The Choir Invisible by James Lane Allen

Author:James Lane Allen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
Publisher: eBooksLib
Published: 2001-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

XIII

WHEN Mrs. Falconer had drawn near John's hut on the morning of his misfortune, it was past noon despite all her anxious, sorrowful haste to reach him. His wounds had been dressed. The crowd of people that had gathered about his cabin were gone back to their occupations or their homes - except a group that sat on the roots of a green tree several yards from his door. Some of these were old wilderness folk living near by who had offered to nurse him and otherwise to care for his comforts and needs. The affair furnished them that renewed interest in themselves which is so liable to revisit us when we have escaped a fellow-creature's suffering but can relate good things about ourselves in like risks and dangers; and they were drawing out their reminiscences now with unconscious gratitude for so excellent an opportunity befalling them in these peaceful unadventurous days. Several of John's boys lay in the grass and hung upon these narratives. Now and then they cast awe-stricken glances at his door which had been pushed to, that he might be quiet; or, if his pain would let him, drop into a little sleep. They made it their especial care, when any new-comer hurried past, to arrest him with the command that he must not go in; and they would thus have stopped Mrs. Falconer but she put them gently aside without heed or hearing.

When she softly pushed the door open, John was not asleep. He lay in a corner on his low hard bed of skins against the wall of logs - his eyes wide open, the hard white glare of the small shutter-less window falling on his face. He turned to her the look of a dumb animal that can say nothing of why it has been wounded or of how it is suffering; stretched out his hand gratefully; and drew her toward him. She sat down on the edge of the bed, folded her quivering fingers across his temples, smoothed back his heavy, coarse, curling hair, and bending low over his eyes, rained down into them the whole unuttered, tearless passion of her distress, her sympathy. Major Falconer came for her within the hour and she left with him almost as soon as he arrived. When she was gone, John lay thinking of her.

"What a nurse she is!" he said, remembering how she had concerned herself solely his about life, his safety, his wounds. Once she had turned quickly:

"Now you can't go away!" she had said with a smile that touched him deeply.

"I wish you didn't have to go!" he had replied mourningfully, feeling his sudden dependence on her.

This was the first time she had ever been in room - with its poverty, its bareness. She must have cast about it a look of delicate inquiry - as a woman is apt to do in a singleman's abode; for when she came again, in addition to pieces of soft old linen for bandages brought

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.