But Berenice refused to give up her place. She stood beside Wynne while
her grandmother examined the arm, handing the things that were wanted;
fighting with the faintness that came over her in waves.
"No, Mehitabel," said she. "I'm made of better stuff than you think."
In her heart she had a half unconscious feeling that she had been
inclined to hold this man in contempt because of his priestly garb; and
that she owed him this reparation. She did not know what had occurred
in that overturned car; but she looked back to it as to a horror of
great darkness in which Wynne had risked his life for hers. She felt
that she could not do less than to stand by while the wound he had
received in her service was being attended to. It was Wynne himself who
put her away.
"You are too kind, Miss Morison," he said; "but you are not fit to do
this. I beg that you'll not stay. Your face shows how hard it is for
you."
The first thought that shot through her mind was one of relief that she
now might properly leave her self-inflicted task; the second was a pang
of self-reproach that she should wish to leave it; the third and
lasting was a sense of pleasure that even in his pain he had not failed
to note her face and divine her feelings.
"Mr. Wynne is right," Mrs. Morison added decisively. "Mehitabel can
help me, my dear. Go into the other room and let Rosa get you a cup of
tea."
"It won't be much of a cup of tea," Mehitabel commented grimly. "That
fool of a girl's got it into her head that it's a good time to cry for
her doxy, because he's a brakeman on some other train."
Berenice smiled at the characteristic crispness and the absurd speech
of the old servant. She remembered Mehitabel from the days when in
pinafores she used to visit here, and when she looked upon the tall,
gaunt woman with an awe which was saved from being terror only by the
fact that she had learned to associate with that abrupt speech an after
gift of crisp cakes. Mehitabel was to her as much a part of the
establishment as were the tall chairs, the lion-headed fire-dogs, or
the silver which had belonged to her grandmother's grandmother.
Passing into the dining-room Berenice summoned the afflicted Rosa, who
came with face all be-blubbered with tears, and who sniffed audibly as
soon as she caught sight of the visitor.
"How do you do, Rosa? I wouldn't cry, if I were you," Berenice said.
"Mehitabel says that this wasn't his train."
"Oh, I know it, Miss," responded Rosa, with more tears; "but I can't
help thinking how dreadful it would be if it was; and me not to know
whether he was dead or alive. It don't seem to me I could ever marry
him, not to be able to tell whether he'd come home any day dead or
alive. I'll have to give him up, Miss; and he's real kind and
free-handed."
Her tears flowed so freely at the thought of giving up her lover that
they splashed on Berenice's hand as Rosa leaned over to reach for
something on the table.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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