XXII.
Snow had fallen in the night—a wet snow, mingled with sleet and fleering rain. It had spread a flashing, silver sheen over the vast wastes, and the sun glinted and laughed from a web of woven jewels. It gleamed from every needle of the stalwart evergreens, which stood around in dazzling ice-armor, keeping guard above the virgin snow asleep, with its white curves dimpling beside the rough, bearish mountains. Overhead the sky bent in tranquil baby-blue.
The beauty of the frozen morning hung cheerily about the row of pillowed chairs wheeled before the glass sides of the long sun-parlor. To some who gazed from these chairs it was a glimpse of the world into which they would soon return; to others it was but the symbol of another weary winter of lengthening waiting. But to each it brought a comfort and a hope.
The same fair whiteness of the outdoors shone mockingly through Daunt’s window. Its very loveliness seemed cruel, with that insidious raillery with which Nature, be she gloomy or bright, fits our darker moods. Through the night, while Margaret’s phantom touch lay upon his forehead, and the ghosts of her kisses crept across his hand, he had fought with his longing, and he had won. But it was a triumphless victory. The pulpy ashes of his own denial were in his mouth. He had asked so little—only to see her, to hear her step, and the lisping movement of her dress, and the cadence of her voice—only to feel the touch of her fingers and the drench of her warm, young life! She loved him; his love, he told himself, incomplete as it was, would take the place of all for her. And in his heart he told himself that he lied!
But the rayless darkness of that inner room cast no shadow in the cozy sun-parlor. There, the doctor, with youthful step that belied his graying hair, strode about among the patients, chatting lightly, and full of good-natured badinage. Then, leaving them smiling, he went back to his private office. As he entered, Margaret rose from the chair where she waited, and came hurriedly toward him. She was pale, and her slender hands were clasping nervously about her wrists.
“Doctor,” she began, and stopped an instant. Then stumblingly, “I have just got your note. I came to ask you—I want to beg you to—not to make me go back! I—want to stay so much! I know so well how to wait on him. You know I wasn’t a regular nurse at the hospital. It was only a trial. Dr. Goodno doesn’t expect me back.”
He drew out a chair for her and made her sit down, wiping his glasses laboriously. “My dear child—Miss Langdon—” he said, “I know how you feel. My good friend Mrs. Goodno wrote me of you when Mr. Daunt came to us. She is a splendid, noble-hearted woman, and she wrote of you as though you were her own daughter. You see,” he continued, “when you first came, it was suspected that Mr. Daunt’s peculiar paralysis might be of a hysteric type, and might yield naturally, under treatment, with a bettering physical condition, or, possibly, under the impulse of some extra nervous stimulus. Such cases are not unmet with.”
“Yes, yes,” she said anxiously.
He polished his glasses again. “I am sorry to say,” he went on, “that we have long ago abandoned this hope, as you know. Such being the case, it seems, under the peculiar circumstances, advisable—that is, it would be better not to——” He stopped, feeling that he was floundering in deeper water than he thought.
“Oh, if you only knew!” Margaret’s voice was shaking. “I came here because I love him, doctor, and because he loved me! Surely I can at least stay by him. I am experienced enough to nurse him. It’s the only thing left now for me to be happy in. He wants me! He’s more cheerful when I am with him. I know he doesn’t really need a special nurse, but—I don’t have to earn the money for it. I do it because I like it.”