The Puritans Part 19

He broke off suddenly, awkward from shyness and genuine feeling. He looked up, however, to meet a glance so rea.s.suring that he felt at once at ease.

"It is time that it ceased to be strange," she returned. "We must try before you go to make you more accustomed to being looked after a little."

He returned her kind look with a grateful smile.

"You are too generous," he said. "I must not trespa.s.s on your good-nature. I think that I could manage to get back to Boston to-day if the trains are running."

"The trains are running, but that is no reason why you should think of running too. We mean to mend you before we let you go."

"But"--

"There is no 'but' about it," Mrs. Morison declared, speaking more seriously. "Berenice and I have settled it, and we are accustomed to having our own way. You are selfish to wish that we should be left with all the obligation on our shoulders."

"Obligation?" repeated he. "How on earth is there any obligation but mine?"

"Do you think that there is no obligation in owing to you Bee's life?"

He stared at her in complete confusion. He made a vain effort to recall clearly what had happened in the car. He remembered the crash, the din, the pain, the horrible clutch on his arm, the choking reek of the smoke, his frantic fear for Berenice, but all these things seemed blurred in his mind like a landscape obscured by a night-fog. Only one memory stood out clear and sharp; that was the joy of holding Berenice clasped in his arms, and of thinking that they would die together. He felt the blood mount in his cheek at the thought, and he hastened to speak, lest his hostess should divine what was in his mind.

"Why do you say that?" he asked. "It was not I that saved her. I was not even conscious when she was taken out."

Mrs. Morison smiled, and touched lightly with the tip of her finger the bandaged arm which lay on the outside of the coverlid.

"We won't dispute about it," said she. "The proof is here. Let it go, if you like; but we shall remember."

"But," protested Maurice, "it wouldn't be honest for me to let you think that I did anything for Miss Morison. I should have been only too glad to help her, but I couldn't. I wish what you think could have been true; but since it isn't, I can't let you think it is."

Mrs. Morison let the matter drop, but her kind old eyes were brighter than ever. She contented herself with saying that at least he was to remain with them, and need not try to escape; then she led the talk to more indifferent matters. Her hand, worn and thin, the blue veins relieved under the delicate skin, lay on the white coverlid like a beautiful carving of ivory. As Maurice looked at it, it brought into his mind the hand of his mother, as in her last days, when he sat by her bedside, it had rested in the same fashion. The tears sprang in his eyes at the memory, half-blinding him. As he tried to brush them away unseen he caught the sympathetic look of his hostess, and its sweetness overpowered him still more. Meeting his glance, she leaned forward tenderly, taking his fingers in her own.

"What is it?" asked she softly.

"Your hand," he answered simply. "It looked so like my mother's."

"Poor boy," she murmured.

He returned the pressure of her clasp, and then the masculine dislike for effusiveness a.s.serted itself.

"I'm afraid I'm weaker than I thought," he said shamefacedly. "I'm almost hysterical."

She glanced at him shrewdly, and smiling, rose.

"For all that," she returned, "you are to get up. Dr. Murray says that it will be better, and you would get hopelessly tired of bed before to-morrow morning. I'll send you something in the way of clothing, and we'll let you play invalid in a dressing-gown to-day. If Mehitabel can help you, you've only to ring. I dare say that you can do something with one hand."

"One never knows until he tries," Wynne answered.

Maurice wished to ask for a barber, but could not pluck up courage.

When he was alone he gazed ruefully into the mirror at his stoutly sprouting black beard, which so little understood the exigencies of the situation that it persisted in growing as vigorously as ever.

"If I stay here a couple of days without shaving," he mused, "I shall simply be hideous. Well, my vanity very likely needs a lesson. What did Mrs. Morison mean by my saving Miss Morison's life? I certainly could not have said so when I was unconscious. It must be from something she herself has said. If I could only remember what did happen after the car went over!"

His bath and toilet were difficult and unsatisfactory enough. The linen with which he was provided, however, smelled sweetly of lavender, and the odor seemed to bear him away into a pleasant reverie, in which he was chiefly conscious of the pleasure of being near--of being near, he a.s.sured himself, so delightful and sympathetic an old lady as Mrs.

Morison. A feeling of well-being, of content, saturated him. Behind his thought of his hostess and his denial to himself that the presence under the same roof of Berenice was the true source of his happiness, lay the consciousness that the latter regarded him as her preserver. He resolutely thrust the thought down deep into his heart, but he could not forget it.

Before he was ready to leave his chamber Mehitabel brought him a telegram from Mrs. Staggchase, to whom he had sent a line announcing his safety. It was merely a friendly word with an offer to come to him if he needed her; but it changed the whole current of his thoughts. He seemed to see the mocking smile of his cousin as she read that he was staying with the Morisons, and to hear again her words about his period of temptation. He resolved, however, to put the whole question of the future out of his mind. Somehow there must be a way to steer safely between his duty and his inclination. He failed to reflect that he who decides to compromise between duty and desire has already sacrificed the former.

Berenice greeted him on his appearance in the library, whither he descended rather shakily. She held in her hand a telegram when he entered under the escort of Mehitabel, and her cheeks were flushed.

Instantly into his mind came the feeling that her color was connected with the message which the yellow paper brought, and he became jealous in a flash. There was no possible reason why he should scent a rival in the mere presence in his lady's hand of a telegram, unless there were an intangible shade of self-consciousness in her manner. He had come downstairs eager to see her and to a.s.sure himself that she was really no worse for the accident, but the sight of the paper instantly changed his mood. In crossing the half-dozen steps from the door to the fire Maurice shifted from frank eagerness to aggrieved distrust. He said good-morning as he entered in the tone of a lover; he spoke as he reached the hearth with the formality of an acquaintance.

He was too keenly alive to the change in his feelings not to know that he showed it. He endeavored to hide his perturbation under an appearance of simple politeness, but he was sure that she watched him and that she was puzzled.

"Well," she said, as she arranged a cushion in the big easy-chair beside the crackling wood fire, "you have the genuine scarred veteran air."

"Please don't bother to wait on me, Miss Morison," he answered, trying to speak naturally, and painfully aware that he did not succeed. "I'm all right, except for the scratch on my arm."

"Scratch, indeed," she returned with a smile which almost disarmed him.

"How many st.i.tches did the doctor have to put in?"

"'Bout enough for a week's mending," interpolated Mehitabel, putting him into the chair with an air of authority, and preparing to retire.

"There, now stay there till you want to go upstairs again, and then send for me."

"Indeed," he protested, laughing, "I am not helpless. You can't make a baby of me just for a disabled arm."

"I suppose," Berenice said, "that I ought to be willing to say that I had rather the wound were in my back, where it would have been but for you; only as a matter of fact I shouldn't be telling the truth. I am sorry for you, Mr. Wynne; but I can't help being glad for myself."

She seemed to be setting herself to win him from his ill-humor, and he had to look into the fire away from her lips and eyes to prevent himself from yielding. He fortified his resistance, which he felt to be weakening, by the reflection that it was his duty not to be carried away by her charm. He called upon his religious scruples to aid him in holding to his pa.s.sion-born jealousy.

"There," Miss Morison said, when he had been properly ensconced and Mehitabel had departed, "now it is my duty to entertain you. What shall I do? My accomplishments are at your service. I can read, without stopping to spell out any except the very longest words. I can play two tunes on the mandolin, only that I've forgotten the middle of one and the other has a run in it that I always have to skip. The piano is too far off across the hall to be available; so that the little I can do in that way doesn't count. I can--let me see, I can teach you three solitaires, or play cribbage, or--I beg your pardon, I forgot."

"You forgot what?" he asked, so intent upon watching the sunlight filtering through her hair that he had hardly noticed what she said.

She looked at him questioningly.

"You don't play cards, perhaps?" she said tentatively.

"No," he answered. "In the country in my boyhood they weren't held in high repute, to say the least; and naturally we don't play at the Clergy House."

There was a brief interval of silence, during which he watched her, while she in her turn looked into the fire. When she spoke again it was in a different tone.

"I know," said she, "that you must think me frivolous, and that I can't be anything else; but"--

"Oh, no," he interrupted, "I never thought you frivolous."

She made an impulsive little gesture with one of her hands.

"Oh, you wouldn't put it in that way, I dare say. You'd call it being worldly, I suppose; but it comes to much the same thing."

Wynne could not understand what was the direction of her thoughts, and he was taken entirely by surprise when she leaned forward impulsively and took in hers his free hand.

"At least," she said, quickly and eagerly, "I can't forget that you saved my life, and I thank you from my heart if I don't know just how to do it in words."