CHAPTER XXVI.
It is often desperately dark in this world; who can say: "It cannot be darker now?"
When I reached home there was a running and a calling--something had happened. An hour before she had rung for me, and I was not to be found. "She was taken in a dreadful way; but luckily what was most needed was ready at hand; for the doctor----"
"He is close behind me," I said, and hurried into the room, from which came the most heart-breaking cries.
"Courage, dearest friend, courage," said the doctor an hour or two later: "it is a little too soon, and--but there are often worse cases, I think--but stay here a few minutes and breathe a little fresh air; you are terribly excited; you cannot bear it."
"She has to bear it," I cried, wringing my hands.
"Of course," he answered. "Come with me."
The day was fine, notwithstanding the cold night and the gray rainy morning; the March sun had broken gloriously through the clouds, and shone dazzlingly from the clear-blue sky: the thawing snow was dropping from all the roofs and pouring from all the rain-spouts, and in the thick branches of the trees of the garden upon which the windows opened, birds were fluttering and twittering, proclaiming that winter was at last over and the spring had come.
But I had no ear for this proclamation: I had no faith in the blue sky and the running water; I awaited other tidings--awaited them with fervent prayers and passionate vows, such as men offer in the time of sore extremity; and the tidings came at sunset, in a tiny piping voice that seemed to go directly to my heart.
Yes, now it was spring. I saw the spring sunlight in the happy smile of the pale young mother; I saw the bright spring sky in her blue eyes that looked smilingly up to me in a soft tremulous light such as I had never before seen in them, and then were turned with beaming love upon her babe.