University of Virginia Library

35. CHAPTER XXXV.

Elsa stipulated for a week; it came to a close before
Philippa heard from home; then some unexpected news
was brought from the shore by Clapp, who had gone
thither for some stores. As he heard it, he said, he
would tell them, but couldn't say whether the particulars
were just so. It was on a Tuesday, the day after Philippa
left her house, that Jason Auster went to the woods
with his gun, and was found there by Jehu Bates, insensible,
and with his right hand blown off at the wrist. He
laid right in a pool of blood, that made Jehu Bates sick;
but he had sense enough to hold up Jason's arm, and to
tie his whip-lash round it, which stopped the blood's
running, and brought him to so that he was able to walk
to Jehu Bates's ox-cart, that was in the woods after a
cord or two of yellow pine; and Jehu Bates brought
him home, where he now lay in a raging fever.

“He's been there ever since Tuesday,” screamed Elsa,
“and now it's Saturday, and we have not been sent for.”

“Maybe he is out of his head,” was Clapp's consolatory
reason for the omission.

With strangely cold, tremulous fingers Philippa began
to fold the articles that were to be packed in her valise,
and arranged them as leisurely and carefully as though
she were not thinking of what she had just heard. Nothing
seemed so plain to her, so imperative, as the getting
of her hair-brush, her thimble, her shoes into this valise;

but every instant a weight was growing heavier and
heavier upon her, which impeded her progress, and was
forcing time to stand still with her, while it sped with
Jason, hurrying him to his last hour. Elsa broke the
spell by asking her if she was ready; her own bonnet
was on, and the wagon was at the door.

“The corn that I didn't think of may be ripe for the
harvest,” she thought; “I must go and see it gathered.”

Every step of the way she urged Clapp to “gee up,”
or they wouldn't reach the house time enough to be of
the least use to anybody. They soon clattered into the
premises by the barnyard gate, and she started for the
porch door like a deer, forgetting Philippa, in her eagerness
to get into the house and resume its duties, exactly
at the point where she had left them months ago. Philippa
looked over the orchard paling, and at the hill, for
it might be her last view of their familiar aspect, and
then walked towards the house with reluctant feet. On
the threshold her heart recoiled against meeting Jason
—the man she could not love, but could not endure to
lose.

“Just see,” said Elsa, when she entered, “this ring of
ashes on the hearth; kitchen looks as if it hadn't been
inhabited. Mary is up stairs; the doctor is dressing the
wound. Gilbert is there, too. Mary says he walks
round the chamber outside Jason's door in his stocking
feet, day and night, just as his dogs do in the yard. She
says he is as rational as she is, which isn't saying much.
You'd better ask the doctor for directions. I hear him
on the stairs.”

She gave Philippa no chance, however, to speak to

him, but assailed him with questions, beginning with
asking why in the world he hadn't sent post haste for
her and Philippa. Jason strictly forbade the sending
of any message, he replied, and it wasn't really necessary;
he was getting along very well, his fever wasn't
so high, and unless mortification set in he would be up
in a few days.

“Mortification!” exclaimed Elsa; “do, if you dare
let that take place.”

Philippa slipped out of the kitchen while they were
talking, and went up stairs. She must see Jason, and
the sooner the shock of the meeting was over the better
for her plan, which was that she should be his nurse.
She entered the chamber, and saw that he was sleeping.
Mary sat by the bed, fanning away the flies with a bunch
of peacock's feathers.

“Elsa wants you down stairs,” Philippa whispered;
“I'll stay up here now.”

Mary relinquished the brush, and crept out, making a
series of contortions to describe the effect of the accident
upon her own condition, but not daring to speak on account
of Jason's slumber.

As soon as Philippa took her seat by the bedside, he
began to sigh, appearing to be in a painful dream; his
lips quivered like a child's, when it is on the point of
weeping grievously for some mysterious reason. He
moved his head from side to side, but, even in his restless
sleep, how motionless his right arm lay outside the
counterpane! Presently he waved his left hand, and
opened his eyes.

“I thought we were going down,” he said, “waterlogged.”

His pallid, wandering eyes, and weak, wailing voice,
told her how terrible the accident had proved. Every
thought fled from her, except the one which made her
heart full—that she must watch him, and care for
him.

“A little water,” be begged, without noticing her.

She held a glass to his lips; the diamond ring caught
his attention; he touched it with his finger.

“Philippa, they don't give me half enough water;
won't you let me have more?”

“Yes.”

He smiled, and tried to wipe his mouth. “It's awkward
with the left hand,” he said.

She took the handkerchief from him, and gently
brushed his bearded face with it, and smoothed his dry,
tangled hair. While she was doing this, he looked at
her with a happy, childish gravity, and said, “The lamp
went out last night.”

“It shall not happen again.”

“Shall you be here all the time?”

“Day and night till you are well.”

For the first time he cast a peculiar glance towards
his mutilated arm—a glance of gratitude; he was thanking
the gun. He looked back again at Philippa, whose
tears were falling in spite of herself.

“You mustn't cry, yellow-bird.” But he began to
weep, too, and Elsa, opening the door, found them both
crying.

“You are a pretty one for a sick-room,” she fiercely
whispered to Philippa; “clear out, if you can't do better
than this.”

Philippa was meekly obeying her, for she felt she had

been guilty of a dangerous, weak display of feeling,
when Jason, his eyebrows knitting with anger, clutched
Elsa by the sleeve, and said, “She promised to stay. She
shan't go. Why have you come?”

“There, there, Jason; Philippa is only going out to
rest half an hour, and I have only come to take care of
her clothes, and get her meals while she waits upon
you.”

“Well, well, that will do.” And he closed his eyes
with exhaustion.

“Ha, ha!” said Elsa, sarcastically, stepping into Philippa's
room, as soon as he slept again; “you could not
keep from running over, could you? It's a poor plan to
be troubled with feelings at the wrong time; seems to
me you haven't calculated right, unless you do want to
kill him out and out.”

“I'll do what you think best.”

“Go back and play cheerful, humor him in every thing;
and, when you can't humor him, cheat him.”

“Will he recover?”

“If the Lord wills.”

“I asked your opinion.”

“I'm dubious; still, my judgment is not worth much,
for I have had no experience in gunpowder accidents—
except in the case of Eli Coffin, whose legs were blown
a mile into the air, boots and all, when he was blasting
rocks: he died.”

Philippa smiled slightly, and Elsa saw her seated beside
Jason again, satisfied that her nerves were strung to
the right pitch for the sick-room. Her own spirits rose to
the occasion, as they always did before positive calamity;
the perils of the imagination she could not face, but

the plain facts of misfortune she could endure cheerfully;
and she bore their progress with the more equanimity
because she herself had been so long exempt from the
various distractions of humanity. It was years since she
had suffered an acute mental or physical pain; her voyage
over the sea of trouble appeared to be ended. This
immunity had engendered the grotesque humor which
looked unfeeling, even to herself, sometimes. She felt
so light-hearted at being able to resume her former sway
in the house, that she tried to account for it on the ground
of a special intervention to the end of bringing her back
to the family, and instinctively threw a sop to Providence
by affirming that Jason would get well to carry out a
scheme which had long been ripening. But Jason was
in no hurry, it seemed, to finish it; his weakness outlasted
the fever which supervened his wound, till the
wound was healed. He maintained a neutral ground,
which neither permitted the invasion of death, nor allowed
the forces of life to occupy it. In case a struggle
should rise between the two powers, it was evident that
he would be quite indifferent to the result. By no word
or token did he convey to Philippa one remembrance of
his love. After the flash of feeling occasioned by her
return, when his mind was so unhinged, he accepted her
attentions as a soldier, when taken to the rear, accepts
attentions from his passing comrades going to the front.
As his illness continued, her feelings changed; their law
warred with the law of her will. Their development was
sanctioned by his inability to triumph over them, either
from abstraction, blindness, or inclination. In spite of
her being shut in that darkened room so many hours,
her eyes grew bright, and the fine gold of her hair
seemed to gain lustre. Elsa's sharp wits discerned the
change. She took occasion one day, when Gilbert, who
sometimes relieved Philippa, was present, to suggest to
Jason the propriety of his recovery, in order to give
Philippa a chance to have a fit of sickness.

“Isn't she well?” he asked.

“How can anybody be well who does not undress of
nights, has odd naps on sofas, and gets no regular
meals?”

“Of course not. Has she been here every night?”

“Certainly; haven't you been aware of it, Jason?”

“I suppose I must have been, but took no thought of
it; I have troubled her too much, then?”

“Oh no! A helpless man, six feet without his
stockings, with one—with only one person in his family
besides himself, is no trouble or anxiety to that person.
Oh no!”

He sighed wearily.

“Gilbert must stay up here more. Can't you, old
fellow? I am no more stupid than your oxen.”

“Yes, I can,” said Gilbert; “but 'pears to me you
are gaining now, and the cattle ain't; 'cause you see
nobody understands 'em but me, and I don't know
as anybody understands me but them; and so it
'pears as if somebody might do better for you than I
can.”

“How do you feel to-day, Jason?” asked Elsa.

“The doctor will tell you.”

“If you don't know how you are, it is a sign you are
better. You must sit up, Jason—your strength will
never come back unless you try for it. Pull him out of
bed, Gilbert, but don't gee and haw too much about it.

Jason, if you don't get well, every thing will go to rack
and ruin.”

“Where's my clothes?” asked Jason. “Help me up,
Gilbert; I thought I was too weak, but Elsa knows
best.”

“Mercy on me,” said Elsa, leaving the room in search
of some clothes for him. “The loss of that hand seems
to have changed his sex. He is as spleeny as Mary; but
he is coming out of that bed, anyhow.”

About nine o'clock that evening Gilbert made his appearance
in Jason's room in a pair of list shoes and a
woollen night-cap.

“Where is Philippa?” Jason asked, with some energy.

“I am here,” she answered, without leaving the sofa,
which the bed-curtains intercepted from his view.

“You are too far off for me to speak to you.”

Surmising what he had to say, she went to his bedside.

“You have been here all this time, Philippa—it has
been hard for you; I have not known it always—I thought
you were in and out, and time has passed so. I must
have confounded night with day. You must let Gilbert
relieve you.”

“Very well,” she answered, with a pain in her heart,
because he had not always known she was there—near
him. “Good-night.”

Gilbert snored so at his post that Jason kept awake
half the night, and finally told him to go to the devil.