For three months General Mathieson remained in the country. His improvement was very gradual—so gradual, indeed, that from week to week it was scarce noticeable, and it was only by looking back that it was perceptible. At the end of that time he could walk unaided, there was less hesitation in his speech, and his memory was distinctly clearer. He passed much of his time on a sofa placed in the shade in the garden, with Hilda and Netta sitting by him, working and talking.
Netta had always been a favorite of his from the time that he first met her in Hanover; and he had, when she was staying with his niece the year before, offered her a very handsome salary if she would remain with her as her companion. The girl, however, was reluctant to give up her occupation, of which she was very fond, still less would she leave her aunt; and although the General would willingly have engaged the latter also as an inmate of the house, to act as a sort of chaperon to Hilda when she drove out alone shopping, Netta refused in both their names.
"You would not have left the army, General, whatever temptations might have been held out to you. I am happy in thinking that I am doing good and useful work, and I don't think that any offer, even one so kind and liberal as yours, would induce me to relinquish it."
Her presence now was not only an inestimable comfort to Hilda, but of great advantage to the General himself. Alone Hilda would have found it next to impossible to keep the invalid interested and amused. He liked to talk and be talked to, but it was like the work of entertaining a child. Netta, however, had an inexhaustible fund of[Pg 103] good spirits. After her long intercourse with children who needed entertainment with instruction, and whose attention it was absolutely necessary to keep fixed, she had no difficulty in keeping the conversation going, and her anecdotes, connected with her life in Germany and the children she had taught, were just suited to the General's mental condition.
Little Walter was of great assistance to her. He had come down with his nurse as soon as they were fairly settled at Holmwood, and his prattle and play were a great amusement to his grandfather. Whenever the conversation flagged Netta offered to tell him a story, which not only kept him quiet, but was listened to with as much interest by the General as by the child. Dr. Leeds was often a member of the party, and his cheery talk always had its effect in soothing the General when, as was sometimes the case, he was inclined to be petulant and irritable.
They had been a fortnight at Holmwood before the doctor discovered Netta's infirmity. She happened to be standing at a window with her back to him when he asked her a question. Receiving no reply, he repeated it in a louder tone, but he was still unanswered. Somewhat surprised, he went up to her and touched her; she faced round immediately.
"Were you speaking to me, Dr. Leeds?"
"Yes, I spoke to you twice, Miss Purcell, but you did not hear me."
"I have been perfectly deaf from childhood," she said; "I cannot hear any sound whatever. I never talk about it; people ask questions and wonder, and then, forgetting that I do not hear, they persist in addressing me in loud tones."
"Is it possible that you are deaf?"
"It is a melancholy fact," she said with a smile, and then added more seriously, "It came on after measles. When I was eight years old my good aunt, who had taken me to some of the best aurists in London, happened to hear that a Professor Menzel had opened an establishment in Hanover for teaching deaf mutes to speak by a new[Pg 104] system of watching people's lips. She took me over there, and, as you see, the result was an undoubted success, and I now earn my living by acting as one of the professor's assistants, and by teaching two or three little girls who board at my aunt's."
"The system must be an admirable one indeed," the doctor said. "I have, of course, heard of it, but could not have believed that the results were so excellent. It never entered my mind for a moment that you were in any way deficient in hearing, still less that you were perfectly deaf. I have noticed that, more than is common, you always kept your eyes fixed on my face when I was speaking to you."
"You would have noticed it earlier had we been often alone together," she said, "for unless I had kept my eyes always upon you I should not have known when you were speaking; but when, as here, there are always several of us together, my eyes are at once directed to your face when you speak, by seeing the others look at you."
"Is it necessary to be quite close to you when one speaks?"
"Oh, not at all! Of course I must be near enough to be able to see distinctly the motion of the lips, say at twenty yards. It is a great amusement to me as I walk about, for I can see what is being said by people on the other side of the road, or passing by in a vehicle. Of course one only gets scraps of conversations, but sometimes they are very funny."
"You must be quite a dangerous person, Miss Purcell."
"I am," she laughed; "and you must be careful not to say things that you don't want to be overheard when you are within reach of my eyes. Yesterday, for instance, you said to Hilda that my aunt seemed a wonderfully kind and intelligent old lady; and you were good enough to add some complimentary remarks about myself."
Dr. Leeds flushed.
"Well, I should not have said them in your hearing, Miss Purcell; but, as they were complimentary, no harm was done. I think I said that you were invaluable here,[Pg 105] which is certainly the case, for I really do not know how we should be able to amuse our patient if it were not for your assistance."
"Hilda and I had a laugh about it," Netta said; "and she said, too, that it was not fair your being kept in the dark as to our accomplishment."
"'Our accomplishment!'" he repeated in surprise. "Do you mean to say that Miss Covington is deaf also? But no, that is impossible; for I called to her yesterday, when her back was turned, and the General wanted her, and she answered immediately."
"My tongue has run too fast," the girl said, "but I don't suppose she would mind your knowing what she never speaks of herself. She was, as you know, living with us in Hanover for more than four years. She temporarily lost her hearing after an attack of scarlet fever, and the doctors who were consulted here feared that it might be permanent. Her father and mother, hearing of Dr. Hartwig as having the reputation of being the first aurist in Europe, took her out to him. He held out hopes that she could be cured, and recommended that she should be placed in Professor Menzel's institution as soon as she could understand German, so that, in case a cure was not effected, she might be able to hear with her eyes. By great good fortune he recommended that she should live with my aunt, partly because she spoke English, and partly because, as I was already able to talk, I could act as her companion and instructor both in the system and in German.
"In three years she could get on as well as I could, but the need for it happily passed away, as her hearing was gradually restored. Still, she continued to live with us while her education went on at the best school in the town, but of course she always talked with me as I talked with her, and so she kept up the accomplishment and has done so ever since. But her mother advised her very strongly to keep the knowledge of her ability to read people's words from their lips a profound secret, as it might tend to her disadvantage; for people might be[Pg 106] afraid of a girl possessed of the faculty of overhearing their conversation at a distance."
"That explains what rather puzzled me the other day," the doctor said. "When I came out into the garden you were sitting together and were laughing and talking. You did not notice me, and it struck me as strange that, while I heard the laughing, I did not hear the sound of your voices until I was within a few paces of you. When Miss Covington noticed me I at once heard your voices."
"Yes, you gave us both quite a start, and Hilda said we must either give up talking silently or let you into our secret; so I don't think that she will be vexed when I tell her that I have let it out."
"I am glad to have the matter explained," he said, "for really I asked myself whether I must not have been temporarily deaf, and should have thought it was so had I not heard the laughing as distinctly as usual. I came to the conclusion that you must, for some reason or other, have dropped your voices to a whisper, and that one or the other was telling some important secret that you did not wish even the winds to hear."
"I think that this is the only secret that we have," Netta laughed.
"Seriously, this is most interesting to me as a doctor, and it is a thousand pities that a system that acts so admirably should not be introduced into this country. You should set up a similar institution here, Miss Purcell."
"I have been thinking of doing so some day. Hilda is always urging me to it, but I feel that I am too young yet to take the head of an establishment, but in another four or five years' time I shall think seriously about it."
"I can introduce you to all the aurists in London, Miss Purcell, and I am sure that you will soon get as many inmates as you may choose to take. In cases where their own skill fails altogether, they would be delighted to comfort parents by telling them how their children may learn to dispense altogether with the sense of hearing."
"Not quite altogether," she said. "It has happened very often, as it did just now, that I have been addressed[Pg 107] by someone at whom I did not happen to be looking, and then I have to explain my apparent rudeness by owning myself to be entirely deaf. Unfortunately, I have not always been able to make people believe it, and I have several time............