"She's dead!" screamed Liz, and sprang up with hysterical cries.
Mrs. Deans' face blanched.
"You fool, get out of the way!" she said, and pushed Liz aside savagely, as she rushed toward Myron's prostrate figure. "Take hold of her," ordered Mrs. Deans, in a voice that quelled the bound girl's hysterics. Together they got her to the door; Mrs. Deans flung it wide, and Myron opened her eyes with the summer rain beating in her face and the waving masses of green trees and tossing branches before her eyes. To that blankness succeeded a quick memory of its approach, a shuddering recollection of that final plunge into darkness, to be obliterated by physical weakness and nausea; she clung to the door to support herself, and Mrs. Deans released her hold of her arms.
"You can go lie down on Liz's bed till you come to," said Mrs. Deans, "and then you can go home for the rest of the day."
"Thank you," said Myron, and Mrs. Deans went to the dining-room, while Myron crept to the tiny kitchen bedroom—each unaware of the horrible bathos of Myron's speech. Mrs. Deans did not come to the kitchen for some time, and when she did Myron was gone—out into the storm unseen of any, to struggle through rain and mud to the village, "a reed shaken by the wind" indeed.
CHAPTER XI.
"All things rejoiced beneath the sun—the weeds,
The river, and the cornfields, and the reeds,
The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze,
And the firm foliage of the larger trees."
The rain that brought back sense and sound to Myron Holder lasted for three days, falling steadily during that time; it was succeeded by the most joyous of weather. The spring was past; the grass grew lush and green beside the little waterways that the rain had created by the roadside; these mimic rivers had in miniature all the diversities and beauties of their greater brethren. There was a gradual decline from the inland to the lake, and adown this many of these evanescent streams found their way.
The stream that passed the Deans farm was the very epitome of Life. Now a large stone obstructed its course and divided its shallow flood, which crept sadly round either side of this rocky islet, to gush gayly together beyond it; after a short space of calm it rushed against an upturned sod and, broken and ragged, fell in tatters over the brink into the little pool below, in whose tiny vortex floated twigs and bits of last year's grass, and perchance a glistening white feather from the breast of a gull; freed from its durance in the pool and not yet schooled to peace and patience, the stream sped on hastily and noisily, striving to find its way between the interlaced red roots of a cedar; its haste to get out into the sunlight defeated its object, and the close-knit fibres flung it back again and again, but it returned to the charge with tiny banners of foam and ripples of defiance; so the strife continued until the gathering ranks of water rose strong enough to toss the foremost clear over the barriers, and the stream went on its way cheerily until the dark culvert that took it across the road was reached, and as souls that plunge into the darkness of death leave all behind them, so this little stream left its foam, its ripples, its burden of twigs and wisps of grass and all its infinitesimal flotsam and jetsam, and essayed the darksome passage, a naked little stream; once out in the light again, it rippled on reflectively, until at last, its "tribute wave delivered," it merged its identity in the lake—losing (and here we cry with breathless lips, "Let it be like the soul in this also!") losing all puny consciousness of individual existence, only aware of being a part of that shining reservoir, dispensing beneficent gifts to air, and blessing and being blessed by the sun, that shone down more sweetly now upon it than when it was a vain and fretting brook.