The Shield of Silence Part 57

Joan dwelt upon her failure--her longing to go to Pat.

These items Cameron recorded in a small red book, for his memory was none too good and he was busy to a dangerous degree.

Then, again, the sick girl depicted the night of the storm--the shock and consequent flight.

"But," she pleaded piteously, holding the strong hand that anch.o.r.ed her to life, "he won! he won, and it is always going to be all right. Oh! if he could only know!"

There would be a pause always ending in: "I want Pat."

"Where is--Pat?" Cameron ventured.

"Home!" And then, weakly, but with a wrenching pathos, Joan sang--"_I'll get to--Scotland_--no! _home_--before you!"

"Come, come, now!" Cameron pressed the thin form down. "You know you've got to live--for Pat."

"Yes--for Pat." And then Joan would sleep.

It was a day in late May that Cameron noticed a change in his case. She was weaker, but steadier. She seemed to connect him with something in the recent past, and that encouraged him. All her previous conscious moments had been like detached flashes.

"What was it you said I must live for?" she asked Cameron. "I've forgotten."

"For everything," he replied, throwing off his coat and gripping the promising moment. "You're not the kind to slink out. Besides, you've got to tell me about your folks. Give them a chance to prove themselves and set things straight." Cameron watched the struggle on the thin face.

"And there is--Pat!" he added.

Joan looked amazed and then quivered.

"Yes, Pat, of course!"

There was a long pause, the consciousness was seeking something to which it might cling. Something forever eluding it.

A day or two later Cameron brought the dog into the sick room. Joan turned as she heard steps.

"Cuff!" she cried and then, as the dog leaped on to her, she sobbed and murmured over and over: "Pat's little Cuff; Pat's little Cuff."

Her way on ahead was safer after that--safer but more secretive.

As Joan got control of her thoughts she became more silent and watchful. She questioned the nurse and found out where she was and how long she had been there; she smiled with her old touch of humour when she was called Miss Lamb but gave thanks that she had a name not her own!

She regarded Cameron with deep grat.i.tude, but drove him to a corner by insisting that he tell her how much she owed him.

Cameron, having her purse under lock and key, at home, told her she owed the hospital fifty dollars.

At that Joan laughed, and the sound gave Cameron more hope than he had known for some time, but it seemed to mark, also, Joan's complete self-control.

Often she lay for hours with closed eyes and wondered with a bit of self-pity why she had not been discovered? Had she so completely dropped from the lives of those she loved that they had forgotten her? She did not know, for some time to come, of the letters to her that were returned to The Gap! She was never to know, fully, the anguish that Doris Fletcher was enduring in her mistaken determination not to hamper the girl who was testing her strength.

While David Martin rated her for ingrat.i.tude and carelessness; while Nancy's face set in resentment and disapproval, Doris smiled and insisted that she would not judge until Joan explained.

"Of course," she added, "if anything were really wrong Joan or Patricia would write. They are probably away on business--and at the worst they will soon let me know when to expect them. Joan was always a poor correspondent."

"Would you like to have me go to Chicago?" Martin asked.

"David, would you go if--it were your boy?" Doris hung on his answer.

"I jolly well wouldn't! I'd let the scamp learn the whole lesson."

"Very well, then I do not want you to go to Chicago!"

Joan, slowly recovering, could hardly have explained to herself why she was so secretive, but more and more she determined not to go to The Gap and open her heart to Doris until she was able to command the situation.

Since she had, for some reason, dropped from their lives, she would wait. Meanwhile, her heart ached with the pity of it all.

She wondered how the name of Lamb had ever been attached to her, and finally she decided to ask Cameron about it.

It was Cameron's custom, now, to delay his call upon Joan until late afternoon. When he was on his way to dinner he took a half hour or more to sit beside her bed and indulge in various emotions.

So long as Joan had been a desperate case she had no individuality at all, except scientifically.

She was bathed, and eventually her hair was cut, not shaved--the nurse put in a plea at the cutting point--and she was fed and made to sleep; but gradually, as she emerged from the shadowy boundary, she a.s.sumed different proportions.

Cameron concluded that her reticence, now her brain was growing clearer, came from a determined effort to cover her tracks and perhaps those of a man--unworthy, undoubtedly, and Cameron believed this man to be the "Pat" to whom his patient had so frantically referred in her raving.

There had evidently been a strenuous scene in which Pat had figured and through which he and the girl had emerged rather deplorably.

Cameron also arrived at the conclusion that the young woman in his care must be made to take a keener interest in life than she seemed to be taking, or her recovery would be slower than it ought to be, according to physical indications. The growing silence worried him; he wished that he could gain her confidence, not in order to gratify curiosity, but to enable him to be of real service.

One afternoon he called at the hospital reinforced with a box of roses.

The flowers had an immediate effect upon Joan. She buried her face in them and closed her eyes, and then Cameron saw large, slow tears escaping the close-shut lids. He welcomed these. Presently Joan asked:

"How is--is--Cuff?"

"Oh! he's ripping," Cameron replied; "after seeing you he seemed to size up the situation and come to terms."

"How--how did you happen to know his name?" This had been a burning curiosity for the past week.

"You happened to mention it when you keeled over in my office. Cuff was apparently your one responsibility. We found your name in a letter--Miss Lamb."

The roses hid the quivering face while a new and hurting question for the first time entered in. Then:

"Did--did I go to your office? I thought I--was brought here from----"

"You were brought here, all right," Cameron felt his way slowly along the opening path; "Miss Brown and I had rather a vigorous trip with you--in my automobile."

"Cuff belonged to--to Pat!" Joan remarked, irrelevantly. She was forcing her thought back to the blank period lying between the hotel and the hospital. Gradually it brightened and a smothered sob found place in the roses.

"So that is why they have left me alone!" Joan reflected; "but oh! how frightened they must be!"

"I rather imagine Pat must be fairly well used up wondering about you,"