We have more than once before had occasion to notice the occupant of that one bed near the head of the room, with a stream of sunshine pouring in at the window and flooding the whole foot. We have before had occasion to remark that tall, slight but sinewy form distending the thin covering as it settled to his shape. Something of his appearance we have not seen before—the head of hair of an indescribable mixture, half pale gold or light blonde and the other or outer half dark brown or black, scarcely seeming to belong to the same growth unless produced by some mad freak of nature. Nor have we before remarked the splendidly-chiselled face so pale and wan, the life-fluids seeming to be exhausted beneath the skin, from loss of blood and severe suffering. Nor yet that other anomaly—a moustache with the outer ends very dark, almost black, strangely relieved by a crop of light brown beard starting thick and short, like stubble, on the chin. Like this picture in some regards, unlike it in others, the occupant of that bed has before presented, as at this moment, an anomaly equally interesting and puzzling. Wherever and whenever seen, at earlier periods, the last time he met the gaze he was dropping from his horse, a bullet through the body just above the heart, a red sword slipping from his hand and insensibility succeeding to delirium, near the railroad-bridge and the captured rebel battery at Culpeper.
The wounded man lay with his eyes closed and seemed to be in sleep. Beside the bed on a low stool and partially resting against it, was one who slept not—a woman. One elbow resting on the bed-clothes supporting her head, and the other hand holding a book in which she was reading. This was evidently the nurse, and yet scarcely an ordinary nurse charged with the care of all patients, or she could not have afforded the time for watching one convalescent while he slept. She, too, may have been seen before; for something there was in that tall and lithe form, that mass of rich silky brown hair, that face with its mournful eyes and painfully delicate features—something that, once seen, lingered like a sweet, sad dream in the gazer's memory. And yet here, too, if there was an identity, change had been very busy. The form had always been lithe—it was now thin to fragility; the hands had always been taper and delicate—now they were fleshless almost to emaciation; the face had always conveyed the thought of gentleness, helplessness and needful protection—now it seemed less helpless but more mournful, the cheeks a little sunken, and the red spot burning in the centre of either not a close enough semblance of ruddy health to deceive an eye quickened by affectionate anxiety. She was dying, perhaps slowly, it might be rapidly, but dying beyond a peradventure, with that friend or foe which has ushered more human beings into the presence of God than any other disease swayed as an agency by the great destroyer—consumption!
A few moments of silence, unbroken by any sound within the room except the thick breathing of the sleeper: then the girl who sat at his side choked a moment, seemed to make violent efforts to control the coming spasm, but at last yielded, clapped both hands to her left side just above her heart, and broke into one of those terrible fits of coughing which tear away the system as the earthquake rives the solid ground, and which are almost as hard to hear as to endure. Instantly, as the spasm relaxed, she hurriedly drew a white handkerchief from the pocket of her dark dress and wiped her lips. It was replaced so suddenly that the awakened sleeper did not see what stained it—blood, mingled frightfully with the clear white foam.
The eyes of the wounded man opened; and there was something more of himself that came back in the light of their warm hazel, only a little dimmed by suffering, and in the play of all the muscles of the face when awake. Both hands lay outside the bed-clothing; and as she saw the opening of his eyes the girl stretched out her own and took one of them with such gentleness and devotion as was most beautiful to behold. She seemed to be touching flesh that she held to be better than her own—a suggestive rarity in this arrogant world! Something that man had been to her, or something he had done for her, beyond a doubt, which made him the object of a feeling almost too near to idolatry. And yet what had he given her, to win so much? Not wealth—not love: merely true friendship, respect when others despised, and a little aid towards rescue when others turned away or labored to produce final ruin! How easily heaven may be scaled—the heaven of love and devotion if no height beyond,—by that consideration which costs so little, by that kindness which should be a duty if it even brought no recompense!
"There—I have woke you! I am so sorry!" she said, as she met his eyes and touched his hand.
"What consequence, if you have?" was his reply, in a voice low and somewhat feeble, while his thin hand made some poor attempt at returning her kind pressure. "Ever generous, Eleanor—ever thinking of others and not of yourself! They make angels of such people as you—do you know it?"
"Angels? oh, my God, have I lived to hear that word applied to me?" Such was the answer, and the mournful eyes went reverently upward as she invoked the one holy Name.
"Angels? yes, why not?" said the invalid. "Every light-tongued lover calls his mistress by that name sometime or other, and—"
"Hush, Carlton Brand, hush!"
Some painful chord was touched, and he appeared to understand, as well he might, by what word with two meanings he had lacerated a feeling. He went back to what he had evidently intended to say at first.