Chapter XII

“Féo has given strict orders that you are to be shown up to her _first_.”

These are the words with which the patient’s mother receives Miss Carew, and they are wafted on a sigh of relieved gratitude, and accompanied by the admission that she has herself been ejected from the sick-room, and requested not to reappear there until further orders. The occasion is evidently considered to be one of such magnitude as to have summoned from his certificate-hung study Mr. Prince to join his acknowledgments to those of his wife; but the elaborate expression of his thanks, with its inevitable prefix of “I do not wish to be intrusive,” is cut short by a peremptory inquiry, transmitted by Féodorovna’s maid, as to the cause of the delay in showing up the visitor.

“She will give you the most minute directions,” says Mrs. Prince, hurrying Lavinia off upon this mandate, and speaking in a flurried semi-whisper. “You must consent to everything, and”--lowering her voice still further--“of course you can use your own judgment afterwards.”

“There is not a soul in the house I can trust,” says Féodorovna, clutching Miss Carew’s hand in a clasp whose feverishness her own cool palm verifies. “Do not pay the slightest attention to anything Nurse Blandy says. She is absolutely untrustworthy and incapable.”

Lavinia nods, mindful of Mrs. Prince’s directions.

“In this dreadful _contretemps_ it is something to have a person on whose honesty at least one can rely,” continues Féodorovna, staring tragically at Lavinia out of her yellowed eyes. “_You_ have some sympathy--some comprehension of what it must be to me to be tied down here, _now_ of all times.”

There is no insincerity in Lavinia’s gesture of assent. Despite the absolute lack of foundation for Miss Prince’s belief in her own indispensability, and the ludicrous effect with which a solemn sentimentality gilds her already gilded features, Miss Carew’s compassion is genuine, and even acute. To be within five doors of him, and yet parted as effectually as if oceans rolled between them! A shocked flash of realization of what such a deprivation would be to herself dries up effectually any of that inclination to mirth which the preposterousness of Féodorovna’s pretensions, coupled with that of her appearance, would naturally produce.

“You must come and go between us,” continues the patient, earnestly. “Tell me how he is from hour to hour, prevent his fretting more than he can help, and ensure him against the neglect which hitherto only my own personal and incessant attention has guarded him from.”

A mechanical mandarin-like movement agitates Lavinia’s head.

“Of course you do not know anything of the technicalities of nursing--how should you?--but you can at least follow my directions.”

“Yes.”

“Do not sit too close to him.”

“No.”

“Do not talk too much.”

“No.”

“Let him choose his own topic.”

A profound sigh follows this last injunction, which somehow implies that there can be little doubt as to what that topic will be.

“Yes.”

“Make as light of my illness as you can.”

“Yes.”

“And come back to me every quarter of an hour to report progress.”

“Every quarter of an hour!” repeats Miss Carew, for once forgetful of and disobedient to her instructions as to unhesitating acquiescence in everything that might be suggested to her. “But you may be asleep!”

“And if I am!” returns Miss Prince, with such an expression of high-flown enthusiasm on her discoloured countenance as makes Lavinia’s pity almost succumb to an unpardonable inclination to laugh.

She escapes at last without having disgraced herself by any overt evidence of amusement, though her departure is delayed by the determination of Miss Prince to invest her messenger in her own cap and apron.

“He has grown used to having them about him,” says Féo, with pensive peremptoriness; while a recollection of ill-controlled cap-strings gambolling across patient eyes confirms the statement in the hearer’s mind, and she sets forth reluctantly equipped in an attire which, like David’s, she has not proved.

Admitted by Nurse Blandy with a lofty cordiality which speaks less for her own merit than for the lustre with which she shines by contrast with Féodorovna, Lavinia finds herself once more standing by that bedside whence her spirit has so rarely stirred since the day, which now seems so incomputably distant, when first her lagging feet carried her thither. Their hands lie in each other’s with the large sense of freedom that the absence of any onlooker gives; the consciousness that, as far as any one to note their clasp goes, they may remain in thrilled contact from now till night. As if in malicious acting upon the knowledge that such a course would be the most distasteful possible to her young employer, Nurse Blandy has hastened to leave them _tête-à-tête_. In their eyes, as they rush to meet, each reads the other’s joyous elation in the thought that not only is there no Féodorovna present to cramp and chill their greeting, but that all through the long wealth of the afternoon to be theirs no opening door need scare them with the swishing announcement of her paralyzing presence.

“So I have a new nurse!” he says, his look wandering with slow delight over the array that had made her feel like a mummer.

“Miss Prince thought that, as you were used to the dress, it would be better that I should wear it.”

“Yes; I am used to the dress.”

The implication that he is _not_ used to the wearer is so clear to them both, as to draw a little gauzy veil of shyness between them.

“I feel rather like Jacob, having jockeyed Esau out of his occupation,” she says, talking somewhat at random; the more so for the consciousness that his eyes have done with her cap and apron, and now find employment in the string of pearls that, as both of them know, owes no ascription to Féodorovna. Involuntarily one of Lavinia’s hands goes up to her throat, with the impulse to hide the jewels, though a cold instinct tells her that he has already discovered their origin.

“It is very hard upon my predecessor, isn’t it,” she says, beginning to talk much faster than her wont, “to have developed such an enthusiasm for nursing, and then to have her course barred by so odious a form of illness?”

“Jaundice, isn’t it?” returns he, with a very respectable and even remorseful effort at regret.

“Yes; jaundice.”

“Poor soul!”

Both read in each other’s hearts that, as between them, talk of Féodorovna is sheer waste of time; yet one of them clings convulsively to her as a safe topic.

“What aggravates her vexation is that she can’t believe that you will not be starved and ill-used in her absence!”

“Poor soul!”

There is a touch of impatience that to one initiated speaks of past endurance in the repeated phrase; and the smile that sends up the corners of both their mouths, when Lavinia adds demurely, “I am to report progress every quarter of an hour,” makes them both feel rather guilty.

It is the man who instinctively breaks away from the subject, and, as one determined to have his will, rushes headforemost into another.

“Tell me how much time you are going to give me! I had rather know at once.”

His eye seeks the travelling-clock standing on the table beside him, and as he turns somewhat to get an exacter view of it, she notes with how much greater ease and freedom he can move.

“I have come to stay the night.”

“_The night!_”

“Yes; the night. My men have left me and gone to London.”

She answers colourlessly, looking straight before her; but through her drooped eyelids her spirit sees the almost incredulous delight of his.

There is a moment’s pause; next, in a long sigh of relief, come the words--

“Then we shall have time for everything!”

She smiles with slow relish of and acquiescence in his thought, despite the apparent protest in her--

“That is rather comprehensive, isn’t it?”

“I mean,” he continues, eagerly sitting up, and leaning on his elbow, “that after your former visits I have always felt that we--that I had not made the most of them; but that I had egotistically frittered away our time”--neither of them notes the significance of the plural pronoun--“talking of myself.”

“Did you talk of yourself?” she asks. “I think your memory plays you false then. If you had, I should,” with embarrassed playfulness, “know more about you than I do.”

“What do you know? What do you care to know?”

“I know that you have had a bullet through your left lung, and one that passed very close to your heart; and that, under these circumstances, it would be wiser not to gesticulate much,” she answers, with a pretty air of admonishment, and of recalling to both their minds her temporary function, which seems to him to sit upon her more exquisitely than any of her former expressions or gestures.

“Did I gesticulate?” he asks. “One gets rather tired of moving nothing but one’s head, and you must not be hard upon me to-day, for I am rather down on my luck. At least I _was_!”

“About Féodorovna?”

“Oh no! At least--of course yes. But that was not what I was alluding to. I have seen”--eyes and hands seeking among the newspapers with which the bed is strewn--“that one of my pals has been badly hit.”

In a moment she is beside him. “Let me help you. Which paper is it in?”

“In them all! It is official from Lord Roberts.” He has found the paragraph, and hands it to her, indicating it with a pale fore finger.

“On February 28th, General ---- and his staff narrowly escaped being captured by a party of the enemy, and were only saved by the presence of mind and gallantry of Captain Greene of the ---- Hussars. Captain Greene had been sent back by the General to order a company of infantry up to the kopje taken on the previous night by the Australian Bushmen. On his way he saw superior numbers of the enemy creeping up a donga, with the obvious intention of surprising General ---- and his staff. With great presence of mind he galloped across ground in full view of the enemy, ordering up reinforcements. Having accomplished his object, Captain Greene recrossed the bullet-swept zone to inform the General of the position, in doing which he was severely wounded in the head and neck, but, though reeling in his saddle, regained the kopje, imparted his discovery, and thereby averted an otherwise inevitable disaster.”

Lavinia’s eyes race through the record, and, having done so, raise themselves to Binning’s. Passionately alive as she is to deeds of daring, at this moment the desire to find something consoling to say to the hero’s friend is even more prominent in her mind and look than admiration of the valiant act.

“It says ‘severely,’ not ‘dangerously’” is her low-voiced comment; “and even ‘dangerously’ does not always mean _mortally_. You were put in as ‘dangerously.’”

He thanks her with an eye-flash for the recollection; but a moment later his hands, so quiet in their patience generally, are uneasily pulling at the embroidered coverlet, which Féodorovna has contributed from her treasures to his luxury, and which Nurse Blandy _will_ call a “bed-spread.”

“I cannot think why they do not let me get up. Roots has promised that I shall be able to return to duty by the end of May; and here we are at the beginning!”

_The end of May!_ It is, then, to the same spot in time that his eyes and heart are directed, as are her own; but with how unimaginable a difference! To him the end of May is to bring release, liberty, return to the “bullet-swept zones,” to the cold veldt, the ambush, and the sniping. Yes, but also to the comradeship after which his soul is lusting. While to _her_!

“May is young yet,” she says, forcing her lips into a reassuring smile. “Dr. Roots has twenty-five days in which to keep his word.”

His hands cease their restless plucking at the counterpane, and a change passes over his face. Has he divination to read beneath the mask of her smile? she asks herself with a sort of terror.

“Twenty-five days!” he repeats softly. “They are a great many; and yet I can fancy their seeming very few.”

Her self-command does not go so far as to furnish her with a comment upon this thrilling truism; and the air upon which his next words steal out seems to have been stilled to receive them.

“I wonder upon how many of those twenty-five I shall have a sight of you?”

“Let us take short views of life, as Sidney Smith bids us,” she answers, involuntarily moving her shoulders, as if to shake off from them a load which, at the moment, seems to press as heavily as did the bursting wallet of his sins upon good Christian’s bowed back. “I will come as often as I can be spared from home.”

At that they regard one another steadily, each conveying to the other’s consciousness their knowledge of how much more than appears the phrase carries.

“You have naturally _a great deal to do_ just now?”

“Yes.”

It is not true; but what is the use of explaining that the dull change--dull, except in the one awful main fact of her wifehood--causes little alteration in the outward framework of her life? Again the room seems irksomely still. Is it possible that to two pairs of ears even the swish of Miss Prince’s skirts would be welcome? In one respect Lavinia might meet that lady with a clear conscience, since she has undoubtedly obeyed her behest of allowing the wounded man to choose his own topic; but it can hardly be said _to_ have agreed with him, judging by the grey shadows on his face. Yet he will not leave the theme that has brought them there.

“It is to be on the 28th?”

“Yes.”

He has leant back on the pillows, which are propped into a more convalescent slant than on the day when she had first seen him lying flat and bloodless upon them. Yet he has reusurped the privilege granted to those _in extremis_; and she grows restless under the insistence of his eyes.

“I should like to give you a present.”

“Oh, why should you?”

There is no mistaking her start, and the pain and dissent in her tone.

“You had rather that I did not?”

“Much rather.”