“Wait a moment and I will go and see that the room is all right.”
She returned presently. “Follow me softly, if you please. She is asleep,—so beautiful,—so innocent!”
Byles Gridley, Master of Arts, retired professor, more than sixty years old, childless, loveless, stranded in a lonely study strewed with wrecks of the world's thought, his work in life finished, his one literary venture gone down with all it held, with nobody to care for him but accidental acquaintances, moved gently to the side of the bed and looked upon the pallid, still features of Myrtle Hazard. He strove hard against a strange feeling that was taking hold of him, that was making his face act rebelliously, and troubling his eyes with sudden films. He made a brief stand against this invasion. “A weakness,—a weakness!” he said to himself. “What does all this mean? Never such a thing for these twenty years! Poor child! poor child!—Excuse me, madam,” he said, after a little interval, but for what offence he did not mention. A great deal might be forgiven, even to a man as old as Byles Gridley, looking upon such a face,—so lovely, yet so marked with the traces of recent suffering, and even now showing by its changes that she was struggling in some fearful dream. Her forehead contracted, she started with a slight convulsive movement, and then her lips parted, and the cry escaped from them,—how heart-breaking when there is none to answer it,—“Mother!”
Gone back again through all the weary, chilling years of her girlhood to that hardly remembered morning of her life when the cry she uttered was answered by the light of loving eyes, the kiss of clinging lips, the embrace of caressing arms!
“It is better to wake her,” Mrs. Lindsay said; “she is having a troubled dream. Wake up, my child, here is a friend waiting to see you.”
She laid her hand very gently on Myrtle's forehead. Myrtle opened her eyes, but they were vacant as yet.
“Are we dead?” she said. “Where am I? This is n't heaven—there are no angels—Oh, no, no, no! don't send me to the other place—fifteen years,—only fifteen years old—no father, no mother—nobody loved me. Was it wicked in me to live?” Her whole theological training was condensed in that last brief question.
The old man took her hand and looked her in the face, with a wonderful tenderness in his squared features. “Wicked to live, my dear? No indeed! Here! look at me, my child; don't you know your old friend Byles Gridley?”
She was awake now. The sight of a familiar countenance brought back a natural train of thought. But her recollection passed over everything that had happened since Thursday morning.
“Where is the boat I was in?” she said. “I have just been in the water, and I was dreaming that I was drowned. Oh! Mr. Gridley, is that you? Did you pull me out of the water?”