The Following of the Star Part 43

As if conscious of some unexpected development, all stood away from it, in silence.

Diana and the doctor drew near. Their eyes met across the stretcher.

"It is David," said Diana. "He has come back to me. Dear G.o.d, he has come back to me!"

Her grey eyes widened. She gazed at the doctor, in startled unseeing anguish.

"Just help me a moment, Mrs. Rivers, will you?" said Sir Deryck's quiet, steady voice. "You and I will place him on the bed; and then, with Dr.

Walters's help, we can soon see what to do next. Put your hands so....

That is right. Now, lift carefully. Do not shake him."

Together they lifted David's wasted form, and laid it gently on the bed.

"Go and open the window," whispered Sir Deryck to Diana. "Stand there a moment or two; then close it again. Do as I tell you, my dear girl. Do it, _for David's sake_."

Mechanically, Diana obeyed. She knew that if she wished to keep control over herself, she must not look just yet on that dear dying face; she must not see the thin travel-stained figure.

She stood at the open window, and the breath of night air seemed to restore her powers of thought and action. She steadied herself against the window frame, and lifted her eyes. Above the forest of chimney stacks, shone one brilliant star.

Her Boy was going quickly--beyond the stars. But he had come back to her first.

Suddenly she understood why he had stopped the correspondence. He was on the eve of his brave struggle to reach home. And why he had begged her to remain in England--oh, G.o.d, of course! Not because he did not want her, but because he himself was coming home. Oh, David, David!

She turned back into the room.

Skilful hands were undressing David.

Something lay on the floor. Mechanically Diana stooped and picked it up.

It was his little short black jacket; the rather threadbare "old friend."

Diana gave one loud sudden cry, and put her hand to her throat.

Sir Deryck stepped quickly between her and the bed; then led her firmly to the door.

"Go to your room," he said. "It is so far better that you should not be here just now. Everything possible shall be done. You know you can confidently leave him to us. David himself would wish you to leave him to us. Sit down and face the situation calmly. He may regain consciousness, and if he does, you must be ready, and you must have yourself well in hand."

The doctor put her gently out, through the half-open door.

Diana turned, hesitating.

"You would call me--if?"

"Yes," said the doctor; "I will call you--then."

Diana still held David's jacket. She slipped her hand into the breast-pocket, and drew out a sealed envelope.

"Sir Deryck," she said, "this is a letter from David to me, which I was to receive after his death. Do you think I may read it now?"

The doctor glanced back at the bed. A nurse stood waiting with the hypodermic and the strychnine for which he had asked. The house surgeon, on one knee, had his fingers on David's wrist. He met the question in the doctor's eyes, and shook his head.

"Yes, I think you may read it now," said Sir Deryck gently; and closed the door.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

DIANA LEARNS THE TRUTH

Diana pa.s.sed to her room, with the sense of all around her being dream-like and unreal.

When the unexpected, beyond all imagining, suddenly takes place in a life, its every-day setting loses reality; its commonplace surroundings become intangible and vague. There seemed no solidity about the stone floors and pa.s.sages of the hospital; no reality about the ceaseless roar of London traffic without.

The only real things to Diana, as she sank into her armchair, were that she held David's coat clasped in her arms; that David's sealed letter was in her hand; that David himself lay, hovering between life and death, just down the corridor.

At first she could only clasp his coat to her breast, whispering brokenly: "He has come back to me! David, David! He has come back to me!"

Then she realised how all-important it was, in case he suddenly recovered consciousness, that she should know at once what he had said to her in his farewell letter.

With an effort she opened it, drew out the closely written sheets, and read it; holding the worn and dusty coat still clasped closely to her.

"MY DEAR WIFE,--When you read these lines, I shall have reached the Land from whence there is no return--'the Land that is very far off.'

"Very far off; yet not so far as Central Africa. Perhaps, as you are reading, Diana, I shall be nearer to you than we think; nearer, in spirit, than now seems possible. So do not let this farewell letter bring you a sense of loneliness, my wife. If spirits can draw near, and hover round their best beloved, mine will bend over you, as you read.

"Does it startle you, that I should call you this? Be brave, dear heart, and read on; because--as I shall be at last in the Land from whence there is no return--I am going to tell you the whole truth; trusting you to understand, and to forgive.

"Oh, my wife, my beloved! I have loved you from the very first; loved you with my whole being; as any man who loved _you_, would be bound to love.

"I did not know it, myself, until after I had made up my mind to do as you wished about our marriage. I had sat up all night, pondering the problem; and at dawn, after I had realised that without transgressing against the Divine Will I could marry you, I suddenly knew--in one revealing flash--that I loved you, my beloved--_I loved you_.

"How I carried the thing through, without letting it be more than you wished, I scarcely know now. It seems to me, looking back upon those days from this great solitude, that it was a task beyond the strength of mortal man.

"And it was, Diana. But not beyond the strength of my love for you. If, as you look back upon our wedding, and the hours which followed, and--and the parting, my wife, it seems to you that I pulled it through all right, gauge, by that, the strength of my love.

"Oh, that evening of our wedding-day! May I tell you? It is such a relief to be able to tell you, at last. It cannot harm you to learn how deeply you have been loved. It need not sadden you, Diana; because every man is the better for having given his best.

"The longing for you, during those first hours, was so terrible. I went down to my cabin--you remember that jolly big cabin, 'with the compliments of the company'--but your violets stood on the table, everything spoke of you; yet your sweet presence was not there; and each revolution of the screw widened the distance between us--the distance which was never to be recrossed.

"I tried to pray, but could only groan. I took off my coat; but when I turned to hang it up, I saw my hat, hanging where you had placed it. I slipped on my coat again. I could not stay in this fragrance of violets, and in the desperate sense of loneliness they caused.

"I mounted to the hurricane deck, and paced up and down, up and down. For one wild moment I thought I would go off, when the pilot left; hurry back to you, confess all, and throw myself on your mercy--my wife, my wife!

"Then I knew I could never be such a hound as to do that.

You had chosen me, because you trusted me. You had wedded me, on the distinct understanding that it was to mean nothing of what marriage usually means. I had agreed to this; therefore you were the one woman on the face of G.o.d's earth, whom I was bound in honour not to seek to win.

"Yet, I wanted you, my wife; and the hunger of that need was such fierce agony.