"Well," said he, "it was very near tattoo; but I always said: weeds won't die," and he rubbed his hands with satisfaction. "Talk enough now," he added, in a tone of authority. "Strict orders, when awake, to allow no discussion, and report fact; which shall be done forthwith."
The sergeant is about rising, but I take one of his brown hands and beg him to stay. I feel myself quite strong, I say; speaking does not fatigue me at all, and of course hearing does not; and I should like to hear how I came into this condition, who the persons are that have been about me, and whose faces I have seen floating through the mist of my dreams; and if there has not been a great good-natured mastiff that guarded me, and had a way of growling deeply.
The old man looks at me attentively, as if he thought all was not yet quite right under my bristly, half-bald skull, and that it was high time he made his report. He placed my hand upon the coverlid, and said, "So! so!" smoothes the pillow, and again says, "So! so!" so to please him I shut my eyes and hear how he rises softly and goes away on tiptoe; but the door has hardly closed behind him when I open my eyes again, and apply myself resolutely to the task of solving the questions which I had addressed to the old man.
As when we look down from a high mountain upon a sea of mist, we note bright points emerging, one by one--a sunlit corn-field, a cottage, a bit of road, a little lake with grassy shores, until at last the whole landscape lies plain before us, except a few spots over which gray wreaths of vapor still float, which more slowly than the rest roll up the ravines--just so before my mental vision dissolved the night of oblivion which during my illness had covered the recent events of my life. Now I again remembered that I was in prison and how I came there; that the old man with the gray moustache was not my friend and nurse, but my keeper; that I had had thoughts of killing him, if necessary, to gain my liberty; and so everything that had happened, up to that last frightful day; but that was confused and obscure--as confused and obscure as it has ever since remained in my memory to this hour. Dark and painful; but strange to say, this painful feeling was turned exclusively against myself. The hate, the bitterness, the rancor, the desperation, the frenzy--all the demons which had dwelt in my soul, were gone, as though an angel with flaming sword--perhaps the Angel of Death, who had hovered over me--had driven them away. Even the remains of pain melted away in thankfulness that the most fearful of all had been spared me--that I could look upon my white, wasted hands without a shudder.
As I lay here, pondering these things, and my eyes rested upon that fair young mother, who bore her boy so securely upon her strong, faithful arm, my hands involuntarily folded, and I thought of my own mother so early lost--far too early for me--and how all would have happened differently if she had ever encircled me with her protecting arms; if in my young sorrows and doubts I could have sought refuge, counsel, and consolation upon her faithful breast. And I thought too of my father, who was so lonely now, whose hopes I had so cruelly blighted, whose pride I had so deeply wounded; and I thought of him for the first time without animosity, with only a feeling of deepest pity for the poor old forsaken man.
"But he will live," I said to myself, "and I am not dead; and all shall be well again. No, not all. The lost past cannot be recalled; but the future still is mine, even in a prison."
In a prison. But was this a prison in which I was?--this pleasant room with windows barred only by nodding vine-branches; a room in which everything spoke of the peacefully cheerful life of its fair inhabitant.
How I came to this idea I do not know, but I could not rid myself of it; and there were the ends of red worsted hanging from the little work-basket. What had a workbasket to do in the room of a man?
I thought and thought, but could arrive at no conclusion; the streak of mist would not move. Indeed it rather widened and spread to a thin veil, which threatened gradually to envelope the whole prospect. I did not care; I had seen it once and knew that I should see it again; knew that I should hear the voices again which now fell faintly on my ear as if from a vast distance, among which I could distinguish the muttered growl of my faithful mastiff, and the soft voice that accompanied the eyes whose gentle light had shone through my darkness.
When I again awaked, it was really night, or at least so late that the little astral lamp by my bedside was already lighted, and by its feeble glimmer I saw some one sitting by my bed whom I did not recognize, as his head was hidden in his hand. But when I moved, and he raised his head and asked, "How are you now?" I knew him at once. The low gentle voice I would have recognized among a thousand. And now, strangely enough, without having to give a moment's thought to the matter, but just as if some one had told me everything in my sleep, I knew that the house in which I had been for the last eight weeks, and in which I had all this time been tended as carefully as if I had been one of the family, was the house of the superintendent, of the man who certainly not to-day for the first time was watching by my bed, and who spoke to me in a tone of affection, as might a kind father to his son.