Part 43 (2/2)
”He will!” put in Helen sharply.
”Say,” Peter said admiringly, ”they ought to put you in command of an army corps out there! You've got the kind of spirit that would break the line.”
”Spirit has nothing to do with it,” Helen replied. ”It is simply a fact.”
”I'd make it the whole army!” said Peter, who belonged to the school which believes that if you make up your mind to do a thing you will do it.
Phil was writing again, his fingers moving more rapidly than usual, his writing less distinct, as if he were under the pressure of strong emotion:
”I should have slipped if it had not been for her. It is a thing one can't talk about--the great thing of all, that makes me bear the pain and make the fight--what Henriette has done for me.”
”Henriette!”
Dr. and Mrs. Sanford and Peter uttered the word together and stared involuntarily at Helen, in blank inquiry. She looked away quickly at the floor and murmured:
”Yes, Henriette!”
There was a silence then, while she took the pad and pencil from Phil and removed the little table, which provided her with the relief of movement.
”Not too much at one time, lest we tire him,” she said.
She went with them through the court, where the seeing men in their pain watched them pa.s.sing; and on the way her glance hovered into theirs beseechingly and her lips were parted as if about to speak, but she could not find words until they were on the path.
”You would make me any promise, wouldn't you,” she asked, ”in order to save him?”
Now she told the secret which only she and Henriette knew, how she had been mistaken for her sister.
”You must not undeceive him, or think of it, or speak of it! You will promise?”
Her nostrils were quivering and her eyes had the steady light of command. As they nodded, the father and mother felt a trifle in awe of her, this woman in a warrior's mood who had been a link between them and their son. She gave them a smile of thanks; then, in the flutter of an impulse, kissed Mrs. Sanford on the cheeks and abruptly started back to the ward, where she gave Phil a hand-clasp to signal her return and two clasps to learn if he wanted anything. He asked for his pad:
”It's pretty hard on them. Did I cheer them up?”
”Yes, and they know that you are going to get well.”
”Good! Aren't they dears? Shall we take a const.i.tutional? It tired the old head-piece a little, all that excitement.”
The const.i.tutionals were promenades up and down the court, with digressions sometimes out onto the paths when he felt particularly venturesome. Her arm through his, wheeling on him as a pivot when they came to the turns, he feeling the touch of her hand upon his wrist, she realising the helplessness of that tall form without some one to guide it, they had paced back and forth so many times now that these promenades had become a part of their existence. His silence she must share. They might think each his own thoughts in the nearness, the interdependence, of that strange companions.h.i.+p. Sometimes he carried on imaginary conversations with her and she with him; and the great things to both were the unspoken things, rather than those written on his arm or on the pad. When the revelation should come that she was not Henriette--but Helen never thought of that. It was the bridge on the other side of the promised land of his recovery.
She was not surprised when she saw Henriette enter the court just as they were turning toward the ward. Henriette came faithfully every day to inquire how he was and reported her visit at dinner with Lady Truckleford's lot. These were practically the only occasions when the sisters met. Henriette's manner was that of affectionate sympathy for Helen and pity for Phil.
”His father and mother have been to see him?”
”Yes. It made him very happy.”
”And Peter Smithers was with them?”
”Yes.”
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