“You're the one to tell him then—poor Steve—you go to him. I must go fetch my Julia and the baby;” and he stumbled out into the darkness with neither hat nor lantern, and fled across the back lots toward the light that burned in his own window.
He soon returned with Julia, who went at once to the room above. In the narrow hall she encountered Arling, who had just come from Marian's bedside, where he had administered to her some simple restorative. She brushed past him without a word.
“Thank you for coming, it's good to have a woman about,” murmured Stephen, glancing toward the door as she entered.
Marian lay on the bed without speech or movement, but her eyes, now brilliant and filled with a strange light, followed every movement of the two. Julia, with Stephen's help, made her more comfortable; they smoothed her pillows and raised her higher on them, for Mrs. Gibbs had been quick to see that her breath came with difficulty.
She had never liked Marian, and Marian had never liked her—but she had forgotten all this—which, after all, was only that chance which determines who shall love and who shall hate. Now she was all tenderness, this brisk energetic woman, with the lines of a shrewish temper already stamped upon her face; and her glance always softened when she looked at Stephen.
There was little either could do but wait; and Marian, save for the look in her eyes and their restless turning, gave no sign that she knew what was passing about her.
Presently Julia stole down-stairs to the kitchen. She found Mrs. Bassett, the general, and Arling still there; the boy fast asleep in her husband's arms.
“Law!” she cried. “Haven't any of you had sense enough to put that child to bed?” and she whisked him out of Gibbs's arms and carried him into the adjoining room.
After that the four fell to watching the clock as if the slow moving hands would tell them when all was over; and as they watched, the row of ragged lights in the uncurtained windows that looked out upon Grant City's Main Street, disappeared one by one, and it was midnight and very still.
At last Julia rose from her chair and without a word went up-stairs; she seemed to know that all was over. She noiselessly pushed open the door and entered the room.