"I could not bear it that you should not know," she hurried on to tell him. "I made them let me come to you."
"You know then, Harriet; they have told you?"
She was human; the sound that broke from her was the cry of a rent soul.
The doctor, who had gone back to the mantel, crouched over the fire.
The Sister seemed to shrink into the shadows beyond the narrow bed.
Alexina clenched her hands, her head on her arms outstretched on the table.
But Harriet had regained herself. "I am here to ask you something.
May I be married to you--now--at once, I mean?"
His response was not audible, only her reply. "Oh, surely you will.
For the rest of my life--to have been--you will give me this, won"t you?"
There was a quick movement from him, and a sound of warning from the nurse who moved forward out of the shadow.
Material things seemed to come back to Harriet. Alarm sprang into her voice. "Shall I go away?" she asked the nurse, even timidly.
The answer came from him. "No; oh, no. Since it may be for so little time I may ask it of you; stay with me, Harriet."
She turned to the doctor.
"Stay," he told her, poor boy, new to these things.
"Then give me my way," Harriet begged, turning back again. She had forgotten the others already. "You said that after what happened between you and Austen you wanted it known how you felt to me. Haven"t I the same right and more, since it was my brother who said it, to want the world to know how I feel to you?"
They could feel the laugh in his reply. "The world, the world, as if you ever cared for what the world--come, be honest, Harriet; you say this in the generous desire of making it up to me."
"But I do--I do care. I could clap my hands, I could glory to cry it from the house-tops, how I care, how I am here, on my knees, begging you will marry me."
"You are kneeling? Yes? Kneel then; even that, since it brings you closer. But let"s not talk of this now. I"m not used to the knowledge of the first yet. Will you put your hand in mine, Harriet?"
The girl over in the shadow felt that her heart would break. And this was love. The great, sad thing was love!
He was talking again. "I never thought, surely, to be a stick of a man like this. I could have made a royal lover, Harriet. A man"s blood at forty is like wine at its fulness. My head--won"t lift--G.o.d, that it should come to find me like this! yet, kiss me, will you, Harriet?"
But a moment and she returned to her pleading. "They will send me away from you, you know, I have no right to be here--unless you give it to me?"
Was she using this, the inference, to move him?
For he caught it at once. "You came--I see, I see."
But she had fled from her position. "It"s not that, as if I cared, as if you thought I cared, it"s because I want to have been--"
But the other had stuck. "Is the doctor there?" he asked.
The young fellow came to the bed.
"I would like to see Father Ryan," said the Major.
The priest came. The two were intimates. He listened to the instructions, the exigencies of the case to be met by him. A license was necessary. "And try and get Miss Blair"s brother to accompany you, and to come here with you; you will make it all clear to him."
Harriet was looking up at the priest, whom she saw as the friend of the man she loved. "And you will come back and marry us yourself, won"t you?" she asked.
He was looking down at her. Even after the long night, in the cold light of a winter dawn, and in the garishness of an evening gown in daylight, she was triumphantly beautiful. With her hand on the smooth brown hand of the Major, she sat and looked up at the ca.s.socked priest. The marble of her face had given way to a divine light and radiance.
He looked down on her.
"I will come," he told her.
It was some hours before he was back. The young doctor had gone and come. Dawn had broadened into a grey and sullen day. Breakfast was sent up and placed in an adjoining room for Harriet and Alexina. The girl tried to eat, if only to seem grateful to the Sister bringing it, but Harriet wandered about the room, and, when Alexina brought her a cup of coffee, shook her head. She watched the door until the doctors were gone and she might return to him, then went in and sat by him again. His eyes were closed, but his hand, seeking as she sat down, found hers. Later, as the priest returned, the gaze from the pillow turned to the door eagerly. Austen was not with him. The face steeled.
The Mother came in, and at a sign from the priest they gathered around, Alexina, the young doctor, the nurse.
With his hand in Harriet"s the Major followed to the end.
Nor was he going to die. There was deeper knowledge of life yet for the woman by him to learn.
Afterward, Doctor Ransome drove Alexina home in his buggy, where she and the voluble, excited Katy packed some things for Harriet.
"And Miss Harriet never to let us hear a word, and Maggie and me never closing our eyes all the night, Miss Alexina," Katy said.
And Harriet Blair a person usually so observant and punctilious about everything!
"And Mr. Blair, he asked where you were, Miss Harriet and you, when he came, and then he dressed and went to the party he was going to take you to, as if nothing had happened. And the Father came this morning and talked, but Mr. Blair hardly said a word, and when they left the priest went one way and Mr. Blair he went the other."
Doctor Ransome came in his buggy and took Alexina back. On reaching the infirmary they found that Major Rathbone"s sister from Bardstown, who had been sent for, had arrived. Alexina had not known that he had a sister until she found her in the room next to the Major"s, with Harriet.
She was childlike and small and was looking at Harriet, helpless and frightened. She was, it proved, twenty-three years old, and a widow with two children.
"And Stevie takes care of us," she explained. "Stevie" was the Major; "us" was herself and the babies.
She had brought both the babies. "I couldn"t leave them and come, you know," she said.
One of them lay on the bed, asleep, a little chap four years old, his coat unfastened, his hair tumbled. The other, the younger, asleep too, lay on the mother"s knee, Harriet regarding him. He was aquiline, lean and handsome, baby as he was, like a little deer hound.
"His name is Stevie," said Stephen"s sister.
Harriet looked up from the child to the mother, almost jealously.
"Then he is mine, too; I have some part in him too, since his name is Stephen."
CHAPTER FOUR