Part 33 (2/2)

”Heaven bless you!” he said rather hoa.r.s.ely; ”you've rolled a ton's burden from my heart to-day.”

Before sunrise next morning, but while the sky was beginning to lighten in that wonderful way one sees in desert countries, a tap came at Ursula's cabin door. She was quite ready: dressed in her cool, linen garb, with her white ap.r.o.n concealed by the folds of the long cloak. The things she wanted to take with her were ready in a modest valise. The rest were to go on to England under the care of the Captain.

Her face was quite calm and serene as she came up on deck; a few gentlemen pa.s.sengers were about to see her off and wish her well. The Captain made his way towards her and took her hand.

”Mrs. Varden has been carried to the boat already. We are ready for you.

Mr. Brian Kelly is going ash.o.r.e too. He is, in fact, there already with my steward, bargaining about a tent in which he means to live for a time within hail of the leper-house. So you will have a friend at hand in case of need. He, like you, is one of the lonely ones of the earth, who can do these things. I am very thankful not to leave you quite alone with your patient! There yonder you see your future home--or prison. You will be quite safe there,--you would have been safe even without Kelly,--but I am thankful he remains too. I shall leave word at the nearest station what has happened. You will have friends looking after you, in a sense, whom you will never see. But Mr. Kelly will be at your beck and call. Now we must be going.”

It was all like a dream to Ursula: the confused sound of voices, the earnest pressure of farewell hand-clasps, the words of praise and blessing lavished upon her; then the sight of the swathed white figure in the bottom of the boat that looked almost like a corpse in its graveclothes, the vivid golden glow over sea and land, the stretches of yellow sand, the white domes of the Arab settlement, and the square stone walls of the place to which she was bound.

She only seemed to awaken to the realities of life when the Captain held her hands in a last farewell, and just stooped and touched her forehead with his lips.

”I have a little girl at home--about your age!” he said huskily, as if in explanation. ”Pray G.o.d she may be as brave a girl as you--though may she never be so sorely tried!”

Then he was gone,--they were all gone,--and Ursula was left alone in this strange, silent place, with that sad sight before her eyes--poor Mrs. Varden, stricken down with that most terrible malady, and in its most malignant and deadly form.

The patient was quite unconscious, and lay upon the narrow bed which Ursula found already neatly made up, muttering in the delirium that knew no lucid intervals. She was not violent--had never been violent, the doctor told her--and there was little enough to be done for her. But the thirst was constant, and Ursula seldom left her side for long. Although there was something so terrible in the poor young wife's disfigured face, yet it seemed to Ursula that she was the one link between her and the unknown. She did not shrink from her. She was as tender as though it had been her mother or sister. She shrank from no task that would bring relief or ease. She knew what to do and she did it unflinchingly.

And then as the day went by and the shadows of evening began to steal over her, she went to the door, to look at the sea and the sands, and see whether it was a dream what the Captain had said of that big Mr.

Kelly staying behind too.

No, it was no dream: there was the stalwart figure pacing to and fro; there was the tent, picturesque and cheerful, with its fire close beside it, and a couple of turbaned Arabs cooking something over the red glow.

”Miss Pendrill, I have been hoping you would come out for a mouthful of fresh air. And how goes your patient?”

”Very, very ill; but always in a stupor. I can leave her for a few minutes sometimes----”

”Ah, good; then we will have supper together out here on the sand; it will eat better to you than in there, and----”

”Oh, but, Mr. Kelly, I am infectious----”

”Stuff and nonsense!--as though I cared for that! We are in the same boat as to that, for I helped to carry her ash.o.r.e. But we needn't be more doleful than circ.u.mstances make us. I am peckish, if you are not.

Do let us have supper here together!”

That was the first of many such meals, taken just in those moments when Ursula could leave her patient, and run out into the fresh air. It seemed as though those Arabs must be cooking all day long, for there was always some appetising dish ready; and oh, the blessed relief of those odd minutes spent with one who could give word for word, and whose eyes shone with friendly sympathy and kindly concern! Ursula said in her heart every day as it went by, that but for this she must have died or gone mad.

The Captain had been right in his prognostication. Mrs. Varden sank gradually, and by the end of the week pa.s.sed away in her sleep; and it was Ursula and Mr. Kelly who bore her to her narrow grave upon those spreading sands; and it was he who filled up the grave that he had dug, and, bringing out a well-worn Prayer-book from his pocket, read over that lonely resting-place those words of hope and promise that have been the consolation of Christian mourners for all time.

Ursula did not take the fell disease. She was unnerved and unstrung for a time; but the quiet days went by one by one, and the consciousness of that watchful presence without kept her from any of those fears and tremors which must otherwise have made this period of waiting an agony to her.

They met every day. They took their meals together, and walked up and down beside the margin of the sea in company. They had to wait till the time of quarantine had gone by; but at last there came the blessed day when a steamer stopped and dropped its boat to fetch them; and the two exiles from humanity looked one at the other, and then at the great vessel awaiting them, and they knew that their time of trial was over.

The pa.s.sengers on that vessel were disposed to make much of them, and laud the girl's heroism to the skies; but she shrank from praise, and kept herself quietly aloof from the little world of the s.h.i.+p, till at last the day came when they steamed slowly into the beautiful harbour at Southampton, and dropped anchor there.

Ursula's few possessions were quickly gathered together; she stepped alone into the bustle of the great world, where welcomes were being bandied about on every side, and every pa.s.senger seemed to have some loving friend or relative to greet him.

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