"I shall come again and take my chances," said Maynard in parting.
Mercurial Whately, forgetting his various troubles and experiences in the excitement of change and return to active duty, bade her a rather boisterous and good-hearted farewell. His mind was completely relieved as to Maynard, and he did not dream of Scoville as a serious rival.
"It's only a question of time," he thought, "and at present mother can do the courting better than I can. When I return Lou will be so desperately bored by her stupid life here as to be ready for any change."
The remaining patients looked at her and Mrs. Whately very wistfully and gratefully, speaking reluctant adieus. When all were gone the girl, feeling that she had reached the limit of endurance, went to her room and slept till evening. It was the sleep of exhaustion, so heavy that she came down to a late supper weak and languid. But youth is elastic, the future full of infinite possibilities. Scoville's words haunted her like sweet refrains of music. No matter how weary, perplexed and sad she was, the certainty of her place in his thoughts and heart sustained her and was like a long line of light in the west, indicating a clearing storm. "He WILL come again," she often whispered to herself; "he said he would if he had to come on crutches. Oh, he DOES love me. He gave me his love that night direct, warm from his heart, because he couldn't help himself. He thought he loved me before—when, by the run, he told me of it so quietly, so free from all exaction and demands; but I didn't feel it. It merely seemed like bright sunshine of kindness and goodwill, very sweet and satisfying then. But when we were parting, when his tones trembled so, when overcome, he lost restraint and snatched me to HIS heart—then I learned that I, too, had a heart."
If she had been given time this new heart-life, with thoughts and hopes springing from it like flowers, would have restored her elasticity. Scoville's manly visage, his eyes, so often mirthful, always kind, would have become so real to her fancy that the pallid, drawn features of the suffering, the dying and the dead, would have faded from her memory. So would have faded also the various aspects of passion from which she had shrunk, frightened by its hot breath. Her days would have been filled with the beautiful, innocent dreams of a young girl's first love so inspired as to cast out fear.
But the ruthless Moloch of war could not permit anything so ideal, so heavenly, as this.
Mrs. Waldo came down from the apartment to which her son had been removed and joined the girl on the veranda. "Ah!" she exclaimed, "I have taken solid comfort all day in the thought that you were sleeping, and now you are still resting. I want to see the color in your cheeks again, and the tired look all gone from your eyes before we go."
"You don't know how I dread to have you go," replied Miss Lou. "From the first your son did more for me than I could do for him. The smile with which he always greeted me made me feel that nothing could happen beyond remedy, and so much that was terrible was happening."
"Well, my child, that's the faith I am trying to cherish myself and teach my boy. It is impossible for you to know what a black gulf opened at my feet when my noble husband was killed early in the war. Such things, happily, are known only by experience, and many escape. Then our cause demanded my only son. I face death with him in every battle, every danger. He takes risks without a thought of fear, and I dare not let him know the agony of my fear. Yet in my widowhood, in the sore pressure of care and difficulty in managing a large plantation in these times, I have found my faith in God's love adequate to my need. I should still find it so if I lost my boy. I could not escape the suffering, but I would not sorrow as without hope."
"How much I would give for the certainty of such a faith!" said Miss
Lou sadly. "Sometimes, since Captain Hanfield died, I think I feel it.
And then—oh, I don't know. Things might happen which I couldn't meet
in your spirit. If I had been compelled to marry my cousin I feel that
I should have become hard, bitter and reckless."