“It will be like a storm dashing against granite cliffs,” she thought whimsically. “Well, there is one merciful thing about it—I shall not have to worry about Melviny gossiping or telling tales.”
In this assumption Lucy was quite right. Melvina Grey proved not only to be as dumb as an oyster but even more uncommunicative than that traditionally self-contained bivalve. Notwithstanding her cheery conversation about the weather, the crops, Sefton Falls, the scenery, she never trespassed upon personalities, or offered an observation concerning her immediate environment; nor could she be beguiled into narrating what old Herman Cole died of, or whether he liked his son’s wife or not. This was aggravating, for Melvina had been two years a nurse in the Cole family and was well qualified to clear up these vexed questions. Equally futile, too, were Ellen’s attempts to wring from her lips any confidential information about the Hoyles’ financial tangles, despite the fact that she had been in the house during the tragedy of Samuel Hoyle’s 219 failure and had welcomed the Hoyle baby into the world.
“Why, the woman’s a clam—that’s what she is!” announced the exasperated patient. “You can get nothin’ out of her. She might as well not know anything if she’s going to be that close-mouthed. I don’t believe hot irons would drag the words out of her. Anyhow, she won’t go retailin’ our affairs all over town after she goes from here; that’s one comfort!”
Lucy endorsed the observation with enthusiasm. It was indeed just as well that Melvina did not report in the sick room all that went on downstairs.
What, for example, would have been Ellen’s feeling had she known that every morning some one of the Howe sisters came stealing across the fields to help with the Webster housework? And what would she have said on discovering that it was her hereditary enemy Martin himself who not only directed the cultivation of her garden but assumed much of its actual work.
Ah, Ellen would have writhed in her bed had such tidings been borne to her. She would, in truth, probably have done far more than writhe had she been cognizant that every evening this 220 same Mr. Martin Howe, arrayed with scrupulous care, leaped the historic wall and came to sit on the Webster doorstep and discuss problems relative to plowing and planting. And if, as frequently happened, the talk wandered off from cabbages and turnips to sunsets and moon glades, and if sometimes there were conscious intervals when there was no talk at all, who was the wiser? Certainly not Ellen, who in her dim chamber little suspected that the pair who whispered beneath her window had long since become as oblivious to the fact that they were Howe and Webster as were Romeo and Juliet that they were Montague and Capulet.
No, the weeks passed, and Ellen lay in blissful ignorance that the shuttle of Fate, ever speeding to and fro, was subtly entangling in its delicate meshes these heirs of an inherited hatred.
Martin’s sisters saw the romance and rejoiced; and although she gave no sign, Melvina Grey must also have seen it.
As for the man and his beloved, they dwelt apart in an ephemeral world where only the prosaic hours when they were separated were unreal. Their realities were smiles, sighs, 221 glances,—the thousand and one nothings that make up the joys and agonies of a lover’s existence. Thus the weeks passed.
In the meanwhile, as a result of rest and good care, Ellen steadily became stronger and soon reached a point where it was no empty platitude to assure her that she was really better.