“Then I won't force them upon you and Crawford, my dear Campion,” said
Harwood, walking away, for he knew that upon some occasions the doctor
should be conciliated, and in the matter of a patient every allowance
should be made for his warmth of feeling. So long as one of his “cases”
paid his skill the compliment of surviving any danger, he spoke well of
the patient; but when one behaved so unhandsomely as to die, it was with
the doctor _De mortuis nil nisi malum_. Harwood knew this, and so he
walked away.
And now that he found himself--or rather made himself--alone, he thought
over all the events of the previous eventful day; but somehow there did
not seem to be any event worth remembering that was not associated with
Daireen Gerald. He recollected how he had watched her when they had been
together among the lovely gardens of the island slope. As she turned her
eyes seaward with an earnest, sad, _questioning_ gaze, he felt that he
had never seen a picture so full of beauty.
The words he had spoken to her, telling her that the day he had spent on
the island was the happiest of his life, were true indeed; he had
never felt so happy; and now as he reflected upon his after-words his
conscience smote him for having pretended to her that he was thinking of
the place where he knew her thoughts had carried her: he had seen from
her face that she was dreaming about her Irish home, and he had made her
feel that the recollection of the lough and the mountains was upon his
mind also. He felt now how coarse had been his deception.
He then recalled the final scene of the night, when, as he was trying
to pursue his own course of thought, and at the same time pretend to be
listening to the major's thrice-told tale of a certain colonel's conduct
at the Arradambad station, the girl had appeared before them like a
vision. Yes, it was altogether a remarkable day even for a special
correspondent. The reflection upon its events made him very thoughtful
during the entire of this afternoon. Nor was he at all disturbed by the
information Doctor Campion brought vo him just when he was going for his
usual smoke upon the bridge, while the shore of Palma was yet in view
not far astern.
“Good fellow he is,” murmured the doctor. “Capital fellow! opened his
eyes just now when I was in his cabin--recovered consciousness in a
moment.”
“Ah, in a moment?” said Harwood dubiously. “I thought it always needed
the existence of some link of consciousness between the past and
the present to bring about a restoration like this--some familiar
sight--some well-known sound.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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