Snow had fallen in the night--a wet snow, mingled with sleet and
fleering rain. It had spread a flashing, silver sheen over the vast
wastes, and the sun glinted and laughed from a web of woven jewels.
It gleamed from every needle of the stalwart evergreens, which stood
around in dazzling ice-armor, keeping guard above the virgin snow
asleep, with its white curves dimpling beside the rough, bearish
mountains. Overhead the sky bent in tranquil baby-blue.
The beauty of the frozen morning hung cheerily about the row of
pillowed chairs wheeled before the glass sides of the long sun-parlor.
To some who gazed from these chairs it was a glimpse of the world into
which they would soon return; to others it was but the symbol of
another weary winter of lengthening waiting. But to each it brought a
comfort and a hope.
The same fair whiteness of the outdoors shone mockingly through
Daunt’s window. Its very loveliness seemed cruel, with that insidious
raillery with which Nature, be she gloomy or bright, fits our darker
moods. Through the night, while Margaret’s phantom touch lay upon his
forehead, and the ghosts of her kisses crept across his hand, he had
fought with his longing, and he had won. But it was a triumphless
victory. The pulpy ashes of his own denial were in his mouth. He had
asked so little--only to see her, to hear her step, and the lisping
movement of her dress, and the cadence of her voice--only to feel the
touch of her fingers and the drench of her warm, young life! She loved
him; his love, he told himself, incomplete as it was, would take the
place of all for her. And in his heart he told himself that he lied!
But the rayless darkness of that inner room cast no shadow in the cozy
sun-parlor. There, the doctor, with youthful step that belied his
graying hair, strode about among the patients, chatting lightly, and
full of good-natured badinage. Then, leaving them smiling, he went back
to his private office. As he entered, Margaret rose from the chair
where she waited, and came hurriedly toward him. She was pale, and her
slender hands were clasping nervously about her wrists.
“Doctor,” she began, and stopped an instant. Then stumblingly, “I have
just got your note. I came to ask you--I want to beg you to--not to
make me go back! I--want to stay so much! I know so well how to wait on
him. You know I wasn’t a regular nurse at the hospital. It was only a
trial. Dr. Goodno doesn’t expect me back.”
He drew out a chair for her and made her sit down, wiping his glasses
laboriously. “My dear child--Miss Langdon--” he said, “I know how you
feel. My good friend Mrs. Goodno wrote me of you when Mr. Daunt came
to us. She is a splendid, noble-hearted woman, and she wrote of you as
though you were her own daughter. You see,” he continued, “when you
first came, it was suspected that Mr. Daunt’s peculiar paralysis might
be of a hysteric type, and might yield naturally, under treatment, with
a bettering physical condition, or, possibly, under the impulse of some
extra nervous stimulus. Such cases are not unmet with.”
“Yes, yes,” she said anxiously.
He polished his glasses again. “I am sorry to say,” he went on, “that
we have long ago abandoned this hope, as you know. Such being the case,
it seems, under the peculiar circumstances, advisable--that is, it
would be better not to----” He stopped, feeling that he was floundering
in deeper water than he thought.
“Oh, if you only knew!” Margaret’s voice was shaking. “I came here
because I love him, doctor, and because he loved me! Surely I can at
least stay by him. I am experienced enough to nurse him. It’s the only
thing left now for me to be happy in. He wants me! He’s more cheerful
when I am with him. I know he doesn’t really need a special nurse,
but--I don’t have to earn the money for it. I do it because I like it.”
“My dear young lady,” the doctor said, wheeling, with suspicious
abruptness, in his chair, “be sure that it is only your own best good
that is considered. There are cruel facts in life that we have to face.
This seems very hard for you now, I know. It _is_ hard! He is a brave
man, and believe me, my child, he knows best.”
Margaret half rose from her seat. “‘He’?--_he_ knows best--Richard?
Does _he_ say--did Mr. Daunt----”
He took her hand as a father might. “It was not easy for him,” he said
simply.
She bowed her head in piteous acquiescence, and held his fingers a
moment, her lips striving courageously for a smile, and then went
silently out.
As she passed Daunt’s closed door on the way to her room, she stretched
out her arms and touched its dark panels softly, fearfully, and then
leaned forward, and once laid her lips against the hard grained wood.
* * * * *
An hour later, from where he lay, Daunt could see the bulbous, ulstered
figure of the colored driver as he waited by the porch to take his
single passenger to the distant Lake station. He could see the rake of
the horses’ ears as the man swung his arms, pounding his sides to keep
the blood circulating. His steamy breath made a curdling smoke-cloud
about his peaked cap.
Daunt’s blood forged painfully as the square ormolu clock on the mantel
pointed near to the hour. There were lines of sleeplessness beneath his
eyes; his face was instinct with suffering. Through his open door came
the mingled tones of conversation in the rooms beyond.
He was sitting up, his vigorous hair, grown over-long during his
illness, blending its hue with that of the dark chair-cushion. The
white collar that he wore seemed to have lent its pallor to his cheeks.
He felt himself to have aged during the night. Through the long weeks
since his accident, he had hoped against hope. The doctors had talked
speciously of change of scene and bracing mountain air. He had been
glad enough to leave the foreboding atmosphere of the hospital for
this more cheery hill-top harbor. He had never known nor asked by what
arrangement Margaret was now with him; it had seemed only natural
that it should be so. His patches of delirium memories were every one
brightened by her face and touch, and this state had merged itself
gradually into the waking consciousness when she was always by. Without
questioning, he had come to realize that whatever might have risen
between them in the past was forever gone, and rested content in her
near presence and the promise of the future.
But as the weeks dragged themselves by he had come to know, with a
kind slowness of realization, that this hope must die. In their late
talks, both of them had tacitly recognized this. In the night of his
growing despair, she had been his one star. Now he must shut out that
ray with his own hands and turn his face to the intolerable dark.
When her head had been next his on the pillow, with his nostrils full
of the clean, grassy fragrance of her hair--when her hand had closed
his lips and her voice had plead with him, he had seen, as through
a lightning-rift, the enormity of the selfishness with which he had
let his soul be tempted. From that moment there was for him but one
way--_this_ way. And he had accepted it unflinchingly, heroically.
* * * * *
The spring of the wide stairway broke and turned half way up, and from
where he sat his eye sighted the landing and that slim figure coming
slowly down. It was the old Margaret in street dress. Above the fur
of her close, fawn cloth coat, her hopeless eyes looked over the
balustrade along which her slight, gloved hand slid weakly, as though
seeking support for her limbs.
She crossed the threshold and came toward him, with her eyes half
closed, as though in a maze of grief. The hollows beneath them looked
bruised, and her features pinched like a child’s with the cold.
Gropingly and blindly, one hand reached out to him, the other she
pressed close to her throat. She was bathed in a wave of violent
trembling.
Every stretching fibre in Daunt’s being responded. He could feel the
shuddering palpitation through her suède glove. His self-restraint
hung about him like heavy chains, which the quiver of an eyelash, the
impulse of a sigh, would start into clamorous vibration.
He looked up and their eyes met once. Her gaze clung to him. His lips
formed, rather than spoke, the word “Good-by.” Then he put her hand
aside and turned his head from her, not to see her go.
His strained ear heard her uncertain footfalls, and the agony of his
mind counted them! Now she was by the table. Now her hand was on the
knob. Now---- He sprang around, facing her at the sound of a stumble
and a dulled blow; she had pitched forward against the opened door,
swaying--about to fall.
As her knees touched the floor, a scream burst shrill in the silence of
the room--a scream that pierced the drowsy quiet of the sun-parlor and
brought the doctor running through the hall.
“Margaret!”
Its intensity dragged her from the swoon. She turned her head. Daunt
was standing in the middle of the floor, his eyes shining with
fluctuant fire, his arms--_both_ arms--stretched out toward her.
“Margaret!” he screamed. “Margaret! I can walk!”
[Illustration]