Part 17 (2/2)
”No, Mehitabel,” said she. ”I'm made of better stuff than you think.”
In her heart she had a half unconscious feeling that she had been inclined to hold this man in contempt because of his priestly garb; and that she owed him this reparation. She did not know what had occurred in that overturned car; but she looked back to it as to a horror of great darkness in which Wynne had risked his life for hers. She felt that she could not do less than to stand by while the wound he had received in her service was being attended to. It was Wynne himself who put her away.
”You are too kind, Miss Morison,” he said; ”but you are not fit to do this. I beg that you'll not stay. Your face shows how hard it is for you.”
The first thought that shot through her mind was one of relief that she now might properly leave her self-inflicted task; the second was a pang of self-reproach that she should wish to leave it; the third and lasting was a sense of pleasure that even in his pain he had not failed to note her face and divine her feelings.
”Mr. Wynne is right,” Mrs. Morison added decisively. ”Mehitabel can help me, my dear. Go into the other room and let Rosa get you a cup of tea.”
”It won't be much of a cup of tea,” Mehitabel commented grimly. ”That fool of a girl's got it into her head that it's a good time to cry for her doxy, because he's a brakeman on some other train.”
Berenice smiled at the characteristic crispness and the absurd speech of the old servant. She remembered Mehitabel from the days when in pinafores she used to visit here, and when she looked upon the tall, gaunt woman with an awe which was saved from being terror only by the fact that she had learned to a.s.sociate with that abrupt speech an after gift of crisp cakes. Mehitabel was to her as much a part of the establishment as were the tall chairs, the lion-headed fire-dogs, or the silver which had belonged to her grandmother's grandmother.
Pa.s.sing into the dining-room Berenice summoned the afflicted Rosa, who came with face all be-blubbered with tears, and who sniffed audibly as soon as she caught sight of the visitor.
”How do you do, Rosa? I wouldn't cry, if I were you,” Berenice said.
”Mehitabel says that this wasn't his train.”
”Oh, I know it, Miss,” responded Rosa, with more tears; ”but I can't help thinking how dreadful it would be if it was; and me not to know whether he was dead or alive. It don't seem to me I could ever marry him, not to be able to tell whether he'd come home any day dead or alive. I'll have to give him up, Miss; and he's real kind and free-handed.”
Her tears flowed so freely at the thought of giving up her lover that they splashed on Berenice's hand as Rosa leaned over to reach for something on the table.
”Well, Rosa,” Miss Morison remarked, smiling at the absurdity of the maid, and wiping her hand, ”I'm sorry that you feel so bad; but I don't like to be deluged with tears.”
”Indeed, Miss,” Rosa returned penitently, ”I didn't mean to cry on you; but tears come so easy in this world. We're all born crying.”
Berenice laughed in spite of herself.
”If we are born crying,” she said, ”that's reason enough for our smiling when we've outgrown being babies.”
”That's all well enough for you,” Rosa retorted with fresh tears.
”You've got your man here all safe if he is hurt a little; and I don't know”--
Berenice broke in with indignant amazement, feeling her face burn.
”My man!” she exclaimed. ”How dare you speak to me like that! Mr. Wynne is nothing to me. He's only a clergyman that was hurt saving my life.”
She broke off with a laugh somewhat hysterical. Her nerves were not under control yet.
”I'm sure I didn't mean,” wailed the girl, ”to say anything wrong.”
”There, there, Rosa,” the other interrupted. ”We are both upset. You shouldn't take so much for granted, or talk to me about 'men.'”
But in her mind the phrase repeated itself vexatiously: ”your man.”
XI
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