Meredith talked very little to Harkless of his cousin, beyond lightly
commenting on the pleasure and oddity of their meeting, and telling him of
her friendly anxiety about his recovery; he said she had perfect
confidence from the first that he would recover. Harkless had said a word
or two in his delirium and a word or two out of it, and these, with once a
sudden brow of suffering, and a difference Meredith felt in Helen's manner
when they stood together by the sick man's bedside, had given the young
man a strong impression, partly intuitive, that in spite of the short time
the two had known each other, something had happened between them at
Plattville, and he ventured a guess which was not far from the truth.
Altogether, the thing was fairly plain--a sad lover is not so hard to
read--and Meredith was sorry, for they were the two people he liked best
on earth.
The young man carried his gay presence daily to the hospital, where
Harkless now lay in a pleasant room of his own, and he tried to keep his
friend cheery, which was an easy matter on the surface, for the journalist
turned ever a mask of jokes upon him; but it was not hard for one who
liked him as Meredith did to see through to the melancholy underneath.
After his one reference to Helen, John was entirely silent of her, and
Meredith came to feel that both would be embarrassed if occasion should
rise and even her name again be mentioned between them.
He did not speak of his family connection with Mr. Fisbee to the invalid,
for, although the connection was distant, the old man was, in a way, the
family skeleton, and Meredith had a strong sense of the decency of reserve
in such a matter. There was one thing Fisbee's shame had made the old man
unable not to suppress when he told Parker his story; the wraith of a
torrid palate had pursued him from his youth, and the days of drink and
despair from which Harkless had saved him were not the first in his life.
Meredith wondered as much as did Harkless where Fisbee had picked up the
journalistic "young relative" who signed his extremely business-like
missives in such a thundering hand. It was evident that the old man was
grateful to his patron, but it did not occur to Meredith that Fisbee's
daughter might have an even stronger sense of gratitude, one so strong
that she could give all her young strength to work for the man who had
been good to her father.
There came a day in August when Meredith took the convalescent from the
hospital in a victoria, and installed him in his own home. Harkless's
clothes hung on his big frame limply; however, there was a drift of light
in his eyes as they drove slowly through the pretty streets of Rouen. The
bandages and splints and drugs and swathings were all gone now, and his
sole task was to gather strength. The thin face was sallow no longer; it
was the color of evening shadows; indeed he lay among the cushions
seemingly no more than a gaunt shadow of the late afternoon, looking old
and gray and weary. They rolled along abusing each other, John sometimes
gratefully threatening his friend with violence.