Chapter 33

Two weeks later, when Quin struggled back to consciousness, he labored under the delusion that he was still in the army and back in the camp hospital. Eleanor, who scarcely left his bedside, was once more Miss Bartlett, the ward visitor, and he was Patient Number 7. He tried to explain to all those dim figures moving about the darkened room that he was making her a bead chain, and unless they got him more beads he could not finish it in time. When they reassured him and tried to get him to take food, he invariably wanted to know if Miss Bartlett had brought it, and which was her day to come again. Then the doctor and the nurse would argue with him, and try to make him remember things he was sure had never happened, and his mental distress would become acute. At such times somebody, who of course could not be Miss Bartlett, but who had her voice and eyes, would take his hand and tell him to go to sleep, then the tangles would all come straight.

One day he was startled out of a stupor by the sound of a querulous old voice saying:

"I guess if he could get out of bed to come across the city to me, I can come across the hall to him. Wheel me closer!"

Quin was drifting off again, when a hand gripped his wrist.

"Open your eyes, boy! Look at me. Do you know who this is?"

He lifted his heavy lids, and wondered dully what Madam was doing at the camp hospital.

"Put the blinds up," she commanded to some one back of her. "Let him see the wall-paper, the furniture. Move that fool screen away."

For the first time, Quin brought his confused attention to bear on his surroundings, and even glanced at the space over the mantel to see if a certain picture was at its old place.

"You are in my house," said Madam, with a finality that was not to be disputed. "Do you remember the first time you came here?"

He shook his head.

"Yes, you do. I fell down the steps and broke my leg, and you came in off the street to tie me up with an umbrella and the best table napkins. What are you smiling about?"

"Smelling salts," Quin murmured, as if to himself.

"You don't need any smelling salts!" cried Madam, missing his allusion. "All you need is to rouse yourself and put your mind on what I am saying. Do you remember living in this house?"

He could not truthfully say that he did, though familiar objects and sounds seemed to be all around him.

"Well, I'll make you," said Madam, nothing daunted. "You stayed in this very room for three months to keep the burglars from stealing Isobel and Enid, and every night you walked me up and down the hall on my crutches."

She paused and looked at him expectantly; but things were still a blur to him.

"You surely remember the Easter party?" she persisted. "If you can forget the way your shirt kept popping open that night, and the way your jaw swelled up, it's more than I can!"

Quin winced. Even concussion of the brain had failed to deaden the memory of that awful night.

"I sort of remember," he admitted.

"Good! That will do for to-day. As for the rest, I'll tell you what happened. You came here one night two weeks ago, when everybody had me dead and buried, and you deviled me into having an operation that saved my life. You stood right by me while they did it. Then you collapsed and knocked your head on the banister, and, as if that wasn't enough, developed pneumonia on top of it. Now all you've got to think about is getting well."

"But--but--Miss Eleanor?" Quin queried weakly, fearing that the blessed presence that had hovered over him was but a figment of his dreams.

"She came home to help bury me," said Madam. "Failing to get the job, she took to nursing you. Now stop talking and go to sleep. If I hear any more of this stuff and nonsense about your being in a hospital and making bead chains, I'll forbid Eleanor crossing the threshold; do you hear?"

From that time on Quin's convalescence was rapid--almost too rapid, in fact, for his peace of mind. Never in his life had he been so watched over and so tenderly cared for. Mr. Ranny kept him supplied with fresh eggs and cream from Valley Mead; Mr. Chester and Miss Enid deluged him with magazines and flowers; Miss Isobel gave him his medicine and fixed his tray herself; Madam chaperoned his thoughts and allowed no intruding fancies or vagaries.

But all these attentions were as nothing to him, compared with the miracle of Eleanor's presence. Just why she was remaining at home he dared not ask, for fear he should be told the date of her departure. The fact that she flitted in and out of his room, flirting with the doctor, teasing the aunties, assuming a divine proprietorship over him, was heaven enough in itself.

Sometimes, when they were alone and she thought he was asleep he would see the dancing, restless light die out of her eyes, and a beautiful exalted look come into them as if she were listening to the music of the spheres.

He attributed this to the fact that she was happy in being once more reconciled to the family. Even she and Madam seemed to be on terms of the closest intimacy, and he spent hours in trying to understand what had effected the change.

As he grew stronger and was allowed to sit up in bed, he realized, with a shock, what a fool's paradise he was living in. A few more days and he must go back to that dark, damp room in Chestnut Street. He must find work--and work, however menial, for which he had the strength. Eleanor would return to New York, and he would probably never see her again. During his illness she had been heavenly kind to him, but that was no reason for thinking she had changed her mind. She had given him his final answer there in New York, and he was grimly determined never to open the subject again.

But one day, when they were alone together, his resolution sustained a compound fracture. Eleanor was reading aloud to him, and in the midst of a sentence she put down the book and looked at him queerly.

"Quin," she said, "did you know I am not going back?"

"Why not? Did the play fail?"

"No. It's a big success. Papa Claude will probably make a small fortune out of it."

"But you? What's the trouble?"

"I've had enough. I had made up my mind to leave the company even before I was sent for."

Quin's eyes searched her face, but for once he held his tongue.

She was evidently finding it hard to continue. She twisted the fringe of the counterpane in her slender, white fingers, and she did not look at him.

"It all turned out as you said it would," she admitted at last. "I--I simply couldn't stand Harold Phipps."

Quin's heart performed an athletic feat. It leaped into his throat and remained there.

"But you'll be joining some other company, I suppose?" He tried to make his voice formal and detached.

"That depends," she said; and she looked at him again in that queer, tremulous, mysterious way that he did not in the least understand.

Her small hands were fluttering so close to his that he could have captured them both in one big palm; but he heroically refrained. He kept saying over and over to himself that it was just Miss Nell's way of being good to a fellow, and that, whatever happened, he must not make her unhappy and sorry--he must not lose his head.

"Quin,"--her voice dropped so low he could scarcely hear it,--"have you ever forgiven me for the way I behaved in New York?"

"Sure!"

He was trembling now, and he wondered how much longer he could hold out.

"Do you--do you--still feel about me the way you--you did--that night on the bus?" she whispered.

Quin looked at her as a Christian martyr might have looked at his persecutor.

"I think about you the way I've always thought about you," he said hopelessly--"the way I shall go on thinking about you as long as I live."

"Well," said Eleanor, with a sigh of relief, "I guess that settles it"; and, to his unspeakable amazement, she laid her head on his pillow and her cheek on his.

When he recovered from his shock of subliminal ecstasy, his first thought was of the trouble he was storing up for Eleanor. Even his rapture was dimmed by the prospect of involving her in another love affair that could only meet with bitter opposition of her family.

"We must keep it dark for the present," he urged, holding her close as if he feared she would slip away. "Maybe, when I am well, and have a good position, and all, they won't take it so hard."

Eleanor refused to listen to any such counsel. She wanted to announce their engagement at once, and be married at the earliest possible date. He needed her to take care of him, she declared; and besides, they could make a start on the money that would soon be due her from her father's estate. To this proposition Quin would not listen, and they had a spirited quarrel and reached no agreement.

Eleanor had fallen seriously in love for the first time in her life, and it was a sudden and overwhelming experience. During those anxious days of Quin's illness, when his life had hung in the balance, she had time to realize what he meant to her. Now that he needed skilful nursing and constant care to assure his recovery, she was determined not to be separated from him.

In spite of his protests, she joyfully announced their engagement to Uncle Ranny and the aunties at dinner, and was surprised to find that the family tree, instead of being rocked to its foundation, was merely pleasantly stirred in its branches.

"You see, we could not help suspecting it," Miss Isobel twittered excitedly to Quin, when she brought him his tray. "You talked about her incessantly in your delirium, and the dear child was almost beside herself the night we thought you might not recover. I told sister then that if you got well----"

"But what about Madam?" Quin interrupted anxiously. "What will she think of Miss Nell's being engaged to a fellow like me, with no money or position, or any prospects of being able to marry for God knows how long?"

Miss Isobel looked grave. "Nellie is breaking the news to her now," she said primly. "I am afraid she is going to find it very hard. But, as sister says, there are times when one has to follow one's own judgments. When mother sees that we all stand together about this----"

She waved her hand with a little air of finality. It was the second time in her life that she had made even a gesture toward freedom.

The interview between Eleanor and her grandmother lasted for more than an hour, and nobody knew the outcome of it until the next morning, when a family council was called in Quin's room. Madam was wheeled in in state, resplendent in purple and gold, with her hair elaborately dressed, as usual.

To everybody's amazement, she opened the conference by abruptly announcing that she had decided that Eleanor and Quin should be married at once.

"She's at loose ends, and he's at loose ends. The sooner they get tied up, the better," was the way she put it.

"But hold on!" cried Quin, sitting up in bed. "I can't do that, you know; I've got to get on my feet first."

"How are you going to get on your feet until you get your strength back?" demanded Madam. "You look like going to work, don't you?"

"Well, the doctor has promised me I can go out on Saturday. I ought to be able to go to work in a couple of weeks."

"Couple of fiddle-sticks! Dr. Rawlins told me it would be two months before you would be fit for work, and even then you would have to be careful."

"Well, you don't think I am going to let Miss Nell in on a deal like that, do you?" Quin's voice broke and he gripped Eleanor's hand until she winced.

"But, Quin, I want it to be now," Eleanor begged. "Grandmother and I have gone over it from every standpoint, and she's come to see it as I do. You need me, and I need you. Why can't you be sensible and see it as we do?"

How Quin ever withstood those pleading tones and beseeching eyes, it is impossible to say. But withstand them he did, announcing stubbornly that it was bad enough for a girl to marry a chap with broken bellows; but for her to marry one she would not only have to nurse, but support as well, was not to be thought of. There was but one thing to do, and that was to wait.

Then it was that Madam, who had been reasonably patient up till now, lost her temper and delivered an ultimatum.

"You'll marry her now or not at all," she thundered. "I am sick and tired of the way you try to run this family, Quinby Graham! For more than a year now you have carried things with a high hand. You got Ranny out of the factory and on a farm. You married Enid to Francis Chester, and sent them to California. You made me let Eleanor go to New York, and came very near landing her on the stage for good. And now, when I have been persuaded into letting the child marry you, you are not satisfied, but insist on doing it at your own time and in your own way!"

"You forgot one thing, granny," suggested Eleanor demurely. "He made you have the operation."

Madam was not to be diverted. She glared at Quin like an angry old lioness.

"Are you going to do as I advise?" she demanded.

"No; not until I get a job." Quin's jaw was set as firmly as hers, and their eyes measured each other's with equal determination.

"Well, then I'll give you a job," she announced with sudden decision. "I'll send you to China."

"To China?"

"Yes. Bartlett & Bangs has just opened a branch house in Shanghai. They are looking for a man to take charge of it. Your knowledge of the language would make up for your lack of experience. Besides, the sea voyage will do you good."

"Do you mean it?" cried Quinn eagerly. "Would Mr. Bangs agree?"

"Geoffrey Bangs would take you back at the factory to-morrow. But I don't want you there, under him. I want to turn you loose on China. It's the only place I know that's big enough to exhaust your energies. You will probably have the entire country plowing up its ancestors before spring."

"And what about you?" said Quin, turning eagerly to Eleanor. "Would you go with me?"

"_Will_ I?" said Eleanor, her eyes dancing.

* * *

That night, when Miss Isobel was tucking Madam into bed, she made bold to ask her how she happened to give her consent to the wedding.

"Isobel," said Madam, cocking a wise old eye, "it might as well be now as later. When a man like Quinby Graham makes up his mind to marry a certain girl, the devil himself can't stop him!"