It was plain enough then that Jessica either did not know how brave her own action had been nor that all her recent suffering had been the price of saving her enemy’s life. Understanding this, the nurse delicately slipped away, leaving those two young souls to find out the truth from one another and to make that peace which their words signified had not existed between them.
“Jessica, don’t you know? Is it possible that nobody has told you how your flinging yourself upon that vicious Beauty prevented his trampling me under his feet and surely saved my life? He trampled you instead and I feel—I feel—O Jessica! I have been so mean, so little, so dastardly and hateful all along from the beginning. I can’t tell you how mean I feel. Can you forgive me? Can you——”
“Helen, Helen! Let’s change the question. Can you love me a little, tiny bit? That’s all I want in this world to be loved; or what’s better, be let to love other people just as much as I wish. You are so beautiful, so clever, I’ve just longed to love you, only—only—Say, Helen, that you can and will now.”
The senior’s answer was to clasp the convalescent in such a close embrace as satisfied forever Jessica’s longing in that question.
“Love you, ‘Little Captain’? Oh! with all my heart and soul; and to try to be somewhat like you is now my dearest ambition. Kiss me, Jessie, kiss me once.”
Not only kisses but tears commingled, to that extent the watchful nurse from the room beyond came back to her post and cut the interview short. But it was a very different, most radiant Helen who left that hospital room and repaired with her story and her good news to the motherly presence of Madame Mearsom.
When she had finished that narration, she added:
“And now, Madame, I want you to help me find a way to, at least, partially repay Jessica for her suffering. I know about hospitals. That it is very expensive to have a private room and one ‘special’ nurse, even one; yet Jessica has had two, and sometimes three. That means, I suppose, that she has been in extremest danger. I want to help her. Will you find out for me, and arrange it as only your tact can, so that her pride won’t be hurt? The whole bill, surgeons, nurses, room, every possible expense; my mother and I wish to pay it and as soon as we can learn how much it is. Of the larger debt—that I owe her my very life—I can’t speak yet. Time will show me some way, I hope, to prove I’m grateful for all that.
“Why, Madame! You are smiling! What can I have said? Haven’t I offered it right? I’m glad, we’re glad, to do much more if you will tell us what.”
“Helen, what has put it into your head that Jessica Trent needs any financial ‘help’?”