In the Van or The Builders Part 49

"Ah!" she said, shaking her head; "but how many of the wounded will live?"

"All of them; judging by your habit, they will simply die a natural death."

"How do you make that out?" she asked, looking up quickly.

"Simply, that by putting them in water in the shade, as is your custom, the flowers will live as long as when left on their stems in the garden."

"Have you found the philosopher's stone yet?" she questioned with an arch look.

"No," he replied, "only the observer's; but have you heard the latest news? It only came an hour ago."

"No, what is it, please?"

"Sir George Head, who has been stationed with the men in Montreal all winter, will be here in a week; and, with what remains of the --nth Royals, will sail at once for England."

The announcement dropped very quietly from the Captain's lips, pregnant though it was with so much to himself. Maud started and turned pale. The mention of Sir George and the Captain's company in the same breath, placed the Doctor and the Major in a relations.h.i.+p that she had heretofore declined to realize. Something seemed imminent, she hardly knew what.

"Which means that you will go with him," she said at last avoiding his eye.

"Yes, Miss Maud, that is what it means; and besides the gruesome and terrible things that have happened, the beautiful and happy days I have spent in Halifax will be at an end."

"If the gruesome things have surpa.s.sed the pleasant ones, you will rejoice when all is over," said Maud gently, regaining her self-control.

"In such case I know I should."

"Women are different from men," was his comment. "Perhaps men do not balance things so clearly. With us I fear every experience of life stands alone. The terrible reality of the slaying of a thousand men in a night may be one thing; but the presence of a single thread of suns.h.i.+ne which enthralls you and penetrates your whole being is another."

"You are very poetic as well as practical, Major Morris, and I think you are right," said Maud, determined not to understand him. "What you say of the soldiers is terribly sad; but about the suns.h.i.+ne, we have many threads of suns.h.i.+ne here. I was born in Halifax and never even crossed the ocean; but from all I hear we have five times as much suns.h.i.+ne in Nova Scotia as you have in England."

"Egad! I suspect you are right," was his answer, as she went off in a little ripple of laughter, her cheeks aglow with color. "It must be the sunlight that freshens your beauty and puts that damask upon your skin."

"Now you flatter. But 'pon my word it is a good thing. It makes you brown as a berry in March, red as a rose in June, and blue as a plum in November."

"I thought it was the wind that did the first as well as the last," he said, watching her ever-changing face.

"It helps," she replied demurely. "But Old Sol always does his share."

"Well," he said dryly, "in my case the order will have to be changed. I expect to go into the plum business in June."

"It is said to be a very fine industry," she said, looking downwards and pulling the petals from the twig of lilac that she had broken from a neighboring bush; "but in all conscience, I always thought you army men looked down upon trade."

"No, indeed," he returned, smiling broadly, as he took in the humor of the situation. "I don't believe in looking down upon any honest calling, even raising plums."

And they both went off in a peal of laughter, though before she was through, Maud's eyelids glistened with tears.

CHAPTER XL.

"So he thinks that a flower severed from the soil and placed in the shade will flourish as well as in its native sunlight," Maud mused after he went away that morning. "Had he a special meaning I wonder?--and about balances, his words contained one sure enough. What is that English home of his like, anyway? And his people, sedate and punctilious, just as my mother says hers were? No wonder he talked about the shade. They say over there it rains seventy days and s.h.i.+nes seven.

If I had let him he would have asked me to give up our glorious suns.h.i.+ne again. Ah, me, life is a funny problem anyway! There's the east and the west, and here I am in the middle. Gadzooks! as my father would say, I wish I knew what to do. I suppose the Doctor will be coming back soon--to buy new clothes of course! Funny, how he took me at my word when I set him down last year. Since then, although endearing enough, he never talks out and out of love--waiting till he comes, I suppose--and not very definite upon that either. Perhaps some dusky maiden in the west may yet steal the young man's heart away. What of Little Moon, the Ojibway chief's daughter, that he raved about in one of his letters?

Pshaw! She would never suit Beaumont! Well! I like Major Morris with his English drawl, his bravery, his knee breeches, and his shade out of sunlight. And I like Dr. Beaumont with his pa.s.sion, his Mon Dieu's, his life in the glorious west, and his controlled faithfulness. But by my faith, do I love either well enough for marriage? Ah, there's the rub, Maud Maxwell! What a little minx you are anyway, not to know your own mind better than that!"

Impatiently she tossed off her hat and finished fixing her tulips. But she did it with unusual care that morning, and an hour afterwards her mother said she never saw them so beautifully arranged before.

The preparation for Eugenia's wedding monopolized the long hours during those May days; and Maud did not have much time for thought. There were clothes to select, gowns to make, milliners and dressmakers to see, boots and gloves fresh from England to be examined and selected with a connoisseur's eye; and in all Maud did her part.

Eugenia, too, had set her heart on seeing her sister marry the Major, and having settled all the preliminaries of her own nuptials in her own decided and placid way, she was prepared during the little time that remained to devote herself to furthering her sister's interests. Hence, instead of retreating to a quiet corner each evening with her lover, the Major and Maud invariably made two of her party; and so intense was Dr.

Fairchilds' devotion, that anything that Genie suggested immediately became law.

In the evenings they played whist, or visited the Art Loan Exhibition, which the good people of Halifax had got up for the benefit of the orphans and widows of Canadian soldiers. Or they went to the music hall to see amateur artists, officers of the garrison, and the young people of Halifax, perform in the name of the same good cause. And so each evening the four inseparables were almost invariably together.

Maud enjoyed it too, for the Major's visits would soon be over; and by judicious fencing she succeeded in parrying anything like a direct declaration again. Each night she went to bed thankful that the end had not yet come; and yet suspicious of what the future day might bring to pa.s.s.

One evening, however, fortune favored Morris. He had gotten himself up with elaborate care, for this was the last night they could devote to whist; and probably the last evening that he would be off duty, for Sir George's s.h.i.+p had been sighted and would be in harbor that night.

"It grieves me to disappoint you," said Maud, after the usual greeting.

"My sister and Dr. Fairchilds are out driving. They expected to be back early, but a messenger has just arrived with the news that the Doctor was detained professionally on account of an accident, and it will be impossible for them to return for an hour yet."

"Ah! I am sorry for ourselves as well as the injured," said the Major, smiling. "But can we not utilize the time? Just the chance for a talk, the very thing that I have been praying the G.o.ds to grant us this long time."

"I did not know that your prayers were so earnest," she laughingly returned, as she picked up a trifle of needlework to help her thoughts run smoothly.

"Yes, and I must speak again," he continued. "We can be serious as well as jolly."

"My dear Major!" exclaimed Maud with a light laugh. "We have the jolliest talks every time we meet. Don't talk of seriousness, please."

"One cannot be merry forever," was his answer.

"Genie says we should always pursue the even tenor of our way," was her quick response. "So I propose that while I use my needle you read aloud either 'Young's Night Thoughts,' or Gray's Elegy,' as a tonic to our gaiety.

"Not a bad idea," said the Major, picking up a book at random. "Perhaps this will do as well."

And he commenced to read Burns's sonnet:

"'Oh, wad some power the Gifty gie us To see ourselves as ithers see us.'"

"That's just it," interrupted Maud. "Now I'll express your sentiments with which I entirely agree. 'She's a rollicking, jolly girl, full of dash and nonsense, doesn't care a fig for anybody; as for falling in love, that's impossible, for she hasn't a heart any bigger than a chipmunk.' How will that do for a commencement?"

"Only fairly well. Pray go on."

A spark of fire flashed from her eyes as she continued:

"'She's got the crazy idea that she lives in a glorious country, where the sun s.h.i.+nes ten months in the year, and she'd rather die an old maid in it than go to another one for all the wealth of Ind.'"

"How eloquent you are!" he said, stroking his moustache over compressed lips and looking toward the ceiling. "Should my rendition come next?"

"That would be delightful!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands in well-a.s.sumed mirth. "You tell me what I think of you, which will be your own sentiment of yourself."