Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/710

 . 21, 1861.] “What need to care?” she said, in that accent of utter despair which it is so sad to hear.

“We care very much, Coral; so much, that if you were not to get well we should be miserable, and it would. kill Denis, who is already almost broken-hearted.

“Poor Denis! I did not deserve that he should love me.”

“We all love you, Coral, and cannot be happy till you are yourself again; so you must be good, and take the medicines and food prepared for you.”

“Ah! it is very easy for those who are happy to talk of being good,” said poor Coral; “I am neither the one nor the other.other.” [sic]

“But because you are not happy yourself, Coral, will it please you to give pain to others? And you must know very well that if you refuse to take what will make you well, you will give us very great pain.”

Coral could not resist the anxious tenderness of his look, and the agitated tones of his voice. She looked at him mournfully, and said;

“I never willingly gave you a pang, and I never will. I will do what you wish.”

“Now that is right, Coral; now you make me happy. Mrs. Wendell, bring Coral her draught, she will take it.”

“No, do you give it to me for this once,—let me have it from you.”

Keefe took the draught from Mrs. Wendell and held it to the pale, thin lips of the sick girl. She drank it eagerly, and then, resigning the cup, laid down her head and covered it with the counterpane. Then Keefe and Helen left the room, and Mrs. Wendell took her knitting and sat down in the rocking-chair.

Two days after Coral was able to leave her bed.

It was now the end of November, and an Indian summer of more than common warmth and beauty spread its soft and serene yet melancholy loveliness over the earth,—melancholy because a loveliness without life or movement, without the song of birds, the perfume of flowers, the murmur of insects, without a breeze to ripple the glossy water or stir the withered leaves that yet hung on the boughs. That soft, slumberous, dreamy beauty soothed the bitter anguish of Coral’s breast into a deep, painless quietude, as she sat at the window of her room and gazed at the golden haze which veiled the dying year and wrapped its blighted beauty in so glorious a shroud.

“It is so peaceful, so calm without,” she whispered; “if I might but die now, and mingle with the elements, surely I, too, should find rest.”

As she continued to look on the scene spread before her, her inborn love of nature, of liberty and motion, came back to her; she became restless; her gaze from the window grew eager and anxious, and sometimes she turned from it as if to listen for every sound of step or opening door. The door between her chamber and the sitting-room was open, and Helen often, with noiseless step, came to it and stole a glance at her patient, but she did not disturb her solitary reverie. She felt that she would be more likely to win Coral’s affection by quiet and unobtrusive sympathy and consideration than by any direct or open efforts to gain it. By-and-by Keefe came in, and after speaking a few words to Helen, he came to Coral. It was the first time he had seen her since she left her bed, and as he met the glance of her large unearthly eyes, through which her soul seemed escaping, he almost started back in terror; her wan and wasted form, her bloodless lips, and, above all, the preternatural expression of those wonderful eyes made her look like the inhabitant of some other world.

“Keefe!” she exclaimed, the moment she saw him, “I want to go out. See how lovely it is out there—how free, how tranquil; and here it is so close and stifling. I want to be out in the open air, under the blue, wide heaven.”

“Is it not too soon for you to venture out, Coral? Had you not better wait till to-morrow?”

“No! no! to-day—to-day. To-morrow may never come. Keefe, let me go! I have longed so much for you to come, I would not ask them, because I knew it would be of no use, but you will not refuse me.”

“I suppose I must not. But, in return for this indulgence, will you not do something to please me?”

“What can I do?” she asked gloomily.

“Try to love Helen.”

“Why should I love her? She has your love: what can she want with mine?”

“She does want it—for my sake, for her own, and for yours.”

“Mine,” said poor Coral. “Ah! never mind me; but it is useless, Keefe, I cannot love her”

Her look and accent pierced Keefe’s heart.

“Forgive me,” he said, “I did not mean to vex you. You shall always do just as you like, and be as free as the wind. Now let us go out. Is not this your cloak?”

Wrapping it round her, he tried to draw her arm through his, but she snatched it away.

“I don’t won’t you to come,” she said, “let me go alone.”

Then seeing a hesitating expression in Keefe’s face, she added:

“You need not be afraid, my kind mother—the only mother I ever knew—will take care of me, and I will ask her to rock me to sleep in her arms; that will cure all.”

The window by which she had been sitting opened in the middle, and, pushing up the bolt, she passed out through it and turned into a path that led to the orchard. Keefe looked after her for a moment, as if uncertain whether to follow her or not, and then he joined Helen in the sitting-room, who was watching the figure of Coral as she moved slowly and feebly over the path, along which she had so often bounded light and agile as a deer of her native woods, and as she gazed her eyes filled with tears.

“What ails my Helen?” asked Keefe, putting his arm round her.

“Oh! Keefe, she is so unhappy, and I fear she will always be so.”

For some days after Coral rose from her sick bed her recovery seemed rapid, and Keefe and