"_Liebes Kind!_" cried the great professsor. "He has in his delirium called for you by name. Dry your tears, we will mend him for you surely. Helen! Ach! that is an all-powerful, love-compelling name-of-uttermost victory, so have no fear. You shall to him go so soon as I can get on my boots." He stuck out a big slippered foot in explanation and encouragement as he beamed on her.
"If I might have a gla.s.s of milk," Helen felt emboldened to say. "I haven"t had time, somehow----"
"Gott in Himmel! She is hungry," roared the professor. "Oh, Love!
Love! what dost thou not? Greta," this to the elderly servant who answered his furious ringing. "Milk, food, drink, everything for this gracious-betrothed-one while I put on my boots."
Fortified by hot coffee and a roll, Helen, being whirled through the streets of Vienna in the doctor"s _coupe_, felt that, come what might, she did not repent her hasty impulse. Even if Peter Ramsay lived.
"Thou must remember, _liebes kind_," came the professor"s jovial voice all softened to warning, "he is very ill; only the good G.o.d knows how ill. But we are doing our best for him. The high fever has gone, but the weakness remains. You must be very quiet."
"I am a nurse," she said, "I know." In a way it was only as a nurse that she had come, only because she could not bear to think of him dying alone.
It seemed an interminable age that she sat in the _coupe_ while Dr.
Pagenheim was preparing the hospital authorities. It was quite a small place, almost private: a place reserved by the doctors for their most serious cases. It had a conventional air, and Helen as she sat could see a sister of charity or two, with large white-winged caps, moving about. Would they let her in? Surely Dr. Pagenheim was powerful enough for that. He came back after a time with the matron, a severe looking sister, with a weary face. He was much graver. "You can see him, and, if you are quiet, you can remain; but he will not know you."
Did he not? As she entered the wide, white ward, empty save for the bed set in the middle, the low, hurried muttering from the figure which lay on it ceased for a moment. It almost seemed as if the mutterer was listening. Then he began again, too low to be intelligible even to the English ears which bent over to listen. The nurses, two fair, simple-faced sisters, looked at her with kindly compa.s.sion and curiosity.
"He is so restless," said one, speaking in the low, even sing-song which so many nurses acquire as a kind of whisper. "If he could only sleep; but we dare not give drugs, his heart is so weak."
His right hand, all bandaged up to the elbow, lay slung in a shifting cradle just above the bed-clothes, his left, the fingers closing and unclosing with a terrible regularity, hung half over the bedside. She slipped hers into it and it closed on hers tightly, so tightly that after a time the blood seemed to seek a way through her fingertips.
The muttering became more distinct.
"Number 36. I am not sure about number 36."
"He is doing very well," she replied softly. "Sister Ann is quite pleased with him. The dressings were not in the least disturbed, and he slept all night without drugs. He is to have beef-tea to-day," the muttering had ceased, the sick man lay quite still, the grip of his hand was slackening, "and to-morrow he will have chicken, and then, if he will only sleep, sleep, sleep quite quietly, sleep--sleep--sleep."
"Gnadige Fraulein," came the nurse"s whisper, "seat yourself so, there must be no movement if possible."
How long she sat there, her hand in his, she did not know, long enough anyhow to feel that, when, or how, or why she knew not, the very touch of him had become dear to her, for it was not only the tingling of the veins after the almost benumbing pressure of his fingers which sent the thrill to her heart and her brain. He had told her the truth: the past was in the present.
After a time he stirred, swallowed a spoonful of nourishment, and slept again. Another nurse stole into the room and whispered with the two in a corner. Helen could not see their calm, fair, untroubled faces, but she could hear one word, a word they had renounced for themselves, which for all that sent a thrill through their woman hearts.
"Love--true love!"
Was it that? Or had she merely wrecked herself and him for something evanescent, worth little? Helen was half asleep herself, all she realised was that something had brought rest to him for the time.
So when the bad turn came again he was stronger, but so long as she was in the room the painful restlessness never returned. And day by day the dressers were more satisfied.
"Helen of Troy is sufficient to bring any man back from the grave, _lich du liebe Gott_, what will not the true love do?" beamed Herr Pagenheim, and the nurses sighed and smiled. Finally, there came a day when Peter Ramsay really opened his eyes, found Helen beside him, and closed them again contentedly. After this came cogitation, so by degrees a puzzled look grew to his eyes.
"It was awfully good of you to come and help nurse me," he said weakly at last. "How did you find out I was ill?"
"Sister Ann had a letter, so I came. I knew you must be alone," she replied sedately.
"It must have been an awful journey for you. I feel so sorry about it," he continued almost impatiently. "You must have had a lot of trouble. And then, when you got here--what beats me is, why did they let you in? They are so strict."
She felt the colour rising to her face. "Oh! I managed," she said evasively. "Now, you really must take your Valentine"s extract and go to sleep."
He shifted restlessly. "How can I go to sleep when I am worried?" he said pitifully, fretfully as a child. "I tell you it must have given you a lot of trouble, and I"m so vexed."
Her face grew tender as she bent over him. "I a.s.sure you I had no trouble at all. It was quite easy. Will you--will you promise me to go to sleep if I tell you how--how I managed?"
"Do," he said with a little sigh. "I really want to know."
"They asked me if I were your mother or your sister," she said, scarcely able to speak for her trembling lips. "So I said no--but--but that I was engaged to be married to you."
He lay quite still. He did not even put out his hand to hers, but the swift tears ran down his hollow cheeks and wetted the pillow.
"You promised you would go to sleep, dear," she said softly, and he closed his eyes, once more like a child.
CHAPTER XXVI
"If Madam will leave it to us," said Myfanwy Jones, "we will give her satisfaction."
She took in all Aura"s grace and beauty as she spoke. Full of shrewd sense, appreciative by virtue of her race, of all that makes for beauty, knowledgeable in all that enhances beauty, her bold dark eyes realised that here was some one worth dressing.
"We will--yes! we will make it of white _velours-panne_ and dead white velvet. It will become Madam, I am sure. I will consult the buyer regarding the price."
She swept away over the Turkey carpets of Williams and Edwards" shop, her shiny, undulating black satin train rippling behind her, towards a tall, most immaculate figure in a long frock coat, who was busy comparing sc.r.a.ps of silk with another tall, broad-shouldered young man. Both might have entered a grenadier company and looked all too big and strong for their task.
"Excuse me, Mr. Morris," said Myfanwy, with the most superb courtesy, "but I should like to speak to Mr. Pugh for an instant." Having got him to herself, her manner changed.
"Merve!" she said sharply. "What price order costume, _panne_ and velvet, my wedding-dress design--you know. I want to make it."
"For that lady?" he said, looking across to where Aura stood, feeling as she still felt in shops, utterly shy and miserable. In an instant a hot flush overspread his face, and he turned back to the silk patterns.
"Thirty guineas."
Myfanwy sniffed scornfully. "You will oblige me, Mervyn Pugh, by having some sense. Look at her! will she give more than fifteen guineas for a dress? Never! and I want to make it."
"Five-and-twenty," he said, refraining from the look. He would gladly have stuck to the thirty, and so have driven Aura from the shop, had he dared. But he did not dare. He was under Myfanwy"s orders, and, so far, he had had no reason to regret the fact. He had climbed like Jonah"s gourd, and was now Williams and Edwards" first buyer. And next year when, after his marriage with Myfanwy (who was now head of the costume department) the additional interest of making money for himself instead of for others had come in his life, and there could be no doubt of their success. He had all the Cymric"s fine feelings for feminine fal-lals (which is shown indubitably by the names over the drapers" shops in London) and Myfanwy had a perfect genius for dress.
Considering, therefore, the crowds of women absolutely without any taste at all who desire to dress well, the result was a.s.sured. He began to wonder how he had ever thought seriously of being a pedagogue, a demagogue, or a minister.
"I shall say twenty," remarked Myfanwy reflectively, "it can be made for fifteen, and she shall have it for that in the end. But I want to make it. She is lovely--and I want to know how I shall look in my wedding-dress."
"Twenty!" said Mervyn wavering.
"I hope it may buy her all she desires as my dress will buy me,"
contended Myfanwy, with a challenge of lip and eyes. "I will say eighteen, Mervyn, to begin with."
With that she swept back to Aura. "It will be eighteen guineas, Madam," she said sweetly; "but if Madam will give us the Mechlin scarf she is wearing to utilise, it will be fifteen."
Fifteen! It seemed enormous to Aura"s ignorance. Yet Ted had given twelve, she knew, for the pink satin, and he had bidden her--since he was too busy to shop--be sure and get something very nice indeed for Ned Blackborough"s dance on New Year"s Eve. Fifteen whole sovereign remedies and fifteen shillings over! What an immense amount to spend upon herself, she who at best was but a poor maimed thing. Every now and again this feeling of being, as it were, a castaway, a derelict on Life"s sea, would come to her, though she knew that millions of women, many from choice, went through the world and left their mark on it with never a child to call them mother. Still the sense of being, as it were, out of the fighting-line was at times oppressive. So few things seemed to matter; certainly not the spending of money.