She took up the cup and administered a spoonful of its contents, before Maurice had quite recovered himself.

The silence which followed did not last long. Madeleine began to question Maurice concerning his life in America, his opinions, his experiences, the people he had known and esteemed; and he responded, in subdued tones, by a long narrative of past events.

It was the first time that Maurice had been called upon to watch beside a bed of sickness, and his was one of those vivacious temperaments to which sleep is so indispensable that an overpowering somnolence will fling its charms about the senses, and bear the spirit away captive, even in the soul's most unwilling moments. Five o'clock had struck when Madeleine perceived that her companion's eyes had grown heavy, and that he was making a desperate struggle to keep them open. With womanly tact she leaned her elbow on the bed, and rested her forehead on her hand, in such a manner that her face was concealed, and thus avoided any further conversation. In less than ten minutes, the sound of clear but regular breathing apprised her that Maurice had fallen asleep.

When she looked up, at first timidly, but soon with security, Maurice was lying back in his arm-chair—his hands were calmly folded together, his head drooped a little to one side, the rich chestnut curls (for his hair had darkened until it no longer resembled Bertha's golden locks) were disordered, and fully revealed his fair, intellectual brow; the pallor of his face rendered more than usually conspicuous the chiselling of his finely-cut features; the calm, half-smiling curve of his handsome mouth gave his whole countenance an expression of placid happiness which it had not worn, of late, in waking hours. Madeleine sat and gazed at him as she could never have gazed when his eyes might have met hers; she gazed until her whole soul flashed into her face; and if Maurice had awakened, and caught but one glimpse of the fervent radiance of that look, he would surely have known her secret.

There is intense fascination to a woman in scanning the face that to her is beyond all others worth perusing, when the soft breath of sleep renders the beloved object unconscious of the eyes bent tenderly upon his features. No check is given to the flood of worshipping love that pours itself out from her soul; then, and perhaps then only, in his presence, she allows the tide of pent-up adoration to break down all its natural barriers. However perfect her devotion at other times, there may, there always does exist a half-involuntary reticence, a secret fear that if even her eyes were to betray the whole wealth of her passion, it would not be well with her. Men are constitutionally, unconsciously ungrateful; give them abundance of what they covet most and they prize the gift less highly than if its measure were stinted. And women have an instinct that warns them not to be too lavish. Those women who love most fervently, most deeply, most internally, seldom frame the full strength of that love into words, or manifest it in looks even; that is, in the waking presence of the one who holds their entire being captive.

Maurice slept on, though the streets had long since become noisy, and door-bells were ringing, and there was a sound of hammering in the entry (the upholsterer at work), and steps could be distinguished passing up and down the stair.

Madeleine, who at one period of her life had been used to night vigils, hardly felt fatigued; but she knew that she must hoard her strength if she would have it last to meet prolonged requirements. She touched Maurice softly; but he was not aroused until she had made several efforts to break his slumber. He looked about him in bewilderment, and then at the white-robed figure before him as though it were an apparition.