CHAPTER XXV.
AN INVALID.
How do I love thee? Let me count the sums. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height, My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace----
When, a month later, Sutton was carried into Dustypore, he was, as anyone would have felt, a fit subject for romance, and Maud was just in themood to appreciate all that was romantic about him to the full. She hadbeen thinking about this event and fancying it, and dreaming about itfor weeks past, poor child, till it had become for her the very climaxof existence. As the time for its realisation drew near she had beenhaunted by nervous apprehensions as to whether she had notmisinterpreted Sutton's words of kindness at that last interview, andwhether the moment of disillusionment might not be now arriving. Sutton,so a morbid mood suggested, might have meant nothing; or his words,perhaps, proved only a passing tenderness, engendered by the specialcircumstances of the hour: her fancy, perhaps, had dressed up a fewcareless expressions into something serious. But there came a truervoice which said that it was not so; that Sutton was not a man ofcareless words or a transient mood, and that a pledge had been given,though without actual spoken vow, which he assuredly would redeem on hisreturn. On the whole then, though not absolutely without a misgiving,Maud was joyous and courageous, and her heart was light within her. She,however, felt herself becoming greatly embarrassed and excited as thehour of Sutton's arrival drew near. The most needless blushes cameflushing into her cheeks; the simplest things seemed difficult toanswer. Felicia knew, Maud was certain, pretty well how matters stood;knew at any rate that there was something between her and Sutton: yetMaud had never summoned up courage to inform her what it was, nor hadFelicia chosen to inquire. It was rather agitating, accordingly, thatFelicia should now be about to have an opportunity of judging forherself how matters stood.
Then Sutton arrived, too suffering from his wound to be moved except ina palanquin; and was got, with a great deal of trouble and painapparently, to the sofa in Vernon's study, which was turned into hissitting-room for the time being, and where the invalid was to spend theday. Here he lay, a close prisoner, as feeble as a bad wound and amonth's fever could make him, and quite in a condition for judiciousnursing. A man in such a plight wants company--pleasant, gentle,noiseless, unexciting, feminine if possible; he wants to be read to, andsung and played to; he wants cooling drinks, which, when mixed andadministered by a hand like Felicia's, are more than nectar; he wantsthose delicious idle gossips, for which the healthy busy side of life soseldom provides either the opportunity or the mood. If a man lack these,an illness is a dreary affair; if he has them, it may bring him thepleasantest hours of his life.
All these pleasant conditions now attended the fortunate Sutton'sconvalescence. Felicia welcomed him with a joyful cordiality and devotedherself with enthusiasm to the task of making his imprisonment as littlewearisome as might be. Vernon stole an hour from his office to read himthe 'Pall Mall Gazette;' Maud found herself busy with the rest, awilling attendant on the happy warrior in his hour of weakness.Everybody made a great deal of him. Felicia's little girls, coming withmuch modesty and many blushes, brought him a nosegay apiece and kissedhis hand with a sort of affectionate reverence. His face was wan andthin, and marked with lines of suffering; but the sweet, kind smile wasstill the same, and the honest eyes and finely-chiselled brow. On thewhole Maud found him handsomer and ten times more touching than everbefore. She knew, too, before they had been a minute in each other'scompany that all was well with her. The time of separation, uncertainty,distress, was done: happiness, greater than she had ever dreamed of, wasalready hers. Her foot stood already on the crowning ridge of existence,and all the horizon blazed with the golden clouds of Hope and Joy.
One effect that Sutton always had upon her she was especially consciousof just now: she had no feeling of shyness with him, such as she feltwith all the world beside; he stirred her being too profoundly for anyslighter feeling to find a place. Shyness deals with the superficial,slighter outcomings of life. Sutton seemed to transport her to anotherworld of thought and feeling: thoughts too high and feelings too intenseto heed the mode of their expression. The consequence was, that itseemed quite natural to Maud for her to be waiting on him; who had sogood a right as she to that pleasant duty?
Then presently Felicia went away with the children, and the two wereagain, for the first time, alone together.
'Come,' Sutton said, changing his manner instantly, 'sit down by me andtell me all that has happened since we parted on the mountain's side.You missed me a little, I hope?'
'Yes,' said Maud, simply, looking at him with fearless, trusting eyes;'your going was the end of all our pleasure--we went away to the Gully,and then came your accident and some dreadful days of anxiety. Sincethen everything has seemed a sort of dream.'
'It has seemed a dream to me sometimes,' said Sutton, 'as I lay andwondered whether the happiness I fancied for myself was real or fable.Things befall one so suddenly in life, and strokes of good or illfortune take one so by surprise, that one distrusts one's own beliefabout them, and cannot fancy that the old life which went before hasbeen all transfigured. Now, however, that I see you and hear you andhave you about me, I begin to feel it was not a dream after all.'
'It was no dream,' said Maud, in her serious way; 'here is your locket,which I have been keeping for you since we parted.'
'No,' said the other, giving back the proffered locket and keeping thehand which gave it in captivity; 'you shall keep it now, if you will,for good and all; that is, if you have a fancy for an old soldier,wounded and battered as you see me. Here I shall be for weeks, Isuppose, a burden on the friends who are good-natured enough to be mynurses. You will have to tend me, as Elaine did Launcelot in his cave.'
'I will,' Maud said, wrapped into a mood which left her scarcelymistress of herself; 'my love is as great as hers was. I have beenliving all these weeks only that I might see you again. I must have diedif you had not come back, or come back other than I hoped.'
The die was cast--the words were spoken; they came out naturally,spontaneously, almost unconsciously before Maud had time to know whatshe was about, or to judge of the wisdom and propriety of what she wassaying. They were the truth; they were what she had been feeling andsaying to herself for weeks past; they were the true outcoming of herhonest heart; and yet no sooner were they spoken than Maud felt an awfulconviction that they had better have been left unsaid; they were more,far more, than anything which had been said on Sutton's part to her. Wasit wrong, unwomanly, indecorous, thus to have declared herself and tornthe veil from her feelings without waiting for a lover's hand to removeit? The thought rushed in upon her with an agonizing distinctness; theblood came rushing to her cheeks and forehead; her very hand whichSutton was holding in his own, emaciated and bloodless, was blushingtoo. She could say nothing, she could do nothing but stay, helpless,having made her confession, and wait for Sutton to rescue her.
As he lay there, holding her hand in his, clasping it with a firm,tender grasp, which seemed to be expressive of all she wanted, Feliciacame into the room. Maud stood there, scarlet, and moved not, nor didSutton seem inclined that she should.
'Felicia,' he said, 'you are the good angel of us both, and this momentwould have been incomplete without you. Maud has just consented tobecome my wife.'
Felicia took Maud to her arms in a sort of rapture of happiness; herheart was too full for speech. It was a delightful relief from theanxiety and distress which had been weighing upon her all the summer andwhich had of late grown into an acute pang. She felt grateful to bothparties, who had at last brought about the result for which she hadwished so anxiously and of which she had somehow begun to despair.
Maud, on her part, felt it natural that Sutton should, at a tryingemergency, have protected her skilfully, considerately, efficiently fromthe embarrassment into which her outspokenness had betrayed her; it waslike himself to do so, and typical of the sort of feeling of confidenc
ewith which he always inspired her. There was a delightful sense ofsafety and protection in being with him. How should her heart not beathigh at the thought that this safety and protection would evermore behers!