“And to think,” he said softly, “that last night—only last night, I had given everything up, and never hoped to see one of you again. May, give me your hand; you’re a good girl. It’s true what my father said: you would go through fire and water. That’s the old Scotch way; not so much for other people as women are now-a-days; but through fire and water—through fire and water, for your own! If you had been here last night I might have told you something—”
“Tell it to me now, Tom.”
“No; I don’t want you to think worse of me than you do. Please God, I will live and mend, and take up all my tangled threads, as Aunt Jean says. How is old Aunt Jean? Cankered body! but I suppose she would have done it too—through fire and water. Do you know, May, there’s a great deal of meaning, sometimes, in what these old boys say.”
“I wish you would not call them old boys, Tom.”
“Well, well—they are not young boys, are they? There is one thing tho’ about women—or, so I’ve always heard, at least. They say you’re hard on other women. If you were called on now to help a woman that was not your flesh and blood?—for the sake of those who were your flesh and blood—”
Marjory’s face was covered with a deep blush; there was but one idea that could be connected with such a speech; she had to conquer a momentary repugnance, an impulse of indignation and shame. But she did conquer it.
“Tom!” she said anxiously; “I hope I could be faithful to my trust. Tell me what it is?”
“Not I!” said Tom, laughing. “No, no, Miss May; I am not going to give you the whiphand over me. I can trust myself best. I am getting well, thank Heaven; and I’ll pick up my tangled threads. It is not a bad phrase that, either. Lord, what a lot of tangled threads I seemed to be leaving last night!”
What could Marjory say? She held his hand between hers and patted it softly, and kissed it with her heart full. It was not like a sick man’s hand, white and wasted. It was brown and muscular, and strong, capable of crushing hers, had he wished; and yet lay somewhat passively embraced by her slender fingers, as if—like the tide ebbing slowly from the shore, the strength had begun to ebb away.
“However, it’s well to be warned,” said Tom. “And, after all, I have done less harm than you would think; nobody’s enemy but my own—as people say. There’s no sensation I ever felt so curious as that one—of thinking you’re dying. What an awful fool you’ve been, you say to yourself; and now it’s no good. Struggle as you like, you can’t mend it; you must just lie still and take what’s coming. I say, May,” he added, with a sudden start. “Say something and be cheery, or I’ll get into the dumps again.”