The Shield of Silence Part 58

Cameron was saying as if the whole matter were an everyday affair, but rather annoying; "queer things happen in a big city. We've done our best to locate your friends; I think some of the officials I have consulted have their doubts as to my mental condition. I kept under cover as well as I could until you were well enough to act for yourself."

"Thank you--oh! thank you." This very faintly and brokenly.

"You see, you are one of the cases that prove that an impossibility is--possible. Truth-stronger-than-fiction idea. But if you would like me to communicate with Pat, I'll be glad to help you."

"No--I will wait now." Joan drew her lips close.

Cameron controlled his features while he listened, but he never referred to Pat again.

"I've sometimes thought," Cameron spoke calmly, "that you might have been looking for my uncle, Doctor Martin, when you stumbled into his old office. I could not flatter myself that you were bent upon obtaining my services."

At this Joan astonished Cameron almost as much as if she had sat up in her coffin.

She rose, as though propelled by a spring, she stared at him and then, as slowly, sank back, still holding him with her eyes that seemed preternaturally large.

"Oh! come now!" Cameron exclaimed. "What's up?" He took her hand and bent over her and to his amaze discovered that she was laughing! He touched the bell. Things were bewildering him--Miss Brown always managed trying situations by reducing them to normal. She responded at once; cool, serene, and capable.

"Nerves?" she asked. And then took command. She raised Joan and settled the pillows into new lines; she removed the roses almost sternly--she disliked the nuisance of flowers in a sick room.

"There, now!" she whispered to Joan, "take this drink and go to sleep like a good girl."

In the face of this sound common sense laughing was out of the question.

Joan pretended sleep rather than risk another: "There, now!"

But her recovery was rapid after that day. Like a veil withdrawn she reflected upon the past as if it were, not a story that was told, but a preface to the real story that her life must be.

The folly, the irresponsibility, no longer dismayed her, but gave her reasons and arguments.

She wanted to live at last! She wanted to go home and separate herself forever from the cheap, theatrical thing she had believed was freedom!

She saw the folly of it all; she seemed an old woman regarding the dangerous pa.s.sage of a younger one.

She realized her own selfishness in her demand for self-expression. What had she expressed while others fixed their faithful eyes on duty?

Nancy shone high and clear in those dull hospital days. Nancy who demanded so little, but who trod, with divine patience, the truer course.

"Well, Nan shall have her own!" Joan thought, and gripped her thin hands under the bedclothes. "I'll strive for Nan as I never have for myself."

Out of the debris of the feverish past Joan held alone to Patricia.

Strange, it seemed to her, that the dead girl should have grown to such importance, but so it was. Patricia was the real, the sacred thing, and she planned the home-bringing of the dear body and the placing of it on the hillside in The Gap.

And through the convalescing days Cameron had his place, like a fixed star.

Often worn by the day's silent remorse and earnest promise as to the future, Joan looked to that hour when Cameron, calm, serious but cheerful, sat by her bedside--a strong link between the folly of the past and the hope of the times on ahead.

Vaguely she recalled the blurred weeks of fever and pain, and always his quiet voice and cool touch held part.

"And to think," Joan could but smile, "that he does not know me--but I know who he is just as I knew about----" She could not name Raymond yet--she could only think kindly of him when she held to the days before that last, tragic night.

And Cameron, meanwhile, was drawing wrong conclusions. Not that they changed his personal att.i.tude toward the girl whose life he had helped save. To him she was a human creature whose faith in her future must be restored as her body was in the process of being. Cameron believed in stepping-stones and was utterly opposed to waste of any kind.

"She's paid her debt and his, too, I wager," Cameron often muttered; "that's the devil of it all, and she'll go on and perhaps down--if she doesn't get a start up. If I could only get hold of her folks--it would help!"

But Joan held him at bay when he ventured on that line.

"When I am quite well," she said with gentle dignity, "I am going home and do my own explaining."

"Are you considering--them?" Cameron frowned at her.

"I am--as I never have before!"

To this silence was the only reply.

Presently Joan made her first big stride toward complete recovery. She forsook her bed during the day and, in pink gown and dainty cap--procured by Miss Brown--she pa.s.sed from a "case" to an individual.

The twilight hour now became something of a function and Cameron dropped his professional manner with his outdoor trappings and appeared, often, as a tired but very humanly interesting young man.

He talked of safe, ordinary things, he brought books and flowers, and while Miss Brown kept a rigid appearance, she inwardly sniffed--or the equivalent.

And then came the Sunday before Joan was to leave the hospital. It happened to be Easter, and a woman was singing in the little chapel down the hall. The room doors were open and the sweet words and melody floated in to the silent listeners--Joan pictured them as she sat and felt her tears roll down her cheeks.

"Some--are going out!" she thought, "and others, like me, must go on.

And here we all are with walls between, but our doors open to:

"He weaves the s.h.i.+ning garments Unceasingly and still Along the quiet waters In niches of the hills."

The words seemed to paint, in the narrow room, the dim Gap. The sound of the river was in Joan's ears and she knew that the niches of the safe hills where her loved ones waited, were full of the spring blossoms.

No leaf that dawns to petal, But hints the Angel-plan.

Joan looked up and saw Cameron at the doorway. He almost filled it, and his eyes grew troubled as he noted the thin, white, tear-wet face.

"Shall I close the door?" he asked.

"No. Please do not. I like to think that all the others, down the corridor, and I are together--listening, growing better!"

"Oh! I see." Cameron tossed aside his coat and sat down.

"I--I don't think you do," Joan smiled at him; "I think I puzzle you terribly, but some day I am going to explain everything. All my life I have been, as I am now, in a narrow little room--peeping out and never touching others any more than I am touching"--she pointed to the right and left--"my neighbours, here. But we were all listening to much the same thing then as now.

"I am going"--here Joan dashed her tears off--"I am going somehow to pull the walls down and know really!"

"Bully!" Cameron had a peculiar feeling in his throat. Then added: "I cut something out of a paper the other day that seemed to me to hold all the philosophy necessary for this tug-of-war we call life. Here it is!"

"Read it, please," Joan dropped her eyes.

"A s.h.i.+pwrecked sailor, buried here, bids you set sail.

Full many a gallant bark, when he was lost, weathered the gale."

"Isn't that good, gripping stuff? I've caught the sense of it, and when I get to thinking--well, of such as lie in many of these little rooms, I'm glad--you're--setting sail!"