Part 14 (2/2)

”Did he speak of old times?”

”Not exactly, but he was just having his breakfast as I went in, and I stood beside him while he ate it, and he laughed when I tried to help him, and asked whether I shouldn't feed him with a spoon--whether I thought he was a baby again. Then he spoke of you, and asked if I had seen you and how you were.”

They found the music presently, and Philippa possessed herself of a quant.i.ty of it and carried it down-stairs to the morning-room to try it over on the little piano which had belonged to Francis years before.

The instrument was rather thin in tone, and some of the notes were out of tune, but Mrs. Goodman promised before she left her, to send for a man from Renwick next morning to put it in order, so that it could be taken up-stairs to the sitting-room.

Turning over the songs, which were, of course, quite out of date, and mostly of the highly sentimental order which found favour in the early eighties, Philippa's eye was arrested by some words which seemed to her familiar. They were the ones Francis had quoted at their first meeting. He had spoken of a song Phil had been in the habit of singing, which seemed to him written for them. She tried it through.

The tune had a certain happy charm which once heard might easily linger in the memory after the music was hushed. The words were these:--

”My heart met yours, when spring was all awaking, Down in the valley where the violets bloom; Through soft grey clouds the kind May sun was breaking, Setting ablaze the gold flower of the broom.

Your heart met mine, and all the birds were singing, Singing for joy that winter's day was done; On every side the harebells pale were ringing A bridal peal for joy--our hearts were one.

Our hearts are one, and nothing can dissever The chain that binds us close; come good or ill, The golden radiance floods life's pathway ever, The scent of violets lingers round us still.”

How many years was it since the simple words had been sung in that house, and the notes of the old piano sounded to the lilting cadence of its melody? And now, of the two who had sung it together, one was gone, and the other--well, for the other some of the golden radiance still shone after all the bitter years fate had meted out; and the scent of the violets lingered still.

Philippa dropped her face until it touched the faded bunch upon her breast. What is there about the scent of violets that always conjures up thoughts of the past? They have beyond the scent of all other flowers a power of memory. The scent of roses tells of long summer days, of dreams soft and tender as light summer airs; lilies speak of love and of love's crown; but it is violets that help us to regret.

CHAPTER XII

PROGRESS

”The days are made on a loom whereof the warp and woof are past and future time.”--EMERSON.

The improvement in Francis Heathcote's condition in the days which followed was, so the doctor and nurses declared, phenomenal. Robert Gale ceased to tug at his beard in angry perplexity, and melted into something which might almost have been called jocularity, as he watched the man gaining in health and strength. ”Splendid! Splendid!” he would say, rubbing his hands together in satisfaction. ”Go on as you are going, and you'll see the last of me soon.”

And as the days went by, peacefully and seemingly uneventfully, the time she spent with Francis became more and more the pivot on which Philippa's whole mind and thought turned. Day by day, almost hour by hour, he appeared to gain visibly in vigour. The cheerfulness and high spirits which had characterised him in an unusual degree before his accident, returned to him; and she marvelled increasingly at the almost boyish gaiety which he evinced at times. There were moments when she had perforce to remind herself of the long years of loneliness and deprivation through which he had pa.s.sed. They seemed to have left no mark on him. And yet she could not think they were forgotten, for once--it was at her second visit to him--he spoke at some length of his illness. Not, however, with any bitterness or annoyance, but merely as one might mention a curious experience through which one had lived, and for which one was little or none the worse.

”It is all so muddled to me. Sometimes it seems as if I had waited years for the sight of your face, and then again it would seem only the day before that I had seen you. Sometimes I saw you so clearly that I thought you were in the room, only I never could get you to speak to me. And I never could touch you. The moment I thought you were coming nearer you went away altogether. That was what bothered me. I suppose it was imagination or some kind of delirium, but it was rather dreadful, for when I couldn't see you everything was swallowed up in a horrible darkness. It was only when you came that there was daylight at all, the rest was a dreadful night.”

”Don't talk of it,” she had begged him, ”it is over now.” And seeing that the subject distressed her he had not spoken of it again.

Philippa found no difficulty in amusing him, or distracting his attention from anything which her intuition warned her might lead to dangerous questioning. She sang to him, and read to him, choosing lighter stories from the magazines, and preferably those in which the plot was laid in other countries or in previous centuries. He showed no signs of bewilderment when such events as the Indian Mutiny or the French Revolution were mentioned, and the girl could not be sure whether he listened without comprehending, for the mere pleasure of hearing her voice and knowing her companions.h.i.+p, or whether some feeling of half-shamed reticence prevented his acknowledging that he had never heard of these things before.

Perhaps, again, the mention of them awoke echoes which had long been silent, and dragged forgotten facts out of oblivion to the light of day--just as one may enter a room which has been closely sealed for years, and see objects once familiar but long since absolutely forgotten, shrouded in dust and dim with disuse, but of which the sight instantly recalls every trifling a.s.sociation.

Sometimes he would comment upon the situations or characters in a story, frequently making fun of them and their peculiarities, and at others he would bid her lay down the book and talk to him instead. He found the greatest pleasure in the time they spent together, when Philippa would take up her embroidery and sit beside him, and he would lie on the sofa with his eyes on her, watching her every movement as her dexterous needle slipped rapidly through the canvas.

He was thoughtful of her, never omitting to question her as to whether she had been out, and constantly bidding her not to give up all her own amus.e.m.e.nts for his sake. He did not speak a great deal of his love, but his devotion showed itself plainly in a hundred different ways--in his deep grat.i.tude for any slight service rendered--in his look of gladness when she came--in the inflexion of his voice, and so on. He seemed determined not to peril his new-found joy, or weary her by any protestations.

It was all quite easy, and Philippa was conscious of a great content, which she attributed to the reaction from her anxiety lest she should fail in the thing she had undertaken, and the natural pride which a nurse may legitimately feel when she sees a patient making strides on the road of convalescence.

She had received a letter from Marion, who wrote from a heart evidently torn with misgivings as to the wisdom of the course Philippa was pursuing. Her words were affectionate and guarded, but doubt and even disapproval could easily be read between the lines. She wrote of the grave dangers which must presently confront her friend, of the moment which must surely come when it would be impossible to go on without acknowledging the truth, and the word which might have been said at once would have to be spoken. She earnestly begged her to withdraw herself altogether, to leave the nursing of Francis Heathcote to others. The pain she would now cause would be nothing to the pain which would be his later when her daily presence had become a delightful habit with him--and so on, and so on. She reiterated the Major's regret that Philippa should have been drawn into the affair while a guest in their house, and particularly during their absence.

Her pity for Francis was intense, but that did not alter her fixed opinion that Philippa was not doing the best or the kindest thing by a.s.sisting to deceive him; for that was what it really amounted to. She knew Philippa's power of sympathy, and her loving heart had no doubt blinded her to what was wise and right.

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