“Clotilde, my child,” went on Stephen, his voice growing suddenly strangely faint, “will you accept what this gentleman offers and can give you, a safe-conduct with Mère Jeanne back to your own country?”
“No, no,” she cried, finding her voice at last. “I do not wish to go. I want to stay here, with you, always!”
And springing forward she was just in time to fling her supporting arms about him as he fell back, unconscious, in his chair.
CHAPTER XII
THE BREAKING OF THE STORM
During Stephen’s illness that followed, it was Mother Jeanne’s devoted nursing that brought him back to health and her hard, brown, skilful hands that tended him with untiring faithfulness. Illness was no new thing to Stephen Sheffield, but this long healing of an ugly wound was hard for him to bear when so much was passing in the world outside and the problems of the Colonies growing graver every day.
“I will tell you nothing,” Doctor Thorndyke would say gruffly when Stephen, as soon as the Doctor appeared in the doorway, would begin to beg for news. “You fret yourself into a fever whenever I relate of some new tom-foolery wrought by King George the Third and his bat-blind ministers. Therefore I will say no more, since my first duty to my country is to make Master Stephen Sheffield well again.”
But as soon as Doctor Thorndyke was gone, Clotilde would steal to Stephen’s bedside and recount all the news of the day that she had gathered from Miles Atherton, for she knew, better than did the gruff Doctor, that it is wiser to tell a sick person the truth than to let him fret for the want of it. She was his constant and cheering companion through this time, since she was nearly as good a nurse as Mother Jeanne and quite as devoted a one.
It was upon her strong young shoulder that he leaned that first morning when he walked downstairs and out into the fresh air. He sat for a long time on the bench in the Queen’s Garden, feeling the sun warm upon him and watching the slow shadow of the sundial creep toward the hour.
“Do you see that?” he said to Clotilde, pointing to the steadily lengthening shadow that stretched its dark finger across the dial. “You can as easily stop the movement of that shadow as you can hold back the disaster that threatens these Colonies. Yet many people think that they can accomplish both the one and the other by the simple device of shutting their eyes!”