A Book o' Nine Tales.. Bates Arlo
rapidly than her stitches, and when she was relieved from her post by old Sarah, she stole softly out of the room to continue her dreaming in an arbor overlooking the water, where, in pleasant weather, she was wont to spend her leisure hours.
The next day, when she gave her patient his morning gruel, he watched her with questioning eyes, as if endeavoring to identify her, and at last framed another inquiry.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I am Columbine.”
“Columbine?”
“Columbine Dysart.”
That he knew little more than before was a consequence of the situation, and Mistress Columbine was wise enough to spare him the necessity of saying so.
“You do not know us,” she said; “but we will take good care of you until you are well enough to hear all about it.”
“But – ” he began, the puzzled look upon his wan face not at all dissipated.
“No,” she returned, “there is no ‘but’ about it. It is all right.”
“But,” he repeated with an insistence that would not be denied, “but – ”
“Well?” queried she, seeing that something troubled him too much to be evaded.
“But who am I?” he demanded, so earnestly that the absurdity of such a question was lost in its pathos.
“Who are you?” she echoed, in bewilderment. Then, with the instant reflection that he was still too near delirium and brain-fever to be allowed to trouble himself with speculations, she added, brightly, and with the air of one who settles all possible doubts, “Why, you are yourself, of course.”
She smiled so dazzlingly as she spoke that a complete faith in her assurances mingled itself with some dimly felt sense of the ludicrous in the sick man’s mind, and although the baffled look did not at once disappear from his face, yet he said nothing further, and not long after he fell asleep, leaving Columbine free to seek her arbor again and ponder on this new phase of her interesting case. She attached no serious importance then to the fact that her patient seemed so uncertain concerning his identity; but, as the days went by, and he was as completely unable to answer his own query as ever, a strange, baffled feeling stole over her; a teasing sense of being brought helplessly face to face with a mystery to which she had no key.
His convalescence was somewhat slow, the hurts he had received having been of a very serious nature; but when he was able to leave his room, and even to accompany Columbine to her favorite arbor, he was still grappling vainly with the problem of who and what he was.
This first visit to the arbor, it should be noted, was an event in the quiet life at the old house. Columbine was full of petty excitement over it, her fair cheeks flushed and her hair disordered with running to and fro to see that the cushions were in place, the sun shining at the right angle, and the breeze not too fresh. She insisted upon supporting the sick man on one side, while faithful old Sarah, her nurse in childhood, and since promoted to fill at once the place of housekeeper and all the departed servants, took his arm upon the other to help him along the smoothly trodden path through the neglected garden. Mr. Dysart was as usual in his library, and to disturb him there was a venture requiring more daring than either of the women possessed. They got on very tolerably without him, however, and the patient was soon installed amid a pile of wraps and shawls in the summer-house, where he was left in charge of Miss Dysart, while Sarah returned to her household avocations.
It was a beautiful day in the beginning of September, warm and golden, with all the mellowness of autumn in the air, while yet the glow of summer was not wholly lost. The soft sound of water on the shore was heard through the chirping of innumerable insects, shrilling out their delight in the heat; while now and then the notes of a bird mingled pleasantly in the harmony. The convalescent drew in full breaths of the sweet air with a sigh of satisfaction, leaning back among his cushions to look, with the pleasure of returning life, over the fair scene before him.
For some time nurse and patient sat silent, but the girl, watching him intently, was in no wise dissatisfied with the other’s evident appreciation of her favorite spot. Indeed, she had dreamed here of him so often that some subtle clairvoyancy may have secretly put him in harmony with the place before he saw it. Columbine liked him for the pleasure so evident upon his handsome, wasted face, while inly she was aware how great would have been her disappointment had he been less alive to the charms of the view.
“How lovely it is!” he said, at length. “It is, perhaps, because you live in so lovely a place,” he added, after a trifling pause, and with a faint smile, “that you are so kind to a waif like myself.”
“Perhaps,” she answered, returning his smile. “But, really, we only did what any one would have done in our place.”
“Oh, no; and besides, few could have done it so well. It is so pleasant, I seem to have lived here always.”
“It may be,” Columbine suggested, with deliberation, “that it recalls some place you have known.”
A shadow came over his face.
“It is a pity,” he said, “that if that unlucky disaster could spare me nothing of my baggage, it could not at least have left me my few poor wits. I might make an interesting case for psychologists. They might discover from me in what part of the brain the faculty of memory is located, for that wretched wound seems to have let mine all ooze out of my cranium. I do not feel, Miss Dysart, like an idiot in all respects, since I certainly know my right hand from my left; and I have found, by experiment in the night-watches, that I could still make myself understood in two or three languages.”
“You had much better have slept,” interpolated his listener.
“But as far as my personal history goes,” he continued, replying to her words by a smile, “my mind is an absolute blank. I can give you several interesting pieces of information concerning ancient history and chronology; but I haven’t the faintest idea what my name is; and you must acknowledge that it is a little hard for a man to be ignorant of his own name.”
“Yes,” Columbine assented, bending forward and clasping her hands in front of her knees. “Yes; and it is so strange! Try and remember; you must surely recollect something.”
“I have tried; I do try; but I can only conjure up a confused mass of shifting images; things I seem to have been and to have done, all indistinguishably mixed with what I have only dreamed or hoped to do and be.”
“How strange!” she said again, fixing her wide-open dark eyes upon him, and then turning her gaze to the sea beyond; “but it will come to you in time.”
“Heavens!” he exclaimed, energetically, “I hope so, else I shall regret that you pulled me out of the water. To-day I do seem to have a glimpse of something more tangible. Since I sat here I almost thought I remembered – ”
He broke off suddenly, his bright look fading into an expression of helpless annoyance.
“What?” cried Columbine, eagerly.
“I cannot tell,” he groaned. “It is all gone.”
“Oh, what a pity!” exclaimed she, springing to her feet in a flush of sympathy and baffled curiosity. “Oh, how cruel!”
Then she remembered that she was absolutely disobeying the doctor’s orders, and was allowing her patient to become excited.
“There, there,” she said, “how wrong of me to let you worry! Everything will come back to you when you are stronger. Now it is time for your luncheon. It is so warm and bright you may have it here if you will promise not to bother your head. For I really think,” she added, wisely, giving his wraps a deft touch or two, “that the best way to remember is not to try.”
“I dare say you are right,” he agreed. “At least trying doesn’t seem to accomplish much.”
She flitted away, to return a moment or two later with an old-fashioned salver, upon which, in dainty china two or three generations old, Sarah had arranged the invalid’s luncheon. She drew the rustic table up to his side