"You must help keep me busy also," was her reply.
"I"ve thought about that; yes, a great deal. You need some wholesome, natural interest that is capable of becoming somewhat absorbing. Is it strange that I should recommend one phase of my hobby, flowers? You know that every tree, shrub, and plant on our little place is a sort of a pet with me. You are fond of flowers, but have never given much thought to their care, leaving that to your gardener. Flowers are only half enjoyed by those who do not cultivate them, nurse, or pet them.
Then there is such an infinite variety that before you know it your thoughts are pleasantly occupied in experimenting with even one family of plants. It is an interest which will keep you much in the open air and bring you close to Mother Nature."
The result of this talk was that the sad-hearted girl first by resolute effort and then by a growing fondness for the tasks, began to take a personal interest in the daily welfare of her plants. Martine and her father were always on the look-out for something new and rare; and as winter approached, the former had a small conservatory built on the sunny side of the house. They also gave her several caged song-birds, which soon learned to recognize and welcome her. From one of his clients Martine obtained a droll-looking dog that seemed to possess almost human intelligence. In the daily care of living things and dependent creatures that could bloom or be joyous without jarring upon her feelings, as would human mirth or gayety, her mind became wholesomely occupied part of each day; she could smile at objects which did not know, which could not understand.
Still, there was no effort on her part to escape sad memories or the acts and duties which revived them. A n.o.ble monument had been erected to Captain Nichol, and one of her chief pleasures was to decorate it with the flowers grown under her own care. Few days pa.s.sed on which she did not visit one of the families who were or had been represented at the front, while Mrs. Nichol felt that if she had lost a son she had in a measure gained a daughter. As the months pa.s.sed and winter was wellnigh spent, the wise gossips of the village again began to shake their heads and remark, "Helen Kemble and Bart Martine are very good friends; but I guess that"s all it will amount to--all, at any rate, for a long time."
All, for all time, Helen had honestly thought. It might easily have been for all time had another lover sought her, or if Martine himself had become a wooer and so put her on her guard. It was his patient acceptance of what she had said could not be helped, his self-forgetfulness, which caused her to remember his need--a need greatly increased by a sad event. In the breaking up of winter his mother took a heavy cold which ended in pneumonia and death.
The gossips made many plans for him and indulged in many surmises as to what he would do; but he merely engaged the services of an old woman as domestic, and lived on quietly as before. Perhaps he grew a little morbid after this bereavement and clung more closely to his lonely hearth.
This would not be strange. Those who dwell among shadows become ill at ease away from them. Helen was the first to discover this tendency, and to note that he was not rallying as she had hoped he would. He rarely sought their house except by invitation, and then often lapsed into silences which he broke with an evident effort. He never uttered a word of complaint or consciously appealed for sympathy, but was slowly yielding to the steady pressure of sadness which had almost been his heritage. She would have been less than woman if, recalling the past and knowing so well the unsatisfied love in his heart, she had not felt for him daily a larger and deeper commiseration. When the early March winds rattled the cas.e.m.e.nts, or drove the sleety rain against the windows, she saw him in fancy sitting alone brooding, always brooding.
One day she asked abruptly, "Hobart, what are you thinking about so deeply when you are looking at the fire?"
A slow, deep flush came into his face, and he hesitated in his answer.
At last he said, "I fear I"m getting into a bad mood, and think I must do something decided. Well, for one thing, the continuance of this war weighs upon my spirit. Men are getting so scarce that I believe they will take me in some capacity. Now that mother is not here, I think I ought to go."
"Oh, Hobart, we would miss you so!" she faltered.
He looked up with a smile. "Yes, Helen, I think you would--not many others, though. You have become so brave and strong that you do not need me any more."
"I am not so brave and strong as I seem. If I were, how did I become so? With the tact and delicacy of a woman, yet with the strength of a man, you broke the crushing force of the first blow, and have helped me ever since."
"You see everything through a very friendly medium. At any rate I could not have been content a moment if I had not done all in my power. You do not need me any longer; you have become a source of strength to others. I cannot help seeing crowded hospital wards; and the thought pursues me that in one of them I might do something to restore a soldier to his place in the field or save him for those at home. I could at least be a hospital nurse, and I believe it would be better for me to be doing some such work."
"I believe it would be better for me also," she answered, her eyes full of tears.
"No, Helen--no, indeed. You have the higher mission of healing the heart-wounds which the war is making in your own vicinity. You should not think of leaving your father and mother in their old age, or of filling their days with anxiety which might shorten their lives."
"It will be very hard for us to let you go. Oh, I did not think I would have to face this also!"
He glanced at her hastily, for there was a sharp distress in her tone, of which she was scarcely conscious herself. Then, as if recollecting himself, he reasoned gently and earnestly: "You were not long in adopting the best antidote for trouble. In comforting others, you have been comforted. The campaign is opening in Virginia; and I think it would be a good and wholesome thing for me to be at work among the wounded. If I can save one life, it will be such a comfort after the war is over."
"Yes," she replied, softly; "the war will be over some day. Albert, in his last letter, said the war would cease, and that happy days of peace were coming. How they can ever be happy days to some I scarcely know; but he seemed to foresee the future when he wrote."
"Helen, I"m going. Perhaps the days of peace will be a little happier if I go."
CHAPTER V
SECOND BLOOM
Martine carried out his purpose almost immediately, seeking the temporary and most exposed hospitals on the extreme left of Grant"s army before Petersburg. Indeed, while battles were still in progress he would make his way to the front and become the surgeon"s tireless a.s.sistant. While thus engaged, even under the enemy"s fire, he was able to render services to Jim Wetherby which probably saved the soldier"s life. Jim lost his right arm, but found a nurse who did not let him want for anything till the danger point following amputation had pa.s.sed. Before many weeks he was safe at home, and from him Helen learned more of Martine"s quiet heroism than she could ever gather from his letters. In Jim Wetherby"s estimation, Cap and Bart Martine were the two heroes of the war.
The latter had found the right antidote. Not a moment was left for morbid brooding. On every side were sharp physical distress, deadly peril to life and limb, pathetic efforts to hold ground against diseases or sloughing wounds. In aiding such endeavor, in giving moral support and physical care, Martine forgot himself. Helen"s letters also were an increasing inspiration. He could scarcely take up one of them and say, "Here her words begin to have a warmer tinge of feeling;" but as spring advanced, imperceptibly yet surely, in spite of pauses and apparent retrogressions, just so surely she revealed a certain warmth of sympathy. He was engaged in a work which made it easy for her to idealize him. His unselfish effort to help men live, to keep bitter tears from the eyes of their relatives, appealed most powerfully to all that was unselfish in her nature, and she was beginning to ask, "If I can make this man happier, why should I not do so?" Nichol"s letter gained a new meaning in the light of events: "I do not ask you to forget me--that would be worse than death--but I ask you to try to be happy and to make others happy."
"A n.o.ble, generous nature prompted those words," she now often mused.
"How can I obey their spirit better than in rewarding the man who not only has done so much for me, but also at every cost sought to rescue him?"
In this growing disposition she had no innate repugnance to overcome, nor the shrinking which can neither be defined nor reasoned against.
Accustomed to see him almost daily from childhood, conscious for years that he was giving her a love that was virtually homage, she found her heart growing very compa.s.sionate and ready to yield the strong, quiet affection which she believed might satisfy him. This had come about through no effort on her part, from no seeking on his, but was the result of circ.u.mstances, the outgrowth of her best and most unselfish feelings.
But the effect began to separate itself in character from its causes.
All that had gone before might explain why she was learning to love him, and be sufficient reason for this affection, but a woman"s love, even that quiet phase developing in Helen"s heart, is not like a man"s conviction, for which he can give his clear-cut reasons. It is a tenderness for its object--a wish to serve and give all in return for what it receives.
Martine vaguely felt this change in Helen long before he understood it.
He saw only a warmer glow of sisterly affection, too high a valuation of his self-denying work, and a more generous attempt to give him all the solace and support within her power.
One day in July, when the war was well over and the field hospitals long since broken up, he wrote from Washington, where he was still pursuing his labors:
"My work is drawing to a close. Although I have not accomplished a t.i.the of what I wished to do, and have soon so much left undone, I am glad to remember that I have alleviated much pain and, I think, saved some lives. Such success as I have had, dear Helen, has largely been due to you. Your letters have been like manna. You do not know--it would be impossible for you to know--the strength they have given, the inspiration they have afforded. I am naturally very weary and worn physically, and the doctors say I must soon have rest; but your kind words have been life-giving to my soul. I turn to them from day to day as one would seek a cool, unfailing spring. I can now accept life gratefully with the conditions which cannot be changed. How fine is the influence of a woman like you! What deep springs of action it touches!
When waiting on the sick and wounded, I try to blend your womanly nature with my coa.r.s.er fibre. Truly, neither of us has suffered in vain if we learn better to minister to others. I cannot tell you how I long to see the home gardens again; and it now seems that just to watch you in yours will be unalloyed happiness."
Helen smiled over this letter with sweet, deep meanings in her eyes.
One August evening, as the Kemble family sat at tea, he gave them a joyous surprise by appearing at the door and asking in a matter-of-fact voice, "Can you put an extra plate on the table?"
There was no mistaking the gladness of her welcome, for it was as genuine as the bluff heartiness of her father and the gentle solicitude of her mother, who exclaimed, "Oh, Hobart, how thin and pale you are!"
"A few weeks" rest at home will remedy all that," he said. "The heat in Washington was more trying than my work."
"Well, thank the Lord! you ARE at home once more," cried the banker. "I was thinking of drawing on the authorities at Washington for a neighbor who had been loaned much too long."
"Helen," said Martine, with pleased eyes, "how well you look! It is a perfect delight to see color in your cheeks once more. They are gaining, too, their old lovely roundness. I"m going to say what I think right out, for I"ve been with soldiers so long that I"ve acquired their bluntness."
"It"s that garden work you lured me into," she explained. "I hope you won"t think your plants and trees have been neglected."
"Have you been keeping my pets from missing me?"
"I guess they have missed you least of all. Helen has seen to it that they were cared for first," said Mrs. Kemble, emphatically.
"You didn"t write about that;" and he looked at the girl gratefully.
"Do you think I could see weeds and neglect just over the fence?" she asked, with a piquant toss of her head.
"Do you think I could believe that you cared for my garden only that your eyes might not be offended?"
"There, I only wished to give you a little surprise. You have treated us to one by walking in with such delightful unexpectedness, and so should understand. I"ll show you when you are through supper."
"I"m through now;" and he rose with a promptness most pleasing to her.
His gladness in recognizing old and carefully nurtured friends, his keen, appreciative interest in the new candidates for favor that she had planted, rewarded her abundantly.
"Oh," he exclaimed, "what a heavenly exchange from the close, fetid air of hospital wards! Could the first man have been more content in his divinely planted garden?"