So, then, he was still living, and there was hope. In the early twilight of the winter evening the two women rode out to the suburban town and went up to the hospital to see him. He did not open his eyes, nor recognize them in any way, he did not even know that they were with him.
"There have been many complications of the illness from his wound," said the nurse; "double pneumonia, typhoid symptoms, and what not; we dared not hope for him for a while, but we feel now that perhaps the worst is over. He has made a splendid fight for his life," she added; "he deserves to win. And he is the favorite of the hospital. Every one loves him. The first question all my patients ask me when I make my first round for the day is 'How is the young American lieutenant this morning?' Oh, if good wishes and genuine affection can keep him with us, he will stay."
So, with tear-wet faces, grateful yet still anxious, the two women left him for the night and sought hospitality at a modest pension in the neighborhood of the hospital.
But a precious life still hung in the balance. As he had lain for many days, so the young soldier continued to lie, for many days to come, apparently without thought or vitality, save that those who watched him could catch now and then a low murmur from his lips, and could see the faint rise and fall of his scarred and bandaged breast.
Then, so slowly that it seemed to those who looked lovingly on that ages were going by, he began definitely to mend. He could open his eyes, and move his head and hands, and he seemed to grasp, by degrees, the fact that his mother and his Aunt Millicent were often sitting at his bedside. But when he tried to speak his tongue would not obey his will.
One day, when he awakened from a refreshing sleep, he seemed brighter and stronger than he had been at any time before. The two women whom he most loved were sitting on opposite sides of his cot, and his devoted and delighted nurse stood near by, smiling down on him. He smiled back up at each of them in turn, but he made no attempt to speak. He seemed to know that he had not yet the power of articulation.
His cot, in an alcove at the end of the main aisle, was so placed that, when the curtains were drawn aside, he could, at will, look down the long rows of beds where once the looms had clattered, and watch wan faces, and recumbent forms under the white spreads, and nurses, some garbed in white, and some in blue, and some in more sober colors, moving gently about among the sufferers in performance of their thrice-blest and most angelic tasks. It was there that he was looking now, and the two women at his bedside who were watching him, saw that his eyes were fixed, with strange intensity, on some object in the distance. They turned to see what it was. To their utter astonishment and dismay they discovered, marching up the aisle, accompanied by an infirmière, Colonel Richard Butler. Whence, when, and how he had come, they knew not. He stopped at the entrance to the alcove, and held up his hand as though demanding silence. And there was silence. No one spoke or stirred. He looked down at Pen who lay, still speechless, staring up at him in surprise and delight.
Into the colonel's glowing face there came a look of tenderness, of rapt sympathy, of exultant pride, that those who saw it will never forget.
He stepped lightly forward and took Pen's limp hand in his and pressed it gently.
"God bless you, my boy!" he said.