Kildares of Storm Part 40

The girl was paying little attention. She watched Channing fearfully. He was still unconscious, livid; but the school-teacher appeared to feel no alarm. He went deftly and quite unhurried about his preparations, getting out a hypodermic syringe, a bottle of chloroform, placing certain instruments in the oven, others in boiling water.

Jacqueline s.h.i.+vered; but she went on with the conversation gallantly, striving to face the situation as her mother or Jemima would have faced it.

"I know one other man who can cook, but he's a minister, and they're always different, somehow. He learned in the mountains, too, by the way, because there was n.o.body but himself and his father to take care of his sick mother. He learned all sorts of things to help her ... how to sew on b.u.t.tons, and mend clothes, and sweep--He can even darn stockings! And he's not a bit ashamed of it."

"I should think," murmured the other, "that he might be even proud of it. You find him unmanly, perhaps?"

"Unmanly! Philip?" The tone of her voice answered him. "Why, he's the manliest man I know!"

The teacher said nothing further; but she got the impression that he was listening, waiting for her to go on.

"Do you know," she said, "I feel as if I knew you, as if I might have known you all my life. Have I never seen you before?"

"I think not," he replied, in a low voice.--Who can tell how much is seen by little eyes newly opened upon the world? Perhaps vision is clearer then than afterwards, when speech and sound and crowding thoughts come to obscure it.

"Have you always lived in these mountains?"

He answered with a slight hesitation. "I came here seventeen years ago."

"And do you never go down to the lowlands?"

"No."

"Then I can't have known you before," she said disappointedly, "because I am only seventeen myself."

A shrewder observer--Jemima for instance--might have noted his hesitancy, might have realized that coming to a place does not imply remaining there continuously.

But Jacqueline was not shrewd. She took people literally, and understood just what they intended her to understand. The art of prevarication was unknown to her; though, as has been seen, she could lie upon occasion, with a large and primitive simplicity.

"Now then," said the teacher briskly. "If you are ready, young lady, we shall go after that bullet."

She shrank away, quivering, all her fine pretense at composure shattered. "O-oh, but you don't expect _me_ to help you? I can't, I never can help with things like that! I'm not like mother and Jemmy. I couldn't bear it. He might groan! I can't stand it when they groan!"

The other frowned. "You are not a coward, I think, afraid of a little blood?"

"It's not the blood--though I don't like that a bit. It's the pain. It's when they groan. Please, please!--It's horrible enough when you don't care for them, but when you do--"

His face softened wonderfully. "Ah!--Yes. It is worse when you care, my dear; but all the more reason for helping. Come, I have no one else. You shall keep me from hurting him by holding this little cone over his face--see, how simple. He will certainly groan, and you will certainly bear it. Come, then!"

Jacqueline, sick and s.h.i.+vering, stuck to her post. "If Jemmy could only see me now!" was the thought with which she stiffened herself. She tried not to listen to the moaning voice--"They're killing me! Take it away.

Oh, _don't_ hurt me any more--"

"You said it wouldn't hurt him!" she muttered once, fiercely.

"And it does not--only his imagination. He has a vivid imagination, this chap."

"Of course he has!" She scented disrespect, and was quick to resent it.

"He's a very famous author,--Mr. Percival Channing."

"So?" But the school-teacher did not appear to be greatly impressed. "A healthy-looking author, at least, which is in his favor. This should not give him any trouble.--Aha! Now we have it."

He held up the bullet for her to see.

"Now then," he added in a moment, "you shall go into my little guest-room there while I watch over our patient, and sleep like the heroine you are for many hours."

Jacqueline demurred indignantly. "Leave him? Indeed I won't! It's my place to nurse him, not yours. Go to sleep yourself!"

He did not venture to drive Woman out of her natural sphere.

"As you like. Just rest on one of these cots, then, while I attend to some further matters. I shall rouse you when I am ready to leave."

"You won't go far?"

"Oh, no. I shall be within call."

Jacqueline stretched herself luxuriously. The cot was very comfortable.

"I shan't go to sleep, of course," she said....

Once during the night she stirred suddenly. "Philip will be worried,"

she murmured.

A quiet voice answered beside her, "No, I shall send word to him."

She lifted her heavy lids. "Oh, is that you, Phil?" she muttered contentedly, and dozed off again....

It was not such an odd mistake. The school-teacher, sitting there beside her, had taken off his spectacles, and the eyes she met when hers opened, were eyes she had known and trusted all her life; gleaming, kindly, quizzical eyes, astonis.h.i.+ngly blue by contrast with a dark face.

He tried not to cough for fear of disturbing her. Until dawn and afterwards he sat there between the two beds, sometimes rising quietly to minister to Channing's needs, but for the most part gazing at the sleeping girl, hungrily, wistfully, often through a mist of tears; searching for resemblances, and finding them.

"Her child!" he whispered to himself. "Her little girl, the babe that was on her breast!--So like, and yet unlike. A hint of pliancy here, of weakness perhaps, that is not Kate. Wilfulness with Kate, never weakness--And already a woman, already come to the time of sacrifice.

Her little girl!--"

He leaned over Channing, studying intently and anxiously the nervous, sensuous, intelligent face in its betraying relaxation of slumber. He shook his head presently, as if in doubt.

"But she will not see; perhaps she will never see. Yes, she is Kate's own child!" He sighed, and shrugged.

"At least there is Philip on guard," he said to himself, finally. "My st.u.r.dy, pious young Atlas, with the world so heavy on his shoulders!--"

The smile on the teacher's lips was mocking and sad, and very tender.

CHAPTER XXIX

It was broad daylight when Jacqueline was awakened by some one calling her by name, and shaking her none too gently.