"Did I say that? I must have been out of my head."
"Thee"ll see that all was ordered for the best, and be content when thee gets strong. People are often better every way after a good fit of sickness. I believe the Good Physician will give His healing touch to thy soul as well as thy body. Ah, here is Zillah. Come in, little girl.
Richard wishes to see thee."
Bearing a bowl in both hands, she entered hesitatingly.
"Why, Zillah, you waiting on me, too! It"s all like a fairy tale, and I"m transformed into a great prince, and am waited on right royally.
I"m going to drink that broth to your health, as if you were a great lady. It will do me more good than all the drugs of all the doctors, just because you are such a good little fairy, and have bewitched it."
The child dimpled all over with pleasure as she came and stood by my side.
"Oh, I"m so glad thee"s getting well!" she cried. "Thee talks queer, but not so queer as thee did before. Thee--"
A warning gesture from her mother checked her, and she looked a little frightened.
"That will do, Zillah. After Richard has taken this I"m not going to let him talk for a long time."
"Do you want to make me all well, Zillah?" I asked, smiling into her troubled and sympathetic face.
She nodded eagerly and most emphatically.
"Then climb on a chair and give me a kiss."
After a quick, questioning look at her mother, she complied, laughing.
"Ah, that puts life into me," I said. "You can tell them all that you did me more good than the doctor. I"ll go with you to see the robins soon."
"I"ve got something else for thee downstairs," she whispered, "something that Emily Warren gathered for thee," and she was gone in a flash.
A moment later she stood in the doorway, announced in advance by the perfume of an exquisite cl.u.s.ter of rosebuds arranged in a dainty vase entwined and half hidden with myrtle.
"Put the vase on the table by Richard, and then thee mustn"t come any more."
"Thee surely are from the Garden of Eden," I exclaimed. "These and your kiss, Zillah, will make me well. Tell Miss Warren that I am going to thank her myself. Good-by now," and she flitted out of the room, bright with the unalloyed happiness of a child.
"Dear me," said Mrs. Yocomb, "thee must indeed get strong fast, for I do have such a time keeping the young people out of thy room. Reuben asks a dozen times a day if he can see thee, and father"s nearly as bad. No more shall see thee to-day, I promise thee. Now thee must rest till to-morrow."
I was well content, for the roses brought a presence very near. In their fragrance, their beauty, their dewy freshness, their superiority to other flowers, they seemed the emblem of the maiden who had made harmony in the garden when Nature was at her best. The scene, as we had stood there together, grew so vivid that I saw her again almost in reality, her face glowing with the undisguised, irrepressible pleasure that had been caused by my unexpected tribute to the absolute truthfulness of her character. Again I heard her piquant laugh; then her sweet, vibratory voice as she sang hymns that awakened other than religious emotions, I fear. By an odd freak of fancy the flowers seemed an embodied strain from Chopin"s nocturne that she had played, and the different shades of color the rising and falling of the melody.
"What do they mean?" I murmured to myself. "At any rate I see no York and Lancaster buds among them."
"Is thee so very fond of roses that thee gazes so long and intently at them?" Mrs. Yocomb quietly asked.
I started, and I had still sufficient blood to crimson my pallid face.
Turning away I said, "They recalled a scene in the garden where they grew. It seemed to me that Miss Warren had grown there too, she was so like them; and that this impression should have been made by a girl bred in the city struck me as rather strange."
"Thy impression was correct--she"s genuine," Mrs. Yocomb replied gravely, and her eyes rested on me in a questioning and sympathetic way that I understood better as I thought it over afterward.
"Yes," I said, "she made just that impression on me from the first. We met as strangers, and in a few hours, without the slightest effort on her part, she won my absolute trust. This at first greatly surprised me, for I regret to say that my calling has made me distrustful. I soon learned, however, that this was just the impression that she should make on any one capable of understanding her."
A deep sigh was my companion"s only answer.
"Mrs. Yocomb," I continued, earnestly, "was I taken ill while you were speaking? I have a vague, tormenting impression that something occurred which I cannot recall. The last that I can remember was your speaking to us; and then--and then--wasn"t there a storm?"
"There may have been. We"ve had several showers of late. Thee had been overdoing, Richard, and thee felt the effects of the fever in thy system before thee or any of us knew what was the matter. Thy mind soon wandered; but thee was never violent; thee made us no trouble--only our anxiety. Now I hope I"ve satisfied thee."
"How wondrously kind you"ve all been to such a stranger! But Miss Adah made reference to something that I can"t understand."
Mrs. Yocomb looked perplexed and annoyed. "I"ll ask Adah," she said, gravely. "It"s time thee took this medicine and slept."
The draught she gave me was more quieting than her words had been, for I remembered nothing more distinctly until I awoke in the brightness of another day.
CHAPTER V
A FLASH OF MEMORY
I found my spirits attuned to the clear sunshine of the new day, and congratulated myself that convalescence promised to be so speedy. Again I had the sense that it was my body only that was weak and exhausted by disease, for my mind seemed singularly elastic, and I felt as if the weight of years and toil had dropped away, and I was entering on a new and higher plane of existence. An unwonted hopefulness, too, gave buoyancy to my waking thoughts.
My first conscious act was to look for my flowers. They had been removed to a distant table, and in their place was a larger bouquet, that, for some reason, suggested Adah. "It"s very pretty," I thought, "but it lacks the dainty, refined quality of the other. There"s too much of it. One is a bouquet; the other suggests the bushes on which the buds grew, and their garden home."
From the sounds I heard, I knew the family was at breakfast, and before very long a musical laugh that thrilled every nerve with delight rang up the stairway, and I laughed in sympathy without knowing why.
"Happy will the home be in which that laugh makes music," I murmured.
"Heaven grant it may be mine. Can it be presumption to hope this, when she showed so much solicitude at my illness? She was crying when my recovery was doubtful, and she entreated me to live. Reuben"s words suggested that she was depressed while I was in danger, and buoyant after the crisis had pa.s.sed. That she feels as I do I cannot yet hope.
But what the mischief do she and Adah mean by saying that they owe me so much? It"s I who owe them everything for their care during my illness. How long _have_ I been ill? There seems to be something that I can"t recall; and now I think of it, Mrs. Yocomb"s account last night was very indefinite."
My further musings were interrupted by the entrance of Mrs. Yocomb with a steaming bowl that smelt very savory.
"Mrs. Yocomb," I cried, "you"re always welcome; and that bowl is, too, for I"m hungry as a cub."
"Glad to hear it," said Mr. Yocomb"s hearty voice from the doorway.
"I"ll kill for you a young gobbler that Emily Warren thinks is like the apple of my eye, if you will promise to eat him."
"No, indeed," I answered, reaching out my hand. "He is already devoted to Miss Warren"s Thanksgiving dinner. May he continue to gobble until that auspicious day."
"What! do you remember that?" and Mr. Yocomb cast a quick look of surprise at his wife.
"Yes, I remember everything up to a certain point, and then all comes to a full stop. I wish you would bridge over the gap for me."
"Richard," interposed Mrs. Yocomb, quickly, "it wouldn"t do thee any good to have father tell thee what thee said when out of thy mind from fever. I can tell thee, however, that thee said nothing of which thee need be ashamed."
"Well, I can"t account for it. I must have been taken very suddenly.
One thing is clear: you are the kindest people I ever heard of. You ought to be put in a museum."