The old man drew away his hand, and shook off the tears she had left upon it, with more strength than he seemed to possess.
"Hush!" he said. "You trouble me."
Ruth shrunk away, and once more rested her head on the quilt, that was soon wet with her tears. After a little she crept close to him again, and timidly touched his hand.
"Father!"
"Poor child! Poor, foolish child!"
"Father, forgive me!"
The sick man"s face quivered all over, and, spite of an effort to restrain it, his poor hand rose tremblingly, and fell on that bowed head.
"Oh, my child! if we had both died before this thing happened."
"I wish we had. Oh, how I wish we had!"
"It was my fault," murmured the sick man.
"No, no! It was mine. I am to blame, I alone."
"I might have known it; poor, lost lamb, I might have known it."
Ruth lifted her head suddenly.
"Lost lamb! Oh, father! what do these words mean?"
The gardener shook his head faintly, closed his eyes, and two great tears rolled from under the lids.
"Oh! tell me--tell me! I--I cannot bear it, father!"
That moment the surgeons, who had gone out for consultation, came back and rather sternly reprimanded Ruth for talking with their patient.
The girl rose obediently, and turned away from the bed. The surgeons saw that a scarlet heat had driven away the pallor of her countenance, but took no heed of that. She had evidently agitated their patient, and this was sufficient excuse for some degree of severity, so she went forth, relieved of her former awful dread, but wounded with new anxieties.
Two days followed of intense suffering to that wounded man and the broken-hearted girl. Fever and delirium set in with him, terror and dread with her. The power of reason had come out of that great shock.
In trembling and awe she had asked herself questions.
Who had fired that murderous shot? How had the gun disappeared from behind the pa.s.sage door, where Richard Storms had surely left it? Had there been a quarrel between the father she loved and the husband she adored? If so, which was the aggressor?
The poor girl remembered with dread the questions with which her father had startled her so that night, the sharp gleam of his usually kind eyes, and the set firmness of his mouth, while he waited for her answer. Did he guess at the deception she had practised, or were his suspicions such as made the blood burn in her veins?
With these thoughts hara.s.sing her mind, the young creature watched over that sick man until her own strength began to droop. In his delirium, he had talked wildly, and uttered at random many a broken fancy that cut her to the soul; but even in his helpless state there had seemed to be an undercurrent of caution curbing his tongue. He raved of the man who had shot him, but mentioned no names; spoke of his daughter with hushed tenderness, but still with a sort of reserve, as if he were keeping some painful secret back in his heart. Sometimes he recognized her, and then his eyes, lurid with fever, would fill with hot tears.
After a while this fever of the brain pa.s.sed off, and left the strong man weak as a child. It seemed as if he had lost all force, even for suffering; but Ruth felt that some painful thing, that he never spoke of or hinted at, haunted him. He was strangely wakeful, and at times she felt his great eyes looking out at her from their deepening caverns, with an expression that made her heart sink.
One day he spoke to her with a suddenness that made her breath stand still.
"Ruth!"
"Father, did you speak to me?"
"Where is he?"
"Who, father?"
"You know. Is he safe out of the way?"
"Do you mean--"
The girl broke off. She could not utter Walton Hurst"s name. The sick man also seemed to shrink from it.
"Is he safe?"
"Oh, father! he was hurt like yourself."
"Hurt!--he? I am speaking of Walton Hurst, girl."
The man spoke out plainly now, and a wild questioning look came into his eyes.
"Oh, father! he was found, like yourself, lying on the ground, senseless. We thought that he was dead."
"Lying on the ground! Who hurt him? Not I--not I!"
Ruth flung herself on her knees by the bed; a flush of coming tears rushed over her face.
"Oh, father! oh, thank G.o.d! father, dear father!"
"Did you think that?" whispered the sick man, overwhelmed by this swift outburst of feeling.
"I did not know--I could not tell. It was all so strange, so terrible!
Oh, father, I have been so troubled!"
The sick man looked at her earnestly.
"Ruth!"
"Yes, father!"
"Was he shot like me?"
"I do not know. They say not. Some terrible blow on the head, but no blood."
"A blow on the head! But how? As G.o.d is my witness, I struck no one."
Ruth fell to kissing that large, helpless hand, as if some awful stain had just been removed from it. In all her father"s sickness she had never touched him with her sweet lips till now. Then all at once she drew back as if an arrow had struck her. It was something keener than that--one of the thoughts that kill as they strike. After a struggle for breath, she spoke.
"But who? Oh, father, you were shot. Was it--was it--"