‘The doctor? Oh! you mean Connor. He is hardly there yet. You don’t know each other. Permit me to present Mr. Connor, Mrs. Mavor.’
As she bowed slightly, her eyes looked into mine with serious gaze, not inquiring, yet searching my soul. As I looked into her eyes I forgot everything about me, and when I recalled myself it seemed as if I had been away in some far place. It was not their colour or their brightness; I do not yet know their colour, and I have often looked into them; and they were not bright; but they were clear, and one could look far down into them, and in their depths see a glowing, steady light. As I went to get some drugs from the Black Rock doctor, I found myself wondering about that far-down light; and about her voice, how it could get that sound from far away.
I found the doctor quite drunk, as indeed Mr. Craig had warned; but his drugs were good, and I got what I wanted and quickly returned.
While Graeme slept Mrs. Mavor made me tea. As the evening wore on I told her the events of the day, dwelling admiringly upon Craig’s generalship. She smiled at this.
‘He got me too,’ she said. ‘Nixon was sent to me just before the sports; and I don’t think he will break down to-day, and I am so thankful.’ And her eyes glowed.
‘I am quite sure he won’t,’ I thought to myself, but I said no word.
After a long pause, she went on, ‘I have promised Mr. Craig to sing to-night, if I am needed!’ and then, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘It is two years since I have been able to sing—two years,’ she repeated, ‘since’—and then her brave voice trembled—‘my husband was killed.’
‘I quite understand,’ I said, having no other word on my tongue
‘And,’ she went on quietly, ‘I fear I have been selfish. It is hard to sing the same songs. We were very happy. But the miners like to hear me sing, and I think perhaps it helps them to feel less lonely, and keeps them from evil. I shall try to-night, if I am needed. Mr. Craig will not ask me unless he must.’
I would have seen every miner and lumberman in the place hideously drunk before I would have asked her to sing one song while her heart ached. I wondered at Craig, and said, rather angrily—