"Henriette is absent for the moment," said Lady Truckleford to Madame Ribot. "She has gone to bring her Cousin Phil for tea."
The bandages off for another examination by Dr. Braisted, the autumn sunlight which kissed the tree-tops and cathedral spires and gave the Channel, which was calm that day, a gossamery sheen, was soft to Phil"s irises in its caressing promise that next time the bandages were removed he should see even better.
People were now dim moving shadows to him; the windows of the ward bright squares in faintly perceptible walls. His hearing was good enough to differentiate in tones but not to make out words unless they were shouted. His pride still refused to let him speak and kept him not unhappily to his pad; for he had been so long without speech that his pencil was an old comrade to whom he disliked in a way to say good-bye. The pain devils" power had become so ineffectual that they were disregarded, pin-p.r.i.c.king grumblers at convalescence.
This afternoon both Henriette and Helen were present when the bandages were removed. He could see their figures dimly as two persons in a mist and hear their voices. He could tell the day nurse from the night nurse when either was speaking. But the voices of the two cousins were the same. He knew if either were at his side without discerning which; and marooned in his own world he often thought of this. He thought of many things, sometimes lazily, again acutely.
"Better, still better!" some one wrote on his arm after Dr. Braisted had gone.
"This is Henriette, isn"t it?" he wrote, as it was. She wrote most of the messages these days.
"I"ll sign my name after this," she wrote in reply, "so you will know.
Helen is going, now."
"No cartoons to-day?" he asked.
"Not to-day," Helen herself wrote. "You have nearly won your brave fight," she added, using the phrase that Henriette had several times used.
"Yes. Good-bye, for the present."
She gave his hand the shake that was the signal of parting, and she was glad to go, glad to be on the move in the restlessness of the last few days which seemed to urge only flight. Feeling his hand close tightly she trembled under its grasp, but could not resist as he drew her nearer. His fingers groped about till they rested on her hair. Now he traced her features with the same feathery touch of the blind as he had Henriette"s, down the smooth, high brow, past the long eyelashes and over the lump of nose, to the lips, which she pressed tight to keep them from quivering.
"I wanted to see if it were really you, Helen," he wrote. "Forgive me such bad manners!"
"Yes, it is I," she answered aloud, as she released his hand; and though she came to her feet convulsively she appeared quite steady as she said to Henriette:
"Any day when the bandages are off he may see so well that he can tell one person from another."
There was a brittle silence, with Henriette motionless and looking past her sister at a fixed point.
"It"s done! It has all come out right," continued Helen, her fingers driven into her palms and a triumphant sort of stoicism in her tone.
Still Henriette looked past her and said nothing.
"I----" There she stopped herself. "I must be going," she added, the words coming in a burst as she went toward the one thing distinct to her eyes, the stream of light from the open door, with the precipitancy of one who has been giddily crossing a narrow bridge and hastens the last steps as loss of equilibrium threatens.
"Any day he may see so well that he can tell one person from another!"
Henriette repeated. "Well," with a shrug after a pause. Then she smiled as she would into her mirror as she wrote on Phil"s arm:
"Shall we walk over to Lady Truckleford"s for tea?"
"Yes," he replied.
He had been there twice already. It was the longest journey he had made on foot since he had been wounded; a welcome change of routine; a bold undertaking. Dr. and Mrs. Sanford, who were coming to see him, met the two as they were crossing the court. Henriette greeted them with her winning smile and insisted that they, too, must come to the Trucklefords". The gravelled path was too narrow for the four to walk abreast and the father and mother fell in behind the erect figure of their son, arm in arm with Henriette.
"She is very beautiful!" whispered Mrs. Sanford to her husband.
"Yes."
Their looks met and held, but they said nothing. Phil"s wish was theirs and they had made a promise. At the crossing of the road they met Peter, who could not wait for Phil to come to the Trucklefords", but must go to him; and Henriette stopped to tell him how much better Phil"s eyes were and to learn about her mother"s journey from Paris.
Every word reflected her radiant delight at seeing him again. Then he dropped to the rear to talk with the Sanfords, who glanced at the two ahead and then at him significantly.
"Resembles her mother," said Peter. "Inherited her good looks."
"We shall see her, too?" said Mrs. Sanford, as if awed at the thought.
"Yes. All we need for a family reunion is the old pair at Truckleford."
"And Helen!" put in Mrs. Sanford.
"And Helen!" said Peter absently. He was not in talking mood. He did not utter a syllable, but chewed at his under lip till they were in the grounds of the old chateau which had been transformed into a hospital.
"I"m backing Phil!" he muttered stubbornly to himself, then.
Madame Ribot hurried forward to embrace Henriette, while Lady Truckleford made sure that the shy old clergyman and his wife felt at home. Although her ideas might be vague about the nature of the charities which she patronised, she was a genuine and discerning hostess.
"It"s clear who is the hero here," she said, nodding toward the group forming around Phil. Madame Ribot was most demonstrative of all over him. She insisted herself upon writing on his arm how brave he was and how every one admired him.
"She certainly does put it on thick!" thought Peter. "And likes it thick!" he added, in recollection of the ride from Paris.
"My arm blushes!" Phil wrote on his pad in reply.
"How clever!" exclaimed Lady Violet.
She must write on his arm, too. Writing on Phil"s arm bid fair to become a fad with the Truckleford lot. What was she to say? She never had an idea when she wanted one, which was something understood by her friends but most puzzling to herself. All she could think of was three millions.
"This is Lady Violet Dearing, and I don"t know of anything that has ever appealed to me so much as the wonderfully brave fight you have made," she wrote at last. "Every day that Henriette brought news that you were better I felt like cheering, it was so splendid."
"Thank you, Lady Violet," he replied.
Talk ran around him but always had him in mind, this man with head swathed in bandages, unable to speak or see or hear for present purposes, who had become a romantic figure since it was known that he would inherit three millions.
"And he does not know!" exclaimed Madame Ribot suddenly. "It does seem a pity." She smiled her best with a kind of challenge to Peter.
"Well," he responded and in a way that made everybody silent. This business of the giving of three millions was in nowise as wonderful to him as to them. He had long ago decided on the gift and merely bided the time of announcement. "Well," he repeated as he rose; and, with a peculiar smile to Madame Ribot, added: "I think he is well enough now.
You may write it, Miss Ribot, as I dictate it. So: "Peter is speaking, Phil, and he is telling you that he has made a will that makes you his heir when he goes over the river--but with the exception of two or three hundred thousand dollars in bequests and what I waste on my farm.""
"Peter!" Phil muttered the one word through the bandages. Then his hand went out searching for Peter"s and held it fast for a long time; while for once everybody on the lawn at tea at the Trucklefords" was silent. Finally he wrote on his pad: "I shall try to be worthy of it.
Yes, I"ll a.s.sist you in ruining the farm in any way you say."
"It"s Phil, all right!" exclaimed Peter, with a satisfied laugh. "I am backing him!" That was all there was to it--this dramatic episode.
"Ripping!" remarked one of the young officers.
Madame Ribot"s foot was softly tapping the sward as she watched Phil on Henriette"s arm leaving the grounds. Dr. and Mrs. Sanford and Peter followed, and silently until they pa.s.sed under the Oral Surgery sign, when Peter said:
"I did not mean to do it that way. I was going to let Helen tell it for me, but someway she makes three millions seem insignificant. They were interested in the three millions over at the Trucklefords". I had pa.s.sed my word, and if I didn"t tell it might look--well, it gave them something to pa.s.s the time at tea, and I"m backing Phil. That"s all there is to it, backing Phil, leaving it to him."
On her way back to her quarters Helen was conscious that she was following the path; conscious of having answered the greeting of people whom she knew in pa.s.sing. She would not have noticed the letter waiting for her on the table in the hall of the nurses" quarters unless her attention were called to it. She took it up with only a casual glance until she had closed the door of her room when the firm"s name on the left-hand corner of the envelope recalled the fact that she had an exhibition of drawings on in New York. This was the first steadying fact, a life-buoy to grasp at, in the misery that had overwhelmed her.