It had required considerable effort to induce Mrs. Thomas to see things in the light of her uselessness, and it was the doctor himself who finally carried her off and left the house to Miss Evy and Amanda. It was late when they found themselves alone in the little room where lay the still form of the man who was dearer than her heart's best blood to the one woman, and to the other—who shall say whether dear, or no?
Amanda had never been in love with the all-conquering hero of Fauquier County. At eighteen she had been in love with love; and Vivian was nearer the embodiment of her ideal than any other whom she knew. The highest powers of our nature remain latent in most of us for lack of opportunity to develop. It may be a talent, it may be a virtue that stays in the germ throughout all the ups and downs of our career, and that we pass on to our children to come out in them as practical capacity.
Although Amanda had in her nature a rare power of wifely devotion, it was of the royal order; it could not stoop, and so it died away. And in its stead had grown to mighty proportions the mother-love that extends in women of a high type beyond the instinctive care of her own young, to an all-embracing tenderness toward feeble creatures of every degree. The little ones, the helpless, the sick appealed to this strong, self-poised woman in a way that called out every capacity for self-sacrifice that lay in her, and she would have wrestled with death and all the evil powers to save from harm anything which confided itself to her protection.
The vigorous, healthy Vivian, contemptuously setting at naught her standards of duty, and wounding her dignity in a hundred ways, was so repulsive to her moral sense that she was ready to fly from him as from a pestilence. But Vivian cast down from his height of graceful insolence and dependent upon her kind offices, had claims before which every critical faculty bowed itself. All she thought of now was how to help him.
"Do you think he'll come to in his right mind?" asked Miss Evy in a low murmur, after half an hour had passed in silence. She could not stand it any longer. She felt as if she must say something. That handsome, calm woman seated at the head of the bed awed her, and at the same time irritated her. In some vague way she felt that Amanda was to blame for Vivian's accident. Like Mrs. Thomas she felt that if the wife had fallen into spasms of self-reproach it would have been more fitting than this display of courage and energy. Yet she was glad, too, for his sake that there was some one at hand able to "take holt and do whatever wuz needed."
Amanda looked over at the gentle spinster pleasantly, but replied only by a faint shake of the head. Her watch lay open upon the stand beside a glass of medicine, covered with a hymn book. Upon the book lay a thin silver spoon marked with the initials of Miss Evy's grandmother. It was one of six, and Miss Evy only used them upon rare occasions.
Amanda still wore her black silk, and over it she had tied one of her hostess' white aprons, made of fine nainsook and trimmed with a deep border of home-made lace. Aprons are the least neutral of garments, for they have the effect of bringing into view certain values in their wearer. By this touchstone some women are instantly proclaimed dowdies; others approved as domestic, and still others marked out as queens or fairies masquerading. The natural servant wears her apron smartly; the born chatelaine with an inimitable grace. Upon Amanda's magnificent figure the garment assumed the air of the imperial purple, and Miss Evy, watching her meekly, acknowledged in her successful rival some rare quality which she could not name, but which seemed to account for and justify the ascendancy she was said to exercise over all her family.
At midnight Vivian opened his eyes. "Whoa, Sultan!" he uttered in feeble tones, and made a motion with his hand as if he pulled upon the reins. Miss Evy started, but Amanda laid her finger on her lips and bending over him, said softly:
"Drink this, Vivian," putting a glass to his lips. He drank all she gave him eagerly, then his head fell back upon the pillow, and he slept till dawn.
Miss Evy was persuaded to retire toward morning. She would have preferred to sit there and watch, but she could not say so, and she was compelled to steal away upstairs, and leave Vivian to his wife, who kept unwinking vigil until the first glimmer of light shot through the closed blinds of the east window. Then she arose and put out the lamp, and noiselessly raising the window let the pure, fresh mountain air into the little room. During her watchful night her mind had been entirely occupied with Vivian's condition; she had not thought of herself. But now, as the sun touched the tip of Round Peak and crept downward till the whole valley was illumined with the light of a perfect October day, she became conscious, with a thrill of pain, of that feeling of personal life and identity which is so strong and vivid when, in some beautiful spot isolated from the whirl of cities, we open our eyes upon a new day.