CHAPTER XIV

“SO FAITHFUL IN LOVE, AND SO DAUNTLESS IN WAR”

It seemed to Jan and Gladys as if the entire world had sunk into silence, waiting to hear whether or not Gwen must be blind. There was a hush over the house. Every one spoke and moved softly, not only because the poor little patient was suffering severe pain, but as if they were all unconsciously listening for the verdict which they dreaded from the doctors. And even in the streets they bore with them the muffled atmosphere of their home. The outside world no longer seemed gay, noisy, cheerful. Sorrow and anxiety deadened the sights and sounds of others’ pleasure to them.

The best physicians of the city were working hard to save Gwen’s sight--regular physicians to care for the nervous system, which had sustained a serious shock, and the famous Dr. Amberton, the oculist, to treat the eye itself, which the sharp corner of the block had struck with such force that it was impossible to say for some days whether the sight could be preserved.

Jan found herself in a different household from the one which had received her three months earlier. In the face of this misfortune threatening poor Gwen--one peculiarly dreadful to a girl of her tastes and ambitions--the indifference to one another which had so shocked Jan on her coming from her own closely united home disappeared, and the atmosphere she breathed was full of love, though heavy with grief.

Mrs. Graham’s interest in her social pleasures, her clubs, and all the outside issues which Jan had loyally struggled against believing that she cared more for than for her family, were thrust into the background and forgotten in the midst of the one absorbing thought. And Jan saw that her uncle was at last her mother’s own brother; that Wall Street and money-making no longer seemed important to him. Mr. and Mrs. Graham went back to the days when they were first married, and Sydney and Gwen were babies together, when, though they had a pretty home, it was farther west and farther down in town, and, though Nurse Hummel was with them, Mrs. Graham had more time and there was more necessity for her taking care of the little ones. Gwen became once more to them that baby girl whom they had then watched so proudly, and her mother hung over her in her darkened room with a loving devotion which suggested Jan’s own mother to the little exile.

Gwen turned to this new mother-love with childlike clinging. She loved to lie with her bandaged eyes resting on her mother’s shoulder, peaceful, and satisfied in something for which she had unconsciously longed, though she could not help knowing that her mother’s tears, which she felt when her groping hand touched her cheek, boded ill to her.

Gladys was gentle, unselfish, absorbed in the thought of her sister, which rendered her a far sweeter, lovelier Gladys than Jan would have believed she could be when she was occupied only with poor, silly little Gladys Graham.

Sydney hovered about Gwen’s door, racking his brains for something to do for her, all his taciturn indifference lost in his pity and regret for Gwen. Altogether, Jan could not help half wondering if the worst were to come, and Gwen lost her sight, if the good accomplished would not be worth the terrible purchase price.

Only Jack was outside the pale of the family love during these waiting days. Jan’s heart ached for the poor little fellow, whose temper had brought him anguish harder to bear than Gwen’s, but whose father could not forgive him. Jack’s meals were served up-stairs, and his father debated sending him away to a military school, where stern discipline might check the temper which Mr. Graham characterized as “murderous.” But Jan knew that the shock of seeing Gwen sink beneath the pain of the missive he had thrown, and the torture of these past days when every one avoided him, and he waited, like the rest, but not with the rest, to learn Gwen’s fate, had burned into warm-hearted Jack’s brain such horror of bursts of passion that the military discipline would not be necessary, that he was completely cured of even a temptation to violence.

“You are our little comfort, Janet,” said her uncle to her one night, when in the dusk she sat by him chatting of her mother in the hope of cheering him. “You won’t admit that our poor girl can lose the light out of her young life, and though you aren’t an old, wise woman, I can’t help feeling better for your faith.”

“Isn’t that just dear!” cried Jan. “You don’t know how I wish I could help, but I honestly feel certain that God won’t let splendid, clever Gwen be blind.”

“Splendid, clever people are the very ones who have to be perfected by suffering, dear little Miss Lochinvar--queer how I’ve come to like that name for you! But you do help. You have no notion how your gentle, affectionate, sunny little presence cheers your aunt and me, and I think Gladys is a much better girl for being with you. Jenny has lent me a simple, genuine little girl who never thinks of herself, and so, without trying, sweetens all her surroundings. I don’t see how I can repay either Jennie or her loan,” said Jan’s uncle, drawing her up close to his side with a warm caress.

Tears of happiness sprang into Jan’s eyes. “If you really want to do something for me, Uncle Howard,” she whispered, “forgive poor little Jack.”

Her uncle’s face hardened. “Your ‘poor little Jack’ is a thoroughly bad boy,” he said. “I can’t forgive him till I know how Gwen comes out.”

“He has done just the same thing, however she comes out, uncle,” said Jan cautiously. “He did not mean to harm Gwen--he never meant anything at all, but flew into a rage, and threw the first thing that came handy. He has done things like that always, and no one thought much about it, only this time the block struck badly. He will never again be the same--he is ever so much more to be pitied than Gwen! He isn’t bad, Uncle Howard. He is a dear boy, generous, truthful, brave, but he has got a terrific temper. One of our boys has such a temper, but mamma watches and helps him all she can, and he is getting over it without such a dreadful thing to cure him as poor Jack has had. You know Hummie is a dear, but she can’t help a boy the way his father and mother can.”

“Why, Jan, are you implying that I am responsible for Jack’s violence?” demanded her uncle.

Jan turned crimson, but stood to her guns after a fashion. “He needs help, uncle, or he did need it--he will not forget now, I think,” she said. “And you know Aunt Tina and you have been so busy! I love Jack, Uncle Howard, and I pity him more than I do Gwen. How would you have felt if you had blinded mamma when you were eleven?”

“My dear child, I never had such a fiendish temper as Jack’s,” said Mr. Graham.

“No, you were more like Gwen, even and pleasant, and you weren’t like Jack. But Jack is a noble boy. He isn’t mean, and he isn’t unkind,” said Jan.

To her great relief her uncle gave a faint laugh. “No one remembers our childhood like these grandmothers of ours!” he said. “You remember my boyhood better than I do, Jan.”

“Let Jack come down and talk to you, uncle,” pleaded Jan, after she had punished him for his impertinence by spatting the end of his nose with a favorite movement of her forefinger. “We are all miserable and worried to death now, but we have each other. But there is Jack--only eleven--up-stairs, like a prisoner, worse off than any of us, because he caused all this sorrow! Only Syd and I go near him--and Drom--and after a while he will be so unhappy you can’t do anything with him--he’s having a fearful time--it would kill me!”

“Who is Drom?” asked Mr. Graham.

“The poor little dog Syd and I saved and had his broken leg set. He’s a darling, so loving and grateful, and he knows more than lots of people!” said Jan.

“What is that Mrs. Browning wrote about some one whose face looked brighter for the little brown bee’s humming? I used to have time to read, but I don’t get a moment now! You are a born lover, Jan. Some people have a talent for loving, just as others have a talent for music, and some--a few--for cooking,” said her uncle. “I seem to remember hearing how you swooped down on the persecutors of that dog. And so you think I’m a bad father?”

“O Uncle Howard, I never thought anything so horrid or so impertinent!” cried Jan. “I’m only a little girl, and what do I know about bringing up children? I never knew any girl outside a story-book who knew how to bring up a family. But of course I feel as though nothing could be nice but mamma’s ways, because we are the very happiest children in the world, and I know she wouldn’t dare leave Jack all alone these dreadful days.”

There was silence for a few moments, and then to Jan’s infinite relief and joy her uncle said: “You are right, Janet. It will do the boy mischief to be left brooding through these dark days of anxiety. And I suspect you are right and he has needed wise control all along. Go up and tell Jack to come to me. Tell him not to be afraid--I know he has had punishment enough--but to come down, and we’ll begin all over again.”

Jan ran off on her errand with a lighter heart than she had had since the day of the accident, first giving her uncle a warmly grateful kiss on the forehead, around which the hair was beginning to grow a little thin. Jack needed no persuading to follow her down-stairs. Much as he had always feared his father, he would have faced anything rather than be left any longer a prisoner with his own thoughts.

Jan left him at Gwen’s door with a kiss the boy did not resent. “Tell your father all you think and feel, Jack, and don’t be afraid of him. He understands and wants to help you. We must all hold on to each other in trouble, you know.” And Jack went slowly on, feeling that they all must hold on to Jan forever.

The library door closed behind him, and no one ever knew precisely what happened in the interview between the poor little culprit and his father. But when, long past his usual bed hour, Nurse Hummel went to hunt Jack up, she found him curled up asleep in his father’s arms in the great leather chair, his legs twined over its arm to supplement his father’s lap, his cheeks flushed and stained with tears, but peace written on the parted lips, which looked very childish in slumber.

As Jan passed into Gwen’s room she found her alone. Her mother, thinking her sleeping, had stolen away, and Jan, for the same reason, seated herself noiselessly in the corner, afraid to open the door again lest she waken Gwen. But Gwen was not asleep. In a few moments she spoke. “Jan,” she said, “please come where I can touch you.”

“How did you know who it was?” asked Jan as she obeyed.

“Blind people have keen hearing,” said Gwen bitterly. “My ears are learning double work.”

“I suppose that’s sensible of them, to improve themselves, but considering you’re not blind they might save themselves the trouble, if they were lazy,” said Jan lightly, not betraying the shock Gwen’s words gave her, for no one had hinted at blindness to Gwen.

“Do you think I don’t know?” asked Gwen, raising herself on one elbow and speaking with such fierceness that Jan was frightened. “Do you suppose I don’t know what makes mamma so loving to me, and why she cries quietly when she thinks I won’t know it? Do you suppose, Janet Howe, that I don’t know why those horrible doctors are so idiotically cheerful with me? If that Doctor Amberton tells me any more silly jokes I won’t answer for what I’ll do or say to him! I am blind--blind--and I’d far rather be dead! Why didn’t Jack kill me if he wanted to do anything to me? Do you suppose I can _live_ without my eyes? How can I write, or paint, or be great--or stand it?”

Jan was dreadfully frightened. “You are not blind, Gwen,” she stammered.

“Now don’t you try to tell me stories, Jan, because I won’t stand it!” said Gwen. “I got the truth out of Viva the other day when mamma let the poor youngster try to read to me. I nearly scared her to death, because she won’t fib, and she didn’t want to tell the truth. Now I’m talking to you, because I trust you, and I can’t keep it to myself any longer. Jan, Jan, for mercy’s sake, say it isn’t so!”

“It isn’t so--or it very likely isn’t so,” said trembling Jan. “If you get all excited and go on like this I don’t know what harm it may do you--the doctors all say to keep you perfectly still for fear of fever. You are not blind, and that’s the truth. But they are anxious about you. Now you see I’m not deceiving you one bit! We didn’t know you were lying there fretting--why didn’t you speak before? You will get well--I’m just as sure as I can be you will--but we all love you so much we feel awfully to have you sick. But if you did have some trouble with your eyes you could be just as great--greater! Isn’t it lovely to have your mother all to yourself like this, and your father never thinking of business, and Gladys and Sydney, and even little Jerry--of course sweet little Viva--all just devoted to you? Don’t fret, Gwen. If you are sick ever so long, you will see!”

“Come here, Jan. I want to hold you!” cried Gwen, clutching her cousin with burning hands, and drawing her downward in a half-delirious grasp. “I won’t see, and that’s just it! O Jan, don’t you know, don’t you feel, what that means?”

“It isn’t going to be,” maintained Jan stoutly. “Yes, I know exactly what it means, but it won’t be so! If it were, you would be just the very heart of this whole family, and you could write the loveliest stories and poems, and everything like that! But, what is better, you could love them and they’d love you, until the whole house would be so much nicer--like ours, which you always said must be lovely, if it was poor. For love is best, of anything, isn’t it?”

“No, no,” moaned poor Gwen; “my eyes are.” But in spite of the tragedy hanging over her, Jan comforted her, and she presently fell asleep, her burning cheek pressed against Jan’s cool one, Jan’s firm hand stroking her tumbled hair, Jan’s strong young shoulders supporting her, and Jan’s warm young heart sustaining her by its courage and love.