CHAPTER X.
With Deena the spring moved drearily. Her position was strangely anomalous; she was neither wife nor widow, without the right to be glad or sad—only dumbly wretched. She could not mourn for a husband who might be living, nor could she ignore the fact that he might be dead, and all the while that parting scene with Stephen burned into her conscience like a brand.
She shut herself up with Polly and the baby, and hardly went out of the house while she remained in New York. Love for the child crept deep into her heart and soothed her into patience when all else failed.
In May the house in Harmouth returned to her keeping, the lease having expired, and she left the Sixty-fifth Street household with reluctance to take up her old life. In the great city she had been but a human atom. Her conduct, her unhappiness, her very existence mattered to no one there, except, perhaps, to Ben and Polly, who were as tender and sympathetic as such vigorous people could be; but in Harmouth every creature was interested in Simeon’s fate, and watched Deena with a curiosity she found maddening.
She felt herself the main topic of conversation; she never approached two people talking in the street that they didn’t break off in guilty confusion, and comments upon her mode of dressing and daily occupations were continually repeated to her in the form of censure. Her own family were especially out of touch, for their assumption that she mourned her husband as Polly would have done made her feel like an impostor. They did not give her much of their company, for their newly found fortune made them even more self-centered than their misfortunes. Dicky was the exception; perhaps because he had started in life hard as nails, and so couldn’t grow any harder. At all events, Deena thought she discerned a reluctant affection in his greeting that was infinitely flattering.
Stephen wrote whenever he could catch the Chilian mail boats on their way through the Straits. His letters were those of a man under the strong hand of restraint; admirable letters, that filled her with respect for him and shame at her own craving for “one word more.”
On the twenty-fifth of May she had a cable that changed the face of events. It was from Montevideo.
Have found Simeon. Desperately ill. On our way home.
S. French.
The news spread over the town like wildfire. The local paper issued an extra; a thing it had not done since the assassination of Mr. McKinley. As soon as Harmouth knew Mrs. Ponsonby’s exact status it became distinctly friendly. People are helpful by instinct, and offers of neighborly assistance poured in from all sides.
Deena left nothing undone that could, by anticipation, add to Simeon’s comfort. His room was ready, a nurse engaged, and all the paraphernalia belonging to the care of the sick collected long before the time due for his arrival. She counted upon seeing him four weeks from the date of the cable. The regular trip of the mail boats between Rio and New York is twenty days; from Montevideo two days more; to that must be added another day to reach Boston, and she was warned that a yacht would go more slowly than a large steamer; she therefore concluded the third week in June would bring them.