There was one subject which knit the cousinship of the four ever closer—Phil. The local postmaster was convinced that there was no danger of one officer starving, if soldiers could live on cake, judging by the number of packages which went through the parcels post to Second Lieutenant Philip Sanford. Their thoughts were those of hundreds of thousands of other households in England. The pride of it for the vicar and his wife was that they, too, had a son at the front. They would not waive the claim that he was partly theirs and their guests did not ask it. Every day they wrote to Phil, and his cheerful letters in answer, always making sport of the mud and minimising the dangers—long letters when the battery was in billets—brought the four heads into communion of spirit whenever the envelopes arrived. Always there was the fear—the fear over hundreds of thousands of households, no less poignant in each because of the hundreds of thousands of others—the fear which they never mentioned and never forgot.
The postman brought Helen's letter, the only one in the post that trip, to Dr. Sanford when he was alone on the lawn, thinking that a point had occurred to him which would give him the better of the argument with the vicar the next time they resumed a certain discussion. After he had opened the envelope and read the first sentence, he folded the sheet and walked away into the garden to be undisturbed. He must think how to break the news to his wife.
"This time Cousin Phil is not writing to you himself, but I am writing for him," Helen wrote. "Though I have never seen you, it seems as if I knew you and I think, as Phil's father and mother, you are the kind who might suffer more in the end if some of the truth were held back by clever phrases than if it were all told at first. He loves you so much and you love him so much that it is the only honest way.
"He is as whole as ever in body, his mind quite clear, despite the wound in his jaw from a shell-fragment; but he must remain here at the hospital for many months, while a miracle man of a surgeon will make his jaw as good as ever. As the result of shell-shock he is also, for the moment, both blind and deaf; but other miracle men will bring back his sight and hearing. All the great ones are prepared to spoil him with attention, he is so brave.
"As he cannot write himself, I shall write for him every day. But you must not be impatient; as these modern miracle men, unlike the Biblical ones, must take time to perform their wonders. Write him as many letters as you can and I'll spell out every word of them to him. Yes, go on writing just as if he were making a fight at the front and that will help him in the new fight he is making in the dark against pain and for you. When he returns he will be the same as when he left you, only dearer to you as you will be to him. He will recover completely. Depend on this."
"Brave little liar!" as Bricktop had said. Yet Helen believed every word.
Dr. Sanford continued to walk up and down after he had finished the letter. Mrs. Sanford, coming out of doors and seeing him, knew that something had happened to Phil, though the Doctor looked only customarily thoughtful and calm. She went toward him, followed by the vicar and his wife; they, too, divining from her attitude that tragedy had come to Truckleford.
"I am ready! What is it?" asked Mrs. Sanford.
He read the letter aloud, thinking that this would soften the message for her. She listened with a white face and still eyes. When he had finished she took his hands in hers; then in silence the two started walking up and down, arm in arm. Two other white heads in the background, quite as if it were their son, also walked up and down, arm in arm. Silent, very silent, the garden, except for the occasional hum of a bee.
The mother was looking the worst fairly in the face, with characteristic fearlessness.
"We have a little money—enough if——" If Phil should be in the eternal night they could care for him, was the first thought of her love. But after they were gone——
The other two white heads were thinking the same. Phil had done this for their cause. They had a little money; he should not want. When, finally, the first two came toward the vicar, he was suddenly mindful that Helen had written the letter; rather than Henriette—which was very odd.
"She would state all the truth, Helen would," said the vicar. "It's her merit. She could not help doing so. When she says that Phil will be as right as ever again, you may depend upon it."
"We do!" said Phil's mother. "He will get well! He must! We'll not think anything else. He will!" There was a quiet, tense vitality in her declaration akin to Helen's own.
"He will!" said Dr. Sanford.
"That sounds better," said the vicar. "It is worthier of the ancestors and Phil."
"We must go to him!" said the mother.
The next morning this pair of old children set out, holding hands in the compartment a good portion of the way to London. Cities always confused Dr. Sanford. Only the call to his son would have given him courage to enter the portals of that sombre War Office, which was only one of many doors whence he took his plea.
Every one was sorry and kindly, too, when they looked over the old clergyman and he told his tale. If they let one parent go to a great hospital in the military zone in France, then they would have to let thousands; but one official, with a sly wink, suggested that he get a note from his Ambassador. Going to the Embassy simply as an American gentleman, without any letters of introduction, he waited in the reception-room a long time till somebody returned from luncheon; and the somebody, who was a young person with a Burke's Peerage under his arm, said that it was quite out of the question for the Embassy to interest itself in his case.
"It's the rules, I suppose," said Mrs. Sanford.
"Yes. We can't go behind the rules," said the Doctor.
It was a sad journey for the old children back to Truckleford and their hand-clasp was tighter than before as they looked out at the hedges slipping by. Awaiting them were letters from Helen, long letters, less matter-of-fact than the first one, with a chant of optimism running through the sentences; and a telegram from Peter Smithers, who had arrived at Liverpool and was coming to see them.
Automobiles were difficult of hire in England then; yet Peter arrived in one, a high-powered one at that. How could he travel by train when he was on the verge of poverty from keeping up that miserable little farm? The way he came through the gate heralded a dynamic advent at the vicarage.
"Glad to meet you, sir, and you, too, Mrs. Sanford!" he said. "Suppose you four have all the ancestors looked up and card-indexed by this time. And what about Phil? Still wallowing in the mud for the pleasure of being shot at? What!"
The look in all four faces drew a sharp, penetratingly anxious exclamation from him.
"Tell me!" he demanded, and the whole aspect of the man had changed in an instant. "Tell me!"
He dropped in a chair at the news; but no sooner was he down than he jumped up, jerking a cigar out of his pocket and chewing at it as he began pacing back and forth with pounding steps.
"Bricktop can do it if anybody can!" he said excitedly. "I'd back Bricktop against anybody or anything! Bricktop over there operating on Phil! It's a small world. Bricktop will do it; and if there aren't specialists over there big enough to bring back Phil's sight and hearing, we'll get them, by George!" Peter took another turn, chewing at his cigar, and then whirled around. Decision was in his eyes and in every one of the definite wrinkles of his face. "I know what you've been thinking—if the worst should happen!"
"Yes, we had!" admitted Mrs. Sanford.
"But it won't, not to Phil! He'll pull out. George! I'd have given a thousand to have seen him knock that Prussian down! Whatever happens, I want you to know that all I have is back of him and every cent I have, if that farm doesn't break me, goes to him—and there's three millions, anyway."
Let it be recorded that the effect of this sudden declaration on four white heads was indescribable, particularly on the vicar and his wife, who had a feeling that they were witnessing some sort of a Christmas-time extravaganza. Phil's mother said that it was quite in keeping with Peter's reputation for making vital decisions promptly. At the same time she only gasped, "Peter!" while Dr. Sanford blinked like one who tries to look the sun in the face.
"Surprises you! I expect it is surprising," said Peter. "Never had any other idea since he was a little shaver. Always had my eye on him, but wasn't going to ruin him by making him think he didn't have to go out and clean cattle cars and knock down Prussians on his own account. Wanted to leave my fortune to a man, and the way to become a man is to go out and scratch gravel. Was kind of backing him when Ledyard took him on, but don't you tell him; it would make him mad. Now Ledyard says he won't let him go; but Ledyard doesn't own the whole United States. Remember last time I saw Phil and I was talking about my employees' clubhouse—he gave me such a slam that my indignation was real."
Misfortune to Phil had cracked the Smithers burr and revealed the sweet kernel inside.
"Peter, I——"
"Peter, we——"
The Longfield Sanfords were at last trying to utter their thanks. As for the Truckleford Sanfords, they still expected to see Peter toss a rope skyward and climb up it out of sight.
"Bless you for a pair of the best old dears that ever lived!" said Peter. "If it hadn't been for your father, Doctor, I might be holding Bill Hurley's job driving the local 'bus. Now, what you want to do is to get to Phil, don't you?"
"Yes! Oh, above everything!" exclaimed Mrs. Sanford.
"I gadded all over London trying," said the Doctor, who narrated his experiences.
"That baby boy at the Embassy, with his little accent and his little moustache turned up, and afraid he might slip on his little shadow, that's Levering's son," said Peter. "Levering started driving a donkey in a mine and left about two hundred thousand dollars and got heart disease making it, while his wife was in Paris. She couldn't stay at home in Cokeville because she had no social standing there. He used to see her once a year, if he could spare two weeks to cross the pond. But I'm wasting a lot of words on him, though it's time somebody gave him a twist. Now, I'll go back to London to-night."
"But you must stay to dinner!" begged the vicar.
"Sorry. But we want to see Phil. Is there a telegraph office here? Good! Might as well start things moving. I'll get dinner at one of those little inns. First-rate meat and potatoes; that's all a man wants—only the English never season anything. Put a pile of salt on the side of their plate and dab every mouthful in it, which means irregular distribution and a waste of time."
He was shaking hands all around preparatory to going, when he had a reminder.
"I want to see that ancestor of ours," he said. "Mine by adoption! You don't mind? I see your family isn't large and there ought to be enough of him to go round."
"We welcome you!" said the vicar, chuckling. This interest in genealogy convinced him that both Peter and the three millions must be real.
Peter looked the ancestor over with the eye of one who knows men.
"I'm proud of him!" he concluded, with a wink to the vicar. "You can see that he had his teeth set firmly in their sockets. Most ancestors have, and those of later generations get wiggly. Well, I'm off!"
When Peter had gone four white heads gazed at one another and swallowed and gazed. Three million dollars! Peter confessed it! And all for Phil!
"Hm-m—let the cat out of the bag!" he mused on his way to London. "Couldn't help it! Enjoyed it! What the professors call the psychological moment! Enjoyed keeping it secret before—enjoyed letting it go. Phil will keep that farm running after I'm gone—if it doesn't break me before I pass over the border."
Now Peter did not go to the War Office and beat a table and argue; but he set things in motion by sending cablegrams and telegrams. He did not even send up his card to the Ambassador until the Ambassador had received messages from four United States senators, from the man to whom he owed his appointment, and from the Secretary of State, that Peter Smithers was in London. Nobody was out at luncheon when he went to the Embassy, where he was at once given a note to some one on high who would immediately communicate to some one at the War Office. But before leaving he reminded the Ambassador that one of the Embassy chore-boys, ought to be taught civility as well as manners.
Nor did Peter go to the War Office until the General who was above the General who was above the General that Phil had first seen also had heard from several quarters about the importance of Peter Smithers. The Great One at the War Office was most cordial, and Peter talked to him as if he were used to meeting Great Ones. Both were leaders and organisers of men.
"I think there will be no difficulty," said the Great One. "We'll make a special case of it on account of his having to remain a long time at a base hospital in France. I'd heard about that young man before. Fine chap! Hope he'll pull through. A relative of yours?"
"Nephew!" Peter replied truthfully.
Hadn't he formally adopted himself as Phil's uncle?
"Bricktop!"
"Peter!"
They took a grappling hold of each other, as if about to engage in a wrestling match to prove which was the more jubilant over this meeting; for Peter was a man after Bricktop's own heart and Bricktop after Peter's.
"You're red-headed as ever!" said Peter.
"What did you expect? That I'd dip my locks in a dye-barrel? Needed all the red I had and some more to deal with some of the stick-in-the-muds, who would not believe that I am a surgeon. Say, but you're good for sore eyes and nostalgia!"
"Think of you being over here and operating on Phil!" Peter held William Smith, D.D.S., off at arm's length in respectful admiration.
"If you hadn't sent me that twenty thousand I wouldn't have had the equipment for the job," Bricktop replied.
"You don't mean that that twenty thousand—maybe it's saved Phil!"
"Exactly what I do mean!"
"Think of that!" Peter swallowed hard and blinked. "But don't you tell him about it—not yet. Here I am talking, when there is somebody outside that——" He did not finish his sentence, but drew Bricktop out of his office into the reception-room, where Dr. and Mrs. Sanford were waiting.
"I don't need any introduction. You're his father and mother!" Bricktop exclaimed.
"Yes, we are here, thanks to Peter," said Mrs. Sanford. "He has a wonderful way of managing things."
"Peter was born to manage things!" said Bricktop. "He gave me my start."
"Just as Dr. Sanford's father gave me mine. And we are here because Phil's is a special case which cannot be moved over to England. Merely had to make the authorities see the light. But it seems to me, Bricktop, you and I are doing a lot of gassing, when what we want is to see Phil. How is he getting on?"
Peter had hesitated to put that question, thinking of what this day meant to the Sanfords. Bricktop looked into the honest, serene eyes of the old pair and seeing that they were not afraid of it, told the truth.
"In two or three days I'll come to the big test," he said. "If that operation succeeds, the rest will be easy."
Then a soft voice, which had the very melody of cheer, added:
"And it will succeed!"
Helen, coming into the room, had overheard Bricktop's opinion, and impulsively reinforced it with her faith. Dr. and Mrs. Sanford for the first time looked into the eyes of the woman who had written to them for Phil and about Phil. Their transparent depths reflected the quality which they had associated with her. Something told her that she was not plain to them, and the thought gave her a thrill of happiness.
"What beautiful eyes!" exclaimed Mrs. Sanford involuntarily. "They are like your spirit!"
"I——" Helen flushed. No one had ever said this to her except the old artist teacher. That any one should think that anything about her was beautiful!
"I'm afraid I was personal!" murmured Mrs. Sanford; and both were embarrassed.
"It was a very nice way to be personal," Helen stammered, finding her smile. "How happy he will be to see you! How he loves you!"
"And his sight and hearing and speech?" asked Mrs. Sanford.
"A long treatment, but they will come back," replied Helen.
She led the way into the ward where Phil was in a big chair, a comely figure of youth up to his chin. The rest of him was a ball of white, with a harness of silver woven in with bandages for his lower face, and bandages over his eyes.
"Your father and mother have come," Helen wrote on his arm.
They sat down without any demonstration, one on each side of his chair, and each took one of his hands, receiving a strong answering clasp. Peter "filled up," as he put up, and went out into the court to pace up and down. When he returned they were in the same position.
This hand in his own left hand Phil knew was his father's, because it was larger and bonier than the one in his right, which was soft and yielding. He was thinking of Longfield; seeing the village street under the old elms, the garden and the porch, and the glory of sunrise and sunset in the Berkshires; relieving the joys of sight. In turn, in that silent communion, Dr. and Mrs. Sanford saw him coming up the path to the porch at all ages and on all occasions.
"That wiggle of his right foot," said Helen, "means that he wants to talk. Oh, we've developed a remarkable code and we've not gone in for the blind raised letters because he never will need them."
She brought a pencil, which she slipped between his fingers, and a pad, which she fixed on a slanting table fastened to the chair.
"He's becoming wonderfully good at it," she said, "though at first he was always getting off the track and writing one line over another."
Slowly but quite clearly he wrote his big letters on small pages, which Helen passed to the father and mother.
"Some family reunion, this! It is a cinch that I get well—father, pardon the language!"
This was the first sheet. The two looked at each other and smiled. "It's Phil, all right!" murmured Peter, echoing their thoughts.
"When I get my new countenance, new eyes and ears, and descend on Longfield, even Jane will admit I'm grown up. I am going to show Hanks that he is not the only one who can branch out"—this on the second sheet.
"Peter arranged it so you could come, I hear," came the third. "Tell him he has been so kind that I almost regret I did not go to work for him and ruin his business."
There was something very like a snort from the direction of Peter, who was caught grinning when the others looked around.
"Tell Bill Hurley, who is for the Allies but a pessimist about their chances, that the Allies are going to win the war. And you are coming often, aren't you? Won't they let you? This conversation is getting one-sided." He pulled up his sleeve, which was a signal to Helen.
"Yes," she wrote, at Dr. Sanford's dictation. "Peter has got a little house for us and permission to stay near you."
"This is just simply HAPPINESS"—Phil spelled out the word in capitals. "Tell Peter he is certainly some arranger. Isn't he going to come and see me, too?"
Peter was swallowing hard—a habit that he had formed since he had arrived at the hospital. He advanced to Phil's side.
"Peter is here," Helen wrote.
Phil's hand went out, searching in the darkness, and Peter's leapt toward it and the two clasped in a firm, prolonged grip.
"Shall I tell him that every cent I have is his, when he expected nothing?" Peter put the question to Helen.
She knew only the vague outline of their story, yet understood the principle involved, and she hesitated. Peter studied her face with his shrewd glance.
"I guess not," he said. "He's fighting for something worth more than three millions and money won't make a fellow of Phil's calibre fight any harder. I guess it would be kind of cheap to do it now. I'll wait till he can see me, or till we know that he is not going to——"
"He will!" put in Helen sharply.
"Say," Peter said admiringly, "they ought to put you in command of an army corps out there! You've got the kind of spirit that would break the line."
"Spirit has nothing to do with it," Helen replied. "It is simply a fact."
"I'd make it the whole army!" said Peter, who belonged to the school which believes that if you make up your mind to do a thing you will do it.
Phil was writing again, his fingers moving more rapidly than usual, his writing less distinct, as if he were under the pressure of strong emotion:
"I should have slipped if it had not been for her. It is a thing one can't talk about—the great thing of all, that makes me bear the pain and make the fight—what Henriette has done for me."
"Henriette!"
Dr. and Mrs. Sanford and Peter uttered the word together and stared involuntarily at Helen, in blank inquiry. She looked away quickly at the floor and murmured:
"Yes, Henriette!"
There was a silence then, while she took the pad and pencil from Phil and removed the little table, which provided her with the relief of movement.
"Not too much at one time, lest we tire him," she said.
She went with them through the court, where the seeing men in their pain watched them passing; and on the way her glance hovered into theirs beseechingly and her lips were parted as if about to speak, but she could not find words until they were on the path.
"You would make me any promise, wouldn't you," she asked, "in order to save him?"
Now she told the secret which only she and Henriette knew, how she had been mistaken for her sister.
"You must not undeceive him, or think of it, or speak of it! You will promise?"
Her nostrils were quivering and her eyes had the steady light of command. As they nodded, the father and mother felt a trifle in awe of her, this woman in a warrior's mood who had been a link between them and their son. She gave them a smile of thanks; then, in the flutter of an impulse, kissed Mrs. Sanford on the cheeks and abruptly started back to the ward, where she gave Phil a hand-clasp to signal her return and two clasps to learn if he wanted anything. He asked for his pad:
"It's pretty hard on them. Did I cheer them up?"
"Yes, and they know that you are going to get well."
"Good! Aren't they dears? Shall we take a constitutional? It tired the old head-piece a little, all that excitement."
The constitutionals were promenades up and down the court, with digressions sometimes out onto the paths when he felt particularly venturesome. Her arm through his, wheeling on him as a pivot when they came to the turns, he feeling the touch of her hand upon his wrist, she realising the helplessness of that tall form without some one to guide it, they had paced back and forth so many times now that these promenades had become a part of their existence. His silence she must share. They might think each his own thoughts in the nearness, the interdependence, of that strange companionship. Sometimes he carried on imaginary conversations with her and she with him; and the great things to both were the unspoken things, rather than those written on his arm or on the pad. When the revelation should come that she was not Henriette—but Helen never thought of that. It was the bridge on the other side of the promised land of his recovery.
She was not surprised when she saw Henriette enter the court just as they were turning toward the ward. Henriette came faithfully every day to inquire how he was and reported her visit at dinner with Lady Truckleford's lot. These were practically the only occasions when the sisters met. Henriette's manner was that of affectionate sympathy for Helen and pity for Phil.
"His father and mother have been to see him?"
"Yes. It made him very happy."
"And Peter Smithers was with them?"
"Yes."
Phil, who knew only that Helen had stopped to speak with some one, had no means of knowing who. She was the same to him as any other person of millions in his silent night, unseen, unheard. His circle of actual human beings consisted of Helen, or Henriette, as he thought, Bricktop, the nurses, the specialists, and now his parents and Peter. They were the visible stars in the darkness. And Helen was taking him back to his chair now.
"You've heard that Smithers will leave all his fortune to Cousin Phil, willy-nilly?" said Henriette, following them indoors. "Mother wrote it from Paris. She had it from Truckleford."
"Only they have not told him," Helen said.
"Why not? I should think that if there were anything that would make him want to live it would be the thought that he was to have three millions."
"Mr. Smithers decided not," Helen replied.
"And how has he stood the day?" Henriette asked the stereotyped question of her sister.
"Very well!" was the answer. "I'm afraid it may have tired and excited him, though." She was careful not to let him overtax himself; and now, when he wanted his pad, she added: "I must not let him write much."
If Henriette prolonged her visits it was when Helen was writing him messages or he was writing to her. The process seemed to fascinate her.
"There is a question I want to ask," Phil wrote. "I have wondered about it a good deal. Helen never sends me any messages. She has not even shaken my hand and said hello to her seventeenth cousin. I can't see her new cartoons, but I remember all of her old ones. Tell me!"
Henriette had been looking over his shoulder as he wrote, Helen standing to one side till he had finished the first sheet. A number of times before he had asked where Helen was, and after a strange thrill that dried her throat she had replied:
"Drawing and in her ward. She inquires about you every day."
It was Henriette who reached for the first sheet this time. When he had finished the second sheet she passed both to Helen, with a studious inquiry on her face and without speaking. Then she looked around the room. It was empty, save for one form asleep on a cot in the far corner. Helen did not look up. She was motionless, staring at the sheets. He was hurt because she had never shaken his hand—she who had no thought except him! And, yes, he had thought of her for herself a little—a part of his kindness even when he was racked with pain. She folded the sheets gently, but without the stir of so much as an eyelash, when Henriette's voice brought her out of her daze.
"The hoax seems complete," said Henriette. "He is wholly convinced that you are I."
"Yes," said Helen. "You wished it, didn't you, and it has helped him—yes, he has said that it kept him alive!"
"Kept him alive!" repeated Henriette, in a monotone.
"Yes, you, not I, kept him alive!"
When people knew this! Henriette was thinking of the Lady Truckleford lot. There were pitfalls ahead which she had not foreseen.
"Why didn't you undeceive him?" she demanded.
"I—I could not. It meant so much to him. As soon as he is well then I shall tell him."
"And if he never gets well——"
"He will!" Helen insisted. "But taking the view that he will not," she added, "only his father and mother know and Peter Smithers. They found it out inadvertently and have sworn to keep the secret." Henriette half closed her eyes thoughtfully as the two sisters looked at each other.
"It seems safe," breathed Henriette, raising her lashes and smiling in relief.
Phil was writing again:
"You do not answer. Helen wrote only one letter to me while I was at the front. I fear that I have offended her. Won't you tell me?"
"I—I must explain in some way!" said Helen.
"Let me!" Henriette interposed. "I've never tried writing on his arm, but I think that I know how from watching you."
She rolled up his sleeve and taking his hand to hold up the arm, as she had seen Helen do, traced the letters, slowly announcing each word as she wrote it:
"This is Helen. She has just come to see you and has come often and thinks that you are making the bravest kind of a fight."
He caught her hand in both of his and shook it warmly in his happiness.
"You don't write as well as Henriette," he wrote in reply, "but I have a lot of experience and could read it. What are you drawing? What cartoons are you making? What mischief are you up to generally?"
"I will tell you when I can write better. Now I shall be going so as not to tire you. Good-night!"
She gave his hand another clasp and turned to Helen, smiling, as she said: "I'm in your place, now, as well as you being in mine!" not forgetting to press her lips to Helen's before withdrawing.
She had gone through it all with a graceful facility and self-command, while Helen had found herself unable even to murmur "Good-night." For an instant, again alone with Phil, she felt that she also was groping in a noiseless and sightless world and that she, too, was maimed. Henriette was beautiful—oh, very beautiful! It was no wonder that men fell in love with her. Just to look at her must make any man want to live. Only to the blind could she herself be beautiful. If his sight should come back, it would be the end of the walks in the court and the writing of messages for him. There was dreadful mockery in the thought when he became well he might think that she who had shared his pain in the dark night cared more for making cartoons than for him. For an instant revolt flamed up in her mind; but only for an instant. It was smothered by the appeal of his helplessness as she looked around at him.
Now he began writing again, and her thoughts were bound up in his finger-ends, in the glow of the comradeship which was sufficient unto itself from day to day. She had learned to tell his mood and if the pain were particularly bad by the way he wrote. The letters were coming slowly, ponderingly, from his pencil-point. Something puzzled him. She looked over his shoulder just as his first sentence was finished.
"Her message did not sound like Helen," he had written.
Every nerve taut with suspense, she waited with quick breaths for what was to follow.
"There was a certain style about everything that she did and said. I think that I could tell her hand from yours since I have become so sensitive to touch; though I suppose that with all the pain and the blindness I imagine all sorts of things which are not real."
A leaping something within her that was for the moment irresistible, quick desire shining in her eyes, made her stretch out her hands toward him. Then her heart seemed to stop beating and she checked herself in the reaction of one who finds herself on the verge of treason. What might have been the effect on him if she told him the truth! All her work might have been undone. She gathered her wits, mastered her emotion, and lashed them together with her will.
"It's time for you to close the writing and thinking shop for the day," she wrote on his arm; but when she started to take his pencil and pad he clung to them. He had something more which he must say, and it was best to yield to his wish, as she had learned.
"The shutters of darkness are always down on that shop," he wrote, "but there is always a light within—you!"
A glow came into her cheeks at the compliment. The light was the face of Henriette, her charm and grace, and the labour of Helen. It proved the wickedness of the impulse to tell him the truth. How dependent he was upon Henriette in his fight!
"Now, that writing and thinking shop idea was like Helen," he was thinking—and thinking was much faster than writing and gave lazy minds more freedom to wander. "Isn't it odd? No, it's because I can't hear or speak or see—and I am tired."
"Good-night!" said her hand-clasp out there in the darkness, but bringing her very near him.
"Good-night!" his return clasp signalled back. Soon he was dozing. The pain was not sharp just then. He was nearly healed enough for another operation.
"He ought to sleep well," Helen said to the night nurse as she went out, with a peculiar relief in going, such as she had never felt before.
When she reached her room, for the first time since she had put them away the night after the ambulance brought Phil to the hospital she took her drawing materials out of her trunk, in answer to some tangent demand of the distraction that possessed her, only to put them back in and the unanswered demands of editors with them, as if she had no concern with them now. There was nothing to do but to keep on marching and fighting, without bothering what bridges were to be crossed on the other side of the promised land of his recovery.
Phil had no idea how long he had dozed when the head pain devil, who sat on the point of his jaw directing the operations of all the little devils on the lines of communication, prodded him awake. For him the little pain devils were articulate. He lived in a world of imagined voices.
"What if you should never get well? What if we should keep you always?" said the Fiend General Commanding. "We are a trifle weak now, but you wait till after the next operation. Then we shall have a rare old dance of it. What if it should be just one operation and another and another forever? Let your wounds heal and get back your strength, only for another bout! What if you should never see green fields or hear the birds sing again?"
On such occasions there must be prompt "counter battery work," as they say at the front, or he would go out of his head. His answer was to call upon his memory for the ammunition of battle; to relieve happy incidents of the past. His father and mother and Peter Smithers and all his friends must help him.
His thoughts ran in leaping waves of half-consciousness from one picture of recollection to another... Yes, it was Helen who had been to see him last... What a ninny she had made him appear when he proposed to her by mistake under the tree!... How the mischief would leap out of her eyes!... How many kinds of Helen were there? Sometimes he had thought that she suffered because she was plain. No, all she cared for was to make drawings. How would she and Peter get along? They would be a pair! She would be certain to cartoon him... The terrace at Mervaux! That last night when the three had walked up and down together in the dusk. White slippers moving in unison with his own steps—odd that he should remember that! Two voices were so alike that either girl might have been speaking. Why, it was quite the same as if he had his hearing back and could not see...
Henriette smiling from her easel at him—how good she was to look at! Helen with her quips as she was drawing the cartoons! Helen in her intensity as she made the real drawing! Henriette silent, smiling, her lips parted as if she were speaking and Helen's words seeming to be here! Oh, afternoon of afternoons! Air sweet to the nostrils and genial sunlight! All the senses in tranquil enjoyment!...
And Henriette! Oh, he had been hard hit that day. It was enough for any woman to be as beautiful as she was! But how little he realised her worth then! Her beauty had dimmed her other qualities. She was all of Helen and Henriette, too... That glorious courage of Henriette in face of the shells! The woman who had waited had not been afraid. When she had only to raise her finger to bring the strong and the well to pay her court, her loyalty had not faltered when he was too horrible to remain alive. If he had not been wounded he would never have known her true worth...
How had such luck come to him? Silence, you pain devils! It had—it had! The messages of her sturdy determination that had fortified him and of the nonsense that cheers which she had written on his arm were recalled. Now he was imagining the touch of her fingers on his arm writing good news. Any minute he might feel her hand-clasp announcing her return. For he had no idea of time; her comings and goings set his calendar. This Henriette made the other seem only a doll. She said that he would get well. He should. It was too good a world for his sight not to come back in order that he might feed it on the beautiful vision of her—now that suffering had taught him how to appreciate her.
"You are very eerie this afternoon," whispered the Fiend General Commanding, beaten down to a grumbling complaint. "If we could only stop you from thinking of her we'd soon have you."
"You never will!" Phil replied. "She has the measure of such imps of hell as you."
And he slept.
Either Helen or Phil had given the eye expert the name of Mr. Eyes and the ear expert that of Mr. Ears, which these great men who had honourific alphabetical court trains to their names did not mind. As guardian of the nerve which enables us to know whether the tenor is in good voice or not and to tell the notes of the lark from those of the nightingale or, what was more important in the latest European operations, the cough of thesoixante-quinzefrom the rattle of a machine-gun, Mr. Ears was champion of silence in the hospital, which might have been as noisy as a boiler factory without disturbing Phil.
The ambulances ran softly up to the door; the nurses spoke low; they did not rattle the dishes when they brought food from the diet kitchens. After Phil's nurse had placed his tray in front of him preparatory to feeding him, she was called to the other end of the room for something, when she heard a crash behind her. She turned to see broken glass and crockery scattered on the floor. Extraordinary! This had never happened before to him. As she bent over to wipe up the small delta of milk she saw Phil's foot wiggling energetically, demanding his pad—a rare request unless he knew that Helen was present.
"Did it make a noise?" he asked.
"Of course, and an awful mess!" she replied. "How did it happen?"
"Experiment!" he wrote.
Experiment? It was a plain case of being out of his head. She hoped that Helen would come soon, as she always brought him around if he gave signs of delirium. Meanwhile, she must be on the watch lest he tear off his bandages, as other of Bricktop's patients had done, but her apprehensions were quite groundless.
The downfall of the tray was a test after vague intimations that sound was entering Phil's silent world. It was as loud to his ears as the crackling of a sheet of newspaper. His elation over the discovery was so great that he had a reaction when the nerve-devils began plying him with their scepticism.
"Well-known psychological illusion!" they said, using professional language which they had picked up from long association with hospitals. "Imagination played you a trick. You knew it was going to crash!"
Very likely they were right. Hadn't he imagined that he could see the interior of the ward and how Henriette looked when she bent over him to write on his arm? Hadn't he sometimes heard her steps in imagination around his chair? He set all his mind into his ears, straining for some other sound. There was none.
"This torture is called hope unfilled!" chirruped the nerve-devils. "Oh, what a dance we shall give you to-morrow after the operation! The operation is to-morrow, isn't it?"
Of course the nurse related the whole affair to Helen when she arrived.
"'Experiment,' he said. How extraordinary!" exclaimed the nurse, who was still more astounded when Helen gave an outcry of joy and, leaning over, puckered her lips and uttered a sharp whistle—which was one of her accomplishments—in Phil's ear.
Here was real test! No imagination about this, if he had heard. She drew back, quivering with suspense. Phil was wiggling his foot almost violently for his pad and pencil.
"Did somebody whistle in my ear?" he asked.
"I did! I did!" she repeated wildly, as she wrote her reply.
"They said it was imagination"—she knew who "they" were, those "Boches" of nerve-devils.
"Score one for the Allies!" she wrote on his arm. "I'm off to tell Mr. Ears!"
The Great Man came swinging along the gravel path, half running to keep up with Helen. After the scientific test which he promptly applied he felt as triumphant as a brigadier who had taken the first line trenches on a front of a thousand yards in the Ypres salient.
"Only a question of time, he says," Helen wrote.
"Hurrah!" Phil replied. "If anybody has a steam siren handy and blew it in my ear it would be all the more comforting."
"Soon I shall not have to write on your arm any more," she told him.
"That will be odd."
"Yes, very!" she said.
Mr. Ears had gone to tell Bricktop, who said that it would hearten Phil for the operation the next day and then despatched a messenger to the parents and Peter Smithers. The news travelled fast about the hospital. It was across the street with the Trucklefords in half an hour.
"Clever of him, wasn't it, dropping the tray?" said Lady Violet. "And so American!"
Of course the Truckleford lot had met Peter Smithers by this time. He and the Sanfords had even had tea over there on the primary invitation of Henriette, renewed unanimously by all present. He was a card, this dry American worth three millions, which were to go to that poor fellow struggling to become a whole human being again without yet knowing that he was to be the heir. Phil's case took on fresh interest. So he could hear a little! And the big operation was to-morrow! If that should succeed and he should recover his sight!