A gay and brilliant Christmas for a holiday world, with roses blooming still in sheltered nooks; a devout Christmas for those prepared to read its beautiful meaning in ancient churches, each of which had found a voice in full choral harmonies on this day; a Christmas of silent and devout thankfulness for those escaped the shadow of death.
Cecilia Denvil had been hovering on the borderland of feverish delirium, where all is unreal, for weeks. Since the afternoon when the carriage-wheels of her mother had passed over her, the present had been blotted out. She was in her own home once more, she raved of her father, her pet birds, the garden. When fever consumed her she was in the foundry, the lava torrent of metal from the furnace mouth creeping nearer and nearer, threatening to ingulf her. Gradually this tumult of restless imagery subsided to a great calm. She wandered with San Donato, the mighty angel, in fields of lilies so vast that they seemed a sea of bloom. Then she became painfully aware of other shapes that bent over her, touched her. A man and a woman met at her side and clasped hands; their faces were vaguely familiar. Rome had vanished, been obliterated; she only wandered among the lilies, guided by a glorious angel, his robe rose-colored, with margin of gold, and a palm branch in his hand. Certainly she must have passed away to another world.
Henry Denvil, on receipt of that telegram, had left Foundryville by the first train, overtaken an outward-bound steamer by means of a small boat, and traversed England and France without delay. Arrived at the apartment in Rome which bore his wife’s name, he was met by her, a pale, distraught creature, who clung to him with hysterical sobs, and searched his face with anxious, terrified eyes.
“Is she dead?” he faltered, hoarsely.
“Oh no; but the surgeons think her limbs will be always useless, and she a cripple.”
He soothed, but put her aside to seek his child instead. Augusta Denvil was conscious, for the first time, of a dull pang of jealousy. In the long and painful days which ensued Henry Denvil had eyes and thoughts only for Cecilia, while the latter, by one of those curious instincts of illness, would accept nothing from another hand after his arrival.
The mother’s ordeal began earlier, and her waning youth had shrivelled in the anguish she was then compelled to endure. Cecilia, from the first, had been deaf to her mother’s most tender tones, winced and screamed at the touch of her fingers, even when lying with closed eyes. Mrs. Denvil, in the awful and solemn watches of the night, read in this aversion the doom of retribution. Her spirit succumbed in the trial. The girl’s foot might indeed have slipped and she been run over anywhere. True, but by her own mother’s wheels!
Christmas morning, so glorious and bright without, was gray and sober within this apartment of a family of strangers, where each face bore evidence of watching, care, grief.
Cecilia opened her eyes and glanced about her. She was lying on her own bed in her little chamber at Rome, only some sharp sword-thrust of circumstance had wholly severed her from the past. Her face was calm, almost solemn in expression. It seemed natural that her father should be sitting beside her holding her hand and striving to speak cheerfully. She was not startled by the fact that brother Jack stood at the foot of the bed. She noticed, entirely without responsive emotion, that her mother had concealed her face on father’s shoulder, shaken by uncontrollable sobs. Her first words were:
“Where is San Donato?”