In Tom’s chamber the soiled uniform was removed, the matted hair laid back, the parched lips moistened, the unconscious invalid clothed in linen white and clean. A doctor came, bowed his ear to Robert’s breast to catch the beating of the heart, and moistened the parched lips.
“Fever has burned him up. The tide is nearly out. It is only a question of a few hours,” he said.
Through the night, Ruth, sitting by his bedside, in the calm and stillness, heard the clock strike the passing hours. At times she heard, through the open windows, the faint ripple of the surf rolling in from the restless sea. Soon for him the waves of life would break upon a shoreless ocean. It was her hand that fanned him; that wiped the death-damp from his forehead; dropped the refreshing cordial on his tongue; held the mirror to his nostrils to ascertain if still, perchance, he breathed. The tides of the ocean had reached their farthest ebb and were setting towards the flood once more, bringing sweet and refreshing odors from the ever-heaving sea. The night winds were drying the dampness from the marble brow. Day was dawning, its amber light flowing along the horizon. The fluttering heart was beating more strongly; more deep the breathing.
“Oh, ’Rinthia! He isn’t going; he’s coming back. God has heard my prayer,” said Ruth.
The sun was rising, and its rays streaming into the chamber. The closed eyes slowly opened and gazed wonderingly. Where was he? What the meaning of this flood of light? No longer straggling beams through iron-grated windows, no longer the bare floor and earth-polluted garments, but linen white and clean. Was it an angel bending over him,—whose eyes of love and infinite tenderness looked into his own? Was it one of the seraphim that pressed her lips to his, that dropped tears upon his cheeks? Were there tears in Heaven? Surely this must be Paradise! The eyes closed, the vision faded, but the angel still was fanning the fevered cheeks.
As shone the face of Moses, the lawgiver of Israel, when he descended from the Mount of God, so the countenance of Ruth Newville was illuminated by a divine radiance when once more she entered her home. During the night she had been transfigured.
“What has happened, daughter?” her father asked.
“Where have you been? what is it?” the exclamation of the mother, gazing with wonder and amazement upon the face of her child.
“Sit down, please, and I will tell you. I must go back to the beginning. Do you remember a day, six years ago, one September afternoon, when I came into the house greatly agitated? and when you asked, as you have now, what had happened, I would not make reply?”
“Yes, Ruth, and you have been a mystery to me ever since that afternoon,” said Mrs. Newville.