“Who has drawn back the curtains?” she demanded at once, in a tone of stern surprise.
Brandon, in spite of his excitement, was able to affect a torpid indifference to the question.
“I could have taken an oath,” said the nurse, “that when I left you last night the curtains were pulled across the window as usual!”
XXXIV
On the afternoon of the following day, Millicent Brandon took the great news to the vicarage, that Gervase had walked across the room. It was a thrilling announcement, and Millicent’s excitement was reflected in Edith and the vicar, for like all his friends they had given up hope that he would ever walk again.
It appeared that something very like a miracle had happened. And, strange to say, it coincided with the visit to Wellwood. But doctor and nurse were loath to believe that that unsanctioned journey had anything to do with a most astonishing matter. As for Brandon himself, walking the path of an extreme wariness in the midst of new and overwhelming perplexities, he was very careful not to claim it as the fount of healing.
A week passed, a truly wonderful week of returning life, of unsealed physical power. The sensory apparatus had been repaired, the dead limbs were again alive, the sufferer had risen from his bed; and in his own mind it was absolutely clear to what agency the fact was due. Moreover, it carried with it a very special obligation.
Brandon had never regarded himself as a religious man. Before he went to the wars of his country he had been a skeptic. He understood well enough the great part faith had played in human affairs, but he had conceived it as the fruit of a peculiar mental and physical constitution. He knew that the religious sense had the power to create an amazing world of its own, but he had been glad to think that he could meet the facts of existence without its aid. Now, however, he felt himself to be a new Faust, who had sold himself, not to the devil, but to the Christian God. He had been miraculously restored to physical health, but only on condition that he obeyed without mental reservation of any kind, the implicit will of Another.
He must lay all questioning aside. Body and soul were now in the care of a superhuman power. He had entered into a most solemn pact, to whose fulfillment he must bend the whole force of his will. And its first fruits were to be seen in a letter which he addressed to an old school and college friend, one Robert Pomfret, urging him to come and spend Christmas at Hart’s Ghyll.
Brandon hardly dared to hope that the letter would succeed in its purpose. There was little in such an invitation to lure a regular man of the town from his accustomed round. But the unexpected happened. Pomfret, being “at a loose end” in Christmas week, found his way to Hart’s Ghyll, prompted, no doubt, by a generous desire to cheer up an old friend in the hour of affliction.