A week passed. She watched Laurence's struggle, saw his strong body wasting away day by day, saw him weakening under the incessant fever. There had been no gleam of recognition for her; he was delirious or lay in a stupor. She tried to follow his wanderings in that strange borderland where the physical struggle was transmuted into fantasies reflecting his past life. Broken phrases told her he was fighting old battles over again.... He was contesting a field of war, leading his men into action; he shouted hoarse words of command, then cried out—he was down but the men must go on, take that position on the ridge.... Then he saw his brother fall, but he couldn't stop, must go on, on ... through the icy water, up that slope where the bullets sang.... A soldier's funeral. He beat time to the Dead March and the last bugle-call....
Or it was a courtroom scene. He was fighting hard for somebody's life, he pleaded passionately in low murmurs. The man hadn't meant to do wrong, Gentlemen of the Jury, he had meant well, only somehow things were against him and he had got into trouble.... Your Honour, before you pronounce sentence, I ask to be heard....
Then he was in a storm, the snow blinded him, he was freezing, couldn't go on ... or in a desert, lost,crying for water. Always the struggle of mind and body against odds, it seemed, a desperate losing battle....
Mary would watch this, always calm, cool, alert for anything she could do to relieve or supplement the nurses. When she gave way it was after she had locked herself into a room alone, and then it was not an emotional breakdown but a drop into nothingness. She would lie with her eyes shut, feeling nothing, caring for nothing. Somewhere there was a dumb sense of injury, of injustice—but even this seemed not to matter, since there was no one to complain to.... Things were like this.
As the days went by, all outside the sickroom became more shadowy to her. Even Jim coming in to see her, grown suddenly a man in this trouble, stalwart and serious; her father's visits, the young doctor, Horace Lavery, her daily consultations with Nora—her mind, aloof and critical, received and registered all the detail of life, dealt with it, but it had the thin quality of shadow. The reality was there with Laurence. Sometimes he murmured her name, spoke to her; not recognizing her there beside him, but seeing her far in the past—tenderly. There seemed no harshness in his memory of her, no pain from those battles they had gone through or the long estrangement. His tone was appealing, it had a child-like pathetic demand. He wanted her to do something about this that was bothering him.
Then came a day when the fever broke. Instead of going up toward night it went down. The patient sleptquietly a good deal of the night, and woke in the dawn, conscious.
Mary too had slept soundly that night for the first time; waking she saw the beaming face of the nurse.
"You can go in, he's quite himself.... But don't let him talk, he's too weak."
He lay there, too weak indeed even to put out his hand toward her, but his eyes welcomed her. How young those eyes looked, vividly blue in his wasted face! The outline of his face under the black beard was that of his youth and his body was slender as in youth. He smiled at her faintly. She knelt beside him and kissed him lightly with deep tenderness, and whispered that he mustn't try to talk, thank God he was better, but he must be very quiet and get back his strength, everything was all right. His eyes smiled at her, rested on her face with the old warmth of youthful love. He whispered her name.
The nurse came in with some soup, and Mary fed him like a child, with deep solicitude, with delight. His eyes closed, he must sleep again; but when she moved he stirred to keep her there. She nodded and drew a chair to the bedside and sat motionless long after he slept.
In the early afternoon, when Laurence had waked and was again sleeping, with the fever still down, Horace Lavery insisted upon taking Mary out for an airing. When she objected, he took her by the arm and led her to a mirror. "Don't you think you need a change?" he enquired severely. She smiled at the pallid facein the glass, looking certainly ten years older in this fortnight, with deep lines in it, the hair carelessly pushed back.
"You've got to keep up your strength, you know, and you haven't poked your nose outdoors since you came," Horace stated. "It's a lovely day. I'll get a carriage."
"Well," agreed Mary. "I feel like celebrating. But only an hour—Laurence might wake and want me there."
The whole atmosphere of the house was changed—a subdued rejoicing had filled it as the black shadow lifted. Nora even for the first time smiled at Mary coming downstairs in her long black cloak and bonnet. And Mary smiled back radiantly and clasped Nora's rather limp hand. Nora, by way of celebrating too, perhaps, had put on a lavender silk dress, more striking than becoming in contrast to her red hair, now neatly arranged. She had a visitor, at whom Mary just glanced in passing—a stout woman in black satin, with a large feathered bonnet and diamond earrings. Mary of course would never have thought of wearing diamond earrings on the street. She possessed a very handsome pair—she and Laurence always gave one another handsome presents on Christmas—but she had hollow gold balls made to fit over the diamonds for the street or in travelling.... Nora's visitor certainly looked vulgar ... and that dress Nora was wearing was a terrible colour, though it was very rich silk. Nora looked like a witch in it, with her thin face and carroty hair.... Had Nora also, perhaps, a pair of diamond earrings?...
Mary, with a high colour in her cheeks, swept haughtily out of the house.
The victoria drove slowly down the cobbled street, Mary and Lavery sitting side by side. With an effort she turned her attention toward her silent escort, and observed that he was attired in a frock-coat, light grey trousers and a silk hat.
"You're all dressed up!" she said with faint gaiety.
"Yes—usher at a wedding at five o'clock—up to today I didn't think I could do it—but now I don't mind. Why, today I'd hardly mind getting married myself!"
His smoothly-shaven face showed signs of the days of stress which, after forty, man nor woman can encounter with impunity. There was a tremor of the muscles round his mouth as he said abruptly:
"I don't know why I got tied up this way with you and Laurence. Awful mistake—and dead against my principles. Why, it spoils life, that's what it does. And it ain't that I'm so fond of you two either—that is, I don't think I am." He smiled uncertainly. "Old fool," he muttered.
Mary laid her hand on his arm.
"Don't do that, damn it," he said, drawing out a scented handkerchief. "Can't you see I'm about to cry?"
"Well, do, then," said Mary.
"At my time of life a nervous strain like this is no joke," he retorted peevishly. "I tell you I'm going to cut your acquaintance. I can't afford it."
"Well, do."
He scowled. "At forty-five a man has a right to thinkof himself—consider his little comforts and so on. He can't afford emotions, they're simply ruinous.... And I might have known you and Laurence would let me in for them. You're that kind. I suspected it all along."
It was a warm misty day of Indian summer. The carriage turned into the drive on the shore of the lake. There trees were shedding softly their last golden leaves. The lake was a deep cloudy blue, lapping in ripples on the sand.
"I think I'd like to walk a ways," said Mary suddenly. "It seems years since I stepped foot on the ground."
She left her wrap in the carriage, which followed them slowly as they strolled along the shore, and halted when they sat down after a time on a bench facing the water. They were silent, relaxed and weary, each immersed in a separate stream of thought; but conscious too of companionship. When Lavery spoke finally it was as though he were thinking aloud.
"I believe we are not meant to go through such emotional strain—I mean, human beings simply aren't constructed for it," he meditated. "I think we've gone off on a tangent, a wrong turning. We've overdeveloped our emotions, and Nature penalizes us every time for it. When you consider it, the physical world being what it is, really hostile to us, so that we have to be always on guard, and with all our care we're liable to an accident any minute—why, it's not reasonable for us to care so much for life or death—our own or other people's. Is it now? We put a wrong emphasis there, I'm sure."
Mary remained silent, and he went on:
"Of course, you may say that what we think is our highest development is all, in a way, against Nature.... Nature works for the mass, for the average, she wants quantity, not quality—she's inclined, when she sees a head rising above the mass to hit it.... What does Nature do for the finer, more sensitive human beings? She knocks them, every chance she gets. Suppose we develop altruistic feelings, a disinterested love for some other human being, we get hit through it, every time. No, ma'am, it doesn't pay! This world is constructed for people with tough shells—all others pass at their own risk.... And I think maybe we'd do better by the world, and other people, and ourselves, if we recognized that—if we had a real philosophy of toughness, instead of what we've mistakenly developed.... The philosophy of tenderness is the fashion, of course—people profess it, are actually ashamed not to—and a few practise it. But what good is it? It doesn't fit the facts, that's all, doesn't work. Since we're flung out defenceless into a world that doesn't care a hang about us as individuals, we ought to grow a tough shell as quick as we can, and stay in it if we want to survive. The only philosophical solution is not to have personal feelings.... You must either not admit them at all, but live like a crab in your shell—or else you must transcend them. Mystics say this can be done—I've never tried it myself. They say you can merge your own individuality in the mass, so that you are simply a part of what is going on, and don't feel personal loss or pain much.... What say about that?"
He turned to Mary, and saw that she had not been listening. She was staring at the blue shimmering water—and suddenly she flushed deeply, painfully, and looked distressed.
"What's the matter?" asked Lavery sharply. "What's bothering you now?"
"It's about Nora—"
"Nora? What about her?"
"Well, I just thought that I might have asked her to go up and see Laurence for a minute, now he's better.... She hasn't been near the room since I came.... And I took it that way, as if she had no business there...."
Lavery looked sideways at her, discomfited.
"Well, you couldn't have too many people running in—he isn't fit for it," he muttered.
"No, but I do feel badly about her.... You see, it goes back years. She was in our house, took care of the boys when they were little. She really loved them—and I guess she'd always been fond of Laurence, she knew him before I did. But I didn't notice it until ... well, I discovered it suddenly and ... she was turned out of the house practically.... I didn't concern myself about how she lived after that...."
"So that was the trouble," said Lavery, looking curiously at her. "I never knew that—I mean, that she was concerned in it.... And you were awfully angry?"
Mary frowned. "I don't know what I was.... It did something to me—I never got over it—couldn't."
"I suppose you were very much in love with Laurence then."
"I don't know whether I was or not, that wasn't the way I thought about it.... I didn't think about itmuch anyway—I never liked thinking about my feelings ... or talking about them."
"You don't mind talking a little this way, do you?"
"No, not now—it seems so long ago, and then—I'm hardly the same person I was then."
"And so you turned her out.... But you didn't want to leave Laurence?"
Mary was silent for some moments.
"Perhaps I did, perhaps not.... I didn't leave him, in one way, and in another I did. It couldn't be the same."
"Oh, no ... but still in the course of time you might have forgiven him."
"It wasn't that.... I don't believe there's such a thing as forgiveness. We forget, that's all."
"And you didn't forget.... I wonder if you loved Laurence."
"I don't know. He always said I didn't.... But he's had his life anyway."
"No doubt. And you've had yours."
Mary shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, yes."
He waited, watching her curiously, and after a moment she broke out:
"I know this—the only times I've ever felt afraid—real fear—it was on account of Laurence—when he was in danger."
"You didn't exactly want him, then, but you didn't want to lose him either?... You wanted him in some way."
"Oh ... that's enough about that.... But I was talking about Nora. I can see she thinks she'll bethrown out again. Any how she just hates me."
"Well, naturally."
"But I tell you, I'm sorry for what I did. I'd like her to know it. But I can't say anything to her. It seems, everything I could say would sound—patronizing, or forgiving, or—wrong, anyway."
"Of course. You're in possession, you see. She knows it, and that she hasn't got any real hold. You can't get around that. I don't see what you can do about it."
"But, you see, she really gave up her life—first to my children, and then.... She would have married and had children of her own."
"No doubt. She might yet. But not while Laurence is around. It's a real passion on her side."
"Well—that's my doing. I mean, that it lasted as long as it did. It was because I acted the way I did that he didn't break with her then."
"He'd have been glad to, many times since, I guess. She is as jealous as the devil, and makes scenes about any shadow of a woman. Naturally—she knows she hasn't got much of a hold on him, only he feels responsible.... I don't really see, Mary, why you should have made such a fuss about her.... It isn't as if he'd ever been in love with her.... Why couldn't you let him have his humble handmaiden ... or at any rate, not upset the whole apple-cart on account of it?"
"Oh, I know, you have no morality—hardly any man has. Anyhow it has nothing to do with that.... I want to know what to do now."
"Well, I don't see what you can do."
They had spoken in calm neutral tones and now were silent again. Lavery watched Mary; her face was intent, slightly frowning, baffled. He reflected that she had a concrete sort of mind, abstract questions, problems of character or conduct, did not interest her, she wanted to "do something." And really now, what could she do about this situation?
"You see," he said slowly, "things are changed now. Your being there—right there in the house—don't you see? I think, when he gets well, Laurence will want to break away for good and all from there. Of course she'd be looked after, materially, that's only right. And she'd probably have a chance to settle in life, it would be better, in the long run, for her.... I'm sort of taking it for granted," he added gravely, "that you want Laurence back."
Mary's face was an expressionless mask; lowered eyelids hid her eyes.
"I guess you want him back, and you don't want any other woman round. I sort of think you're human, after all."
"I'm afraid to say," she murmured.
"What? How?"
"I'm afraid.... It seems, I mustn't want anything now, I mustn't count on anything.... I must try to do right, to make up what I can, in any case, whether Laurence—" Suddenly she turned and cowered against Lavery, hiding her face on his shoulder, clutching his arm. "I'm afraid—I'm afraid!"
He sat silent and nodded his head slightly, looking blank, then became cheerful, expostulated:
"Oh, I know we're not out of the woods yet—but, Isay, you're not going to pieces, are you, the first good day we've had, and me with a wedding on my hands?... I say, this is unreasonable.... Poor girl, you're tired out, I know ... but what d'ye suppose the coachman thinks?"
"As if I cared!" But she sat up and straightened her bonnet. "We'd better go back now."
The sun was almost too warm on their bench.... And the water ... what a blue, soft and cloudy, a heavenly colour.... The softness and warmth of summer shed for a day over bare boughs and falling leaves....