Jack shivered, and Jan remembered that she had come to comfort the warm little heart, which was full of noble impulses, though black rage sometimes held it in control.
She laid her cheek softly against Jack’s without speaking, and the boy nestled close to her, feeling there might be pardon for him somewhere since Jan did not cast him off.
CHAPTER XIV
“SO FAITHFUL IN LOVE, AND SO DAUNTLESS IN WAR”
It seemed to Jan and Gladys as if the entire world had sunk into silence, waiting to hear whether or not Gwen must be blind. There was a hush over the house. Every one spoke and moved softly, not only because the poor little patient was suffering severe pain, but as if they were all unconsciously listening for the verdict which they dreaded from the doctors. And even in the streets they bore with them the muffled atmosphere of their home. The outside world no longer seemed gay, noisy, cheerful. Sorrow and anxiety deadened the sights and sounds of others’ pleasure to them.
The best physicians of the city were working hard to save Gwen’s sight—regular physicians to care for the nervous system, which had sustained a serious shock, and the famous Dr. Amberton, the oculist, to treat the eye itself, which the sharp corner of the block had struck with such force that it was impossible to say for some days whether the sight could be preserved.
Jan found herself in a different household from the one which had received her three months earlier. In the face of this misfortune threatening poor Gwen—one peculiarly dreadful to a girl of her tastes and ambitions—the indifference to one another which had so shocked Jan on her coming from her own closely united home disappeared, and the atmosphere she breathed was full of love, though heavy with grief.
Mrs. Graham’s interest in her social pleasures, her clubs, and all the outside issues which Jan had loyally struggled against believing that she cared more for than for her family, were thrust into the background and forgotten in the midst of the one absorbing thought. And Jan saw that her uncle was at last her mother’s own brother; that Wall Street and money-making no longer seemed important to him. Mr. and Mrs. Graham went back to the days when they were first married, and Sydney and Gwen were babies together, when, though they had a pretty home, it was farther west and farther down in town, and, though Nurse Hummel was with them, Mrs. Graham had more time and there was more necessity for her taking care of the little ones. Gwen became once more to them that baby girl whom they had then watched so proudly, and her mother hung over her in her darkened room with a loving devotion which suggested Jan’s own mother to the little exile.
Gwen turned to this new mother-love with childlike clinging. She loved to lie with her bandaged eyes resting on her mother’s shoulder, peaceful, and satisfied in something for which she had unconsciously longed, though she could not help knowing that her mother’s tears, which she felt when her groping hand touched her cheek, boded ill to her.
Gladys was gentle, unselfish, absorbed in the thought of her sister, which rendered her a far sweeter, lovelier Gladys than Jan would have believed she could be when she was occupied only with poor, silly little Gladys Graham.