Thomas broke out into wails of thankfulness, while Mrs. Powell
breathed more quietly a prayer as grateful. Amanda said no word, but
a deep sigh exhaled from her burdened chest, and she tried to draw
nearer. A friendly hand held her back. Edgar Chamblin's blue eyes
glimmered anxiously in the light of the lantern he was holding, and he
said with kindly insistence:
"I wouldn't go nigh him jes' yet, Mis' Mandy. We're goin' ter tote him
ovah t' cousin Evy Smith's. Her'n is the nighest house, an' Doctor
Sowers says he must be taken ter the ve'y nighest place."
"Can't he be taken _home_?" wailed Vivian's mother. "I mean to _my_
house whar he kin be taken cyar uv?" with a spiteful look at her
daughter-in-law.
The doctor looked up anxiously. Vivian's closed lids had quivered for
a second and a look of consciousness appeared, then faded away. With
tender hands he was laid on the cot that now arrived and carried over
the field to Miss Eva Smith's cottage, where the little bedroom off
the parlor had been made ready for him, and the best bed was spread
with every dainty piece of linen the spinster could draw from her
treasured store.
So it was upon a lace-trimmed, hemstitched pillow-slip that the
beautiful head of the injured man reposed, and over him was spread a
silk quilt that had long been the pride of Miss Evy's maiden heart, and
which she now brought forth with a solemn sense of consecration.
Miss Evy was a thin, fragile woman, with a figure that had once
been willowy, but was now angular; blue eyes that once were like
forget-me-nots, contrasting with tender, coral lips and baby blond
hair; but tears shed in secret had washed the blue from her eyes and
the peachy bloom from her oval cheeks, until only a faint reminiscence
remained of the beauty which had captivated Vivian Thomas' boyish
fancy. One of the peculiarities of Vivian's fortune was that the
women he had wooed and forsaken remained faithful to him till death,
cherishing no resentment and seeking no retaliation; but, instead,
biding the time when by some act of service they could prove the
strength of an affection that always had in it an element of maternal
fondness.
Why some men whose paths through life are marked by the broken hearts
of women should experience from those they injure the tenderness
and leniency seldom or never accorded to better but rougher men is
something only to be explained by the waywardness of feminine nature.
The majority of women like to be martyred, but resent frank abuse. The
weakly child of the flock easily converts his mother into a slave,
even though she perceives through the veil of feebleness the force of
egotism. And in the same way the man of soft manners, winning voice,
and insinuating tongue, may play the tyrant at his pleasure, and be
admired and adored by women whose slavishness is a conscious concession
to some imagined delicacy that appeals to their maternal instinct.
In the humble heart of Miss Evy her girlhood's hero had maintained
his place, notwithstanding her conscientious efforts after Vivian's
marriage to think of him as something entirely apart from her life.
Thinking of him was a privilege she allowed herself under certain
restrictions. She thought of him when she prayed, when she sang in
the choir on Sunday and Wednesday nights, and when she worked in her
flower-garden. Most of all then, for long ago he had been used to stop
his horse and stand outside the low stone fence, with his arm through
the bridle-rein, and talk with her in a playfully sentimental way that
she had thought the prettiest sort of love-making. And so, to keep him
out of her mind when she tended her spotted lilies and trained the
purple wistaria, was as impossible as it would have been to avoid the
connection between the sky and the gracious heaven lying beyond.
It was an innocent indulgence that did not infringe upon the rights of
Vivian's wife, and did no harm to the gentle woman herself; for it
kept alive her faith in human nature and trust in the compensations
Providence has in store for those who have been denied their heart's
desire in this world. And these are feelings that die out in most of
us under the scourge of disappointment and leave something worse than
heartache in their room.
There had been days when the loneliness of her self-chosen, single lot
had been too hard to be borne, and sometimes then Miss Evy would steal
to the window of her little spare front room, and peep guiltily through
a slit in the blue shade to watch for a sight of Vivian riding past,
and when the longed-for vision appeared, she would start back with her
hand on her heart and a hot color in her delicate cheek, but he never
saw her, nor ever dreamed of her observation. If he had he would have
dismounted and chatted with her for a few minutes at the gate; for
Vivian was ever tender toward the women who worshiped him, and he
would have valued the eloquent if silent appreciation of this faithful
heart, and taken comfort in the sympathy she would have expressed at
least in looks; rumor having carried to her news of scenes at Benvenew,
little to Amanda's credit.
As she stood back behind the door, and watched from this little
distance hands that had a better right than her own minister to the
man she loved, a pang of jealousy sent its jarring quiver through all
her nerves; but the next instant it was succeeded by the thankful
feeling that it was hers to extend hospitality, to furnish the means of
comfort, and mayhap, her privilege, while others rested, to help nurse
him back to health.
There was something for everyone to do that night, for the country
doctor worked with the bustle that grows out of the necessity of
finding occupation for the officious onlookers who must not be
offended. Something for everybody excepting Jane Thomas, whose
hysterical condition made her such a nuisance that even Dr. Sowers
could think of no more diplomatic suggestion than that she should go
somewhere and lie down--and take some warm water and brandy.
"And me a Blue Ribboner!" she moaned resentfully.
Amanda was a born nurse; self-restrained, level-headed, tender and
strong, she won golden laurels in the doctor's opinion as she quietly
took her place at his side, and intelligently carried out his wishes
without comment or question. Her mother went home at nine o'clock to
take care of little Nellie, the doctor having stated his opinion that
although there was concussion of the brain, Vivian's hurt would not
necessarily prove fatal. The state of coma might be followed by brain
fever, but with good nursing his fine constitution would bring him
through.
"It's sartenly a special Providence," thought Mrs. Powell, when Amanda
told her that she should stay at the cottage. "Don't you take a mite
o' fear 'bout Nellie; you know she'd stay with me contented fur any
length o' time," she said, as she left.
"But you'll bring her over to see me for a few minutes when you come
to-morrow," Amanda urged, and her mother answered: "Uv coas, honey,
we'll come over right 'arly. Don't you get wore out now; you and Miss
Evy take tu'ns settin' up."
It had required considerable effort to induce Mrs. Thomas to see things
in the light of her uselessness, and it was the doctor himself who
finally carried her off and left the house to Miss Evy and Amanda. It
was late when they found themselves alone in the little room where lay
the still form of the man who was dearer than her heart's best blood to
the one woman, and to the other--who shall say whether dear, or no?
Amanda had never been in love with the all-conquering hero of Fauquier
County. At eighteen she had been in love with love; and Vivian was
nearer the embodiment of her ideal than any other whom she knew. The
highest powers of our nature remain latent in most of us for lack of
opportunity to develop. It may be a talent, it may be a virtue that
stays in the germ throughout all the ups and downs of our career,
and that we pass on to our children to come out in them as practical
capacity.
Although Amanda had in her nature a rare power of wifely devotion,
it was of the royal order; it could not stoop, and so it died away.
And in its stead had grown to mighty proportions the mother-love that
extends in women of a high type beyond the instinctive care of her
own young, to an all-embracing tenderness toward feeble creatures of
every degree. The little ones, the helpless, the sick appealed to this
strong, self-poised woman in a way that called out every capacity for
self-sacrifice that lay in her, and she would have wrestled with death
and all the evil powers to save from harm anything which confided
itself to her protection.
The vigorous, healthy Vivian, contemptuously setting at naught her
standards of duty, and wounding her dignity in a hundred ways, was
so repulsive to her moral sense that she was ready to fly from him as
from a pestilence. But Vivian cast down from his height of graceful
insolence and dependent upon her kind offices, had claims before which
every critical faculty bowed itself. All she thought of now was how to
help him.
"Do you think he'll come to in his right mind?" asked Miss Evy in a low
murmur, after half an hour had passed in silence. She could not stand
it any longer. She felt as if she must say something. That handsome,
calm woman seated at the head of the bed awed her, and at the same time
irritated her. In some vague way she felt that Amanda was to blame
for Vivian's accident. Like Mrs. Thomas she felt that if the wife had
fallen into spasms of self-reproach it would have been more fitting
than this display of courage and energy. Yet she was glad, too, for his
sake that there was some one at hand able to "take holt and do whatever
wuz needed."
Amanda looked over at the gentle spinster pleasantly, but replied only
by a faint shake of the head. Her watch lay open upon the stand beside
a glass of medicine, covered with a hymn book. Upon the book lay a thin
silver spoon marked with the initials of Miss Evy's grandmother. It was
one of six, and Miss Evy only used them upon rare occasions.
Amanda still wore her black silk, and over it she had tied one of her
hostess' white aprons, made of fine nainsook and trimmed with a deep
border of home-made lace. Aprons are the least neutral of garments,
for they have the effect of bringing into view certain values in their
wearer. By this touchstone some women are instantly proclaimed dowdies;
others approved as domestic, and still others marked out as queens or
fairies masquerading. The natural servant wears her apron smartly; the
born chatelaine with an inimitable grace. Upon Amanda's magnificent
figure the garment assumed the air of the imperial purple, and Miss
Evy, watching her meekly, acknowledged in her successful rival some
rare quality which she could not name, but which seemed to account for
and justify the ascendancy she was said to exercise over all her family.
At midnight Vivian opened his eyes. "Whoa, Sultan!" he uttered in
feeble tones, and made a motion with his hand as if he pulled upon the
reins. Miss Evy started, but Amanda laid her finger on her lips and
bending over him, said softly:
"Drink this, Vivian," putting a glass to his lips. He drank all she
gave him eagerly, then his head fell back upon the pillow, and he slept
till dawn.
Miss Evy was persuaded to retire toward morning. She would have
preferred to sit there and watch, but she could not say so, and she
was compelled to steal away upstairs, and leave Vivian to his wife,
who kept unwinking vigil until the first glimmer of light shot through
the closed blinds of the east window. Then she arose and put out the
lamp, and noiselessly raising the window let the pure, fresh mountain
air into the little room. During her watchful night her mind had
been entirely occupied with Vivian's condition; she had not thought
of herself. But now, as the sun touched the tip of Round Peak and
crept downward till the whole valley was illumined with the light of a
perfect October day, she became conscious, with a thrill of pain, of
that feeling of personal life and identity which is so strong and vivid
when, in some beautiful spot isolated from the whirl of cities, we open
our eyes upon a new day.
There is no other joy so fine and none so fleeting, perhaps, as this
stirring of our individual energies by the breath of that mighty living
force that recreates us each morning after the apathy of night. At this
instant of recognition the day belongs to us and the air resounds with
a pæan of wonderful hopes and promises, as if our single personality
were the only concern of nature. Soon the responsibilities of our
relations to others crowd out this sense of individual life and the
momentary Sabbath-peace of the soul is broken up by the work-a-day hum
of jarring machinery. So, swift upon the exaltation aroused in Amanda
by the influence of an unshared sunrise, came the disappointing sense
of check and defeat to her own purposes and plans, which had been
wrought within the last few hours. None of the reasons that led to her
decision to go away and begin a new life remote from these surroundings
had altered. Fauquier County was still limited, narrow, and hostile
to Nellie's mental development; Benvenew was still poverty-stricken,
and no new resources suggested themselves. And Vivian was still the
old Vivian, with all his vices upon his head, and likely with the
first hour of returning health to repel and disgust her, just as he
had been doing all along. Every condition she had dwelt upon as urgent
cause of flight was unchanged; and yet, with lightning swiftness was
accomplished that resolution, paralleled in the experience of every
one of us, by which the one whose offenses had banished him from her
consideration, was made through sudden appeal to pity, the object of
first importance to her.
As Amanda turned from the window and approached the bed where Vivian
was now opening eyes in which the light of reason was absent, she
turned her back upon all the rosy hopes that had been dwelling in her
imagination, and took up the burden of a hard and painful duty. For
she was aware through the prophetic insight that flashes through our
acts into the region of remote consequences, that out of the immediate
obligation of nursing her husband back to health and strength, would
grow ties that would cramp and fetter all her future. Her only defense
against whatever his will might impose upon her had been in her
feeling of antagonism. For, strong and self-poised as she was, she
had the woman's weak-point of an intense susceptibility, and if she
had achieved the wish to be hard as nails, the first touch from a
beseeching hand would inevitably break through the crust and betray the
lurking softness beneath.
It was with a quiver of fright that she realized, as she raised
Vivian's head upon her arm and felt him weakly recline against it,
that the barriers would soon be broken down between them, and that
there might enter into her heart, destitute of respect and esteem that
pitiful substitute for true affection, a self-immolating tenderness
that leads judgment into abysses where poisonous plants grow, exhaling
odors detrimental to sanity and health. The flash of fear came and
went, and no one, save her mother, ever knew what Amanda's concession
meant to her, and what it involved.
Miss Evy had passed a sleepless night, and at six o'clock she crept
softly down to the door of Vivian's bedroom and stood for a moment
before she knocked, listening for sounds that she dreaded to hear, the
sound of incoherent murmuring, in femininely sweet tones.
"Come in," Amanda called, and she entered, with a scared, anxious face
and timid step.
"He's out of his mind, ain't he?" she queried pitifully, and Amanda
made an assenting movement of the head.
Vivian's delirium was not violent at first, and he submitted to
requirements with a gentleness that was like his ordinary courtesy.
But he recognized no one for many days, showing a preference, however,
for Amanda and her mother, over all the others who came in to offer
their services. His wife seemed to have a peculiarly soothing effect
upon him, and with another variation from his attitude when in health,
he was impatient and fretful whenever his mother appeared. Mrs. Thomas
took this hard, and in the parlor of the cottage, where she sat most
of the time seeing callers, she bewailed the ingratitude of her son,
and whispered dark sayings against Amanda--"who wuz tryin' now to throw
dust in people's eyes by makin' out she was dreadful fond o' him, when
if the truth wuz told--"
It seemed as if everybody within ten miles around came with offers of
help and utterances of sympathy; the last delivered only to Mrs. Thomas
and Miss Evy, for few persons saw Amanda. For ten days she watched by
Vivian's bedside with a devotion that completely revolutionized all
Miss Evy's ideas of her, and astonished even her mother. And when, from
the very jaws of death, Vivian came slowly back to life, he had become
to her like a dear child, whom it was her duty to shield and minister
to, and treat with a tenderness unmingled with criticism. Whether this
mental attitude would continue was a question. Mrs. Powell held counsel
about it with herself, and made it a subject of prayer: "That Mandy
would go on bein' forgivin' an' lovin' an' that all'd go well betwixt
her an' her husband."
The exquisite season of Indian Summer, the fifth season of the year in
the mountain region of Virginia, set in early, and one morning when the
air was so soft that it brought to the surface all the gentle, kindly
impulses of hearts that stiffen and congeal under the rough touch of
frost, Amanda found herself curiously moved as she stepped lightly
about Vivian's room, waiting for him to awake.
It often happens that a mental preparation unconsciously takes place
in us for events about to happen. A letter is on its way to us, and we
think of the writer, sometimes expressing a solicitude the letter's
contents justify. A friend visits us and we meet him with the remark
that we were at that moment longing for his presence. Some catastrophe
takes place that we were anticipating, and if a pleasure is in the air
its approach is heralded by a peculiar elation and excitement that our
occupations cannot account for.
These are more tangible things, and easier to understand than the
subtle atmospheric changes that pass along from heart to heart. How
can we explain the power affection has to send its prophet before to
prepare for its coming? In some unexpected hour a certain something
tugs at our heart-strings and tunes them up so that when the right hand
is extended a melody is evoked that we did not think of or intend.
Amanda was a practical woman, not an emotional one, but she was not
therefore any the less alive to fine shades of feeling. She dusted the
bedroom with a piece of dampened cheese-cloth, set carefully upon the
stand the slender necked Bohemian vase of flowers that were Miss Evy's
morning tribute, and laid out clean towels beside the basin of fresh
water upon the chair by the bed, as methodically as usual. Yet she was
conscious of being in a state of expectancy, as if she stood upon the
eve of something.
Vivian opened his eyes, larger and clearer for his three weeks'
illness, and looked in her face with that solemn expression that
accompanies the return of consciousness after the delirium of fever,
and she trembled under the rush of tenderness that his gaze awakened.
"Amanda!" he said feebly, "you in here! Aren't you up early?"
"Not so very early, dear," she responded, very gently. "It's you who
have slept late."
"Strange I don't feel more like getting up," he remarked. Then his gaze
wandered over the room, and came back in perplexity to her face.
"Are you the genii?" he asked with a little smile.
"Am I what?" She thought his wits were wandering again.
"The genii. I must be Prince Camaralzaman. I went to sleep in my own
room last night, and wake up in this, which I vow I never saw before."
"You were indeed brought here, but not from your own room. You have
been here three weeks, Vivian. You fell from your horse into Mowbray
Gulch and hurt your head, and you have had brain fever."
She spoke slowly, and he followed her words attentively, closing his
eyes when she was through, and lying perfectly quiet for a minute. Then
he said:
"Where is 'here?'"
"We are at Miss Evy Smith's. Her house was the nearest place, you know,
and you had to be brought here."
"Evy Smith's!" he repeated, with a strange little laugh. "That's
singular." After an interval, he added:
"Has she been nursing me?"
"She helped. She has been very, very kind. A sister could not have done
more."
"She was always sweet and obliging," he observed. "But--Amanda, come
sit down on the bed, won't you? My voice seems mighty weak, somehow."
"I mustn't let you talk," Amanda said. She sat down on the edge of the
bed, and as she did so a flush settled upon her firm cheek and stayed
there. Not for three years had she been so close to him. Perhaps he
remembered, too. What he said was:
"So it is you who have been taking care of me? It was good of you,
Amanda. I think you must have grown rather fond of me while I've been
at your mercy here."
That unerring tact of his suggested exactly the right thing to say.
Not a word to jar the delicate springs of feeling that had been set
at work in her, and not a sign that he meant to take advantage of her
changed attitude.
He was too weak to think such matters out. He merely obeyed the keen
instinct that belongs to natures like his, in emphasizing by this
casual allusion the leniency and indulgence she must naturally feel
toward him under the circumstances.
Some people have the faculty of making us feel grateful to them for
permitting us to serve them. Vivian had it. Amanda was so delighted
to see him recovering that she almost felt like thanking him for it.
Perhaps one reason for this humility was that she had not been free
throughout his illness from the sting of self-reproach. Outwardly she
had ignored Jane Thomas' bitter charge that her violent conduct had
indirectly caused Vivian's accident. But in secret her conscience had
taken her to task again and again for her severity toward him. If it
had led to this she felt that blame should rightly fall upon her.
No faculty of our nature brings to us keener suffering than our sense
of justice. Suppressed, it cries out continually; exercised, it leads
to acts too positive to be endured in retrospect; and this relenting of
a strong nature, this going back upon itself and its principles, is a
common occurrence in daily life.
Great risk attends such changes of mental attitude, for character is
built upon a belief in the correctness of our own judgment. If we ever
come to a point where it appears probable that everything we have held
to and believed in is a mistake, God help us!
Now, the strong point in Amanda's character was her unflinching
uprightness. She had always dared tell the truth to herself, using no
palliations. And in this way she felt certain of her ground. But now,
for the first time, the demon of self-distrust had entered into her
mind, and all her ideas and opinions became affected by it.
If she had been to blame in her attitude toward Vivian, how far was
she to blame? In what respect was she right? Poor Amanda was now
in a condition where Jane Thomas' stinging remarks could cause her
discomfort. Strangely enough, her greatest consolation was in the
attachment Miss Evy had formed for her.
"I don't know how I could ever have let myself think of you as I used
to think, Mrs. Thomas," the gentle spinster had said once, when they
were upon confidential terms. "I'm shore you're anything but unfeeling."
"Am I called that?" Amanda asked, not without a pang. She was no longer
above caring what people said about her.
"Well, you know some people must have something to say about
everybody," Miss Evy said, apologetically. "But since I know you, why,
I think you're real good; even good enough for Mr. Thomas."
Amanda looked at her when she said that. Something occurred to her that
she had heard a long time ago and forgotten.
"Thank you," she said, quite gently, and turned away.