The Rosary, Florence Louisa Barclay [books for 20 year olds TXT] 📗

to my secretary, without having to explain them."

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Nurse Rosemary humbly. "I was wrong."

Garth stretched his hand across the table, and left it there a moment; though no responsive hand was placed within it.

"Never mind," he said, with his winning smile, "my kind little mentor and guide. You can direct me in most things, but not in this. Now let us conclude. Where were we? Ah--'to suggest coming to see me.' Did you put `It is most kind' or `It is more than kind?'"

"'More than kind,'" said Nurse Rosemary, brokenly.

"Right, for it is indeed more than kind. Only she and I can possibly know how much more. Now let us go on ... But I am receiving no visitors, and do not desire any until I have so mastered my new circumstances that the handicap connected with them shall neither be painful nor very noticeable to other people. During the summer I shall be learning step by step to live this new life, in complete seclusion at Gleneesh. I feel sure my friends will respect my wish in this matter. I have with me one who most perfectly and patiently is helping--Ah, wait!" cried Garth suddenly. "I will not say that. She might think--she might misunderstand. Had you begun to write it? No? What was the last word? 'Matter?' Ah yes. That is right. Full stop after 'matter.' Now let me think."

Garth dropped his face into his hands, and sat for a long time absorbed in thought.

Nurse Rosemary waited. Her right hand held the pen poised over the paper. Her left was pressed against her breast. Her eyes rested on that dark bowed head, with a look of unutterable yearning and of passionate tenderness. At last Garth lifted his face. "Yours very sincerely, Garth Dalmain;" he said. And, silently, Nurse Rosemary wrote it.


CHAPTER XXII


DR. ROB TO THE RESCUE

Into the somewhat oppressive silence which followed the addressing and closing of the envelope, broke the cheery voice of Dr. Rob.

"Which is the patient to-day? The lady or the gentleman? Ah, neither, I see. Both flaunt the bloom of perfect health and make the doctor shy. It is spring without, but summer within," ran on Dr. Rob gaily, wondering why both faces were so white and perturbed, and why there was in the air a sense of hearts in torment. "Flannels seem to call up boating and picnic parties; and I see you have discarded the merino, Nurse Gray, and returned to the pretty blue washables. More becoming, undoubtedly; only, don't take cold; and be sure you feed up well. In this air people must eat plenty, and you have been perceptibly losing weight lately. We don't want TOO airy-fairy dimensions."

"Why do you always chaff Miss Gray about being small, Dr. Rob?" asked Garth, in a rather vexed tone. "I am sure being short is in no way detrimental to her."

"I will chaff her about being tall if you like," said Dr. Rob, looking at her with a wicked twinkle, as she stood in the window, drawn up to her full height, and regarding him with cold disapproval.

"I would sooner no comments of any kind were made upon her personal appearance," said Garth shortly; then added, more pleasantly: "You see, she is just a voice to me--a kind, guiding voice. At first I used to form mental pictures of her, of a hazy kind; but now I prefer to appropriate in all its helpfulness what I DO know, and leave unimagined what I do not. Did it ever strike you that she is the only person--bar that fellow Johnson, who belongs to a nightmare time I am quickly forgetting--I have yet had near me, in my blindness, whom I had not already seen; the only voice I have ever heard to which I could not put a face and figure? In time, of course, there will be many. At present she stands alone to me in this."

Dr. Rob's observant eye had been darting about during this explanation, seeking to focus itself upon something worthy of minute examination. Suddenly he spied the foreign letter lying close beside him on the table.

"Hello!" he said. "Pyramids? The Egyptian stamp? That's interesting. Have you friends out there, Mr. Dalmain?"

"That letter came from Cairo," Garth replied; "but I believe Miss Champion has by now gone on to Syria." Dr. Rob attacked his moustache, and stared at the letter meditatively. "Champion?" he repeated. "Champion? It's an uncommon name. Is your correspondent, by any chance, the Honourable Jane?"

"Why, that letter is from her," replied Garth, surprised. "Do you know her?" His voice vibrated eagerly.

"Well," answered Dr. Rob, with slow deliberation, "I know her face, and I know her voice; I know her figure, and I know a pretty good deal of her character. I know her at home, and I know her abroad. I've seen her under fire, which is more than most men of her acquaintance can claim. But there is one thing I never knew until to-day and that is her handwriting. May I examine this envelope?" He turned to the window;--yes, this audacious little Scotchman had asked the question of Nurse Rosemary. But only a broad blue back met his look of inquiry. Nurse Rosemary was studying the view. He turned back to Garth, who had evidently already made a sign of assent, and on whose face was clearly expressed an eager desire to hear more, and an extreme disinclination to ask for it.

Dr. Mackenzie took up the envelope and pondered it.

"Yes," he said, at last, "it is like her,--clear, firm, unwavering; knowing what it means to say, and saying it; going where it means to go, and getting there. Ay, lad, it's a grand woman that; and if you have the Honourable Jane for your friend, you can be doing without a few other things."

A tinge of eager colour rose in Garth's thin cheeks. He had been so starved in his darkness for want of some word concerning her, from that outer light in which she moved. He had felt so hopelessly cut off from all chance of hearing of her. And all the while, if only he had known it, old Robbie could have talked of her. He had had to question Brand so cautiously, fearing to betray his secret and hers; but with Dr. Rob and Nurse Gray no such precautions were needed. He could safely guard his secret, and yet listen and speak.

"Where--when?" asked Garth.

"I will tell you where, and I will tell you when," answered Dr. Rob, "if you feel inclined for a war tale on this peaceful spring morning."

Garth was aflame With eagerness. "Have you a chair, doctor?" he said. "And has Miss Gray a chair?"

"I have no chair, sir," said Dr. Rob, "because when I intend thoroughly to enjoy my own eloquence it is my custom to stand. Nurse Gray has no chair, because she is standing at the window absorbed in the view. She has apparently ceased to pay any heed to you and me. You will very rarely find one woman take much interest in tales about another. But you lean back in your own chair, laddie, and light a cigarette. And a wonderful thing it is to see you do it, too, and better than pounding the wall. Eh? All of which we may consider we owe to the lady who disdains us and prefers the scenery. Well, I'm not much to look at, goodness knows; and she can see you all the rest of the day. Now that's a brand worth smoking. What do you call it--'Zenith'? Ah, and 'Marcovitch.' Yes; you can't better that for drawing-room and garden purposes. It mingles with the flowers. Lean back and enjoy it, while I smell gun-powder. For I will tell you where I first saw the Honourable Jane. Out in South Africa, in the very thick of the Boer war. I had volunteered for the sake of the surgery experience. She was out there, nursing; but the real thing, mind you. None of your dabbling in eau-de-cologne with lace handkerchiefs, and washing handsome faces when the orderlies had washed them already; making charming conversation to men who were getting well, but fleeing in dread from the dead or the dying. None of that, you may be sure, and none of that allowed in her hospital; for Miss Champion was in command there, and I can tell you she made them scoot. She did the work of ten, and expected others to do it too. Doctors and orderlies adored her. She was always called 'The Honourable Jane,' most of the men sounding the H and pronouncing the title as four syllables. Ay, and the wounded soldiers! There was many a lad out there, far from home and friends, who, when death came, died with a smile on his lips, and a sense of mother and home quite near, because the Honourable Jane's arm was around him, and his dying head rested against her womanly breast. Her voice when she talked to them? No,--that I shall never forget. And to hear her snap at the women, and order along the men; and then turn and speak to a sick Tommy as his mother or his sweetheart would have wished to hear him spoken to, was a lesson in quick-change from which I am profiting still. And that big, loving heart must often have been racked; but she was always brave and bright. Just once she broke down. It was over a boy whom she tried hard to save--quite a youngster. She had held him during the operation which was his only chance; and when it proved no good, and he lay back against her unconscious, she quite broke down and said: 'Oh, doctor,--a mere boy--and to suffer so, and then die like this!' and gathered him to her, and wept over him, as his own mother might have done. The surgeon told me of it himself. He said the hardest hearts in the tent were touched and softened. But, it was the only time the Honourable Jane broke down."

Garth shielded his face with his hand. His half-smoked cigarette fell unheeded to the floor. The hand that had held it was clenched on his knee. Dr. Rob picked it up, and rubbed the scorched spot on the carpet carefully with his foot. He glanced towards the window. Nurse Rosemary had turned and was leaning against the frame. She did not look at him, but her eyes dwelt with troubled anxiety on Garth.

"I came across her several times, at different centres," continued Dr. Rob; "but we were not in the same departments, and she spoke to me only once. I had ridden in, from a temporary overflow sort of place where we were dealing with the worst cases straight off the field, to the main hospital in the town for a fresh supply of chloroform. While they fetched it, I walked round the ward, and there in a corner was Miss Champion, kneeling beside a man whose last hour was very near, talking to him quietly, and taking measures at the same time to ease his pain. Suddenly there came a crash--a deafening rush--and another crash, and the Honourable Jane and her patient were covered with dust and splinters. A Boer shell had gone clean through the roof just over their heads. The man sat up, yelling with fear. Poor chap, you couldn't blame him; dying, and half under morphine. The Honourable Jane never turned a hair. 'Lie down, my man,' she said, 'and keep still.' 'Not here,' sobbed the man. 'All right,' said the Honourable Jane; 'we