Part 19 (2/2)

Gardiner was travelling, travelling--climbing steep mountains, white with snow, and his breath came in short laboured sighs, fast, fast--it was the only sound in the room. Bella had not left his side for hours, her cheek pressed the pillow by his restless head. Her tears had fallen and dried, fallen and dried. Bella alone knew what Gardiner tried to say. His faltering words, his halting English, were familiar to the sister and she interpreted to the others, to whom Gardiner, too small to reach them, had never been very near. Twenty times the kneeling figure had asked--

”What does he say, Bella? What does he want?”

”He thinks it is a game,” the little sister said; ”he says it's cold, he says he wants Cousin Antony.”

Since his summons, when Gardiner found that he must gird his little loins for the journey, his mind had gone to the big cousin who had so triumphantly carried him over the imaginary steeps.

From the door, where he had been standing on the edge of the group, a tall figure in a red flannel s.h.i.+rt came forward, bent down, and before any one knew that he had come, or who he was, he was speaking to the sick child.

”Gardiner, little cousin, here's your old cousin Antony come back.”

Gardiner was travelling hard, but his head stopped its restless turning.

He looked up into the beloved face, whose smile shone on him and lit his dark journey. Gardiner tried to answer the brightness of that smile, he tried to hold out his little arms. In a sob Bella whispered--

”He wants Cousin Antony to carry him.”

Without removing his look of tender brightness from the traveller's face, Fairfax murmured--

”I reckon I'll take him in my arms, Aunt Caroline.”

And as the steepest, coldest place came in sight to little Gardiner, he was lifted in a warm embrace. He opened his eyes upon Antony's and with a radiant look gave up the painful climbing to the rescuer.

CHAPTER VIII

Fairfax himself made many cruel Siberian journeys and voyages through h.e.l.lish tropics, on his own narrow bed in the hall room overlooking the New York Central yards. He had something close to pneumonia and turned and cried out on his bed, too small for his big form, and in his delirium he kicked away the footboard. His uncle's house, which he had left as brusquely this time as before, haunted him in his mind troubled by sickness. He cried out that it was a cursed place and that Gardiner had been killed by neglect, and that he shook the dust of New York from his feet. From wild blue eyes that flamed under his hair grown long, he stared into the s.p.a.ce peopled by delirium and called his solitary attendant ”Bella,” and begged her to come away with him before it was too late, for, as many sick people seem to be, he was travelling. In his case he journeyed back to his boarding-house and laid his visions down and waked up in the same old world that had treated him badly, but which he was not ready to leave.

It was a sunny, brilliant January day. The snow had frozen on his window and the light played upon gleaming bands, and through the dingy yellow shade the sunlight came determinedly. On the table by his bedside were his medicines and milk, and he was covered by counterpanes lent by the other lodgers.

He felt the perspiration pour off him as his mind found its balance, and he saw how weak he was; but though it hurt him to breathe, he could do so, and the crisis was past. He had fallen on his bed when he came from New York and here he had remained. He wet his cracked lips, said ”Water,” and from behind him, where she had been sitting, a girl came and held a gla.s.s to his lips. Fairfax drank, closed his eyes, made no sign of recognition, for he knew Molly Shannon. She wiped the sweat from his brow and face tenderly, and though her hand had not trembled before in her ministrations, it trembled now. Her heart was beating with grat.i.tude for she knew he was saved. She gave him milk and brandy, after a few moments, then sat down to her work. Fairfax, speaking each word distinctly, said--

”I reckon I've been pretty sick, haven't I?”

”You're all right now, Misther Fairfax.”

He smiled faintly. He was indifferent, very weak, but he felt a kind of mild happiness steal over him as he lay there, a sense of being looked after, cared for, and of having beaten the enemy which had clutched his throat and chest. He heard the voices of Molly and the doctor, heard her pretty Irish accent, half-opened his eyes and saw her hat and plaid red-and-black shawl hanging by the window. The plaid danced before his eyes, became a signal flag, and, watching it, he drowsed and then fell into the profound sleep which means recovery.

CHAPTER IX

Fairfax took Molly Shannon's presence for granted, accepted her services, obeyed her docilely and thanked her with his smile which regained its old radiance as he grew stronger. Lying shaven, with his hair cut at last--for she had listened to his pleading and sent for a barber--in clean sheets and jacket, he looked boyish and thin, and to the Irish girl he was beautiful. She kept her eyes from him for fear that he should see her pa.s.sion and her adoration, and she effaced herself in the nurse, the mother, the sister, in the angel.

Sure, she hadn't sent word to any one. How should she? Sorry an idea she had where he came from or who were his folks.

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