Part 15 (2/2)
”I have no people,” said Paul.
”No people? What do you mean?” she asked sharply, for the moment forgetful of the sick room. She herself had hundreds of relations. The branches of her family tree were common to half the country families of England. ”Have you no parents--brothers or sisters--?”
”None that I know of,” said Paul. ”I'm quite alone in the world.”
”Have you no friends to whom I could write about you?”
He shook his head, and his great eyes, all the greater and more l.u.s.trous through illness, smiled into hers. ”No. None that count. At least--there are two friends, but I've lost sight of them for years.
No--there's n.o.body who would be in the least interested to know. Please don't trouble. I shall be all right.”
Miss Winwood put her cool hand on his forehead and bent over him. ”You?
You, alone like that? My poor boy!”
She turned away. It was almost incredible. It was monstrously pathetic.
The phenomenon baffled her. Tears came into her eyes. She had imagined him the darling of mother and sisters; the gay centre of troops of friends. And he was alone on the earth. Who was he? She turned again.
”Will you tell me your name?”
”Savelli. Paul Savelli.”
”I thought so. It was in the two books in your knapsack. A historical Italian name.”
”Yes,” said Paul. ”n.o.ble. All dead.”
He lay back, exhausted. Suddenly a thought smote him. He beckoned. She approached. ”My heart--is it safe?” he whispered.
”Your heart?”
”At the end of my watch-chain.”
”Quite safe.”
”Could I have it near me?”
”Of course.”
Paul closed his eyes contentedly. With his talisman in his hand, all would be well. For the present he need take thought of nothing. His presence in the beautiful room being explained, there was an end of the perplexity of his semi-delirium. Of payment for evident devoted service there could be no question. Time enough when he grew well and able to fare forth again, to consider the immediate future. He was too weak to lift his head, and something inside him hurt like the devil when he moved. Why worry about outer and unimportant matters? The long days of pain and illness slipped gradually away. Miss Winwood sat by his bedside and talked; but not until he was much stronger did she question him as to his antecedents. The Archdeacon had gone away after a week's visit without being able to hold any converse with Paul; Colonel Winwood was still at Contrexeville, whence he wrote sceptically of the rare bird whom Ursula had discovered; and Ursula was alone in the house, save for a girl friend who had no traffic with the sick-chamber.
She had, therefore, much leisure to devote to Paul. Her brother's scepticism most naturally strengthened her belief in him. He was her discovery. He grew almost to be her invention. Just consider. Here was a young Greek G.o.d--everyone who had a bowing acquaintance with ancient sculpture immediately likened Paul to a Greek G.o.d, and Ursula was not so far different from her cultured fellow mortals as to liken him to anything else--here was a young Phoebus Apollo, all the more Olympian because of his freedom from earthly ties, fallen straight from the clouds. He had fallen at her feet. His beauty had stirred her. His starlike loneliness had touched her heart. His swift intelligence, growing more manifest each day as he grew stronger, moved her admiration. He had, too, she realized, a sunny and sensuous nature, alive to beauty--even the beauty of the trivial things in his sickroom.
He had an odd, poetical trick of phrase. He was a paragon of young Greek G.o.ds. She had discovered him; and women don't discover even mortal paragons every day in the week. Also, she was a woman of forty-three, which, after all, is not wrinkled and withered eld; and she was not a soured woman; she radiated health and sweetness; she had loved once in her life, very dearly. Romance touched her with his golden feather and, in the most sensible and the most unreprehensible way in the world, she fell in love with Paul.
”I wonder what made you put that Santa Barbara of Palma Vecchio just opposite the bed,” he said one day. He had advanced so far toward recovery as to be able to sit up against his pillows.
”Don't you like it?” She turned in her chair by his bedside.
”I wors.h.i.+p it. Do you know, she has a strange look of you? When I was half off my head I used to mix you up together. She has such a generous and holy bigness--the generosity of the All-woman.”
Ursula flushed at the personal tribute, but let it pa.s.s without comment. ”It's not a bad photograph; but the original--that is too lovely.”
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