Stories by American Authors Volume VII Part 17

Up in the master's home a single feeble ray was visible in the inhabited wing. Henry Denvil had fallen asleep in his chair. He awoke, looked at his watch, and rose. Eight o'clock. He caught a glimpse of his own face in the gla.s.s; it was pale and worn. He resumed his chair.

The clock ticked in-doors; the rain fell steadily out-of-doors. The lamp had been so placed that its rays fell on a portrait opposite his chair. This portrait represented his daughter Cecilia at the age of ten--a charming blonde head, skilfully treated by the artist, and the large eyes were turned full upon him with a frank intelligence. Henry Denvil was not of an imaginative temperament; his prime had been too fully occupied for idle reveries; but now solitude was rendering him sensitive to morbid influences. When he awoke he became vividly, intensely conscious of the gaze of this picture fixed on himself. He sat motionless, and studied it, instead of going out. Nine o'clock. A tap at the door, and M. Jacques Robin stood on the threshold, deferential in manner, wet as to garments, having awaited his guest for an hour. Henry Denvil laughed loudly, almost roughly, seized his hat, and sought the village tavern.

The play was reckless that night. The visitor was in the mood for high stakes. Monsieur Robin lost and won without the quiver of an eyelash or a change of hue in the dull opacity of his complexion. Henry Denvil lost and won with the veins growing knotted and prominent in forehead and temple, and his color deepening from red to crimson. Madame Robin, cool and quiet, crocheted little threads of silk together into a golden mesh with a sharp and slender needle, and from time to time served the gentlemen with wine.

Eleven o'clock. Some person tapped Henry Denvil on the shoulder. He glanced up impatiently, with bloodshot eyes. The landlord of the tavern gave him a telegram, while the official who had brought it waited at the door. He read:

"Come to us immediately. Cecilia has been run over. Tell me what to do.--AUGUSTA DENVIL."

Then he was standing outside in the dark night, the rain, chill and dreary as destiny, beating on his bare head, while the clouds rolled low, and the river sent up its murmur from the valley below. His little girl would be dead, he felt convinced, before he could reach her.

III.

"The nest of the blind bird is made by G.o.d."--_Armenian Proverb._

Christmas-day at Rome, as cold and crisp as any Northern festival, with a piercing Tramontane wind sweeping across the piazza, the Alban Hills snow-crested, as if cut in alabaster, and the fountains fringed with icicles.

A gay and brilliant Christmas for a holiday world, with roses blooming still in sheltered nooks; a devout Christmas for those prepared to read its beautiful meaning in ancient churches, each of which had found a voice in full choral harmonies on this day; a Christmas of silent and devout thankfulness for those escaped the shadow of death.

Cecilia Denvil had been hovering on the borderland of feverish delirium, where all is unreal, for weeks. Since the afternoon when the carriage-wheels of her mother had pa.s.sed over her, the present had been blotted out. She was in her own home once more, she raved of her father, her pet birds, the garden. When fever consumed her she was in the foundry, the lava torrent of metal from the furnace mouth creeping nearer and nearer, threatening to ingulf her. Gradually this tumult of restless imagery subsided to a great calm. She wandered with San Donato, the mighty angel, in fields of lilies so vast that they seemed a sea of bloom. Then she became painfully aware of other shapes that bent over her, touched her. A man and a woman met at her side and clasped hands; their faces were vaguely familiar. Rome had vanished, been obliterated; she only wandered among the lilies, guided by a glorious angel, his robe rose-colored, with margin of gold, and a palm branch in his hand. Certainly she must have pa.s.sed away to another world.

Henry Denvil, on receipt of that telegram, had left Foundryville by the first train, overtaken an outward-bound steamer by means of a small boat, and traversed England and France without delay. Arrived at the apartment in Rome which bore his wife's name, he was met by her, a pale, distraught creature, who clung to him with hysterical sobs, and searched his face with anxious, terrified eyes.

"Is she dead?" he faltered, hoa.r.s.ely.

"Oh no; but the surgeons think her limbs will be always useless, and she a cripple."

He soothed, but put her aside to seek his child instead. Augusta Denvil was conscious, for the first time, of a dull pang of jealousy.

In the long and painful days which ensued Henry Denvil had eyes and thoughts only for Cecilia, while the latter, by one of those curious instincts of illness, would accept nothing from another hand after his arrival.

The mother's ordeal began earlier, and her waning youth had shrivelled in the anguish she was then compelled to endure. Cecilia, from the first, had been deaf to her mother's most tender tones, winced and screamed at the touch of her fingers, even when lying with closed eyes. Mrs. Denvil, in the awful and solemn watches of the night, read in this aversion the doom of retribution. Her spirit succ.u.mbed in the trial. The girl's foot might indeed have slipped and she been run over anywhere. True, but by her own mother's wheels!

Christmas morning, so glorious and bright without, was gray and sober within this apartment of a family of strangers, where each face bore evidence of watching, care, grief.

Cecilia opened her eyes and glanced about her. She was lying on her own bed in her little chamber at Rome, only some sharp sword-thrust of circ.u.mstance had wholly severed her from the past. Her face was calm, almost solemn in expression. It seemed natural that her father should be sitting beside her holding her hand and striving to speak cheerfully. She was not startled by the fact that brother Jack stood at the foot of the bed. She noticed, entirely without responsive emotion, that her mother had concealed her face on father's shoulder, shaken by uncontrollable sobs. Her first words were:

"Where is San Donato?"

Her family failed to understand her. Mademoiselle Durand, also tremulous and in tears, heard and hastened away to her own room. She returned with the little image.

"It is her fancy," murmured the governess.

Cecilia indicated by a gesture that it was to be placed in her father's hands. Mr. Denvil held it carefully, while the invalid gazed steadfastly at her saint. They waited for her next words in silence and suspense. The joy of a convalescent is seldom demonstrative. She did not speak again for an hour. Then she exclaimed suddenly, in stronger tones:

"It is Christmas-day and papa has come."

Henry Denvil bent over and kissed the wasted little face, praying in his heart it might only be spared to him.

Jack looked on, stiff and ill at ease, after the manner of boys in a sick-chamber. He answered his father's inquiries in constrained and difficult English, with frequent lapses into French. Four years in a Swiss school had wrought wonders for Jack, especially as his mother had left him to take walking tours with his tutors during the summer vacations. A foreign education had been Mrs. Denvil's idea of preparation for life as an American citizen, especially at Foundryville.

There was another lapse into stillness before Cecilia's voice became again audible.

"If I had not--met with the accident on the Pincio, _would_ you have come to Rome for Christmas?"

"I fear not, my child."

"Are we to go home with you now?"

"Yes."

Cecilia smiled and closed her eyes. Did she thus understand San Donato's message at last?

Madame Robin will not be installed as housekeeper in the master's house. In the future, Mrs. Denvil, with the reaction of a shallow nature, may make trips to better climates for her neuralgia, or Jack be absent at college; but Henry Denvil--nay, the very foundry--cannot be more constant to the spot than his daughter. There will be no b.a.l.l.s for her, clad in satin, pearls and diamonds twinkling in her hair and about her throat, no dancing days, no debut in society as an heiress.

Instead, Cecilia will flit from room to room of the long silent home in a wheel-chair, a presence bright, cheerful, watchful, now pausing in the sunny conservatory where each unfolding flower seems aware of her presence, now awaiting the father's return from work.

Above the entrance door will be enshrined the image of San Donato, guardian of the home, whose mission is to avert evil.