“How easy it seems for noble souls to be noble!” thought I, as I followed Padiham up the neat staircase of his House of Charity. “What a beautiful vengeance it is of this man upon nature for blighting him! A meaner being would be soured, and turn cynic, and perhaps chuckle that others were equalized with him by suffering. He simply, and as if it were a matter of course, gives himself to baffling sorrow and blight. It is Godlike.” And I looked with renewed admiration at the strange figure climbing the stairs before me.
He was all head and shoulders, and his motions were like a clumsy child’s. I went slowly after him. Was it true that this long love-chase over land and sea was at its ending? Joy is always a giant surprise,—success a disappointment among the appointed failures. Was this grim dwarf to be a conjurer of happiness?
Padiham tapped at a door in the upper story.
A voice said, “Come in.”
Her voice! That sweet, sad voice! That unmurmuring, unrebellious voice! That voice of gentle defiance, speaking a soul impregnable! How full of calm hopefulness! while yet I could detect in it the power of bursting into all the horror of that dread scream that had come through the stillness to our camp at Fort Bridger.
The dwarf opened the door quietly.
The sunshine of that fresh June morning lay bright upon the roses in the window. My glance perceived the old blue-gray infantry surtout hanging in a corner. Mr. Clitheroe was sitting up in bed, lifting a tea-cup with his left hand. His long white beard drifted over the cool bedclothes. An appetizing breakfast, neatly served, was upon a table beside him. And there in this safe haven, hovering about him tenderly as ever in the days of his errant voyaging in the hapless time gone by, was his ministering angel, that dear daughter, the sister of my choice.
She turned as we entered.
The old steady, faithful look in the gray eyes. The same pale, saddened beauty. The unblenching gaze of patient waiting.
She looked at me vaguely, while life paused one pulse. Then, as I stepped forward, the eloquent blood gushed into her face,—for she knew that the friend could not long outrun the lover. She sprang into my arms. Forgive me, John Brent, if I did put my lips close to her burning cheek. It was only to whisper, “He is in London, searching for you. He has never rested one moment since you were lost to us. In an hour he will be here.”