“A great victory, dear. The war is over, and the regiment was the bravest in the field.”
His eyes kindled, his lips trembled, he sobbed, and the tears ran down his face. He was very weak, too weak to move his hand.
“Was it dark just now?” he asked presently.
“No.”
“It was only dark to me? Something passed away, like a black shadow. But as it went, and the sun—O the blessed sun, how beautiful it is!—touched my face, I thought I saw a light white cloud pass out at the door. Was there nothing that went out?”
She shook her head, and in a little while he fell asleep, she still holding his hand, and soothing him.
From that time, he recovered. Slowly, for he had been desperately wounded in the head, and had been shot in the body, but making some little advance every day. When he had gained sufficient strength to converse as he lay in bed, he soon began to remark that Mrs. Taunton always brought him back to his own history. Then he recalled his preserver’s dying words, and thought, “It comforts her.”
One day he awoke out of a sleep, refreshed, and asked her to read to him. But the curtain of the bed, softening the light, which she always drew back when he awoke, that she might see him from her table at the bedside where she sat at work, was held undrawn; and a woman’s voice spoke, which was not hers.
“Can you bear to see a stranger?” it said softly. “Will you like to see a stranger?”
“Stranger!” he repeated. The voice awoke old memories, before the days of Private Richard Doubledick.