"You never deceived her, darling. Do not distress yourself so," whispered Stephen. They were standing on the threshold of the room. A slight rustling in the bed made them turn: Mrs. Carr had half-lifted her head from the pillow, her lower jaw had fallen to its utmost extent in her effort to articulate, and she was pointing the forefinger of her left hand at the door. It was a frightful sight. Even Stephen turned pale, and sprang hastily away.
"You see," said Mercy, in a ghastly whisper, "sometimes she certainly does know things; but she never looks like that except at you. You must never come in again."
"No," said Stephen, almost as horror-stricken as Mercy. "It is very strange though, for she always used to seem so fond of me."
"She was very childish and patient," said Mercy. "And I think she thought that you were slowly getting to care about me; but now, wherever her soul is,--I think it has left her body,--she knows that we deceived her."
Stephen made no answer, but turned to go. The expression of resolved endurance on his face pierced Mercy to the quick, as it always did. She sprang after him, and clasped both her hands on his arm. "O Stephen, darling,--precious, brave, strong darling! do forgive me. I ought to be killed for even saying one word to give you pain. How I can, I don't see, when I long so to make you happy always."
"You do give me great, unutterable happiness, Mercy," he replied. "I never think of the pain: I only think of the joy," and he laid her hand on his lips. "All the pain that you could possibly give me in a lifetime could not outweigh the joy of one such moment as this, when you say that you love me."
These days were unspeakably hard for Stephen. He had grown during the past year to so live on the sight and in the blessedness of Mercy that to be shut away from them was simply a sort of dying. There was no going back for him to the calm routine of the old life before she came. He was restless and wretched: he walked up and down in front of the house every night, watching the shadow of her figure on the curtains of her mother's room. He made all manner of excuses, true and false, reasonable and unreasonable, to speak to her for a moment at the door in the morning. He carried the few verses in his pocket-book she had given him; and, although he knew them nearly by heart, he spent long hours in his office turning the little papers over and over. Some of them were so joyous that they stirred in him almost a bitter incredulity as he read them in these days of loss and pain. One was a sonnet which she had written during a two days' absence of his,--his only absence from his mother's house for six years. Mercy had been astonished at her sense of loneliness in these two days. "O Stephen," she had said, when he came back, "I am honestly ashamed of having missed you so much. Just the knowing that you wouldn't be here to come in, in the evenings, made the days seem a thousand years long, and this is what came of it."
And she gave him this sonnet:--
To an Absent Lover.
That so much change should come when them dost go,
Is mystery that I cannot ravel quite.
The very house seems dark as when the light
Of lamps goes out. Each wonted thing doth grow
So altered, that I wander to and fro,
Bewildered by the most familiar sight,
And feel like one who rouses in the night
From dream of ecstasy, and cannot know
At first if he be sleeping or awake,
My foolish heart so foolish for thy sake
Hath grown, dear one!
Teach me to be more wise.
I blush for all my foolishness doth lack;
I fear to seem a coward in thine eyes.
Teach me, dear one,--but first thou must come back!
Another was a little poem, which she laughingly called his and not hers. One morning, when they had bade each other "good-by," and she had kissed him,--a rare thing for Mercy to do, he had exclaimed, "That kiss will go floating before me all day in the air, Mercy. I shall see every thing in a light as rosy as your lips."