CHAPTER XIX
THE ROLLING YEAR
"Is he better to-day?"
"Better in body; but for the mind I can see little betterment."
Elizabeth sighed at her husband's words. Months had gone by since Christopher Neville was borne into the house on his litter. Winter had thawed into spring, spring had bourgeoned and bloomed itself into summer, and summer had dropped its green mantle and taken on the dusky sadness of autumn with its intervals of Indian summer's hazy glory, and now winter was here again. Not last year's icy winter with the cruel chill of the north bearing down on the unpreparedness of the south; but a genial, soft, out-of-doors winter with roses blooming to deck the burial of the old year and welcome the birth of the new, to hearten the struggling and revive the sick.
"Surely," they said, "this weather must put new life into Neville."
It was only in the inner circle that they named him. To the outer world he was "the guest," or when need was, "Master John." Often when alone Huntoon asked himself what would happen if Brent caught wind of Neville's being alive, and made requisition upon Berkeley for his return. It would make an awkward entanglement, Huntoon admitted; but he vowed to himself that there should be a stiff fight before the prisoner was taken from Romney, and those who knew Huntoon's character and the look of his upper lip would have been slow to undertake the capture.
In the first months under the doctor's skilful treatment, the invalid had gained rapidly, and the household rejoiced. Then Nature cried a halt. The color came back to the pallid cheeks, strength to the limbs, but the old light in the eyes never returned. A lassitude marked all motions. A gentle thoughtfulness showed itself in word and deed; but they were as the words and deeds of a child dealing with the present alone. The blow from the bowsprit or the shock of the water or both together, falling on nerves so terribly overwrought, had unseated reason and dethroned memory, at least made a gap which the wandering mind was powerless to fill.