And so it came to pass that one day two women appeared in the doorway of the ward in which Gunner Barton lay, and paused for a moment as though in uncertainty. Then, with a stifled cry, the younger of the two rushed forward, past the long line of beds, where, propped on pillows, were to be seen many faces pale and drawn with pain. By the side of one—the palest of all, so pale indeed that had it not been for the red-brown eyes and auburn hair it might have been called utterly colourless—she paused and fell upon her knees. She forgot that many curious eyes were bent upon her; she forgot that she was an injured woman; and that Jim, who had wronged her, was so maimed and shattered as to be in truth a very wreck of a man; she forgot everything but that he was there, and that he loved her. And so, poor little soft foolish thing, she put her arm about his neck and laid her face upon the pillow beside his, and kissed him, and murmured incoherent words of tenderness and joy.
And Jim—poor Jim, his broken frame was so weak, and his heart so torn by gladness mingled with a piercing sorrow, that he hid his face upon her shoulder and wept like a little child.
By-and-bye Susie, throwing back her shawl, disclosed the sleeping face of the babe with a kind of shrinking pride; and Jim, with his great gaunt frame still shaking with sobs, raised himself on his one serviceable elbow and looked at him long and earnestly, though his eyes were still dim.
“I’d like,” he said, “I’d like to make all square for him and you, Susan; but ’tis puzzlin’ to know what’s right. I’m just fit for nothin’, my girl; I’ll never be fit to do a hand’s turn for myself.”
“And that’s true,” put in Mrs. Frizzell, who had been standing at the foot of the bed, wiping her eyes and sniffing violently. “’Ees, poor fellow, I can see from here where they’ve a-took off your leg. I can see quite plain that it bain’t aside of the other under the clothes.”
Susie did not hear her; her face was burning as she bent it close to Jim’s.
“I’ll not mind nothin’, Jim,” she said. “I’d be only too proud and glad to work for ’ee.”
“There’d be my pension of course,” said he. “But you’re so young, Susie; you might do better p’r’aps—if ’tweren’t for the little chap here.”
He thrust out his long, feeble hand and touched the child’s soft face, his own working with emotion the while. Wife, and child, and home—all there within the grasp of those weak hands. Could he give them up? And yet to be a burden all his days to the trusting creature, of whose ignorance he had already taken shameful advantage.
“Susie,” he whispered, “you don’t know what you’re doing.”