But she had fled from her position. "It's not that, as if I cared, as
if you thought I cared, it's because I want to have been--"
But the other had stuck. "Is the doctor there?" he asked.
The young fellow came to the bed.
"I would like to see Father Ryan," said the Major.
The priest came. The two were intimates. He listened to the
instructions, the exigencies of the case to be met by him. A license
was necessary. "And try and get Miss Blair's brother to accompany you,
and to come here with you; you will make it all clear to him."
Harriet was looking up at the priest, whom she saw as the friend of
the man she loved. "And you will come back and marry us yourself,
won't you?" she asked.
He was looking down at her. Even after the long night, in the cold
light of a winter dawn, and in the garishness of an evening gown in
daylight, she was triumphantly beautiful. With her hand on the smooth
brown hand of the Major, she sat and looked up at the cassocked
priest. The marble of her face had given way to a divine light and
radiance.
He looked down on her.
"I will come," he told her.
It was some hours before he was back. The young doctor had gone and
come. Dawn had broadened into a grey and sullen day. Breakfast was
sent up and placed in an adjoining room for Harriet and Alexina. The
girl tried to eat, if only to seem grateful to the Sister bringing it,
but Harriet wandered about the room, and, when Alexina brought her a
cup of coffee, shook her head. She watched the door until the doctors
were gone and she might return to him, then went in and sat by him
again. His eyes were closed, but his hand, seeking as she sat down,
found hers. Later, as the priest returned, the gaze from the pillow
turned to the door eagerly. Austen was not with him. The face steeled.
The Mother came in, and at a sign from the priest they gathered
around, Alexina, the young doctor, the nurse.
With his hand in Harriet's the Major followed to the end.
Nor was he going to die. There was deeper knowledge of life yet for
the woman by him to learn.
Afterward, Doctor Ransome drove Alexina home in his buggy, where she
and the voluble, excited Katy packed some things for Harriet.
"And Miss Harriet never to let us hear a word, and Maggie and me
never closing our eyes all the night, Miss Alexina," Katy said.
And Harriet Blair a person usually so observant and punctilious about
everything!
"And Mr. Blair, he asked where you were, Miss Harriet and you, when he
came, and then he dressed and went to the party he was going to take
you to, as if nothing had happened. And the Father came this morning
and talked, but Mr. Blair hardly said a word, and when they left the
priest went one way and Mr. Blair he went the other."
Doctor Ransome came in his buggy and took Alexina back. On reaching
the infirmary they found that Major Rathbone's sister from Bardstown,
who had been sent for, had arrived. Alexina had not known that he had
a sister until she found her in the room next to the Major's, with
Harriet.
She was childlike and small and was looking at Harriet, helpless and
frightened. She was, it proved, twenty-three years old, and a widow
with two children.
"And Stevie takes care of us," she explained. "Stevie" was the Major;
"us" was herself and the babies.
She had brought both the babies. "I couldn't leave them and come, you
know," she said.
One of them lay on the bed, asleep, a little chap four years old, his
coat unfastened, his hair tumbled. The other, the younger, asleep too,
lay on the mother's knee, Harriet regarding him. He was aquiline, lean
and handsome, baby as he was, like a little deer hound.
"His name is Stevie," said Stephen's sister.
Harriet looked up from the child to the mother, almost jealously.
"Then he is mine, too; I have some part in him too, since his name is
Stephen."