The Wall Between Part 42

"Of course."

Jane turned to Martin; but he shook his head.

"You go," he said.

"I'll do whatever you want me to."

"I'd rather you went first."

"Just as you say. I won't stay long though."

After watching the two women disappear down the long, rubber-carpeted corridor, he began to pace the small, spotlessly neat office in which he had been asked to wait. It was a prim, barren room, heavy with the fumes of iodoform and ether. At intervals, the m.u.f.fled tread of a doctor or nurse pa.s.sing through the hall broke its stillness, but otherwise there was not a sound within its walls.

Martin walked back and forth until his solitude became intolerable. There were magazines on the table but he could not read. Would Jane never return? The moments seemed hours.

In his suspense he fell to every sort of pessimistic imagining. Suppose Lucy were worse? Suppose she declined to see him? Suppose she did not love him?

So sanguine had been his hopes, he had not seriously considered the latter possibility. The more he meditated on the thought of failing in his suit, the more wretched became his condition of mind. The torrent of words that he had come to speak slowly deserted his tongue until when Jane entered, a quarter of an hour later, wreathed in smiles, he was dumb with terror.

"She's ever so much better than I expected to find her," began his sister without preamble. "An' she was so glad to see me, poor soul! You can go up now with the nurse; only don't stay too long."

"Did you tell her----" began the discomfited Martin.

"I didn't tell her anything," Jane replied, "except that I was going to take her home with me in a day or two."

"Doesn't she know I'm here?"

"No."

"You don't know, then, whether she----"

"I don't know anything, Martin," Jane replied, nevertheless beaming on him with a radiant smile. "An' if I did I certainly shouldn't tell you. You an' Lucy must settle your affairs yourselves."

With this dubious encouragement and palpitating with uneasiness, Martin was forced to tiptoe out of the room in the wake of his white-robed conductor. As he walked down the long, quiet hall, he said to himself that every step was bringing him nearer to the crisis when he must speak, and still no words came to his lips. When, however, he turned from the dinginess of the pa.s.sageway into the sunny little room where Lucy lay, he forgot everything but Lucy herself.

She was resting against the pillows, her hair unbound, and her cheeks flushed to crimson. Never had she looked so beautiful. He stopped on the threshold, awed by the wonder of her maidenhood. Then he heard her voice.

"Martin!"

It was only a single word, but the yearning in it told him all he sought to know. In an instant he was on his knees beside her, kissing the brown hand that rested on the coverlid, touching his lips to the glory of her hair.

Jane, waiting in the meantime alone in the dull, whitewashed office, had ample opportunity to study every nail in its floor, count the slats in the slippery, varnished chairs, and speculate as to the ident.i.ty of the spectacled dignitaries whose portraits adorned the walls.

She planned her winter's wardrobe, decided what Mary, Eliza and herself should wear at the wedding, and mentally arranged every detail of the coming domestic upheaval. Having exhausted all these subjects, she began in quite indecent fashion to select names for her future nieces and nephews. The first boy should be Webster Howe. What a grand old name it would be! She prayed he would be tall like Martin, and have Lucy's eyes and hair. Ah, what a delight she and Mary and Eliza would have bringing up Martin's son and baking cookies for him!

It was just when she was mapping out the educational career of this same Webster Howe and was struggling to decide what college should be honored by his presence that Martin burst into the room. A guilty blush dyed Jane's virgin cheek.

Martin, however, took no notice of her abstraction. In fact he could scarcely speak coherently.

"It's all right, Jane," he cried. "I'm the happiest man on earth. Lucy loves me. Isn't it wonderful, unbelievable? We are goin' to be married right away, an' I'm to start buildin' the wall, so'st it will be done before the cold weather comes. We're goin' to leave a little gate in it for you an' Mary an' 'Liza to come through. An' we're goin' to put up a stone in the cemetery to Lucy's aunt with: _In grateful remembrance of Ellen Webster_ on it."

Jane sniffed.

"I can think of a better inscription than that," she remarked with unwonted tartness, lapsing into Scripture. "Carve on it:

"He that soweth iniquity shall reap vanity; and the rod of his anger shall fail."