“Elsie, don’t faint! Be strong, I command you! Your mother lives! she lives! She has been placed here in apparent death only; she must not recover to find herself in this dreadful place; to see these grave-clothes; to know what horrors have befallen her, lest reason be shocked forever from its seat. Give me your cloak, Elsie! Quick! quick! My God, don’t faint, I abjure you; I’ll never forgive you if you faint now. Your cloak, I say; your cloak, quick! to throw around this shroud, which she must not see.”
Elsie, with pallid lips and dilated eyes, too amazed and doubtful of her own senses and sanity to receive the joyful truth, with mechanical promptitude threw off her cloak and handed it to Magnus.
“That’s my brave girl; that’s my pioneer wife!” he said, receiving the cloak, and folding it hastily yet carefully around the form he held in his arms, and pressing it closer to his bosom. “There, Elsie! Now, my little heroine, shade the lantern; quick, Elsie, lest she open her eyes and see the place we bear her from. Quick, Elsie! she is moving restlessly in my arms now, and her form is getting warm, thank Heaven! as warm almost as yours, my Elsie. There, now follow me closer behind, Elsie, my little soldier, and you may let the lantern shine as soon as we get out of the church.”
And so, folding the form of Alice closer in his sustaining arms, closer to his sheltering bosom, and followed by Elsie, bearing the darkened lantern, he hurried up the stairs of the vault, down the aisle of the church, out of the great door, and across the graveyard toward the cottage of the sexton, never pausing in his speed until he reached the door of the cabin, which, without stopping to unlatch, he pushed open with a blow of his foot.
He bore her in, followed by Elsie with the lantern. The fire they had left there was still burning brightly, warming and lighting the whole room. In the upper end of the apartment stood a poor but neat and cleanly bed.
Toward this he hastened with the form of Alice. He turned down the cover, and, hastily divesting her of the heavy cloak, laid her in the bed and covered her warmly up. He stooped and looked at her with intense interest, then took her arm and felt her pulse. It was moderately full and quick. He gazed upon her face. The color was still brightening in her cheeks and lips; her eyelids were quivering as if about to fly open; her full, fresh lips were slightly apart, as if about to speak; she was moving gently, breathing softly, murmuring melodiously. He bent his ear to catch that low, musical murmur; low and musical as the faintest breath of the Æolian harp. The words of that strange melody were: “Oh, angels, let me go! I—only I of all the earth love him well enough to be the instrument of Christ for his redemption—I—only I of all the earth have faith in its possibility.”
“Wandering, flighty, delirious,” said Dr. Magnus, quietly dropping the wrist he had held, and rising and going toward Elsie. “Elsie, I dare not leave your mother for an instant now. Pick up your cloak, wrap yourself well in it, take the lantern and haste to the gate, where we left the carriage; take my medicine chest from the box, and bring it hither. Haste, Elsie, haste! Every second counts a year of life.”
Mechanically as an automaton Elsie had obeyed his every direction. She looked unnatural with her pale face and great, dilated eyes. And she performed her part with the abstracted air and literal and mathematical precision of a sleep-walker. With this strange, absent air she went out, and after an absence of about fifteen minutes returned with the medicine chest.
Magnus heard her coming and left his patient for an instant to open the door and relieve her of her burden. But here another subject unexpectedly arrested his attention and claimed his care. As she gave the chest into his hands she stared straight at him—straight through him and past him with such unconscious eyes that he grew alarmed for her. Setting down the medicine chest upon a bench, he took her hands and drew her up to the fire, and, laying his hand upon her shoulder, and looking straight in her eyes, he said cheerfully:
“Wake up, Elsie! Rouse yourself, my child! This is very awful, but not unnatural.”