Instead of snow and cold and the black terror of being overwhelmed by stormy night, here were light and warmth and a curiously sleepy yet volatile sense of comfort.
Jessica’s eyes for a long time rested tranquilly upon what seemed a gigantic rose hanging directly over her head. Her brain received no impression whatever as to why it was there, and there was not the slightest impulse to wonder or to think about it at all. Even when it finally began to descend nearer, and to expand and unfold pale pink leaves, still it was satisfying not to have to make any effort toward understanding it. The transformation went on with infinite slowness before her vacantly contented vision. Upon all sides the outer leaves gradually, little by little, stretched themselves downward, still downward, until they enveloped her as in the bell of some huge inverted lily. Indefinite spaces of time intervened, and then it became vaguely apparent that faint designs of other, smaller flowers were scattered over these large environing leaves, and that a soft, ruddy light came through them. With measured deliberation, as if all eternity were at its disposal, this vast floral cone revealed itself at last to her dim consciousness as being made of some thin, figured cloth. It seemed weeks—months—before she further comprehended that the rose above her was the embroidered centre of a canopy, and that the leaves depending from it in long, graceful curves about her were bed-curtains.
After a time she found herself lifting her hand upright and looking at it. It was wan and white like wax, as if it did not belong to her at all. From the wrist there was turned back the delicately quilted cuff of a man’s silk night-shirt. She raised the arm in its novel silken sleeve, and thrust it forward with some unformed notion that it would prove not to be hers. The action pushed aside the curtains, and a glare of light flashed in, under which she shut her eyes and gasped.
When she looked again, an elderly, broad-figured man with a florid face was standing close beside the bed, gazing with anxiety upon her. She knew that it was General Boyce, and for a long time was not surprised that he should be there. The capacity for wondering, for thinking about things, seemed not to exist in her brain. She looked at him calmly and did not dream of speaking.
“Are you better?” she heard him eagerly whisper. “Are you in pain?”
The complex difficulty of two questions which required separate answers troubled her remotely. She made some faint nodding motion of her head and eyes, and then lay perfectly still again. She could hear the sound of her own breathing—a hoarse, sighing sound, as if of blowing through a comb—and, now that it was suggested to her, there was a deadened heavy ache in her breast.
Still placidly surveying the General, she began to be conscious of remembering things. The pictures came slowly, taking form with a fantastic absence of consecutive meaning, but they gradually produced the effect of a recollection upon her mind. The starting point—and everything else that went before that terrible sinking, despairing struggle through the wet snow—was missing. She recalled most vividly of all being seized with a sudden crisis of swimming giddiness and choking—her throat and chest all afire with the tortures of suffocation. It was under a lamp-post, she remembered; and when the vehement coughing was over, her mouth was full of blood, and there were terrifying crimson spatters on the snow. She had stood aghast at this, and then fallen to weeping piteously to herself with fright. How strange it was—in the anguish of that moment she had moaned out, “O mother, mother!” and yet she had never seen that parent, and had scarcely thought of her memory even for many, many years.
Then she had blindly staggered on, sinking more than once from sheer exhaustion, but still forcing herself forward, her wet feet weighing like leaden balls, and fierce agonies clutching her very heart. She had fallen in the snow at the very end of her journey; had dragged herself laboriously, painfully, up on to the steps, and had beaten feebly on the panels of the door with her numbed hands, making an inarticulate moan which not all her desperate last effort could lift into a cry; and then there had come, with a great downward swoop of skies and storm, utter blackness and collapse.
She closed her eyes now in the weariness which this effort at recollection had caused. Her senses wandered off, unbidden, unguided, to a dream of the buzzing of a bee upon a window-pane, which was somehow like the stertorous sound of her own breathing.
The bee—a big, loud, foolish fellow, with yellow fur upon his broad back and thighs—had flown into the schoolroom, and had not wit enough to go out again. Some of the children were giggling over this, but she would not join them because Mr. Tracy, the schoolmaster upon the platform, did not wish it. She wanted very much to please him. Already she delighted in the hope that he liked her better than he did some of the other girls—scornful girls who came from wealthy homes, and wore better dresses than any of the despised Lawton brood could ever hope to have.
Silk dresses, opened boldly at the throat, and with long trains tricked out with imitation garlands. They were worn now by older girls—hard-faced, jealous, cruel creatures—and these sat in a room with lace curtains and luxurious furniture. And some laughed with a ring like brass in their voices, and some wept furtively in comers, and some cursed their God and all living things; and there was the odor of wine and the uproar of the piano, and over all a great, ceaseless shame and terror.
Escape from this should be made at all hazards; and the long, incredibly fearful flight, with pursuit always pressing hot upon her, the evil fangs of the wolf-pack snapping in the air all about her frightened ears, led to a peaceful, soft-carpeted forest, where the low setting sun spread a red light among the big tree-trunks. Against this deep, far-distant sky there was the figure of a man coming. For him she waited with a song in her heart. Did she not know him? It was Reuben Tracy, and he was too gentle and good not to see her when he passed. She would call out to him—and lo! she could not.
Horace was with her, and held her hand; and they both gazed with terrified longing after Tracy, and could not cry out to him for the awful dumbness that was on them. And when he, refusing to see them, spread out his arms in anger, the whole great forest began to sway and circle dizzily, and huge trees toppled, rocks crashed downward, gaunt giant reptiles rose from yawning caves with hideous slimy eyes in a lurid ring about her. And she would save Horace with her life, and fought like mad, bleeding and maimed and frenzied, until the weight of mountains piled upon her breast held her down in helpless, choking horror. Then only came the power to scream, and—
Out of the roar of confusion and darkness came suddenly a hush and the return of light. She was lying in the curtained bed, and a tender hand was pressing soft cool linen to her lips.
Opening her eyes in tranquil weakness, she saw two men standing at her bedside. He who held the cloth in his hand was Dr. Lester, whom she remembered very well. The other—he whose head was bowed, and whose eyes were fa............