I COME INTO MY OWN
It was long before I realized that that white, bandaged thing lying on
the bed before me was my hand. I gazed at it curiously for a while and
stirred it slightly to make sure,--what a mighty effort that little
motion cost me!--and then I became aware that a breeze was passing across
my face, and a peculiar thing about it was that it came and went
regularly like the swinging of a pendulum. And when I raised my eyes to
see what this might mean, I found myself looking straight into the
astonished face of Sam, my boy.
He stared at me for a moment, his eyes starting from his head, and then
with a loud cry he dropped the fan he had been wielding and ran from the
room, clapping his hands together as he went, as I had heard negroes do
under stress of great excitement. What could it mean? Again my eyes fell
upon the queer, bandaged thing which must be my hand. Had there been an
accident? I could not remember, and while my mind was still wrestling
with the question in a helpless, flabby way, I heard the swish of skirts
at the door, and there entered who but Dorothy!
"Why, Dorothy!" I cried, and then stopped, astonished at the sound of my
own voice. It was not my voice at all,--I had never heard it before,--and
it seemed to come from a great way off. And what astonished me more than
anything else was that Dorothy did not seem in the least surprised by it.
"Yes, Tom," she said, and she came to the bedside and laid her hand upon
my head. Such a cool, soft little hand it was. "Why, the fever is quite
gone! You will soon be well again."
I tried to raise my hand to take hers, but it lay there like a great
dead weight, and I could scarcely move it. I know not what it was, but
at the sight of her standing there so strong and brave and sweet, and
the thought of myself so weak and helpless, the tears started from my
eyes and rolled down my cheeks in two tiny rivulets. She seemed to
understand my thought, for she placed one of her hands in mine, and with
the other wiped my tears away. I love to think of her always as I saw
her then, bending over me with infinite pity in her face and wiping my
tears away. The moment of weakness passed, and my brain seemed clearer
than it had been.
"Have I been ill?" I asked.
"Very ill, Tom," she said. "But now you will get well very quickly."
"What was the matter with me, Dorothy?"
She looked at me a moment and seemed hesitating for an answer.
"I think you would better go to sleep now, Tom," she said at last, "and
when you wake again, I will tell you all about it."
"Very well," I answered submissively, and indeed, at the time, my brain
seemed so weary that I had no wish to know more.
She gently took her hand from mine and went to a table, where she poured
something from a bottle into a glass. I followed her with my eyes, noting
how strong and confident and beautiful she was.
"Drink this, Tom," she said, bringing the glass back to the bed and
holding it to my lips. I gulped it down obediently, and then watched
her again as she went to the window and drew the blind. She came back
in a moment and sat down in the chair from which I had startled Sam.
She picked up the fan which he had dropped, and waved it softly to and
fro above me, smiling gently down into my face. And as I lay there
watching her, the present seemed to slip away and leave me floating in
a land of clouds.
But when I opened my eyes again, it all came back to me in an instant,
and I called aloud for Dorothy. She was bending over me almost before the
sound of my voice had died away.
"Oh, thank God!" I cried. "It was only a dream, then! You are safe,
Dorothy,--there were no Indians,--tell me it was only a dream."
"Yes, I am quite safe, Tom," she answered, and took my hand in
both of hers.
"And the Indians?" I asked.
"Were frightened away by Colonel Washington and his men, who killed
many of them."
I closed my eyes for a moment, and tried to reconstruct the drama of
that dreadful night.
"Dorothy," I asked suddenly, "was Brightson killed?"
"Yes, Tom," she answered softly.
I sighed.
"He was a brave man," I said. "No man could have been braver."
"Only one, I think," and she smiled down at me tremulously, her eyes
full of tears.
"Yes, Colonel Washington," I said, after a moment's thought. "Perhaps he
is braver."
"I was not thinking of Colonel Washington, Tom," and her lips began
to tremble.
I gazed at her a moment in amazement.
"You do not mean me, Dorothy?" I cried. "Oh, no; I am not brave. You do
not know how frightened I grow when the bullets whistle around me."
She laid her fingers on my lips with the prettiest motion in the world.
"Hush," she said. "I will not listen to such blasphemy."
"At least," I protested, "I am not so brave as you,--no, nor as your
mother, Dorothy. I had no thought that she was such a gallant woman."
"Ah, you do not know my mother!" she cried. "But you shall know her some
day, Tom. Nor has she known you, though I think she is beginning to know
you better, now."
There were many things I wished to hear,--many questions that I
asked,--and I learned how Sam had galloped on until he reached the fort,
how he had given the alarm, how Colonel Washington himself had ridden
forth twenty minutes later at the head of fifty men,--all who could be
spared,--and had spurred on through the night, losing the road more than
once and searching for it with hearts trembling with fear lest they
should be too late, and how they had not been too late, but had saved
us,--saved Dorothy.
"And I think you are dearer to the commander's heart than any other man,"
she added. "Indeed, he told me so. For he stayed here with you for three
days, watching at your bedside, until he found that he could stay no
longer, and then he tore himself away as a father leaves his child. I had
never seen him moved so deeply, for you know he rarely shows emotion."
Ah, Dorothy, you did not know him as did I! You had not been with him at
Great Meadows, nor beside the Monongahela, nor when we buried Braddock
there in the road in the early morning. You had not been with him at
Winchester when wives cried to him for their husbands, and children for
their parents, nor beside the desolated hearths of a hundred frontier
families. And of a sudden it came over me as a wave rolls up the beach,
how much of sorrow and how little of joy had been this man's portion.
Small wonder that his face seemed always sad and that he rarely smiled.
Dorothy had left me alone a moment with my thoughts, and when she came
back, she brought her mother with her. I had never seen her look at me
as she looked now, and for the first time perceived that it was from her
Dorothy got her eyes. She stood in the doorway for a moment, gazing down
at me, and then, before I knew what she was doing, had fallen on her
knees beside my bed and was kissing my bandaged hand.
"Why, aunt!" I cried, and would have drawn it from her.
"Oh, Tom," she sobbed, and clung to it, "can you forgive me?"
"Forgive you, aunt?" I cried again, yet more amazed. "What have you done
that you should stand in need of my forgiveness?"
"What have I done?" she asked, and raised her face to mine. "What have I
not done, rather? I have been a cold, hard woman, Tom. I have forgot what
right and justice and honor were. But I shall forget no longer. Do you
know what I have here in my breast?" she cried, and she snatched forth a
paper and held it before my eyes. "You could never guess. It is a letter
you wrote to me."
"A letter I wrote to you?" I repeated, and then as I saw the
superscription, I felt my cheeks grow hot. For it read, "To be delivered
at once to Mrs. Stewart."
"Ay," she said, "a letter you wrote to me, and which I should never have
received had you not forgot it and left it lying on my table in my study
at Riverview. Can you guess what I felt, Tom, when they brought it to me
here, and I opened it and read that you had gone to the swamp alone
amongst those devils? I thought that you were dead, since the letter had
been delivered, and the whole extent of the wrong I had done you sprang
up before me. But they told me you were not dead,--that Colonel
Washington had come for you, and that you had ridden hastily away with
him. I could guess the story, and I should never have known that you had
saved the place but for the chance which made you forget this letter."
I had tried to stop her more than once. She had gone on without heeding
me, but now she paused.
"It was nothing," I said. "Nothing. There was no real danger. Thank Long.
He was with me. He is a better man than I."
"Oh, yes," she cried, "they are all better men than you, I dare say! Do
not provoke me, sir, or you will have me quarreling with you before I
have said what I came here to say. Can you guess what that is?" and she
paused again, to look at me with a great light in her eyes.
But I was far past replying. I gazed up at her, bewildered, dazzled. I
had never known this woman.
"I see you cannot guess," she said. "Of course you cannot guess! How
could you, knowing me as you have known me? 'Tis this. Riverview is
yours, Tom, and shall be always yours from this day forth, as of right it
has ever been."
Riverview mine? No, no, I did not want Riverview. It was something
else I wanted.
"I shall not take it, aunt," I said quite firmly. "I am going to make a
name for myself,--with my sword, you know," I added with a smile, "and
when I have once done that, there is something else which I shall ask you
for, which will be dearer to me--oh, far dearer--than a hundred
Riverviews."
What ailed the women? Here was Dorothy too on her knees and kissing my
bandaged hand.
"Oh, Tom, Tom," she cried, "do you not understand?"
"Understand?" I repeated blankly. "Understand what, Dorothy?"
"Don't you remember, dear, what happened just before the troops came?"
"Oh, very clearly," I answered. "The Indians got Brightson down and
stabbed him, and just then you sprang up and cried the troops were
coming, and sure enough, there they were just entering the clearing, and
the Indians paused only for one look and then fled down the stairs as
fast as they could go. 'T was you who saved us all, Dorothy."
"Oh, but there was something more!" she cried. "There was one Indian who
did not run, Tom, but who stopped to aim at me. I saw him do it, and I
closed my eyes, for I knew that he would kill me, and I heard his gun's
report, but no bullet struck me. For it was you whom it struck, dear,
through your hand and into your side, and for long we thought you dying."
"Yes," I said, "but you see I am not dying, nor like to die, dear
Dorothy, so that I may still rejoin the troops erelong."
She was looking at me with streaming eyes.
"Do you mean that I am not going to get well, Dorothy?" I asked, for I
confess her tears frightened me.
"Oh, not so bad as that, dear!" she cried. "Thank God, not so bad as
that! But your hand, Tom, your right hand is gone. You can never
wield a sword again, dear, never go to war. You will have to stay at
home with me."
I know not how it was, but she was in my arms, and her lips were on mine,
and I knew that was no more parting for us.
CHAPTER XVIII
AND SO, GOOD-BY
Well, a right hand is a little price to pay for the love of a wife like
mine, and if I have made no name in the world, I at least live happy in
it, which is perhaps a greater thing. And I have grown to use my left
hand very handily. I have learnt to write with it, as the reader
knows,--and when I hold my wife to me, I have her ever next my heart.
It is the fashion, I know well, to stop the story on the altar's steps,
and leave the reader to guess at all that may come after, but as I turn
over the pages I have writ, they seem too much a tale of failure and
defeat, and I would not have it so. For the lessons learned at Fort
Necessity and Winchester and at Duquesne have given us strength to drive
the French from the continent and the Indian from the frontier. So that
now we dwell in peace, and live our lives in quiet and content, save for
some disagreements with the king about our taxes, which Lord Grenville
has made most irksome.
And even to my dearest friend, whose life, as I have traced it here, has
been so full of sorrow and reverse, has come great happiness. He is
honored of all men, and has found love as well, for he has brought a wife
home to Mount Vernon. Dorothy declares that Mistress Washington is the
very image of that Mary Cary who used him so ill years ago,--but this
may be only a woman's leaning toward romance.
Indeed, we have a romance in our own home,--a bright-eyed girl of
twenty, who, I fear, is soon to leave us, if a certain pert young blade
who lives across the river has his way. It will be I who give her away
at the altar, for her father lies dead beside the Monongahela,--brave,
gentle-hearted Spiltdorph. My eyes grow dim even now when I think of
you, yet I trust that I have done as you would have had me do. For I
found the girl at Hampton, after a weary search,--perhaps some day I
shall tell the story.
It is in the old seat by the river's edge I write these words, and as I
lay down the pen, my hand falls on those carved letters, T and D, with a
little heart around them,--very faint, now, and worn with frequent
kisses,--and as I lift my head, I see coming to me across the grass the
woman who carved them there and whom I love.