Part 45 (1/2)

”Be very careful!” whispered the nurse.

He knew he must be careful. Only the eyes were alive. The body was a collapsed thing. He seemed scarcely breathing, his voice was a thread.

”Robin!” Coombe caught as he bent close to him. ”Robin!”

”She is well, dear boy!” How his voice shook! ”I have taken care of her.”

The light leaped up into the blue for a second. The next the lids dropped and the nurse sprang forward because he had slipped into a faint so much like death that it might well have rent hope from a looker-on.

For the next hour, and indeed for many following, there was unflagging work to be done. The Red Cross Nurse was a capable, swiftly moving woman, with her resources at her finger's ends, and her quick wits about her. Almost immediately two doctors from the staff, in charge of the rooms upstairs were on the spot and at work with her. By what lightning-flashed sentences she conveyed to them, without pausing for a second, the facts it was necessary for them to know, was incomprehensible to Coombe, who could only stand afar off and wait, watching the dead face. Its sunken temples, cheeks and eyes, and the sharply carven bone outline were heart gripping.

It seemed hours before one of the doctors as he bent over the couch whispered,

”The breathing is a little better--”

It was not possible that he should be moved, but the couch was broad and deeply upholstered and could be used temporarily as a bed. Every resource of medical science was within reach. Nurse Jones, who had been on her way home to take a rest, was so far ensnared by unusual interest that she wished to be allowed to remain on duty. There were other nurses who could be called on at any moment of either night or day. There were doctors of indisputable skill who were also fired by the mere histrionic features of the case. The handsome, fortunate young fellow who had been supposed torn to fragments had by some incomprehensible luck been aided to drag himself home--perhaps to die of pure exhaustion.

Was it really hours before Coombe saw the closed eyes weakly open? But the smile was gone and they seemed to be looking at something not in the room.

”They will come--in,” the words dragged out scarcely to be heard.

”Jackson--said--said--they--would.” The eyes dropped again and the breathing was a mere flutter.

Nurse Jones was in fact filled with much curiosity concerning and interest in the Marquis of Coombe. She was a clever and well trained person, but socially a simple creature, who in an inoffensive way ”loved a lord.” If her work had not absorbed her she could not have kept her eyes from this finely conventional and rather unbending-looking man who--keeping himself out of the way of all who were in charge of the seemingly almost dead boy--still would not leave the room, and watched him with a restrained pa.s.sion of such feeling as it was not natural to see in the eyes of men. Marquis or not he had gone through frightful things in his life and this boy meant something tremendous to him. If he couldn't be brought back--! Despite the work her swift eye darted sideways at the Marquis.

When at length another nurse took her place and she was going out of the room, he moved quickly towards her and spoke.

”May I ask if I may speak to you alone for a few minutes? I have no right to keep you from your rest. I a.s.sure you I won't.”

”I'll come,” she answered. What she saw in the man's face was that, because she had brought the boy, he actually clung to her. She had been clung to many times before, but never by a man who looked quite like this. There was _more_ than you could see.

He led her to a smaller room near by. He made her sit down, but he did not sit himself. It was plain that he did not mean to keep her from her bed--though he was in hard case if ever man was. His very determination not to impose on her caused her to make up her mind to tell him all she could, though it wasn't much.

”Captain Muir's mother believes that he is dead,” he said. ”It is plain that no excitement must approach him--even another person's emotion. He was her idol. She is in London. _Must_ I send for her--or would it be safe to wait?”

”There have been minutes to-day when if I'd known he had a mother I should have said she must be sent for,” was her answer. ”To-night I believe--yes, I _do_--that it would be better to wait and watch. Of course the doctors must really decide.”

”Thank you. I will speak to them. But I confess I wanted to ask _you_.”

How he did cling to her!

”Thank you,” he said again. ”I will not keep you.”

He opened the door and waited for her to pa.s.s--as if she had been a marchioness herself, she thought. In spite of his desperate eyes he didn't forget a single thing. He so moved her that she actually turned back.

”You don't know anything yet-- Some one you're fond of coming back from the grave must make you half mad to know how it happened,” she said. ”I don't know much myself, but I'll tell you all I was able to find out. He was light headed when I found him trying to get on the boat. When I spoke to him he just caught my hand and begged me to stay with him. He wanted to get to you. He'd been wandering about, starved and hiding. If he'd been himself he could have got help earlier. But he'd been ill treated and had seen things that made him lose his balance. He couldn't tell a clear story. He was too weak to talk clearly. But I asked questions now and then and listened to every word he said when he rambled because of his fever. Jackson was a fellow prisoner who died of hemorrhage brought on by brutality. Often I couldn't understand him, but he kept bringing in the name of Jackson. One thing puzzled me very much.

He said several times 'Jackson taught me to dream of Robin. I should never have seen Robin if I hadn't known Jackson.' Now 'Robin' is a boy's name--but he said 'her' and 'she' two or three times as if it were a girl's.”

”Robin is his wife,” said Coombe. He really found the support of the door he still held open, useful for the moment.