Part 37 (2/2)
”How, pray?”
”It is out of the question, I suppose,” Saxham said coldly, ”that you should slacken in your ministrations among the sick and wounded, and keep out of daily and hourly danger--for her sake?”
”Impossible,” her voice answered, and her heart added unheard: ”Impossible, unless I should be false to my Heavenly Bridegroom out of love for the child He gave.”
”Then,” said Saxham bluntly, ”unless these recurrent nerve-storms are to culminate in cerebral lesion and mental and physical collapse--a result more easy to avert than to deal with--take the girl about with you.”
”But----” the Mother uttered in irrepressible dismay. ”I--we go everywhere!”
It was most true. He had a vision, as she said it, of the black-robed, white-coifed, cheerful Sisters pa.s.sing in couples through the shrapnel-littered streets, between houses of gaping walls, and shattered roofs, and gla.s.sless windows, cheerful, serene, helpful, bringing comfort to the dying, and a.s.sistance to the sick, oblivious of whistling bullets and bursting sh.e.l.ls. And the most arduous duties, the most repulsive tasks, the most danger-fraught errands, were hers, always by right, and claim, and choice. What a woman it was! A very Judith in Israel. He knew that Judith did not like him, but unconcealed admiration was in his blue eyes as he looked at her.
”I know it. Let _her_ go everywhere. It is the sole chance, and--you spoke of faith just now.... If you have it for yourself and the religious women of your Order, who go about doing good in confidence of the protection--I do not speak in mockery--of an Almighty Hand, why can't you have it for her?”
She had never seemed so n.o.ble in his eyes as when she took that implied rebuke of his, with meek bending of her proud head, and candid self-condemnation in the eyes that were lowered and then raised to his, and beautiful humility in her speech:
”Sir, your reproach is just; it is I who have been lacking in faith.
And--it shall be as you advise.”
The distant bugle blared out its warning. The bell tolled twice, stopped, and tolled four; the smaller bells echoed. The voices of the sentries came to their ears, loudly at first, then more distant, then reduced to the merest spider-thread of sound:
”'Ware big gun! South quarter, 'ware!”
”I must go to her,” the Mother-Superior said, and pa.s.sed him swiftly and went down the ladder. Saxham followed. The white figure on the stool had not stirred, apparently. Its blank eyes still stared at the wall, and the mechanical hand moved, sewing at nothing, as diligently as ever.
”Lynette!”
The fixed, blindly-staring eyes came to life. Colour throbbed back into the wan ivory cheeks. The mouth lost its vacant droop. She rose up from the stool with a joyful cry, and, stumbling in her haste, ran into the outstretched arms. As they wrapped about her, clinging to her sole earthly friend and guardian as though she could never let go, came the crash of the driving-charge, the yelling Brocken-hunt of the pa.s.sage of the huge projectile, the ear-splitting din of the sh.e.l.lburst. She lifted up a radiant face of laughing defiance, and then choked and quivered and burst out crying, leaning her panting young bosom against the black habit, and weeping as though her whole being must dissolve, Undine-like, in tears.
Ah, the lovely feminine woman who weeps and clings! She will never lose her dominion over the sons of men. The appealing glances of her beautiful wet eyes melt the stoniest male hearts, the soft tendril-like wreathing of her arms about the pillar of salt upon the Plain would have had power to change it back into a breathing human being once more, if Lot had looked back, instead of his helpmeet. Her sterner sisters may feel as keenly, love as tenderly, sorrow even more bitterly than she. Who will believe it among the sons of dead old Adam, who first felt the heaving bosom pant against his own, and saw the first bright tear-showers fall--forerunners of what oceans of world-sorrow to be shed hereafter, when the Angel of the flaming sword drove the peccant pair from Paradise. Ah, the fair, weak woman who weeps and clings!
And Owen Saxham, watching Lynette from the ladder-foot, and the Mother-Superior, clasping her and murmuring soft comfort into the delicate, fragile ear under the heaped waves of red-brown hair, shared the same thought.
How this trembling, vibrating, emotional creature will love one day, when the man arrives to whom imperious Nature shall bid her render up her all!
In whom, prayed the unselfish mother-heart, willing to be bereft of even the Heaven-sent consolation for the sake of the beloved, in whom may she find not only the earthly mate-fellow, but the kindred soul. For, all-pitying Mother of Mercy! should she, too, be doomed to stake all upon a wavering, unstable, headlong Richard, what will happen then?
Looking at the pair, Saxham thought of Ruth and Naomi. Lynette's tears had been dried quickly, like all joy-drops that the eyes shed. She was talking low and earnestly, pleading her cause with clinging hands and wistful looks and coaxing tones that were broken sometimes by a sob and sometimes by a little peal of girlish laughter.
”Mother, I am not made of sugar to be melted in the sun, or Dresden china to be broken. I am strong enough to take my share of the work; I am brave enough to bear anything--anything,” she urged, ”if only I may be with you.
But to sit cooped up here day after day, safe and sheltered, sewing powder-bags or giving Katie French lessons, or helping Sister Tobias, and listening to the guns”--the blood fled from her cheeks and the great pupils of her eyes dilated until they looked all black in her face of whiteness--”the dreadful guns, and wondering where you are when the sh.e.l.ls are bursting”--her voice rose in anguish--”I can't bear it! Mother, do you hear?” She threw her beautiful head back entreatingly, and the pulses in her white throat throbbed under Saxham's eyes, and her slight hands were desperate in their clutch upon the arms that held her. ”I want my share of the risk, whatever it is. I will have it! It is my right. I have tried to be good and patient, but I can't, I can't, I can't stand this any more!”
Her voice broke upon a sob, and Saxham said from the doorway that was filled by his great shoulders from post to post:
”You will not have to stand it any more. The Reverend Mother has reconsidered her decision. She will take you to the Hospital and elsewhere from to-day.”
The man's curt manner and authoritative tone brought Lynette for the first time to knowledge of his presence. Her glance went to him, and joy was mingled with surprise in the face she turned towards the Mother-Superior.
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