"It is nothing but nerves," she said presently, with a sob that turned into a laugh. "I sometimes think the nervous breakdown has been worse than the operation. It has left me more unstrung and at the mercy of everything that goes wrong. Doctor Bridges and John both say I'll be well again if I have patience—but it is so hard to have patience."
"You're getting well. You will soon be strong again," Jenny Blair answered, while her heart was wrung with emotion. "Let me turn down your bed. You have been up too long, and you look so lovely in bed with your curls on your neck. Have you noticed," she asked cheerfully, "how beautifully everything in the room matches your kimono?"
The colours of the room were blue and mauve, and the chintz curtains, faded by many washings, held a shadowy design of wistaria and larkspur. A flowered paper, worn but still bright, covered the sunny walls, and there was a coverlet of blue silk, a present from Mrs. Archbald, on the foot of the bed. The morning sunshine fell in a chequered pattern over Ariel's cage at the window.
Mrs. Birdsong shook her head, while her tears flowed over features so inanimate that they might have been carved in ivory. "I can't stay in bed all the time. I must use my strength. I am going away to-morrow, and I must use my strength," she repeated despairingly.
"It will be cool in the mountains, and you will soon begin to improve. Anybody would be weak after that long illness."
"Nobody knows, nobody knows what I have been through."
"But you're getting well. You're getting well, only you must be careful. The doctor told you to go very slowly at first."
While her arms enfolded her friend, Jenny Blair felt that she was aching with sympathy and compassion. How she loved her! Not for anything in the world would she betray her trust. It was true that she loved George, too (she had begun to call him "George" in her thoughts), in a different way—oh, so different!--but that wasn't her fault. She had not chosen to fall in love with him. Some winged power over which she had no control had swept her from the earth to the sky. Since it was useless to deny her love, she could only remind her conscience (near enough to the nineteenth century to make scruples) that she did not mean the slightest harm in the world. All she asked was to cherish this romantic love in the depths of her heart. "Nothing could make me hurt her," she thought passionately, "but it can't harm her to have me love him in secret." And, besides, even if she were to try with all her strength, she could not stop loving him; she could not destroy this burning essence of life that saturated her being. "When you can't help a thing, nobody can blame you."
Kneeling on the floor, crumpling her pink linen dress, with her arms about Mrs. Birdsong, and her hard young heart dissolving with pity, she said aloud, "You must get well soon. You must get well soon because there is nobody like you."
Within her arms, she felt Mrs. Birdsong relax and give way, as if courage had failed. She looked straight before her into the sunshine, and her eyes were like blue hollows in which the light quivered, sank, and was drowned. Yet even in despair, Jenny Blair thought, she was more vital than any one else. Though her radiance was dimmed and sunken, it infused a glow into the room, into the house, which borrowed life from her presence, into the summer wildness and stillness of the garden.
"I shall never be well again," she said suddenly. "Something tells me I shall be like this always."
"But you won't. The doctors all say that you will be well again."
"They say that, but I know better."
Jenny Blair kissed her hand. "Let me put you to bed. You are sad because you're tired."
"In a minute, dear. I'll go in a minute." Pushing the hair back from her forehead, Mrs. Birdsong sat up very straight and wiped a moisture like dew from her lashes. "Only let me get a breath of air. I must be in bed before George comes home. It depresses him terribly when he finds me like this. I know I am selfish; but, somehow, for the first time in my life, I can't think of anything but what I've been through. Self-pity is a contemptible thing," she added, with an empty laugh, and asked abruptly, "Has it turned very much hotter!"
"No, it has been hot all the morning. Shall I turn on the fan? I wish you could have gone away before this last hot spell. Poor Aunt Etta is feeling it dreadfully; but Grandfather doesn't seem to mind the heat as much as we do. Old persons don't suffer with heat, do they?"
"I don't know. Perhaps their blood is thinner, or they take less exercise. But your grandfather ought to have gone to the White as usual. He can't do Etta any good by staying at home."
Poor Etta, who had suffered for weeks with an excruciating pain in her head, was being treated every day for an infected sinus; and since Mrs. Archbald was obliged to remain in town with her, the General had refused to open his cottage at White Sulphur Springs.
"He simply won't go anywhere without Mamma," Jenny Blair explained, "and of course she couldn't think of leaving Aunt Etta. We're all going just as soon as the doctor thinks she is well enough."
"I thought you were going abroad, dear, with the Peytons."
Jenny Blair shook her head. "I've been abroad twice already, and there wouldn't be a bit of fun in going anywhere with Bena. That is why I gave up the idea of living with her in New York and studying for the stage. She has her head full of boys, and I never liked them."
"But that isn't natural. You're young and you're pretty."
"I don't care. I like older men best, even very old men like Grandfather."
"How absurd, darling! I remember you used to talk that way about John when he was a boy; but I thought you'd outgrown that long ago."
"I haven't. I don't like him any better than I did years and years ago."
"Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself." Mrs. Birdsong was laughing, and her voice sounded natural and gay. "John has a brilliant career ahead of him. Every one says so, and in a few years, as soon as he begins to succeed, he will settle down in his views."
"I don't care. In his heart he doesn't like me any more than I like him—and that is not at all. You know as well as I do that John adores the very ground you walk on."
"But that's different. That's not being in love." A flush of pleasure dyed the delicate texture of Mrs. Birdsong's cheeks, and she looked suddenly animated and young.
"Well, he's not in love with me either. He says romantic love is a mental fever, and I don't care what anybody says, we don't really like each other. He thinks I'm selfish, and I think he's perfectly horrid. I'd rather be an old maid all my life than marry anybody like John."
"But you must marry. Every woman ought to marry. If she doesn't, she is sure to miss happiness." Though the accents were those of genteel tradition, the voice trailed off slowly on a note of broader humanity. "Not that marriage always brings happiness. I don't mean that; but I do think that every woman ought to have the experience of life."
"Well, I haven't seen a boy yet I'd like to be married to, and, most of all, I'd hate to be married to John."
"I can understand that, but you will have other chances. You're the kind of girl men fall in love with. I don't mean because you're pretty. There is something else in you that attracts, and I believe this something else counts more than real beauty in the long run. I'm not sure that great beauty, the beauty that brings fame while it lasts, is wholly a blessing. They used to call me the Virginia Lily because they said I was like Langtry," she added pensively. "There was one photograph in profile that was sometimes mistaken for a picture of her when she was young."
"I remember that one. But you were—you are far lovelier. Grandfather says her eyes could never compare with yours. Once, when I was a little girl, I asked him what the Mediterranean was like, and he answered, 'Like Mrs. Birdsong's eyes!'"