“Out of danger,” he said. “I am glad I went. He would have died if he had not been relieved.”
Mrs. Cary said nothing. Her eyes were searching his face, which seemed to have grown thinner in one night. She threw her arm around him to support him. They walked up to the door, and he sat down on the step and passed his hand over his brow. “I am very tired. I have fought—” he began; but did not finish the sentence. The next second he sank forward on the steps.
With a cry to Blair, Mrs. Cary caught him. She raised him up; his eyes opened once and rested on Mrs. Cary’s face, and a faint smile came into them. His lips murmured his wife’s name, and then Blair’s; and then his eyes slowly closed, and, with a sigh, his head sank on Mrs. Cary’s arm, and the long fight was done. John Cary, of Birdwood, had laid down his arms.
Jacquelin was absent from the County when the news of Dr. Cary’s death reached him. At first he could hardly grasp it. It seemed as if it could not be true. He had never thought of Dr. Cary’s dying, or of the County existing without him. All of Jacquelin’s own family except Rupert and Miss Thomasia had passed away, and he was accustomed to death. Many friends had gone. Dr. Cary had sat at their bedsides and closed their eyes; but, somehow, it had never occurred to Jacquelin to think of Death striking him. He seemed to be a part of the old life—in all the County, its best and most enduring type; and, now that he had gone, Jacquelin felt as though the foundation were falling out—as though the old life had passed away with him.
The next thought was of Blair. The two had been so absolutely associated ever since he could remember. He could hardly think of her as surviving. He hurried home. As he neared the neighborhood, every man he met was talking of the Doctor. They all felt like Jacquelin. They wondered what would happen, now that the Doctor had gone. At one place, where Jacquelin had to wait a little while, a group were discussing him. They were talking of him as they remembered him in the war. They were all poor men; but they had all been soldiers, and they spoke of him as of a comrade. He was always at the front, they said; he could hardly have been there more if he had been the Colonel. If a man was shot, before they knew it there was Dr. Cary. He said he could save at any time those not badly wounded; those who were badly shot he could only save on the firing-line. And he was as quick to look after a wounded Yankee as after a Confederate, they asserted. “A wounded man wasn’t an enemy,” he had said; “he was a patient.” They all had stories of his courage, his endurance, his kindness. One told how he had sent a fresh cow over to the speaker’s wife on a time when the children were sick; another mentioned how he had come around once to collect some money, but, finding that they did not have a cent, had lent them some he had just collected from Andy Stamper. A third related how he had kissed and prayed with a wounded Yankee boy, who was dying and wanted to see his mother. “He leant down by him,” said the man, “and put his arm around him, and said ‘Now I lay me,’ just for all the world like a woman. And, next minute, after the boy got quiet, he was leaning over getting a ball out of a man right by him.”
There was a long pause after this simple recital, which had been delivered in a quiet, monotonous tone.
“They say Leech was as good as dead when he got to him.”
“I’d ’a’ let him die a thousand times,” swore one, with deep sincerity.
“Yes. Well, so would I. But, somehow, the Doctor, he always was different. Seemed like, big as he was, he couldn’t bear any ill feelin’s.”