Part 16 (1/2)

By that time we had pa.s.sed into the fresher air of the Mediterranean, and the sea was delightfully smooth. Galt Roscoe still slept, though his temperature was high.

My conference with Mrs. Falchion after breakfast was brief, but satisfactory. I told her frankly that Roscoe had been delirious, that he had mentioned her name, and that I thought it best to reduce the number of nurses and watchers. I made my proposition about Justine Caron. She shook her head a little impatiently, and said that Justine had told her, and that she was quite willing. Then I asked her if she would not also a.s.sist. She answered immediately that she wished to do so. As if to make me understand why she did it, she added: ”If I did not hear the wild things he says, some one else would; and the difference is that I understand them, and the some one else would interpret them with the genius of the writer of a fairy book.”

And so it happened that Mrs. Falchion came to sit many hours a day beside the sick couch of Galt Roscoe, moistening his lips, cooling his brow, giving him his medicine. After the first day, when she was, I thought, alternating between innate disgust of misery and her womanliness and humanity,--in these days more a reality to me,--she grew watchful and silently solicitous at every turn of the malady. What impressed me most was that she was interested and engrossed more, it seemed, in the malady than in the man himself.

And yet she baffled me even when I had come to this conclusion.

During most of his delirium she remained almost impa.s.sive, as if she had schooled herself to be calm and strong in nerve; but one afternoon she did a thing that upset all my opinions of her for a moment. Looking straight at her with staring, unconscious eyes, he half rose in his bed, and said in a low, bitter tone: ”I hate you. I once loved you--but I hate you now!” Then he laughed scornfully, and fell back on the pillow. She had been sitting very quietly, musing. His action had been unexpected, and had broken upon a silence. She rose to her feet quickly, gave a sharp indrawn breath, and pressed her hand against her side, as though a sudden pain had seized her. The next moment, however, she was composed again, and said in explanation that she had been half asleep, and he had startled her. But I had seen her under what seemed to me more trying conditions, and she had not shown any nervousness such as this.

The pa.s.sengers, of course, talked. Many ”true histories” of Mrs.

Falchion's devotion to the sick man were abroad; but it must be said, however, that all of them were romantically creditable to her. She had become a rare product even in the eyes of Miss Treherne, and more particularly her father, since the matter at the Tanks. Justine Caron was slyly besieged by the curious, but they went away empty; for Justine, if very simple and single-minded, was yet too much concerned for both Galt Roscoe and Mrs. Falchion to give the inquiring the slightest clue. She knew, indeed, little herself, whatever she may have guessed. As for Hungerford, he was dumb. He refused to consider the matter. But he roundly maintained once or twice, without any apparent relevance, that a woman was like a repeating decimal--you could follow her, but you never could reach her. He usually added to this: ”Minus one, Marmion,” meaning thus to exclude the girl who preferred him to any one else. When I ventured to suggest that Miss Treherne might also be excepted, he said, with maddening suggestion: ”She lets Mrs. Falchion fool her, doesn't she? And she isn't quite sure the splendour of a medical professor's position is superior to that of an author.”

In these moments, although I tried to smile on him, I hated him a little. I sought to revenge myself on him by telling him to help himself to a cigar, having first placed the box of Mexicans near him. He invariably declined them, and said he would take one of the others from the tea-box--my very best, kept in tea for sake of dryness. If I reversed the process he reversed his action. His instinct regarding cigars was supernatural, and I almost believe that he had--like the Black Dwarf's cat--the ”poo'er” of reading character and interpreting events--an uncanny divination.

I knew by the time we reached Valetta that Roscoe would get well; but he recognised none of us until we arrived at Gibraltar. Justine Caron and myself had been watching beside him. As the bells clanged to ”slow down” on entering the harbour, his eyes opened with a gaze of sanity and consciousness. He looked at me, then at Justine.

”I have been ill?” he said.

Justine's eyes were not entirely to be trusted. She turned her head away.

”Yes, you have been very ill,” I replied, ”but you are better.”

He smiled feebly, adding: ”At least, I am grateful that I did not die at sea.” Then he closed his eyes. After a moment he opened them, and said, looking at Justine: ”You have helped to nurse me, have you not?” His wasted fingers moved over the counterpane towards her.

”I could do so little,” she murmured.

”You have more than paid your debt to me,” he gently replied. ”For I live, you see, and poor Hector died.”

She shook her head gravely, and rejoined: ”Ah no, I can never pay the debt I owe to you and to G.o.d--now.” He did not understand this, I know.

But I did. ”You must not talk any more,” I said to him.

But Justine interposed. ”He must be told that the nurse who has done most for him is Mrs. Falchion.” His brows contracted as if he were trying to remember something. He moved his head wearily.

”Yes, I think I remember,” he said, ”about her being with me, but nothing clearly--nothing clearly. She is very kind.”

Justine here murmured: ”Shall I tell her?”

I was about to say no; but Roscoe nodded, and said quietly, ”Yes, yes.”

Then I made no objection, but urged that the meeting should only be for a moment. I determined not to leave them alone even for that moment.

I did not know what things connected with their past--whatever it was--might be brought up, and I knew that entire freedom from excitement was necessary. I might have spared myself any anxiety on the point. When she came she was perfectly self-composed, and more as she seemed when I first knew her, though I will admit that I thought her face more possible to emotion than in the past.

It seems strange to write of a few weeks before as the past; but so much had occurred that the days might easily have been months and the weeks years.

She sat down beside him and held out her hand. And as she did so, I thought of Boyd Madras and of that long last night of his life, and of her refusal to say to him one comforting word, or to touch his hand in forgiveness and friends.h.i.+p. And was this man so much better than Boyd Madras? His wild words in delirium might mean nothing, but if they meant anything, and she knew of that anything, she was still a heartless, unnatural woman, as I had once called her.

Roscoe took her hand and held it briefly. ”Dr. Marmion says that you have helped to nurse me through my illness,” he whispered. ”I am most grateful.”