Mrs. Falchion Part 16

By that time we had pa.s.sed into the fresher air of the Mediterranean, and the sea was delightfully smooth. Galt Roscoe still slept, though his temperature was high.

My conference with Mrs. Falchion after breakfast was brief, but satisfactory. I told her frankly that Roscoe had been delirious, that he had mentioned her name, and that I thought it best to reduce the number of nurses and watchers. I made my proposition about Justine Caron. She shook her head a little impatiently, and said that Justine had told her, and that she was quite willing. Then I asked her if she would not also a.s.sist. She answered immediately that she wished to do so. As if to make me understand why she did it, she added: "If I did not hear the wild things he says, some one else would; and the difference is that I understand them, and the some one else would interpret them with the genius of the writer of a fairy book."

And so it happened that Mrs. Falchion came to sit many hours a day beside the sick couch of Galt Roscoe, moistening his lips, cooling his brow, giving him his medicine. After the first day, when she was, I thought, alternating between innate disgust of misery and her womanliness and humanity,--in these days more a reality to me,--she grew watchful and silently solicitous at every turn of the malady. What impressed me most was that she was interested and engrossed more, it seemed, in the malady than in the man himself.

And yet she baffled me even when I had come to this conclusion.

During most of his delirium she remained almost impa.s.sive, as if she had schooled herself to be calm and strong in nerve; but one afternoon she did a thing that upset all my opinions of her for a moment. Looking straight at her with staring, unconscious eyes, he half rose in his bed, and said in a low, bitter tone: "I hate you. I once loved you--but I hate you now!" Then he laughed scornfully, and fell back on the pillow. She had been sitting very quietly, musing. His action had been unexpected, and had broken upon a silence. She rose to her feet quickly, gave a sharp indrawn breath, and pressed her hand against her side, as though a sudden pain had seized her. The next moment, however, she was composed again, and said in explanation that she had been half asleep, and he had startled her. But I had seen her under what seemed to me more trying conditions, and she had not shown any nervousness such as this.

The pa.s.sengers, of course, talked. Many "true histories" of Mrs.

Falchion's devotion to the sick man were abroad; but it must be said, however, that all of them were romantically creditable to her. She had become a rare product even in the eyes of Miss Treherne, and more particularly her father, since the matter at the Tanks. Justine Caron was slyly besieged by the curious, but they went away empty; for Justine, if very simple and single-minded, was yet too much concerned for both Galt Roscoe and Mrs. Falchion to give the inquiring the slightest clue. She knew, indeed, little herself, whatever she may have guessed. As for Hungerford, he was dumb. He refused to consider the matter. But he roundly maintained once or twice, without any apparent relevance, that a woman was like a repeating decimal--you could follow her, but you never could reach her. He usually added to this: "Minus one, Marmion," meaning thus to exclude the girl who preferred him to any one else. When I ventured to suggest that Miss Treherne might also be excepted, he said, with maddening suggestion: "She lets Mrs. Falchion fool her, doesn't she? And she isn't quite sure the splendour of a medical professor's position is superior to that of an author."

In these moments, although I tried to smile on him, I hated him a little. I sought to revenge myself on him by telling him to help himself to a cigar, having first placed the box of Mexicans near him. He invariably declined them, and said he would take one of the others from the tea-box--my very best, kept in tea for sake of dryness. If I reversed the process he reversed his action. His instinct regarding cigars was supernatural, and I almost believe that he had--like the Black Dwarf's cat--the "poo'er" of reading character and interpreting events--an uncanny divination.

I knew by the time we reached Valetta that Roscoe would get well; but he recognised none of us until we arrived at Gibraltar. Justine Caron and myself had been watching beside him. As the bells clanged to "slow down" on entering the harbour, his eyes opened with a gaze of sanity and consciousness. He looked at me, then at Justine.

"I have been ill?" he said.

Justine's eyes were not entirely to be trusted. She turned her head away.

"Yes, you have been very ill," I replied, "but you are better."

He smiled feebly, adding: "At least, I am grateful that I did not die at sea." Then he closed his eyes. After a moment he opened them, and said, looking at Justine: "You have helped to nurse me, have you not?" His wasted fingers moved over the counterpane towards her.

"I could do so little," she murmured.

"You have more than paid your debt to me," he gently replied. "For I live, you see, and poor Hector died."

She shook her head gravely, and rejoined: "Ah no, I can never pay the debt I owe to you and to G.o.d--now." He did not understand this, I know.

But I did. "You must not talk any more," I said to him.

But Justine interposed. "He must be told that the nurse who has done most for him is Mrs. Falchion." His brows contracted as if he were trying to remember something. He moved his head wearily.

"Yes, I think I remember," he said, "about her being with me, but nothing clearly--nothing clearly. She is very kind."

Justine here murmured: "Shall I tell her?"

I was about to say no; but Roscoe nodded, and said quietly, "Yes, yes."

Then I made no objection, but urged that the meeting should only be for a moment. I determined not to leave them alone even for that moment.

I did not know what things connected with their past--whatever it was--might be brought up, and I knew that entire freedom from excitement was necessary. I might have spared myself any anxiety on the point. When she came she was perfectly self-composed, and more as she seemed when I first knew her, though I will admit that I thought her face more possible to emotion than in the past.

It seems strange to write of a few weeks before as the past; but so much had occurred that the days might easily have been months and the weeks years.

She sat down beside him and held out her hand. And as she did so, I thought of Boyd Madras and of that long last night of his life, and of her refusal to say to him one comforting word, or to touch his hand in forgiveness and friends.h.i.+p. And was this man so much better than Boyd Madras? His wild words in delirium might mean nothing, but if they meant anything, and she knew of that anything, she was still a heartless, unnatural woman, as I had once called her.

Roscoe took her hand and held it briefly. "Dr. Marmion says that you have helped to nurse me through my illness," he whispered. "I am most grateful."

I thought she replied with the slightest constraint in her voice. "One could not let an old acquaintance die without making an effort to save him."

At that instant I grew scornful, and longed to tell him of her husband.

But then a husband was not an acquaintance. I ventured instead: "I am sorry, but I must cut short all conversation for the present. When he is a little better, he will be benefited by your brightest gossip, Mrs.

Falchion."

She rose smiling, but she did not again take his hand, though I thought he made a motion to that end. But she looked down at him steadily for a moment. Beneath her look his face flushed, and his eyes grew hot with light; then they dropped, and the eyelids closed on them. At that she said, with an incomprehensible airiness: "Good-night. I am going now to play the music of 'La Grande d.u.c.h.esse' as a farewell to Gibraltar. They have a concert on to-night."

And she was gone.

At the mention of La Grande d.u.c.h.esse he sighed, and turned his head away from her. What it all meant I did not know, and she had annoyed me as much as she had perplexed me; her moods were like the chameleon's colours. He lay silent for a long time, then he turned to me and said: "Do you remember that tale in the Bible about David and the well of Bethlehem?" I had to confess my ignorance.

"I think I can remember it," he continued. And though I urged him not to tax himself, he spoke slowly thus:

"And David was in an hold, and the garrison of the Philistines was then in Bethlehem.

"And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me to drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem that is at the gate!

"And the three brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem that was by the gate, and took and brought it to David; nevertheless, he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the Lord.

"And he said, My G.o.d forbid it me that I should do this; is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives?

Therefore he would not drink it."

He paused a moment, and then added: "One always buys back the past at a tremendous price. Resurrections give ghosts only."

"But you must sleep now," I urged. And then, because I knew not what else more fitting, I added: "Sleep, and

"'Let the dead past bury its dead.'"

"Yes, I will sleep," he answered.

BOOK II. THE SLOPE OF THE PACIFIC

CHAPTER XI. AMONG THE HILLS OF G.o.d

"Your letters, sir," said my servant, on the last evening of the college year. Examinations were over at last, and I was wondering where I should spend my holidays. The choice was very wide; ranging from the Muskoka lakes to the Yosemite Valley. Because it was my first year in Canada, I really preferred not to go beyond the Dominion. With these thoughts in my mind I opened my letters. The first two did not interest me; tradesmen's bills seldom do. The third brought a thumping sensation of pleasure--though it was not from Miss Treherne. I had had one from her that morning, and this was a pleasure which never came twice in one day, for Prince's College, Toronto, was a long week's journey from London, S.W. Considering, however, that I did receive letters from her once a week, it may be concluded that Clovelly did not; and that, if he had, it would have been by a serious infringement of my rights. But, indeed, as I have learned since, Clovelly took his defeat in a very characteristic fas.h.i.+on, and said on an important occasion some generous things about me.

The letter that pleased me so much was from Galt Roscoe, who, as he had intended, was settled in a new but thriving district of British Columbia, near the Cascade Mountains. Soon after his complete recovery he had been ordained in England, had straightway sailed for Canada, and had gone to work at once. This note was an invitation to spend the holiday months with him, where, as he said, a man "summering high among the hills of G.o.d" could see visions and dream dreams, and hunt and fish too--especially fish. He urged that he would not talk parish concerns at me; that I should not be asked to be G.o.dfather to any young mountaineers; and that the only drawback, so far as my own predilections were concerned, was the monotonous health of the people. He described his summer cottage of red pine as being built on the edge of a lovely ravine; he said that he had the Cascades on one hand with their big glacier fields, and mighty pine forests on the other; while the balmiest breezes of June awaited "the professor of pathology and genial saw-bones." At the end of the letter he hinted something about a pleasant little secret for my ear when I came; and remarked immediately afterwards that there were one or two delightful families at Sunburst and Viking, villages in his parish. One naturally a.s.sociated the little secret with some member of one of these delightful families. Finally, he said he would like to show me how it was possible to transform a naval man into a parson.

My mind was made up. I wrote to him that I would start at once. Then I began to make preparations, and meanwhile fell to thinking again about him who was now the Reverend Galt Roscoe. After the 'Fulvia' reached London I had only seen him a few times, he having gone at once into the country to prepare for ordination. Mrs. Falchion and Justine Caron I had met several times, but Mrs. Falchion forbore inquiring for Galt Roscoe: from which, and from other slight but significant matters, I gathered that she knew of his doings and whereabouts. Before I started for Toronto she said that she might see me there some day, for she was going to San Francisco to inspect the property her uncle had left her, and in all probability would make a sojourn in Canada. I gave her my address, and she then said she understood that Mr. Roscoe intended taking a missionary parish in the wilds. In his occasional letters to me while we all were in England Roscoe seldom spoke of her, but, when he did, showed that he knew of her movements. This did not strike me at the time as anything more than natural. It did later.

Within a couple of weeks I reached Viking, a lumbering town with great saw-mills, by way of San Francisco and Vancouver. Roscoe met me at the coach, and I was taken at once to the house among the hills. It stood on the edge of a ravine, and the end of the verandah looked over a verdant precipice, beautiful but terrible too. It was uniquely situated; a nest among the hills, suitable either for work or play. In one's ears was the low, continuous din of the rapids, with the music of a neighbouring waterfall.

On the way up the hills I had a chance to observe Roscoe closely. His face had not that st.u.r.dy buoyancy which his letter suggested. Still, if it was pale, it had a glow which it did not possess before, and even a stronger humanity than of old. A new look had come into his eyes, a certain absorbing earnestness, refining the past asceticism. A more amiable and unselfish comrade man never had.