CHAPTER XLVIII.THE OCCUPANT OF NO. 40.
It was a large, handsome room, but it seemed gloomy and cheerless now, with only a night-lamp burning on the table, casting weird shadows here and there, and only partially revealing the form upon the bed of a tall young man, who lay with his face turned from the light and half buried in the pillow. Outside the counterpane one arm and hand were lying, and Queenie noticed that the latter was white and shapely as a woman’s, and noticed, too, the mass of light brown, slightly curling hair, which clustered around the sick man’s head and sent an indescribable thrill through her veins, as of something familiar. The man was young, she knew, though she had not seen his face, and dared not see it lest she should disturb him.
“Let him sleep; it will do him good and keep back the dreadful vomit,” Christine had said, and not for worlds would Queenie disobey her. She held a human life in her keeping, and with her finger on her lip to Pierre, who crouched almost at her feet, she seated herself in an arm-chair just where she could see the outline of the figure upon the bed, and there for hours she sat and watched, and listened to the irregular breathing, while every kind of wild fancy danced through her brain, and her limbs began at last to feel pricklyand numb, and a sense of cold and faintness to steal over her.
The air in the room was hot and oppressive though the windows were opened wide. Outside, the rain was falling heavily, and the sky as black as ink; there was no sound to break the awful stillness, except the occasional tread of some physician or nurse on duty, or the crash of distant wheels, whose meaning Queenie understood full well, shuddering as she thought of the rapid burials which the peril made necessary, and remembering what she had read of the great plague in London, where the death-cart rolled nightly through the street, while the dreadful cry was heard:
“Bring out your dead; bring out your dead.”
The words kept repeating themselves over and over in Queenie’s mind until her brain became confused; the present faded away into the far-off past, and she was one of those weary watchers in London, listening to the cry:
“Bring out your dead.”
And she was bringing hers—was carrying the young man whose long limbs dragged upon the floor, and whose head drooped upon her shoulder, while his dead face, not yet cold, touched hers with a caressing motion which brought with it a thought of poor Phil, lying beneath the Indian waters.
It was a horrid nightmare, and Queenie struggled with it a moment, and then awoke with a cry of Phil upon her lips—a cry so loud that the sleeper upon the bed started a little, and moaned, and said something indistinctly, and moved uneasily, then settled again into slumber, and all was quiet as ever.
But Queenie stood erect upon her feet, rigid as a piece of marble, and almost as white, while her eyes, which seemed to Pierre to shoot out gleams of fire, were turned wildly toward the form lying so motionless across the room, with the white, shapely hand still outside the counterpane, and the light brown wavy hair upon thepillow. He had spoken—had called a name, which the excited girl had recognized as her own. She couldnotbe mistaken. In answer to her cry forPhilthe fever patient had aroused a little and responded:
“Queenie.”
She was sure of it. He might not have meanther, it is true. There were other Queenies in the world, no doubt, but he had called her name—this man, who in her dream she was carrying to the death-cart, and who might perhaps, go there when the morning dawned.
There was a clock upon the mantel, and Queenie saw that it was half-past two. The early summer morning would soon break, and then she would see the face of this stranger who had called for Queenie, and whose head and hair were so like her lost Phil’s that, as she looked, with straining, eager eyes, and whirling brain, it seemed to her at last that it was Phil himself—Phil, drowned and dead, perhaps, but still Phil, come back to her in some incomprehensible manner, just to mock her a moment, and then to be snatched away again forever. But she would see him first distinctly, would know if it were a phantom or a reality lying there upon the bed within her reach, for she had advanced a few steps forward, and could have touched the head upon the pillow.
“Pierre,” she said, at last, when she could endure the suspense no longer—“Pierre,” and her voice sounded to herself like the echo of something a thousand miles away, “am I going mad, or is that—is that—” and she pointed to the tall form on the bed.
Not comprehending her in the least, Pierre stared at her, with a great fear that her mind was really unsettled by all the terrible scenes through which she had passed.
“Is it what?” he asked, coming to her side, and she replied:
“Bring the light. I must see the face of this young man. I cannot wait till morning.”
“But, mademoiselle,” Pierre remonstrated, “think of the danger to him. Christine’s orders were to let him sleep; he was not to be disturbed.”
“Nor shall I disturb him; but I shall see him. Bring the light!” Queenie said, peremptorily, as she moved to the other side of the bed, toward which the sick man’s face was turned.
Carefully pushing down the pillow, so as to bring the features more distinctly to view, Queenie stood for one brief instant gazing upon them; then, turning to Pierre, she whispered:
“Nearer, Pierre; hold the lamp a little nearer, please.”
He obeyed her, and as the full rays of the light fell upon the white, pinched face of the sleeper, Queenie threw her arms high in the air, and, in a voice Pierre would never have recognized as hers, cried out:
“Oh, Pierre, Pierre!it is—it is—my Phil—come back to me again! Christine! Christine! come, and help!”
It was a loud, wailing cry, and the next moment Queenie lay across the foot of the bed, where she had fallen in a death-like swoon, while over her bent Christine. She had not left the house at all, but had sat below, waiting for some such denouement when the truth should become known to Queenie.
Christine had found the young man late the previous afternoon, and recognized him at once, experiencing such a shock as had set every nerve quivering, and made her feel that at last her own strength was giving way. To save him for Queenie was her great desire, and, with a prayer on her lips, and a prayer in her heart, she worked as she had never worked before to allay the burning fever and quiet his disordered mind.
Once, during a lucid interval, he looked into her face, and knew her.
“Christine,” he said, faintly, “where is Queenie? I came to find her. Don’t let me die till I have seen her.”
“Queenie is here. I will send for her at once. Do not be afraid; I will not let you die. Your case is not very bad,” Christine replied, speaking thus emphatically and against her own convictions, because she saw how frightened he was himself, and knew that this would only augment the disease and lessen his chances for recovery.
“Keep very quiet, and I’ll soon have you well,” she said, and Phil did whatever she bade him do, though his mind began to wander again, and he talked constantly of Queenie, whom he had come to find.
At last, however, he fell away to sleep, and then it was that Christine sent for Queenie, and establishing her in the room, went out into the adjoining chamber and waited, knowing that sooner or later she would be needed. All through the weary hours which preceded Queenie’s cry for help she sat alone in the darkness, alternately shaking with cold and burning with fever, while in her heart was a feeling amounting to certainty that her work was done, that the deadly faintness stealing over her at intervals, and making her so sick and weak, was a precursor of the end. But she must live long enough to save Philip Rossiter, and give him back to Queenie, who might think more kindly of her when she was gone. So she fought back her symptoms bravely, and rubbed her cold, damp face when it was the coldest, and then leaned far out of the open window into the falling rain when it was the hottest.
And thus the time passed on until her quick ear caught the sound of voices and footsteps in the sick-room, and she heard Queenie’s wild cry forheras if in that hour of peril she was the one person in all the world of whom there was need. Queenie had turned to her at last as the child turns to its mother in peril, and withswift feet Christine went to the rescue, and almost before Pierre knew she was there, she had the unconscious girl in her arms and was bearing her into the room, where for hours she had waited so patiently. Fixing her in a safe and upright position upon a cushion, she ran back to Phil, who, she knew, must be her first and principal care.
When Queenie’s shriek echoed through the room so near to him, he had roused from his sleep, and was moaning and talking to himself, without, apparently, any real consciousness as to where he was. But Christine’s soothing hands, and the medicine she administered quieted him, and leaving him in Pierre’s care, she went back to Queenie, who was recovering from her swoon.
“Tell me,” she gasped, when she was able to speak, “Was it a dream, or was it Phil? Tell me, Christine, is it Phil, and will he die?”
“It is Phil,” Christine replied, “saved from the sea, I know not how, only that he is here, that he came seeking for you, and I found him with the fever, late yesterday afternoon, and did for him what I could. Then I sent for you, and the rest you know. Only be quiet now. I do not think he will die.”
“Oh, save him, save him, and you shall have my love forever. I have been cold and proud, but I will be so no longer if you give me back my Phil,” Queenie said, with choking sobs, as she knelt at Christine’s feet and clasped the hem of her dress.
“I will do what I can,” Christine replied, while again through every nerve throbbed the old, sick feeling which she could not put aside, even in her exquisite joy that Queenie might at last be won.
“Too late; it has come too late,” she thought to herself, while to Queenie she said: “I must go to him now, for what I do must be done quickly. A few hours later and it will be too late.”
So they went together to the sick-room, where Phillay with his face turned more fully to the light and showing distinctly how pinched and pallid it was. Had Queenie’s own life depended upon it, she could not have forborne going up to him and softly kissing his pale forehead; then she knelt down beside him, and so close to him that her dark hair touched the curls of light brown as she buried her face in her hands, and Christine knew that she was praying earnestly that he might be spared to her. At last, just as the dawn was breaking and the first gray of the morning was stealing into the room, he moved as if about to waken, and with a quick, imperative movement of her hand Christine put Queenie behind her, saying as she did so: “He must not see you yet. Keep out of his sight till I tell you to come.”
Fearful lest she should attract his attention if she left the room, Queenie crouched upon the floor, close beside the bed, and waited with a throbbing heart for the moment when she might speak and claim her love. Phil was better; the long sleep had done him good, but there was a drowsiness over him still, and he only opened his eyes a moment, and, seeing Christine bending over him, smiled gratefully upon her, and said:
“You are so good to me.”
Then he took the draught she gave him and slept again, this time quietly and sweetly as a child, while Queenie sat upon the floor, fearing to move or stir lest she should disturb him. Slowly the minutes dragged on until at last it was quite light in the room. The heavy rain had ceased; the dense fog had lifted, and the air which came in at the window was cool and pure, and seemed to have in it something of life and invigoration.
“The weather has changed, thank God,” Christine murmured, while Queenie, too, whispered, “Thank God! thank God!”
Phil must have felt the change, for he breathed more naturally and there came a faint color to his lips, and at last, just as a ray of sunlight stole into the room anddanced upon the wall above his head, he woke to perfect consciousness, and, stretching his hand toward Christine said:
“You have saved my life and I thank you; but for you I should have died when the dreadful sickness came. How long have I been here, and where is Queenie? I dreamed she was here.”
As the tones of the voice she had never expected to hear again fell upon her ear Queenie could no longer restrain herself, but springing up, she bent over Phil and said:
“I am here—Phil,my love, my darling, and nothing shall part us again. I amnotyour cousin, and I can love you now.”
She was kneeling beside him, with one arm under his neck, while with the other hand she caressed his face, and kissing him passionately continued:
“O, Phil, I thought you were dead, and it broke my heart, for I did love you all the time, and I found it out when it was too late and you were gone, and I mourned for you so much, and all the brightness went out from my life; but it will come back again with you, my darling! my darling!”
Her tears were falling like rain upon his face, and her voice was choked with sobs, as she made this avowal of her love, without a shadow of shame or feeling that she was doing anything unmaidenly. Phil washers. Nothing could change that, or his love for her. She was as sure of him as she was that she breathed, and she had no hesitancy in pouring out the full measure of her affection for him. Both Christine and Pierre had stolen from the room, leaving the lovers alone in that first blissful moment of their reunion. For a time Phil lay perfectly still and took her caresses and kisses in silence. Then summoning all his strength, he wound his arms around the little girl, and hugging her close to him whispered:
“Heaven can scarcely be better than this. Oh, Queenie! my darling! my pet!”
He was very weak, and Queenie saw it, and drawing herself from him said:
“You must not talk any more now. You must get well, and then I can hear it all—where you have been and why you are not dead. Oh, Phil, it was so horrible—everything which has happened to me since you went away. I am nobody—nobody, Phil; no name, no right to be born, and I was once so proud. Did they tell you, Phil? Do you knowwhoI am?”
“Yes, they told me; I know, poor little Queenie,” Phil replied, with a tighter clasp of the hand which lay in his.
She did not ask him if it would make any difference with his love. She knew it would not. She had always felt sure of Phil; he was hers for ever, and the old joy began to come back, and the old light sparkled in her eyes, which shone like stars as she went on:
“It was so dreadful when I found it out, and I wanted to die, because you, too, were dead, or I thought you were, and I used to whisper to you in the dark nights, when I could not sleep, and I thought maybe you would come and let me know in some way that you were sorry for me. Where were you, Phil, when I was wanting you so much?”
“Very, very far away, but I cannot tell you now,” said Phil, knowing himself that he must not talk longer then; but he would not let her leave him; he wanted her there beside him, where he could touch her hands, and look into her face and beaming eyes, which dazzled and bewildered him with their brightness.
So Queenie sat by him all that morning, seldom speaking to him, but often bending over him to kiss his forehead or hands, and occasionally murmuring;
“Dear Phil, and I am so glad—so happy. Nothing will ever trouble me again.”
“Not even the Fergusons?” Phil answered her once, with his old, teasing smile, which made him so like the Phil of other days that Queenie laughed aloud, and, shaking her head gayly, said:
“No, not even grandma’s purple gloves can ever worry me again. Oh, Phil, I have repented so bitterly of all my pride, and I shall never, never be so any more—shall never be angry with you, or any one, or indulge in one of my moods! I wish I could make you understand how changed I am, for I see you do not quite believe me.”
Nor did he, though he smiled lovingly upon her, and lifting his hand feebly smoothed her fair round cheek, where her blushes were burning so brightly. He knew that Queenie could not change her nature any more than the leopard can change his spots—knew that at times she would be the same little willful, imperious girl she had always been, defying his authority and setting at naught his wishes. And he would not have her otherwise if he could; he should not know her if the claws were always sheathed and she was gentle and sweet as she was now. Loving and true she would always be, and so repentant when her moods were over that it would be well worth his while to bear with them occasionally, as he was sure to have to do. But he did not tell her so; he did not tell her anything, for he was too weak to talk, so he only looked his love and happiness through his eyes, which rested constantly upon her face, until at last even that became to him as something seen through a mist, not altogether real, and he again fell into a quiet sleep, with his hand resting in Queenie’s.