Chapter VII: The Invalid Improves

THE next morning at breakfast, Graham said—"How is my mother this morning?"

"She did not sleep very well, but she seems comfortable now. I shan't let her get up very early."

"I'm afraid your meeting with Mrs. Jeffery rather agitated her?"

Sara looked up at him gravely and frankly.

"Mr. Laird, your mother told me all last night."

"I am glad she did," he said, after a little pause; "I would rather you had heard it from her lips than from anybody else's. I suppose you guessed she had something on her mind?"

"It ought not to be there," said Sara. "She has distorted and magnified what happened so much that she refuses to put it away from her."

"She cannot well do that. Our memories are hard masters."

"But our failures and mistakes can be blotted out. It is wrong to bind them upon our shoulders and bear the burden of them."

"What were you singing to her last night?"

"A hymn—"

Graham smiled, and Sara coloured a little.

"Don't scorn hymns," she said. "This was a very special one."

"I do not doubt it. But my mother's hurt is too deep to be touched by hymns. If Mrs. Jeffery does happen to call here, you must not let her see my mother. I am sorry she is in the neighbourhood. Of course I was abroad at the time of my mother's trouble. Eva was a young and foolish girl, but I don't think she was so much to blame as my mother imagines. It is a very sad story. I have heard both sides. But I would give a good deal to any one who brought the least bit of comfort to my mother. She is much too morbid, of course, about her part in it. It was an accident, pure and simple. And if any soul has punished themselves a thousand times over for a fit of temper, I am sure my poor mother has."

"Yes," said Sara, "that is quite true. She will be comforted by and by, Mr. Laird; I know she will."

"I shall have to answer Mrs. Jeffery's note," said Graham, musingly. "I am ashamed of having put it into my pocket and forgotten it. I think I must ride over and see her, and then I'll have a look at Snooks. Reuben would like to keep him another day, he said."

Sara's day passed very quietly. It seemed like a calm after a storm.

When Mrs. Laird was dressed, she sat in her chair engrossed in a book which she was reading. She made no allusion to what had passed the evening before, but when dusk came on, she sent for Sara.

"Sing to me," she said.

Sara sang some of her favourite songs, both grave and gay, then, just as she was laying aside her guitar, Mrs. Laird said—

"And now sing me that hymn again. And sing it slowly—make it last!"

Sara willingly did so.

Mrs. Laird listened with face screened from view by her book, which she held between herself and the singer.

The sweet vibration of Sara's voice accentuated the sweetness of the words.

Mrs. Laird thanked her quietly when she had finished, and Sara wisely made no comment upon it.

After that, every evening she sang the same hymn, until one night about ten days afterwards Mrs. Laird said abruptly—

"You need not sing it any more. I know it now by heart. As I lie in bed, I hear your voice still singing it."

Sara bent down and kissed her.

"I'm so glad you like it," she said. "I have always loved it. You're going to have the two last lines made good to you."

Mrs. Laird looked up inquiringly.

"We'll change one word," said Sara, smiling.

"And our lives will be all sunshine
In the sweetness of our Lord."

Mrs. Laird caught hold of her hand with a quick-drawn breath.

"Oh," she said, "if it could be! It's the first ray of hope I've had through all these wretched years."

She was very silent after that. Sara felt her way very carefully. She knew that words from her were unnecessary, for she believed that Mrs. Laird was drawing near to the One Who loved her. So she said little and prayed much.

Snooks returned home, and soon regained the use of his leg.

Sara did not forget the lonely woman who had helped to dress his wounds. She went up one day, and sat outside the hut according to her promise. She sat there for half an hour without hearing or seeing any sign of her.

Then as she was about to move away, the door slowly opened, and Agnes came out. She had a jug in her hand as if she were going to the spring, and she gave a start when she saw Sara, but it was too self-consciously done to be natural. Sara had a pretty good idea that she had been seen from the window.

"I thought you might like to hear how your patient was going on," said Sara, brightly. "I nearly brought him up with me to-day, only I was afraid that you had made him so comfortable here that he would want to return to you."

"He was a very good patient," Agnes said gravely. "A good deal more patient than I was when I got my hurt. He and I have reason to remember these hills."

Then she looked sharply at Sara.

"You've heard my story from somebody?"

"Well, yes, I have," said Sara, gently. "I do feel so sorry for you."

Agnes shot up her head in the air with a little snort.

"Oh, you've no cause to be sorry for me. That happened years ago. I've learnt to bear in silence, but I hate pity."

Sara made no reply. She just smiled upon her companion in a friendly fashion, and Agnes's face softened at once.

"Father and I fit in very well together, for we're both silent. He is always busy, and so am I."

"Do you get any time for reading?"

"No. Father's books don't interest me. They're all on herbs and medicines. But I crochet and knit. I've crocheted a good many shawls and now I'm doing a quilt. Does Mrs. Laird work? She'd find it would soothe her like nothing else if she did."

"Yes; we work together. I quite agree with you. Work always soothes me."

Agnes looked at Sara's bright sympathetic face.

"I shouldn't think you were ever ruffled or disturbed," she said.

"Sometimes I feel inside like a seething whirlpool," said Sara; "especially when wrong is being done, and nobody seems able to right it. But as far as my own affairs go, I have had a happy life."

"You look like it. Anybody could see you've never known trouble."

"Oh, I don't know about that," said Sara, gravely. "Trouble comes to us all. I have twice been rooted up out of a very happy comfortable home, but I know it must be the very best thing for me, so it doesn't worry me."

"Why should it be the very best thing for you?" asked Agnes in surprise.

"I don't know why. I suppose I shall see the reason for it some day."

A little silence fell upon them.

Then Agnes said gloomily—

"There's no more light and hope for me some future day than there is now."

"Oh, isn't there? Don't you look forward to another better life when this is done? You don't expect to come to an end when you die?"

"I hate death. I don't trouble about it."

"I have learnt that it is a golden gate," said Sara. "I remember hearing a little story long ago. May I tell it to you?

"It was of three travellers on board ship journeying towards land. One was a stowaway; he knew he was going to be landed and left to shift for himself. He looked forward with doubt and uneasiness to the end of his journey, for he did not know what would become of him. The other was a criminal who had been detected and discovered since he was on board. He knew what the end of his journey would mean for him. Trial, punishment, and most likely death. The third was going home to his father's house. He had been sent abroad on a mission of some difficulty, and had suffered a good many hardships in trying to carry it out. But his mission was done. He had been recalled, and now there was a gladness in his eye, an eager anticipation in his heart of the welcome he would receive, of the home that was his. He knew that the end of his journey would be better than all that had gone before."

Sara paused. Her eyes were far-away and there was a rapt smile about her lips.

Agnes looked at her. Her daily contact with her father, who was an educated man, had refined her and made her more thoughtful than most women in her position would have been.

"I feel like the stowaway," she said. "I don't know what the end of my journey will be."

"But you can know. I would never rest if I were you till I did know. The Bible will tell you."

Then Sara got up to go.

"Come and see me soon again," said Agnes. "You are different from other people."

Sara promised she would; and Agnes stood watching her light quick steps retreating into the distance. She went back to the hut.

"If the Bible could give me her gladness and sureness, it would be worth reading," she said. "I'll have a try."

It was an eventful day when, wrapped up warmly, Sara took Mrs. Laird round the garden. She leant heavily upon the girl's arm, and at first would hardly notice the flowers that under Sara's care were blossoming freely. But as the days grew brighter and warmer, the air and sunshine worked their way with her, and she began to evince more interest in things about her.

And one sunny morning Sara got Graham to help, and between them they got the old lady down to the lake, and took her out in a boat.

It was a very successful effort. Mrs. Laird came back to the house with a light in her eyes which Sara had never seen before.

Graham was intensely pleased, but also cautious.

"Don't go too fast, Miss Darlington," he said. "Don't overtax her strength. I don't know if it is a good sign or not, but my mother is altering very much. She is softer and gentler in her ways; the shadow seems lifting from her. I sometimes wonder whether it is a sign that her hold on life is lessening, that her strength is going. What do you think?"

"No," said Sara, slowly, "I think it is something better than that. I think she is being comforted."

"She has told me more than once what a comfort you are to her."

"Oh, Mr. Laird, I am not doing it. Do you think I personally could bring her out of the shadows?"

He looked at her in a puzzled sort of way, but said no more.

There were still days when Mrs. Laird relapsed into brooding melancholy, but these came very seldom now, and if she had been depressed during the day, she would ask Sara to sing her the hymn that she had learnt to love.

One evening she had retired early to bed, and Sara ran down into the garden to water her flowers. She found Colonel Fleming and Graham pacing the paths together, as they smoked their pipes.

Colonel Fleming gave her a very hearty greeting. "Haven't seen you for ages! I hear of you from different quarters. Miss Ferris complains she has asked you over to dine and you won't go. I hoped to meet you there last week. Why won't you accept her invitations?"

"Because I am otherwise employed," said Sara, with a little laugh. "But I liked Miss Ferris very much."

"So does every one. Now look here. I'm going to give a party—what do you ladies call it?—An 'At Home,' isn't it? I shall be at home to my friends next Thursday. I expect Sir Malcolm and Miss Ferris, I expect Mrs. Jeffery and her little girl, and I expect you, Miss Darlington. Laird will drive you over: of course he'll come. I shall have the parson and his wife, and the doctor and a few local fry. What's bothering my head is the question of entertainment. My strawberries will be ripe, but you wouldn't like to be told to pick them, would you? There will be croquet for a few—but what on earth will the rest do?"

"Talk," said Graham. "My experience of those sorts of gaieties is that you stand about a damp lawn, and keep your tongues busy; you refresh yourself with tea, and you go at it again till you've exhausted every subject under the sun. And then you're glad enough to see the traps coming round."

"Poor dumb dog," said Colonel Fleming. "Does he never talk to you, Miss Darlington?"

"Not much," said Sara, laughing.

"No," said Graham; "Miss Darlington and I think more than we speak. If we have anything particular to say, we say it, otherwise we hold our tongues."

"Well, am I to expect you?"

"I will see what Mrs. Laird says," said Sara, quietly. "If she cannot spare me, I shall not come. But I thank you for the invitation."

"You must bring her, Graham. Don't dare to show your face without her!"

He departed.

Sara continued watering her flowers.

"Here!" said Graham, suddenly, after watching her in an absent-minded way. "You must let me fill those cans for you. Why do you give yourself such a lot of trouble? Let the flowers take their chance and wait for the rain."

"If you had sown these, and watched their growth from seedlings, you couldn't see them flag and wither and die for want of a little effort on your part."

Graham did not answer. He filled her cans from the garden tap and carried them backwards and forwards for her. Then, when she expressed herself satisfied, he said—

"Now we have earned a rest, come and sit down over here where we can look down upon the lake."

She followed him to a favourite nook of hers in the garden. The trees and shrubs had been cut away, and from a rustic seat the lake in its beautiful setting of wooded slopes lay before them. She clasped her hands idly in her lap, and a smile of keen enjoyment came to her lips as she gazed over the still blue water.

"I don't think I have ever seen you idle before," said Graham, breaking a silence of some minutes. "You always have that everlasting knitting in your hands or some other dull kind of work."

Sara laughed.

"How like a man! Women's work is often dull, but it is very useful nevertheless!"

"How was it you refused Miss Ferris's invitation? Did my mother know about it?"

"No. I did not think it necessary to tell her."

"But that was hardly fair. There was no reason why you should not have gone."

"I had several very good reasons," said Sara, serenely. "The chief one perhaps was that your mother requires me more towards the end of the day than any other part of it."

"But I could have taken your place."

"Not altogether. You see what a good opinion I have of my services! I did not come here to enjoy social gaiety."

"Gaiety! If you only knew what a dull soul is Ferris! His dinners are heavier to the spirit than to the digestion, and that is saying a good deal!"

"Then I haven't missed much," said Sara, laughing.

He looked at her without speaking for a moment, then he said—

"You must come to Fleming's to-morrow. We need not stay long. I can't think how he can consider it worth his while to turn his house topsy-turvy for such an ineffectual bit of social intercourse. It's like playing at a game!"

"Playing games is healthy sometimes. Colonel Fleming strikes me as a very sociable man. He likes his fellow creatures, doesn't he?"

A shadow came into Graham's eyes.

"He used to be one of the most popular officers in the service. I can't think even now why he stays here. Of course at one time I think I told you—he had his trouble, but time heals wounds of that sort."

"He is very fond of you."

"It's rather astonishing, isn't it?"

As Sara looked up, she encountered quite a humorous sparkle in Graham's dark eyes, and she cried impulsively—

"Oh, I'm so glad you've a sense of humour. Why don't you show it more? It helps through difficult bits of life as nothing else does."

And then she rose from her seat.

"I must go in. Your mother will be expecting me."

She had turned from him before Graham had recovered from his astonishment.

"A sense of humour!" he muttered. "When one is cramped and deadened, and crushed into a flattened bit of putty, it's hard to have any sense at all. But she is revolutionizing us! And what a light she is in our dark dreary house!"