Chapter 7
The days of convalescence were slow and beautiful, the little group in the line cottage on the Point each realizing that for a time they were set apart from the world to a special relation with one another, which was very delightful. Even their hostess felt this and entered into her part with true spirit. She would come into the bedroom in the morning as if she had come to court to pay her respects to the king. And there was no humbler courtier than Corinne, who cooked delicious dishes and was never more pleased than when the young man praised her newest concoctions.
In the dim watches of the night, Gail duly warned her heart that this delightful companionship could not last forever and that she must understand from the first that it was but temporary. Her way lay in the working world, and she could see from the start that the man had lived in a world of leisure and luxury. She cherished no romantic notions concerning what might happen in the future, but she resolutely set herself to be his friend and to nurse him back to life, with the sole intention of going out of his life when he was able to be on his feet once more. She had no delusions about the fact that this coming separation from him was going to be hard for her.
Never had Gail enjoyed such companionship with any man excepting her father, but this man was more than friend. He was child and rescuer and dear companion all in one. She knew that when she must turn away and go alone, the wrench would be extremely hard to bear. But because she had accepted this fact and was steadily going on with her beautiful ministrations, their relation to each other was perhaps the more ideal. On her part, at least, there was absolutely no selfishness in it. As though they had been children of the same home, they went through the days looking into each other's faces, frankly glad for the days that came each morning like new gifts, with the constant deference to each other that kills selfishness and that utter joy in life that makes the soul blind to the fact that Edens do not last forever.
There was no romancing between them. The man basked in the sunshine of the girl's smile and loved to watch her every movement, but he made no claims upon her save those a patient or a dear child might make; the girl was utter devotion to him, anticipating every need and making pleasure out of every whim. It was a little tarrying-time on the borders of life, where sin does not enter because of the nearness of Death whose castle lies not far away. That they must someday pass beyond that border and enter life once more and lose all this forever, each realized, but blissfully ignored. It was enough for the moment that things were as they were.
The September storms were over, and a season of Indian summer had settled down upon sea and land. The long days succeeded one another with dreamy sweetness. The sea shimmered and basked in the misty sunlight, as if a veil had been thrown over its terrors and only its liveliness shone through. The crickets chirped sleepily in the grasses on the dunes, and all nature seemed to be taking a siesta after the hard labor of the summer before it started on the winter's arduous tasks.
In the cool evenings, a fire burned on the hearth in the sitting room, and its flickering light played through the open door over the bedroom floor. Mrs. Battin would sit before it, crocheting or reading the paper, and they could see her from where they sat. She seldom came into the bedroom more than twice a day for a few minutes' formal visit, but the door stood open always, and she was ready to help any suggestion of a need.
Mrs. Battin's son had not yet returned. His business kept him longer than he expected, and so he suggested that Corinne take his mother up to the city. But she preferred to remain at the shore as long as she had company, so the son was quite content, knowing that his mother was not alone. The elderly lady was becoming very fond of Gail, and she loved to watch her going about in some of Jeannette's pretty dresses, just as the other dear girl used to do. Gail also was growing fond of her. The querulous old tone had almost disappeared, and the look of discontent was giving place to quiet peace.
Sometimes she came and sat with folded hands while the girl read aloud from the Bible at evening, and then she slipped out again like a shadow when the reading was over. Gail's reading had become a daily ceremony, which even Corinne attended, slipping into the sitting room and sitting just out of sight by the bedroom door, with her hands folded reverently in her apron. The old Bible was working its miracle charm that it always works whenever people give it an opportunity. The words were sinking into the hearts of the listeners and making them thoughtful. It is just possible that if the house had contained other books, the Bible might not have had so good a chance, but the Battins were not great readers, and the house was destitute even of magazines. It is to be supposed that the young granddaughter may have had books at the shore, which probably had been sent back to the city home, and there had been no one about to bring more. An occasional newspaper was about all Mrs. Battin's eyes would allow her to read. So the Bible held full sway over this unique household, and the time set apart to it was looked forward to with eagerness. Gail entered into the reading of it eagerly, a new joy in the book coming to her own heart. And as she read, new wonders opened to her sight.
Perhaps her rendering of the words had much to do with the interest of her audience. Her voice no longer chanted the words in a low monotone calculated only to soothe the soul to sleep. She read as if she were painting vivid pictures before her listeners' eyes, making every scene of the Bible live before them, bringing out unconsciously the thoughts from hidden passages until they had new meaning to people who before now had been but careless readers when they read at all. It is safe to say that to the young man, at least, the book was utterly new. To the others, it suddenly became the Word of God in very truth.
Gail, having been trained in Bible lore from babyhood by a father who was somewhat unusual in his spiritual life and his study of the scriptures, unconsciously made clear, by her very way of reading, things that in the past always had seemed obscure to her audience. Without any knowledge of what she was doing, Gail was becoming a preacher, and the sermons were all the more effective in that they were sinking deeper into her own heart, as well. She had been so busy and sad and hard pressed in the two years since her father died that she had given little time to the study of her Bible, and so had grown into a more or less coldhearted Christian. The daily reading was helping her back to a fuller realization of the presence of the Christ whose follower she had been since early childhood.
The young people did not talk about themselves. They almost went out of the way for a long time to avoid the subject. It seemed as if they feared to ask questions lest it break the perfect beauty of their present companionship.
When the young man asked for the story of the wreck, Gail told it most briefly:
"You remember how you lashed me to a raft? Well, you were struck on the head as you were jumping over the rail, and it made you unconscious for a time; but we floated to this harbor, and the doctor has fixed you up all right. He says you oughtn't to think about it now till you are quite strong. Don't you think we had better not recall it yet?"
He had nodded acquiescence, but he lay a long time looking at her and thinking. He remembered something. He wondered if it was true. He would have liked to ask her--but not yet. Sometime he would, if all went well. And then he looked at her and smiled with something in his eyes that she could not understand, something that made her heart leap up with unbidden joy.
"Isn't there someone to whom you ought to send word?" she asked him presently. "I should have asked you that at once. Someone must be very anxious about you all these days."
He looked thoughtfully at her again, a kind of a faraway, dreamy speculation in his eyes, then a half-comical smile grew about his lips.
"No, I guess not," he said slowly. "There is no one who would waste time fretting about me. Mother died when I was a kid; I can't remember my father. I've an uncle out in California, but I doubt if he even knows I was on that ship. The fellows might care, but I won't let them know yet. They'd think they had to trail down here and see me, a great mob of them, and I don't want them. No
t yet. Things are all right as they are. They'll be glad to see me when I get back, but no damage will be done by waiting a little. But how about you? I'm afraid you have stayed away from your family to take care of me."
"I haven't any family," said Gail, trying to smile cheerfully, though her voice sounded pathetic. "Father and Mother died within six months of each other a little over two years ago. I was the only child. There are no near relatives. A cousin by marriage on my father's side is the only one who even pretends to keep any track of me at all. She secured the position for me with Mrs. Patton, the woman with whom I was traveling south when the accident happened. She was very much relieved to get me off her hands, although I never have been a burden upon anything but her conscience. I fancy she would know nothing but relief if she hears that I was drowned. She might be a little sorry, perhaps, but it won't lose her any sleep."
"But how about this Mrs. Patton? Have you sent her word? Or was she lost?"
Gail entered into a merry account of her last scene with Mrs. Patton, and he laughed heartily over her description, looking at her tenderly afterward and wondering if it were selfish in him to be glad she had no other ties to take her away from him.
Thus they drifted happily through the days of his recovery, learning more every day of each other.
The first day he sat up for a little while, he asked for writing materials and said he must write some letters.
Their hostess provided all that was necessary, and the young man wrote three--one to his bank, one to his tailor, and another to a department store.
He slept a long time after that effort and awoke very happy. He declared he was going to get up as soon as his new clothes came.
Gail felt a strange sinking at her heart when he announced that. Not but that she wanted him to improve as fast as possible, but it made her feel that the time was short. She must soon go back to the lonely world and find something to do. This experience would be like a beautiful dream that was gone. She was like a person on the verge of waking before the dream is finished, lingering and trying to stay asleep. Yet she knew that the waking had to come.
The day his things arrived they had a happy time unpacking. Gail unwrapped the packages and would only allow her patient to sit up and direct. There were a large express package and a new trunk full of things. The express package contained a suit and overcoat. In the trunk were shoes, socks, undergarments, shirts, neckties, collars, and cuffs, a number of toiletries, and a soft felt hat. Gail opened them and spread them out for him to see, handling the things with wistful fingers, glad that they were so soft and fine in quality, yet feeling by their fineness so much the more separated from their owner. She had known he would be like that--everything fine and fitting.
She helped him with his dressing--brought hot water for his shaving, put in his shirt studs and cuff links, and fastened his tie. It all seemed so strange, but he was happy as a child, while her heart was like lead. She could not keep back the tears or the lumps in her throat, and she had a strange sense of inward weeping, as if her heart were crying. Now and then she shook herself away from her melancholy and told herself how glad she was that her prayers were answered and that he was almost well, but when she saw him fully dressed, clean shaven, standing erect for the first time since his illness, the wall of separation seemed to rise between them, and she could not help feeling shy. This was not the child she had sheltered and saved, prayed for and nursed, who was dependent upon her for his very existence. This was a full-grown man with a tremendous will of his own and a keen delight in having come to his own again. She shrank back into herself as she would have done on shipboard if some accident of the day had made him her debtor for some trifling favor. Now she felt that this was a stranger with whom she must be reserved. He should see nothing in her to make him think she had laid any claim to his notice. She was just a passing stranger now, whom fate had ordained should help him over a hard place and then pass on.
He was so elated with the idea of being dressed and feeling himself a man again that he did not notice her distant manner at first; but toward night, when he was tired and wanted to rest, when he needed her help, she gravely gave it. She fed him his supper and patted the bedclothes about his shoulders, for the evening was chilly. Suddenly he reached both hands up and took her face between them gently, looking at her.
"You're tired," he said with conviction. "I've been a bear and a baby, and I've made you tired."
"Oh, no!" she said, trying to smile in the old way. Something in his eyes was speaking to her own and making it very hard for her to sit there that way with his hands upon her face, yet she could not shrink away and hurt him. He would not understand. They had come to a place where he would not, must not, understand.
"Yes, you are tired," he said again. "You have been very good and dear to me. I haven't tried to tell you yet how I feel about it. I couldn't! I wasn't strong enough! But someday I'll show you!"
Then he let her go. She thought he had meant to show her how tenderly he felt toward her. It was a rendering to her deep gratitude and esteem of his heart. She understood and accepted it for that alone and entertained no sentimental ideas concerning it. It was something sacred and sweet for her to remember always. Yet she lay long awake that night on her cot in the sitting room where she slept, with tears upon her cheeks for the loneliness that was to be hers now in the near future. She tried to think what she should do and plan for her going, but could not. She must wait and let things take their course. She had trusted her life to God, and she felt that she would be guided.
The next morning she slept late and found to her surprise and dismay that her patient had dressed himself and was awaiting her in the big chair by the window. It made her feel as if her work was done and there was no longer need for her to stay.
He noticed her grave face and rallied her upon it, telling her she was going to be the patient pretty soon and he would have to play nurse, for she had been overworking. But she roused herself and tried to be cheerful, and the breakfast that Corinne brought for them both on a big tray and put on a little table between them passed off very delightfully. Nevertheless, Gail had a continual feeling that she was a guest and ought not to remain.
Gradually, she grew accustomed to his being a man up and around. She still waited upon him continually, trying to save his strength--which he would not save for himself--though he was growing stronger every day. He began to have a healthy color, and soon the doctor allowed him to take short walks upon the beach.
They would go out in the early morning, Gail carrying wraps and a rug and pillows, and walk a little way, then they would drop down upon the sand and stay awhile, watching the sea, talking a little, resting, then walking on again, and back to their cushions for another siesta. Now and again Corinne would come out with a tray of something good to eat, or a glass of egg and milk for each. The still, beautiful days of Indian summer slipped by to the dreamy chirp of the cricket, with that sad, sweet, pensive way that such days go in a lonely place where time seems to have stopped and necessity drives not mortals to forget the beauty of the autumn.
One curious thing about their companionship was that they had never as yet called each other by name. Neither could quite be satisfied to say Mister or Miss, and anything more than that seemed to break the unique relationship they had established, and so they drifted along with saying "you."
Gail had not even known his name until the day his letters came, addressed in care of Mrs. Battin to Mr. Clinton Benedict. It seemed a beautiful name and fitted her idea of him. Sometimes she longed intensely to ask him about himself and his life, but determined not to break through his reserve.
Their days of converse were very sweet. They talked about intangible things--souls and why they were made, tendencies and how far they could be controlled, character and what constitutes it. They settled all sorts of abstruse problems and found out each other's opinions and preferences on a hundred thousand important and unimportant topics. They told stories and dreamed dreams t
ogether, and almost Gail forgot her fears and shyness and blossomed out again into the frank, free-hearted friend she had been when she was nursing him; and always yet she was the nurse, alert for his comfort, husbanding his strength.
Then one bright morning they went forth as usual with pillows and shawls and the morning paper to find the most sheltered nook not far from the cottage. Gail arranged a place for her patient and settled him comfortably, and was just about to read the front page of the paper to him when the wind caught the sheet and, shaking it open, scattered its various leaves in confusion around her.
Laughingly she reached out hurried hands after it, and Benedict, too, caught a page as it floated by. As chance would have it, the page he caught contained the society column and was headed by the picture of a beautiful girl. With a startled exclamation he drew it to him and read a paragraph, his face a strange mixture of emotions; but when he looked up to meet Gail's questioning eyes, joy had the predominance. She could see he was very happy and excited, and very much surprised about something. It must have some connection with the girl in the picture.
Chapter 8
"I must go to the city at once!" he said, and a weight like a mountain fell into the girl's heart. "Isn't there a morning train sometime? I could get that fish boy to take me across and catch it. He's due in a few minutes now, isn't he? It is a quarter to ten."
"He usually comes at ten," said Gail, trying not to show how much her voice was shaking and how wildly her heart was beating. "But you are not fit to go on a journey yet."
Out of the Storm Page 6