Miss Minerva and Teresa, might have hesitated to keep the patient's room closed to the doctor. These two were resolved. They refused to disturb Ovid, even by sending up a message. Mr. Null took offence. "Understand, both of you," he said, "when I call to-morrow morning, I shall insist on going upstairs--and if I find this incivility repeated, I shall throw up the case." He left the room, triumphing in his fool's paradise of aggressive self-conceit.
They waited for some time longer--and still no message reached them from upstairs. "We may be wrong in staying here," Miss Minerva suggested; "he may want to be alone when he leaves her--let us go."
She rose to return to the house of her new employers. They respected her, and felt for her: while Carmina's illness continued, she had the entire disposal of her time. The nurse accompanied her to the door; resigned to take refuge in the landlady's room. "I'm afraid to be by myself," Teresa said. "Even that woman's chatter is better for me than my own thoughts."
Before parting for the night they waited in the hall, looking towards the stairs, and listening anxiously. Not a sound disturbed the melancholy silence.
CHAPTER LVIII.
Among many vain hopes, one hope had been realised: they had met again.
In the darkened room, her weary eyes could hardly have seen the betrayal of what he suffered--even if she had looked up in his face. She was content to rest her head on his breast, and to feel his arm round her. "I am glad, dear," she said, "to have lived long enough for this."
Those were her first words--after the first kiss. She had trembled and sighed, when he ran to her and bent over her: it was the one expression left of all her joy and all her love. But it passed away as other lesser agitations had passed away. One last reserve of energy obeyed the gentle persuasion of love. Silent towards all other friends, she was able to speak to Ovid.
"You used to breathe so lightly," she said. "How is it that I hear you now. Oh, Ovid, don't cry! I couldn't bear that."
He answered her quietly. "Don't be afraid, darling; I won't distress you."
"And you will let me say, what I want to say?"
"Oh, yes!"
This satisfied her. "I may rest a little now," she said.
He too was silent; held down by the heavy hand of despair.
The time had been, in the days of his failing health, when the solemn shadows of evening falling over the fields--the soaring song of the lark in the bright heights of the midday sky--the dear lost remembrances that the divine touch of music finds again--brought tears into his eyes. They were dry eyes now! Those once tremulous nerves had gathered steady strength, on the broad prairies and in the roving life. Could trembling sorrow, seeking its way to the sources of tears, overbear the robust vitality that rioted in his blood, whether she lived or whether she died? In those deep breathings that had alarmed her, she had indeed heard the struggle of grief, vainly urging its way to expression against the masterful health and strength that set moral weakness at defiance. Nature had remade this man--and Nature never pities.
It was an effort to her to collect her thoughts--but she did collect them. She was able to tell him what was in her mind.
"Do you think, Ovid, your mother will care much what becomes of me, when I die?"
He started at those dreadful words--so softly, so patiently spoken. "You will live," he said. "My Carmina, what am I here for but to bring you back to life?"
She made no attempt to dispute with him. Quietly, persistently, she returned to the thought that was in her.
"Say that I forgive your mother, Ovid--and that I only ask one thing in return. I ask her to leave me to you, when the end has come. My dear, there is a feeling in me that I can't get over. Don't let me be buried in a great place all crowded with the dead! I once saw a picture--it was at home in Italy, I think--an English picture of a quiet little churchyard in the country. The shadows of the trees rested on the lonely graves. And some great poet had written--oh, such beautiful words about it. The red-breast loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print the ground. Promise, Ovid, you will take me to some place, far from crowds and noise--where children may gather the flowers on my grave."
He promised--and she thanked him, and rested again.
"There was something else," she said, when the interval had passed. "My head is so sleepy. I wonder whether I can think of it?"
After a while, she did think of it.
"I want to make you a little farewell present. Will you undo my gold chain? Don't cry, Ovid! oh, don't cry!"
He obeyed her. The gold chain held the two lockets--the treasured portraits of her father and her mother. "Wear them for my sake," she murmured. "Lift me up; I want to put them round your neck myself." She tried, vainly tried, to clasp the chain. Her head fell back on his breast. "Too sleepy," she said; "always too sleepy now! Say you love me, Ovid."
He said it.
"Kiss me, dear."
He kissed her.
"Now lay me down on the pillow. I'm not eighteen yet--and I feel as old as eighty! Rest; all I want is rest." Looking at him fondly, her eyes closed little by little--then softly opened again. "Don't wait in this dull room, darling; I will send for you, if I wake."
It was the only wish of hers that he disobeyed. From time to time, his fingers touched her pulse, and felt its feeble beat. From time to time, he stooped and let the faint coming and going of her breath flutter on his cheek. The twilight fell, and darkness began to gather over the room. Still, he kept his place by her, like a man entranced.
CHAPTER LIX.
The first trivial sound that broke the spell, was the sound of a match struck in the next room.
He rose, and groped his way to the door. Teresa had ventured upstairs, and had kindled a light. Some momentary doubt of him kept the nurse silent when he looked at her. He stammered, and stared about him confusedly, when he spoke.
"Where--where--?" He seemed to have lost his hold on his thoughts--he gave it up, and tried again. "I want to be alone," he said; recovering, for the moment, some power of expressing himself.
Teresa's first fear of him vanished. She took him by the hand like a child, and led him downstairs to his rooms. He stood silently watching her, while she lit the candles.
"When Carmina sleeps now," he asked, "does it last long?"
"Often for hours together," the nurse answered.
He said no more; he seemed to have forgotten that there was another person in the room.
She found courage in her pity for him. "Try to pray," she said, and left him.
He fell on his knees; but still the words failed him. He tried to quiet his mind by holy thoughts. No! The dumb agony in him was powerless to find relief. Only the shadows of thoughts crossed his mind; his eyes ached with a burning heat. He began to be afraid of himself. The active habits of the life that he had left, drove him out, with the instincts of an animal, into space and air.