The pathos of our lives and their tragedies are dependent upon the order of the coming of God and Love and Death. If God comes first, we are happy then, for he seems to know when Love approaches, and so he is never turned away. Sometimes Love leaves the heart, but never if God comes first, for he is truer in the presence of the King, and the King is happy when Love is near. Sometimes Love comes first, and while he sits waiting, Death knocks; then he flees from the soul, for he fears the face of his brother, unless God is there, for Death always smiles when he sees God. Sometimes Death comes first, and then neither Love nor God can enter. This and this only is Tragedy with us in Dunvegan. Our children never pass his home at night, and we scarce dare breathe his name at midday—the home, the name of the man who died and saw neither Love nor God.
About a week after the writing of Tait’s letter, a pretty, girlish figure entered the hospital, and finding no one near, began searching the beds for the face of some loved one. On the way down she had been trying to prepare herself for the meeting and tried to make the bright eyes she remembered grow dim, the strong muscles flabby, and the hale glow of health on the cheeks fade to pallor, but she could not.
All the way from Dunvegan she had been planning how she would see him, among the others, on his white bed, and the old, familiar face would look as ever into hers. Now when she turned into the wards and saw the ghastly sights around her, she was stunned for a moment. Men were there looking ruefully at their stubs of arms and fingers, men with every imaginable part of their bodies shot off, and one man who lay just beside her, with his face turned away—Great God!—suppose Tait should be like him—. One eye was eaten out with cancer; disease had laid hold of his very vitals, and his right arm had been amputated. The thought of him made her sick, and she leaned against the bedstead. Then, not daring to look around, she went back to find a nurse for directions. She had hardly staggered a yard when she heard a weak voice:
“Annie, Annie!”
Stopping at the sound of her name, she paused to locate the sound.
“Annie, Annie, don’t you hear me? Here I am.”
The voice was weak and husky and unfamiliar, but the name was Annie. She turned. It was the man whose arm was gone, whose eye was eaten out by cancer.
“Annie, Annie, I am Tait! Oh, God, don’t you know me?”
The thin wasted hand held out in entreaty. She knew that it was her husband.
“Tait, darling boy! Oh, what have they done to you? My darling, my darling!”