"Millfield, Georgia."My dear Miss Brent,"Your letter reached me yesterday and I have thought it over carefully. I appreciate the feeling that prompted it—but I don't know that any friend, however kind and discerning, can give the final advice in such matters. You tell me you are sure my wife will not ask me to return—well, under present conditions that seems to me a sufficient reason for staying away."Meanwhile, I assure you that I have remembered all you said to me that day. I have made no binding arrangement here—nothing to involve my future action—and I have done this solely because you asked it. This will tell you better than words how much I value your advice, and what strong reasons I must have for not following it now."I suppose there are no more exploring parties in this weather. I wish I could show Cicely some of the birds down here."Yours faithfully,"John Amherst."Please don't let my wife ride Impulse."
"Millfield, Georgia.
"My dear Miss Brent,
"Your letter reached me yesterday and I have thought it over carefully. I appreciate the feeling that prompted it—but I don't know that any friend, however kind and discerning, can give the final advice in such matters. You tell me you are sure my wife will not ask me to return—well, under present conditions that seems to me a sufficient reason for staying away.
"Meanwhile, I assure you that I have remembered all you said to me that day. I have made no binding arrangement here—nothing to involve my future action—and I have done this solely because you asked it. This will tell you better than words how much I value your advice, and what strong reasons I must have for not following it now.
"I suppose there are no more exploring parties in this weather. I wish I could show Cicely some of the birds down here.
"Yours faithfully,
"John Amherst.
"Please don't let my wife ride Impulse."
Latent under Justine's acute consciousness of what thisletter meant, was the sense of Bessy's inferences and conjectures. She could feel them actually piercing the page in her hand like some hypersensitive visual organ to which matter offers no obstruction. Or rather, baffled in their endeavour, they were evoking out of the unseen, heaven knew what fantastic structure of intrigue—scrawling over the innocent page with burning evidences of perfidy and collusion....
One thing became instantly clear to her: she must show the letter to Bessy. She ran her eyes over it again, trying to disentangle the consequences. There was the allusion to their talk in town—well, she had told Bessy of that! But the careless reference to their woodland excursions—what might not Bessy, in her present mood, make of it? Justine's uppermost thought was of distress at the failure of her plan. Perhaps she might still have induced Amherst to come back, had it not been for this accident; but now that hope was destroyed.
She raised her eyes and met Bessy's. "Will you read it?" she said, holding out the letter.
Bessy received it with lifted brows, and a protesting murmur—but as she read, Justine saw the blood mount under her clear skin, invade the temples, the nape, even the little flower-like ears; then it receded as suddenly, ebbing at last from the very lips, so that the smile with which she looked up from her reading was aswhite as if she had been under the stress of physical pain.
"So you have written my husband to come back?"
"As you see."
Bessy looked her straight in the eyes. "I am very much obliged to you—extremely obliged!"
Justine met the look quietly. "Which means that you resent my interference——"
"Oh, I leave you to call it that!" Bessy mocked, tossing the letter down on the table at her side.
"Bessy! Don't take it in that way. If I made a mistake I did so with the hope of helping you. How can I stand by, after all these months together, and see you deliberately destroying your life without trying to stop you?"
The smile withered on Bessy's lips. "It is very dear and good of you—I know you're never happy unless you're helping people—but in this case I can only repeat what my husband says. He and I don't often look at things in the same light—but I quite agree with him that the management of such matters is best left to—to the persons concerned."
Justine hesitated. "I might answer that, if you take that view, it was inconsistent of you to talk with me so openly. You've certainly made me feel that you wanted help—you've turned to me for it. But perhaps that does not justify my writing to Mr. Amherst without your knowing it."
Bessy laughed. "Ah, my dear, you knew that if you asked me the letter would never be sent!"
"Perhaps I did," said Justine simply. "I was trying to help you against your will."
"Well, you see the result." Bessy laid a derisive touch on the letter. "Do you understand now whose fault it is if I am alone?"
Justine faced her steadily. "There is nothing in Mr. Amherst's letter to make me change my opinion. I still think it lies with you to bring him back."
Bessy raised a glittering face to her—all hardness and laughter. "Such modesty, my dear! As if I had a chance of succeeding where you failed!"
She sprang up, brushing the curls from her temples with a petulant gesture. "Don't mind me if I'm cross—but I've had a dose of preaching from Maria Ansell, and I don't know why my friends should treat me like a puppet without any preferences of my own, and press me upon a man who has done his best to show that he doesn't want me. As a matter of fact, he and I are luckily agreed on that point too—and I'm afraid all the good advice in the world won't persuade us to change our opinion!"
Justine held her ground. "If I believed that of either of you, I shouldn't have written—I should not be pleading with you now—And Mr. Amherst doesn't believe it either," she added, after a pause,conscious of the risk she was taking, but thinking the words might act like a blow in the face of a person sinking under a deadly narcotic.
Bessy's smile deepened to a sneer. "I see you've talked me over thoroughly—and onhisviews I ought perhaps not to have risked an opinion——"
"We have not talked you over," Justine exclaimed. "Mr. Amherst could never talk of you...in the way you think...." And under the light staccato of Bessy's laugh she found resolution to add: "It is not in that way that I know what he feels."
"Ah? I should be curious to hear, then——"
Justine turned to the letter, which still lay between them. "Will you read the last sentence again? The postscript, I mean."
Bessy, after a surprised glance at her, took the letter up with the deprecating murmur of one who acts under compulsion rather than dispute about a trifle.
"The postscript? Let me see...'Don't let my wife ride Impulse.'—Et puis?" she murmured, dropping the page again.
"Well, does it tell you nothing? It's a cold letter—at first I thought so—the letter of a man who believes himself deeply hurt—so deeply that he will make no advance, no sign of relenting. That's what I thought when I first read it...but the postscript undoes it all."
Justine, as she spoke, had drawn near Bessy, laying a hand on her arm, and shedding on her the radiance of a face all charity and sweet compassion. It was her rare gift, at such moments, to forget her own relation to the person for whose fate she was concerned, to cast aside all consciousness of criticism and distrust in the heart she strove to reach, as pitiful people forget their physical timidity in the attempt to help a wounded animal.
For a moment Bessy seemed to waver. The colour flickered faintly up her cheek, her long lashes drooped—she had the tenderest lids!—and all her face seemed melting under the beams of Justine's ardour. But the letter was still in her hand—her eyes, in sinking, fell upon it, and she sounded beneath her breath the fatal phrase: "'I have done this solely because you asked it.'
"After such a tribute to your influence I don't wonder you feel competent to set everybody's affairs in order! But take my advice, my dear—don'task me not to ride Impulse!"
The pity froze on Justine's lip: she shrank back cut to the quick. For a moment the silence between the two women rang with the flight of arrowy, wounding thoughts; then Bessy's anger flagged, she gave one of her embarrassed half-laughs, and turning back, laid a deprecating touch on her friend's arm.
"I didn't mean that, Justine...but let us not talk now—I can't!"
Justine did not move: the reaction could not come as quickly in her case. But she turned on Bessy two eyes full of pardon, full of speechless pity...and Bessy received the look silently before she moved to the door and went out.
"Oh, poor thing—poor thing!" Justine gasped as the door closed.
She had already forgotten her own hurt—she was alone again with Bessy's sterile pain. She stood staring before her for a moment—then her eyes fell on Amherst's letter, which had fluttered to the floor between them. The fatal letter! If it had not come at that unlucky moment perhaps she might still have gained her end.... She picked it up and re-read it. Yes—there were phrases in it that a wounded suspicious heart might misconstrue.... Yet Bessy's last words had absolved her.... Why had she not answered them? Why had she stood there dumb? The blow to her pride had been too deep, had been dealt too unexpectedly—for one miserable moment she had thought first of herself! Ah, that importunate, irrepressible self—themoi haïssableof the Christian—if only one could tear it from one's breast! She had missed an opportunity—her last opportunity perhaps! By this time, even, a hundred hostile influences, coldwhispers of vanity, of selfishness, of worldly pride, might have drawn their freezing ring about Bessy's heart....
Justine started up to follow her...then paused, recalling her last words. "Let us not talk now—I can't!" She had no right to intrude on that bleeding privacy—if the chance had been hers she had lost it. She dropped back into her seat at the desk, hiding her face in her hands.
Presently she heard the clock strike, and true to her tireless instinct of activity, she lifted her head, took up her pen, and went on with the correspondence she had dropped.... It was hard at first to collect her thoughts, or even to summon to her pen the conventional phrases that sufficed for most of the notes. Groping for a word, she pushed aside her writing and stared out at the sallow frozen landscape framed by the window at which she sat. The sleet had ceased, and hollows of sunless blue showed through the driving wind-clouds. A hard sky and a hard ground—frost-bound ringing earth under rigid ice-mailed trees.
As Justine looked out, shivering a little, she saw a woman's figure riding down the avenue toward the gate. The figure disappeared behind a clump of evergreens—showed again farther down, through the boughs of a skeleton beech—and revealed itself in the next open space as Bessy—Bessy in the saddle on a day of glaringfrost, when no horse could keep his footing out of a walk!
Justine went to the window and strained her eyes for a confirming glimpse. Yes—it was Bessy! There was no mistaking that light flexible figure, every line swaying true to the beat of the horse's stride. But Justine remembered that Bessy had not meant to ride—had countermanded her horse because of the bad going.... Well, she was a perfect horsewoman and had no doubt chosen her surest-footed mount...probably the brown cob, Tony Lumpkin.
But when did Tony's sides shine so bright through the leafless branches? And when did he sweep his rider on with such long free play of the hind-quarters? Horse and rider shot into sight again, rounding the curve of the avenue near the gates, and in a break of sunlight Justine saw the glitter of chestnut flanks—and remembered that Impulse was the only chestnut in the stables....
She went back to her seat and continued writing. Bessy had left a formidable heap of bills and letters; and when this was demolished, Justine had her own correspondence to despatch. She had heard that morning from the matron of Saint Elizabeth's: an interesting "case" was offered her, but she must come within two days. For the first few hours she had wavered,loath to leave Lynbrook without some definite light on her friend's future; but now Amherst's letter had shed that light—or rather, had deepened the obscurity—and she had no pretext for lingering on where her uselessness had been so amply demonstrated.
She wrote to the matron accepting the engagement; and the acceptance involved the writing of other letters, the general reorganizing of that minute polity, the life of Justine Brent. She smiled a little to think how easily she could be displaced and transplanted—how slender were her material impedimenta, how few her invisible bonds! She was as light and detachable as a dead leaf on the autumn breeze—yet she was in the season of sap and flower, when there is life and song in the trees!
But she did not think long of herself, for an undefinable anxiety ran through her thoughts like a black thread. It found expression, now and then, in the long glances she threw through the window—in her rising to consult the clock and compare her watch with it—in a nervous snatch of humming as she paced the room once or twice before going back to her desk....
Why was Bessy so late? Dusk was falling already—the early end of the cold slate-hued day. But Bessy always rode late—there was always a rational answer to Justine's irrational conjectures.... It was the sight of those chestnut flanks that tormented her—she knewof Bessy's previous struggles with the mare. But the indulging of idle apprehensions was not in her nature, and when the tea-tray came, and with it Cicely, sparkling from a gusty walk, and coral-pink in her cloud of crinkled hair, Justine sprang up and cast off her cares.
It cost her a pang, again, to see the lamps lit and the curtains drawn—shutting in the warmth and brightness of the house from that wind-swept frozen twilight through which Bessy rode alone. But the icy touch of the thought slipped from Justine's mind as she bent above the tea-tray, gravely measuring Cicely's milk into a "grown-up" teacup, hearing the confidential details of the child's day, and capping them with banter and fantastic narrative.
She was not sorry to go—ah, no! The house had become a prison to her, with ghosts walking its dreary floors. But to lose Cicely would be bitter—she had not felt how bitter till the child pressed against her in the firelight, insisting raptly, with little sharp elbows stabbing her knee: "Andthenwhat happened, Justine?"
The door opened, and some one came in to look at the fire. Justine, through the mazes of her fairy-tale, was dimly conscious that it was Knowles, and not one of the footmen...the proud Knowles, who never mended the fires himself.... As he passed out again, hovering slowly down the long room, she rose, leaving Cicely on the hearth-rug, and followed him to the door.
"Has Mrs. Amherst not come in?" she asked, not knowing why she wished to ask it out of the child's hearing.
"No, miss. I looked in myself to see—thinking she might have come by the side-door."
"She may have gone to her sitting-room."
"She's not upstairs."
They both paused. Then Justine said: "What horse was she riding?"
"Impulse, Miss." The butler looked at his large responsible watch. "It's not late—" he said, more to himself than to her.
"No. Has she been riding Impulse lately?"
"No, Miss. Not since that day the mare nearly had her off. I understood Mr. Amherst did not wish it."
Justine went back to Cicely and the fairy-tale.—As she took up the thread of the Princess's adventures, she asked herself why she had ever had any hope of helping Bessy. The seeds of disaster were in the poor creature's soul.... Even when she appeared to be moved, lifted out of herself, her escaping impulses were always dragged back to the magnetic centre of hard distrust and resistance that sometimes forms the core of soft-fibred natures. As she had answered her husband's previous appeal by her flight to the woman he disliked, so she answered this one by riding the horse he feared.... Justine's last illusions crumbled. Thedistance between two such natures was unspannable. Amherst had done well to remain away...and with a tidal rush her sympathies swept back to his side....
The governess came to claim Cicely. One of the footmen came to put another log on the fire. Then the rite of removing the tea-table was majestically performed—the ceremonial that had so often jarred on Amherst's nerves. As she watched it, Justine had a vague sense of the immutability of the household routine—a queer awed feeling that, whatever happened, a machine so perfectly adjusted would work on inexorably, like a natural law....
She rose to look out of the window, staring vainly into blackness between the parted curtains. As she turned back, passing the writing-table, she noticed that Cicely's irruption had made her forget to post her letters—an unusual oversight. A glance at the clock told her that she was not too late for the mail—reminding her, at the same time, that it was scarcely three hours since Bessy had started on her ride.... She saw the foolishness of her fears. Even in winter, Bessy often rode for more than three hours; and now that the days were growing longer——
Suddenly reassured, Justine went out into the hall, intending to carry her batch of letters to the red pillar-box by the door. As she did so, a cold blast struckher. Could it be that for once the faultless routine of the house had been relaxed, that one of the servants had left the outer door ajar? She walked over to the vestibule—yes, both doors were wide. The night rushed in on a vicious wind. As she pushed the vestibule door shut, she heard the dogs sniffing and whining on the threshold. She crossed the vestibule, and heard voices and the tramping of feet in the darkness—then saw a lantern gleam. Suddenly Knowles shot out of the night—the lantern struck on his bleached face.
Justine, stepping back, pressed the electric button in the wall, and the wide door-step was abruptly illuminated, with its huddled, pushing, heavily-breathing group...black figures writhing out of darkness, strange faces distorted in the glare.
"Bessy!" she cried, and sprang forward; but suddenly Wyant was before her, his hand on her arm; and as the dreadful group struggled by into the hall, he froze her to him with a whisper: "The spine——"
WithinJustine there was a moment's darkness; then, like terror-struck workers rallying to their tasks, every faculty was again at its post, receiving and transmitting signals, taking observations,anticipating orders, making her brain ring with the hum of a controlled activity.
She had known the sensation before—the transmuting of terror and pity into this miraculous lucidity of thought and action; but never had it snatched her from such depths. Oh, thank heaven for her knowledge now—for the trained mind that could take command of her senses and bend them firmly to its service!
Wyant seconded her well, after a moment's ague-fit of fear. She pitied and pardoned the moment, aware of its cause, and respecting him for the way in which he rose above it into the clear air of professional self-command. Through the first hours they worked shoulder to shoulder, conscious of each other only as of kindred will-powers, stretched to the utmost tension of discernment and activity, and hardly needing speech or look to further their swift co-operation. It was thus that she had known him in the hospital, in the heat of his youthful zeal: the doctor she liked best to work with, because no other so tempered ardour with judgment.
The great surgeon, arriving from town at midnight, confirmed his diagnosis: there was undoubted injury to the spine. Other consultants were summoned in haste, and in the winter dawn the verdict was pronounced—a fractured vertebra, and possibly lesion of the cord....
Justine got a moment alone when the surgeons returned to the sick-room. Other nurses were there now, capped, aproned, quickly and silently unpacking their appliances.... She must call a halt, clear her brain again, decide rapidly what was to be done next.... Oh, if only the crawling hours could bring Amherst! It was strange that there was no telegram yet—no, not strange, after all, since it was barely six in the morning, and her message had not been despatched till seven the night before. It was not unlikely that, in that little southern settlement, the telegraph office closed at six.
She stood in Bessy's sitting-room, her forehead pressed to the window-pane, her eyes straining out into the thin February darkness, through which the morning star swam white. As soon as she had yielded her place to the other nurses her nervous tension relaxed, and she hung again above the deeps of anguish, terrified and weak. In a moment the necessity for action would snatch her back to a firm footing—her thoughts would clear, her will affirm itself, all the wheels of the complex machine resume their functions. But now she felt only the horror....
She knew so well what was going on in the next room. Dr. Garford, the great surgeon, who had known her at Saint Elizabeth's, had evidently expected her to take command of the nurses he had brought from town;but there were enough without her, and there were other cares which, for the moment, she only could assume—the despatching of messages to the scattered family, the incessant telephoning and telegraphing to town, the general guidance of the household swinging rudderless in the tide of disaster. Cicely, above all, must be watched over and guarded from alarm. The little governess, reduced to a twittering heap of fears, had been quarantined in a distant room till reason returned to her; and the child, meanwhile, slept quietly in the old nurse's care.
Cicely would wake presently, and Justine must go up to her with a bright face; other duties would press thick on the heels of this; their feet were already on the threshold. But meanwhile she could only follow in imagination what was going on in the other room....
She had often thought with dread of such a contingency. She always sympathized too much with her patients—she knew it was the joint in her armour. Her quick-gushing pity lay too near that professional exterior which she had managed to endue with such a bright glaze of insensibility that some sentimental patients—without much the matter—had been known to call her "a little hard." How, then, should she steel herself if it fell to her lot to witness a cruel accident to some one she loved, and to have to performa nurse's duties, steadily, expertly, unflinchingly, while every fibre was torn with inward anguish?
She knew the horror of it now—and she knew also that her self-enforced exile from the sick-room was a hundred times worse. To stand there, knowing, with each tick of the clock, what was being said and done within—how the great luxurious room, with its pale draperies and scented cushions, and the hundred pretty trifles strewing the lace toilet-table and the delicate old furniture, was being swept bare, cleared for action like a ship's deck, drearily garnished with rows of instruments, rolls of medicated cotton, oiled silk, bottles, bandages, water-pillows—all the grim paraphernalia of the awful rites of pain: to know this, and to be able to call up with torturing vividness that poor pale face on the pillows, vague-eyed, expressionless, perhaps, as she had last seen it, or—worse yet—stirred already with the first creeping pangs of consciousness: to have these images slowly, deliberately burn themselves into her brain, and to be aware, at the same time, of that underlying moral disaster, of which the accident seemed the monstrous outward symbol—ah, this was worse than anything she had ever dreamed!
She knew that the final verdict could not be pronounced till the operation which was about to take place should reveal the extent of injury to the spine. Bessy, in falling, must have struck on the back of herhead and shoulders, and it was but too probable that the fractured vertebra had caused a bruise if not a lesion of the spinal cord. In that case paralysis was certain—and a slow crawling death the almost inevitable outcome. There had been cases, of course—Justine's professional memory evoked them—cases of so-called "recovery," where actual death was kept at bay, a semblance of life preserved for years in the poor petrified body.... But the mind shrank from such a fate for Bessy. And it might still be that the injury to the spine was not grave—though, here again, the fracturing of the fourth vertebra was ominous.
The door opened and some one came from the inner room—Wyant, in search of an instrument-case. Justine turned and they looked at each other.
"It will be now?"
"Yes. Dr. Garford asked if there was no one you could send for."
"No one but Mr. Tredegar and the Halford Gaineses. They'll be here this evening, I suppose."
They exchanged a discouraged glance, knowing how little difference the presence of the Halford Gaineses would make.
"He wanted to know if there was no telegram from Amherst."
"No."
"Then they mean to begin."
A nursemaid appeared in the doorway. "Miss Cicely—" she said; and Justine bounded upstairs.
The day's work had begun. From Cicely to the governess—from the governess to the housekeeper—from the telephone to the writing-table—Justine vibrated back and forth, quick, noiseless, self-possessed—sobering, guiding, controlling her confused and panic-stricken world. It seemed to her that half the day had elapsed before the telegraph office at Lynbrook opened—she was at the telephone at the stroke of the hour. No telegram? Only one—a message from Halford Gaines—"Arrive at eight tonight." Amherst was still silent! Was there a difference of time to be allowed for? She tried to remember, to calculate, but her brain was too crowded with other thoughts.... She turned away from the instrument discouraged.
Whenever she had time to think, she was overwhelmed by the weight of her solitude. Mr. Langhope was in Egypt, accessible only through a London banker—Mrs. Ansell presumably wandering on the continent. Her cables might not reach them for days. And among the throng of Lynbrook habitués, she knew not to whom to turn. To loose the Telfer tribe and Mrs. Carbury upon that stricken house—her thought revolted from it, and she was thankful to know that February had dispersed their migratory flock to southern shores. But if only Amherst would come!
Cicely and the tranquillized governess had been despatched on a walk with the dogs, and Justine was returning upstairs when she met one of the servants with a telegram. She tore it open with a great throb of relief. It was her own message to Amherst—address unknown....
Had she misdirected it, then? In that first blinding moment her mind might so easily have failed her. But no—there was the name of the town before her...Millfield, Georgia...the same name as in his letter.... She had made no mistake, but he was gone! Gone—and without leaving an address.... For a moment her tired mind refused to work; then she roused herself, ran down the stairs again, and rang up the telegraph-office. The thing to do, of course, was to telegraph to the owner of the mills—of whose very name she was ignorant!—enquiring where Amherst was, and asking him to forward the message. Precious hours must be lost meanwhile—but, after all, they were waiting for no one upstairs.
The verdict had been pronounced: dislocation and fracture of the fourth vertebra, with consequent injury to the spinal cord. Dr. Garford and Wyant came out alone to tell her. The surgeon ran over the technical details, her brain instantly at attention as he developed his diagnosis and issued his orders. She asked no questions as to the future—she knew it was impossible to tell. But there were no immediate signs of a fatal ending: the patient had rallied well, and the general conditions were not unfavourable.
"You have heard from Mr. Amherst?" Dr. Garford concluded.
"Not yet...he may be travelling," Justine faltered, unwilling to say that her telegram had been returned. As she spoke there was a tap on the door, and a folded paper was handed in—a telegram telephoned from the village.
"Amherst gone South America to study possibilities cotton growing have cabled our correspondent Buenos Ayres."
Concealment was no longer possible. Justine handed the message to the surgeon.
"Ah—and there would be no chance of finding his address among Mrs. Amherst's papers?"
"I think not—no."
"Well—we must keep her alive, Wyant."
"Yes, sir."
At dusk, Justine sat in the library, waiting for Cicely to be brought to her. A lull had descended on the house—a new order developed out of the morning's chaos. With soundless steps, with lowered voices, the machinery of life was carried on. And Justine, caughtin one of the pauses of inaction which she had fought off since morning, was reliving, for the hundredth time, her few moments at Bessy's bedside....
She had been summoned in the course of the afternoon, and stealing into the darkened room, had bent over the bed while the nurses noiselessly withdrew. There lay the white face which had been burnt into her inward vision—the motionless body, and the head stirring ceaselessly, as though to release the agitation of the imprisoned limbs. Bessy's eyes turned to her, drawing her down.
"Am I going to die, Justine?"
"No."
"The pain is...so awful...."
"It will pass...you will sleep...."
"Cicely——"
"She has gone for a walk. You'll see her presently."
The eyes faded, releasing Justine. She stole away, and the nurses came back.
Bessy had spoken of Cicely—but not a word of her husband! Perhaps her poor dazed mind groped for him, or perhaps it shrank from his name.... Justine was thankful for her silence. For the moment her heart was bitter against Amherst. Why, so soon after her appeal and his answer, had he been false to the spirit of their agreement? This unannounced, unexplained departure was nothing less than a breach of his tacit pledge—the pledge not to break definitely with Lynbrook. And why had he gone to South America? She drew her aching brows together, trying to retrace a vague memory of some allusion to the cotton-growing capabilities of the region.... Yes, he had spoken of it once in talking of the world's area of cotton production. But what impulse had sent him off on such an exploration? Mere unrest, perhaps—the intolerable burden of his useless life? The questions spun round and round in her head, weary, profitless, yet persistent....
It was a relief when Cicely came—a relief to measure out the cambric tea, to make the terrier beg for ginger-bread, even to take up the thread of the interrupted fairy-tale—though through it all she was wrung by the thought that, just twenty-four hours earlier, she and the child had sat in the same place, listening for the trot of Bessy's horse....
The day passed: the hands of the clocks moved, food was cooked and served, blinds were drawn up or down, lamps lit and fires renewed...all these tokens of the passage of time took place before her, while her real consciousness seemed to hang in some dim central void, where nothing happened, nothing would ever happen....
And now Cicely was in bed, the last "long-distance" call was answered, the last orders to kitchen and stablehad been despatched, Wyant had stolen down to her with his hourly report—"no change"—and she was waiting in the library for the Gaineses.
Carriage-wheels on the gravel: they were there at last. Justine started up and went into the hall. As she passed out of the library the outer door opened, and the gusty night swooped in—as, at the same hour the day before, it had swooped in ahead of the dreadful procession—preceding now the carriageful of Hanaford relations: Mr. Gaines, red-glazed, brief and interrogatory; Westy, small, nervous, ill at ease with his grief; and Mrs. Gaines, supreme in the possession of a consolatory yet funereal manner, and sinking on Justine's breast with the solemn whisper: "Have you sent for the clergyman?"
Thehouse was empty again.
A week had passed since Bessy's accident, and friends and relations had dispersed. The household had fallen into its routine, the routine of sickness and silence, and once more the perfectly-adjusted machine was working on steadily, inexorably, like a natural law....
So at least it seemed to Justine's nerves, intolerably stretched, at times, on the rack of solitude, of suspense,of forebodings. She had been thankful when the Gaineses left—doubly thankful when a telegram from Bermuda declared Mrs. Carbury to be "in despair" at her inability to fly to Bessy's side—thankful even that Mr. Tredegar's professional engagements made it impossible for him to do more than come down, every second or third day, for a few hours; yet, though in some ways it was a relief to be again in sole command, there were moments when the weight of responsibility, and the inability to cry out her fears and her uncertainties, seemed almost unendurable.
Wyant was her chief reliance. He had risen so gallantly above his weakness, become again so completely the indefatigable worker of former days, that she accused herself of injustice in ascribing to physical causes the vague eye and tremulous hand which might merely have betokened a passing access of nervous sensibility. Now, at any rate, he had his nerves so well under control, and had shown such a grasp of the case, and such marked executive capacity, that on the third day after the accident Dr. Garford, withdrawing his own assistant, had left him in control at Lynbrook.
At the same time Justine had taken up her attendance in the sick-room, replacing one of the subordinate nurses who had been suddenly called away. She had done this the more willingly because Bessy, who was now conscious for the greater part of the time, hadasked for her once or twice, and had seemed easier when she was in the room. But she still gave only occasional aid, relieving the other nurses when they dined or rested, but keeping herself partly free in order to have an eye on the household, and give a few hours daily to Cicely.
All this had become part of a system that already seemed as old as memory. She could hardly recall what life had been before the accident—the seven dreadful days seemed as long as the days of creation. Every morning she rose to the same report—"no change"—and every day passed without a word from Amherst. Minor news, of course, had come: poor Mr. Langhope, at length overtaken at Wady Halfa, was hastening back as fast as ship and rail could carry him; Mrs. Ansell, anchored at Algiers with her invalid, cabled anxious enquiries; but still no word from Amherst. The correspondent at Buenos Ayres had simply cabled "Not here. Will enquire"—and since then, silence.
Justine had taken to sitting in a small room beyond Amherst's bedroom, near enough to Bessy to be within call, yet accessible to the rest of the household. The walls were hung with old prints, and with two or three photographs of early Italian pictures; and in a low bookcase Amherst had put the books he had brought from Hanaford—the English poets, the Greek dramatists, some text-books of biology and kindred subjects, and a few stray well-worn volumes: Lecky's European Morals, Carlyle's translation of Wilhelm Meister, Seneca, Epictetus, a German grammar, a pocket Bacon.
It was unlike any other room at Lynbrook—even through her benumbing misery, Justine felt the relief of escaping there from the rest of the great soulless house. Sometimes she took up one of the books and read a page or two, letting the beat of the verse lull her throbbing brain, or the strong words of stoic wisdom sink into her heart. And even when there was no time for these brief flights from reality, it soothed her to feel herself in the presence of great thoughts—to know that in this room, among these books, another restless baffled mind had sought escape from the "dusty answer" of life. Her hours there made her think less bitterly of Amherst—but also, alas, made her see more clearly the irreconcilable difference between the two natures she had striven to reunite. That which was the essence of life to one was a meaningless shadow to the other; and the gulf between them was too wide for the imagination of either to bridge.
As she sat there on the seventh afternoon there was a knock on the door and Wyant entered. She had only time to notice that he was very pale—she had been struck once or twice with his look of sudden exhaustion, which passed as quickly as it came—then she saw thathe carried a telegram, and her mind flew back to its central anxiety. She grew pale herself as she read the message.
"He has been found—at Corrientes. It will take him at least a month to get here."
"A month—good God!"
"And it may take Mr. Langhope longer." Their eyes met. "It's too long——?" she asked.
"I don't know—I don't know." He shivered slightly, turning away into the window.
Justine sat down to dash off messages to Mr. Tredegar and the Gaineses: Amherst's return must be made known at once. When she glanced up, Wyant was standing near her. His air of intense weariness had passed, and he looked calm and ready for action.
"Shall I take these down?"
"No. Ring, please. I want to ask you a few questions."
The servant who answered the bell brought in a tea-tray, and Justine, having despatched the telegrams, seated herself and began to pour out her tea. Food had been repugnant to her during the first anguished unsettled days, but with the resumption of the nurse's systematic habits the nurse's punctual appetite returned. Every drop of energy must be husbanded now, and only sleep and nourishment could fill the empty cisterns.
She held out a cup to Wyant, but he drew back with a gesture of aversion.
"Thanks; I'm not hungry."
"You ought to eat more."
"No, no. I'm very well."
She lifted her head, revived by the warm draught. The mechanical act of nourishment performed, her mind leapt back to the prospect of Amherst's return. A whole month before he reached Lynbrook! He had instructed her where news might find him on the way...but a whole month to wait!
She looked at Wyant, and they read each other's thoughts.
"It's a long time," he said.
"Yes."
"But Garford can do wonders—and she's very strong."
Justine shuddered. Just so a skilled agent of the Inquisition might have spoken, calculating how much longer the power of suffering might be artificially preserved in a body broken on the wheel....
"How does she seem to you today?"
"The general conditions are about the same. The heart keeps up wonderfully, but there is a little more oppression of the diaphragm."
"Yes—her breathing is harder. Last night she suffered horribly at times."
"Oh—she'll suffer," Wyant murmured. "Of course the hypodermics can be increased."
"Just what did Dr. Garford say this morning?"
"He is astonished at her strength."
"But there's no hope?—I don't know why I ask!"
"Hope?" Wyant looked at her. "You mean of what's called recovery—of deferring death indefinitely?"
She nodded.
"How can Garford tell—or any one? We all know there have been cases where such injury to the cord has not caused death. This may be one of those cases; but the biggest man couldn't say now."
Justine hid her eyes. "What a fate!"
"Recovery? Yes. Keeping people alive in such cases is one of the refinements of cruelty that it was left for Christianity to invent."
"And yet—?"
"And yet—it's got to be! Science herself says so—not for the patient, of course; but for herself—for unborn generations, rather. Queer, isn't it? The two creeds are at one."
Justine murmured through her clasped hands: "I wish she were not so strong——"
"Yes; it's wonderful what those frail petted bodies can stand. The fight is going to be a hard one."
She rose with a shiver. "I must go to Cicely——"The rector of Saint Anne's had called again. Justine, in obedience to Mrs. Gaines's suggestion, had summoned him from Clifton the day after the accident; but, supported by the surgeons and Wyant, she had resisted his admission to the sick-room. Bessy's religious practices had been purely mechanical: her faith had never been associated with the graver moments of her life, and the apparition of a clerical figure at her bedside would portend not consolation but calamity. Since it was all-important that her nervous strength should be sustained, and the gravity of the situation kept from her, Mrs. Gaines yielded to the medical commands, consoled by the ready acquiescence of the rector. But before she left she extracted a promise that he would call frequently at Lynbrook, and wait his opportunity to say an uplifting word to Mrs. Amherst.
The Reverend Ernest Lynde, who was a young man, with more zeal than experience, deemed it his duty to obey this injunction to the letter; but hitherto he had had to content himself with a talk with the housekeeper, or a brief word on the doorstep from Wyant. Today, however, he had asked somewhat insistently for Miss Brent; and Justine, who was free at the moment, felt that she could not refuse to go down. She had seen him only in the pulpit, when once or twice, in Bessy's absence, she had taken Cicely to church: he struckher as a grave young man, with a fine voice but halting speech. His sermons were earnest but ineffective.
As he rose to meet her, she felt that she should like him better out of church. His glance was clear and honest, and there was sweetness in his hesitating smile.
"I am sorry to seem persistent—but I heard you had news of Mr. Langhope, and I was anxious to know the particulars," he explained.
Justine replied that her message had overtaken Mr. Langhope at Wady Haifa, and that he hoped to reach Alexandria in time to catch a steamer to Brindisi at the end of the week.
"Not till then? So it will be almost three weeks—?"
"As nearly as I can calculate, a month."
The rector hesitated. "And Mr. Amherst?"
"He is coming back too."
"Ah, you have heard? I'm glad of that. He will be here soon?"
"No. He is in South America—at Buenos Ayres. There will be no steamer for some days, and he may not get here till after Mr. Langhope."
Mr. Lynde looked at her kindly, with grave eyes that proffered help. "This is terrible for you, Miss Brent."
"Yes," Justine answered simply.
"And Mrs. Amherst's condition——?"
"It is about the same."
"The doctors are hopeful?"
"They have not lost hope."
"She seems to keep her strength wonderfully."
"Yes, wonderfully."
Mr. Lynde paused, looking downward, and awkwardly turning his soft clerical hat in his large kind-looking hands. "One might almost see in it a dispensation—weshould see one, Miss Brent."
"We?" She glanced up apologetically, not quite sure that her tired mind had followed his meaning.
"We, I mean, who believe...that not one sparrow falls to the ground...." He flushed, and went on in a more mundane tone: "I am glad you have the hope of Mr. Langhope's arrival to keep you up. Modern science—thank heaven!—can do such wonders in sustaining and prolonging life that, even if there is little chance of recovery, the faint spark may be nursed until...."
He paused again, conscious that the dusky-browed young woman, slenderly erect in her dark blue linen and nurse's cap, was examining him with an intentness which contrasted curiously with the absent-minded glance she had dropped on him in entering.
"In such cases," she said in a low tone, "there is practically no chance of recovery."
"So I understand."
"Even if there were, it would probably be death-in-life: complete paralysis of the lower body."
He shuddered. "A dreadful fate! She was so gay and active——"
"Yes—and the struggle with death, for the next few weeks, must involve incessant suffering...frightful suffering...perhaps vainly...."
"I feared so," he murmured, his kind face paling.
"Then why do you thank heaven that modern science has found such wonderful ways of prolonging life?"
He raised his head with a start and their eyes met. He saw that the nurse's face was pale and calm—almost judicial in its composure—and his self-possession returned to him.
"As a Christian," he answered, with his slow smile, "I can hardly do otherwise."
Justine continued to consider him thoughtfully. "The men of the older generation—clergymen, I mean," she went on in a low controlled voice, "would of course take that view—must take it. But the conditions are so changed—so many undreamed-of means of prolonging life—prolonging suffering—have been discovered and applied in the last few years, that I wondered...in my profession one often wonders...."
"I understand," he rejoined sympathetically, forgetting his youth and his inexperience in the simple desire to bring solace to a troubled mind. "I understand your feeling—but you need have no doubt. Human life is sacred, and the fact that, even in this materialistic age, science is continually struggling to preserve and prolong it, shows—very beautifully, I think—how all things work together to fulfill the divine will."
"Then you believe that the divine will delights in mere pain—mere meaningless animal suffering—for its own sake?"
"Surely not; but for the sake of the spiritual life that may be mysteriously wrung out of it."
Justine bent her puzzled brows on him. "I could understand that view of moral suffering—or even of physical pain moderate enough to leave the mind clear, and to call forth qualities of endurance and renunciation. But where the body has been crushed to a pulp, and the mind is no more than a machine for the registering of sense-impressions of physical anguish, of what use can such suffering be to its owner—or to the divine will?"
The young rector looked at her sadly, almost severely. "There, Miss Brent, we touch on inscrutable things, and human reason must leave the answer to faith."
Justine pondered. "So that—one may say—Christianity recognizes no exceptions—?"
"None—none," its authorized exponent pronounced emphatically.
"Then Christianity and science are agreed." She rose, and the young rector, with visible reluctance, stood up also.
"That, again, is one of the most striking evidences—" he began; and then, as the necessity of taking leave was forced upon him, he added appealingly: "I understand your uncertainties, your questionings, and I wish I could have made my point clearer——"
"Thank you; it is quite clear. The reasons, of course, are different; but the result is exactly the same."
She held out her hand, smiling sadly on him, and with a sudden return of youth and self-consciousness, he murmured shyly: "I feel for you"—the man in him yearning over her loneliness, though the pastor dared not press his help....
Thatevening, when Justine took her place at the bedside, and the other two nurses had gone down to supper, Bessy turned her head slightly, resting her eyes on her friend.
The rose-shaded lamp cast a tint of life on her face, and the dark circles of pain made her eyes look deeper and brighter. Justine was almost deceived by the delusive semblance of vitality, and a hope that was half anguish stirred in her. She sat down by the bed, clasping the hand on the sheet.
"You feel better tonight?"
"I breathe...better...." The words came brokenly, between long pauses, but without the hard agonized gasps of the previous night.
"That's a good sign." Justine paused, and then, letting her fingers glide once or twice over the back of Bessy's hand—"You know, dear, Mr. Amherst is coming," she leaned down to say.
Bessy's eyes moved again, slowly, inscrutably. She had never asked for her husband.
"Soon?" she whispered.
"He had started on a long journey—to out-of-the-way places—to study something about cotton growing—my message has just overtaken him," Justine explained.
Bessy lay still, her breast straining for breath. She remained so long without speaking that Justine began to think she was falling back into the somnolent state that intervened between her moments of complete consciousness. But at length she lifted her lids again, and her lips stirred.
"He will be...long...coming?"
"Some days."
"How...many?"
"We can't tell yet."
Silence again. Bessy's features seemed to shrink into a kind of waxen quietude—as though her facewere seen under clear water, a long way down. And then, as she lay thus, without sound or movement, two tears forced themselves through her lashes and rolled down her cheeks.
Justine, bending close, wiped them away. "Bessy—"
The wet lashes were raised—an anguished look met her gaze.
"I—I can't bear it...."
"What, dear?"
"The pain.... Shan't I die...before?"
"You may get well, Bessy."
Justine felt her hand quiver. "Walk again...?"
"Perhaps...not that."
"This?I can't bear it...." Her head drooped sideways, turning away toward the wall.
Justine, that night, kept her vigil with an aching heart. The news of Amherst's return had produced no sign of happiness in his wife—- the tears had been forced from her merely by the dread of being kept alive during the long days of pain before he came. The medical explanation might have been that repeated crises of intense physical anguish, and the deep lassitude succeeding them, had so overlaid all other feelings, or at least so benumbed their expression, that it was impossible to conjecture how Bessy's little half-smothered spark of soul had really been affected by the news. But Justine did not believe in this argument. Her experience among the sick had convinced her, on the contrary, that the shafts of grief or joy will find a crack in the heaviest armour of physical pain, that the tiniest gleam of hope will light up depths of mental inanition, and somehow send a ray to the surface.... It was true that Bessy had never known how to bear pain, and that her own sensations had always formed the centre of her universe—yet, for that very reason, if the thought of seeing Amherst had made her happier it would have lifted, at least momentarily, the weight of death from her body.
Justine, at first, had almost feared the contrary effect—feared that the moral depression might show itself in a lowering of physical resistance. But the body kept up its obstinate struggle against death, drawing strength from sources of vitality unsuspected in that frail envelope. The surgeon's report the next day was more favourable, and every day won from death pointed now to a faint chance of recovery.
Such at least was Wyant's view. Dr. Garford and the consulting surgeons had not yet declared themselves; but the young doctor, strung to the highest point of watchfulness, and constantly in attendance on the patient, was tending toward a hopeful prognosis. The growing conviction spurred him to fresh efforts; at Dr. Garford's request, he had temporarily handed over his Clifton practice to a young New York doctorin need of change, and having installed himself at Lynbrook he gave up his days and nights to Mrs. Amherst's case.
"If any one can save her, Wyant will," Dr. Garford had declared to Justine, when, on the tenth day after the accident, the surgeons held their third consultation. Dr. Garford reserved his own judgment. He had seen cases—they had all seen cases...but just at present the signs might point either way.... Meanwhile Wyant's confidence was an invaluable asset toward the patient's chances of recovery. Hopefulness in the physician was almost as necessary as in the patient—contact with such faith had been known to work miracles.
Justine listened in silence, wishing that she too could hope. But whichever way the prognosis pointed, she felt only a dull despair. She believed no more than Dr. Garford in the chance of recovery—that conviction seemed to her a mirage of Wyant's imagination, of his boyish ambition to achieve the impossible—and every hopeful symptom pointed, in her mind, only to a longer period of useless suffering.
Her hours at Bessy's side deepened her revolt against the energy spent in the fight with death. Since Bessy had learned that her husband was returning she had never, by sign or word, reverted to the fact. Except for a gleam of tenderness, now and then, when Cicelywas brought to her, she seemed to have sunk back into herself, as though her poor little flicker of consciousness were wholly centred in the contemplation of its pain. It was not that her mind was clouded—only that it was immersed, absorbed, in that dread mystery of disproportionate anguish which a capricious fate had laid on it.... And what if she recovered, as they called it? If the flood-tide of pain should ebb, leaving her stranded, a helpless wreck on the desert shores of inactivity? What would life be to Bessy without movement? Thought would never set her blood flowing—motion, in her, could only take the form of the physical processes. Her love for Amherst was dead—even if it flickered into life again, it could but put the spark to smouldering discords and resentments; and would her one uncontaminated sentiment—her affection for Cicely—suffice to reconcile her to the desolate half-life which was the utmost that science could hold out?
Here again, Justine's experience answered no. She did not believe in Bessy's powers of moral recuperation—her body seemed less near death than her spirit. Life had been poured out to her in generous measure, and she had spilled the precious draught—the few drops remaining in the cup could no longer renew her strength.
Pity, not condemnation—profound illimitable pity—flowed from this conclusion of Justine's. To a compassionate heart there could be no sadder instance ofthe wastefulness of life than this struggle of the small half-formed soul with a destiny too heavy for its strength. If Bessy had had any moral hope to fight for, every pang of suffering would have been worth enduring; but it was intolerable to witness the spectacle of her useless pain.
Incessant commerce with such thoughts made Justine, as the days passed, crave any escape from solitude, any contact with other ideas. Even the reappearance of Westy Gaines, bringing a breath of common-place conventional grief into the haunted silence of the house, was a respite from her questionings. If it was hard to talk to him, to answer his enquiries, to assent to his platitudes, it was harder, a thousand times, to go on talking to herself....
Mr. Tredegar's coming was a distinct relief. His dryness was like cautery to her wound. Mr. Tredegar undoubtedly grieved for Bessy; but his grief struck inward, exuding only now and then, through the fissures of his hard manner, in a touch of extra solemnity, the more laboured rounding of a period. Yet, on the whole, it was to his feeling that Justine felt her own to be most akin. If his stoic acceptance of the inevitable proceeded from the resolve to spare himself pain, that at least was a form of strength, an indication of character. She had never cared for the fluencies of invertebrate sentiment.
Now, on the evening of the day after her talk with Bessy, it was more than ever a solace to escape from the torment of her thoughts into the rarefied air of Mr. Tredegar's presence. The day had been a bad one for the patient, and Justine's distress had been increased by the receipt of a cable from Mr. Langhope, announcing that, owing to delay in reaching Brindisi, he had missed the fast steamer from Cherbourg, and would not arrive till four or five days later than he had expected. Mr. Tredegar, in response to her report, had announced his intention of coming down by a late train, and now he and Justine and Dr. Wyant, after dining together, were seated before the fire in the smoking-room.
"I take it, then," Mr. Tredegar said, turning to Wyant, "that the chances of her living to see her father are very slight."
The young doctor raised his head eagerly. "Not in my opinion, sir. Unless unforeseen complications arise, I can almost promise to keep her alive for another month—I'm not afraid to call it six weeks!"
"H'm—Garford doesn't say so."
"No; Dr. Garford argues from precedent."
"And you?" Mr. Tredegar's thin lips were visited by the ghost of a smile.
"Oh, I don't argue—I just feel my way," said Wyant imperturbably.
"And yet you don't hesitate to predict——"
"No, I don't, sir; because the case, as I see it, presents certain definite indications." He began to enumerate them, cleverly avoiding the use of technicalities and trying to make his point clear by the use of simple illustration and analogy. It sickened Justine to listen to his passionate exposition—she had heard it so often, she believed in it so little.
Mr. Tredegar turned a probing glance on him as he ended. "Then, today even, you believe not only in the possibility of prolonging life, but of ultimate recovery?"
Wyant hesitated. "I won't call it recovery—today. Say—life indefinitely prolonged."
"And the paralysis?"
"It might disappear—after a few months—or a few years."
"Such an outcome would be unusual?"
"Exceptional. But then thereareexceptions. And I'm straining every nerve to make this one!"
"And the suffering—such as today's, for instance—is unavoidable?"
"Unhappily."
"And bound to increase?"
"Well—as the anæsthetics lose their effect...."
There was a tap on the door, and one of the nurses entered to report to Wyant. He went out with her, and Justine was left with Mr. Tredegar.
He turned to her thoughtfully. "That young fellow seems sure of himself. You believe in him?"
Justine hesitated. "Not in his expectation of recovery—no one does."
"But you think they can keep the poor child alive till Langhope and her husband get back?"
There was a moment's pause; then Justine murmured: "It can be done...I think...."
"Yes—it's horrible," said Mr. Tredegar suddenly, as if in answer to her thought.
She looked up in surprise, and saw his eye resting on her with what seemed like a mist of sympathy on its vitreous surface. Her lips trembled, parting as if for speech—but she looked away without answering.
"These new devices for keeping people alive," Mr. Tredegar continued; "they increase the suffering besides prolonging it?"
"Yes—in some cases."
"In this case?"
"I am afraid so."
The lawyer drew out his fine cambric handkerchief, and furtively wiped a slight dampness from his forehead. "I wish to God she had been killed!" he said.
Justine lifted her head again, with an answering exclamation. "Oh, yes!"
"It's infernal—the time they can make it last."
"It's useless!" Justine broke out.
"Useless?" He turned his critical glance on her. "Well, that's beside the point—since it's inevitable."
She wavered a moment—but his words had loosened the bonds about her heart, and she could not check herself so suddenly. "Why inevitable?"
Mr. Tredegar looked at her in surprise, as though wondering at so unprofessional an utterance from one who, under ordinary circumstances, showed the absolute self-control and submission of the well-disciplined nurse.
"Human life is sacred," he said sententiously.
"Ah, that must have been decreed by some one who had never suffered!" Justine exclaimed.
Mr. Tredegar smiled compassionately: he evidently knew how to make allowances for the fact that she was overwrought by the sight of her friend's suffering: "Society decreed it—not one person," he corrected.
"Society—science—religion!" she murmured, as if to herself.
"Precisely. It's the universal consensus—the result of the world's accumulated experience. Cruel in individual instances—necessary for the general welfare. Of course your training has taught you all this; but I can understand that at such a time...."
"Yes," she said, rising wearily as Wyant came in.
Her worst misery, now, was to have to discuss Bessy's condition with Wyant. To the young physician Bessywas no longer a suffering, agonizing creature: she was a case—a beautiful case. As the problem developed new intricacies, becoming more and more of a challenge to his faculties of observation and inference, Justine saw the abstract scientific passion supersede his personal feeling of pity. Though his professional skill made him exquisitely tender to the patient under his hands, he seemed hardly conscious that she was a woman who had befriended him, and whom he had so lately seen in the brightness of health and enjoyment. This view was normal enough—it was, as Justine knew, the ideal state of mind for the successful physician, in whom sympathy for the patient as an individual must often impede swift choice and unfaltering action. But what she shrank from was his resolve to save Bessy's life—a resolve fortified to the point of exasperation by the scepticism of the consulting surgeons, who saw in it only the youngster's natural desire to distinguish himself by performing a feat which his elders deemed impossible.
As the days dragged on, and Bessy's sufferings increased, Justine longed for a protesting word from Dr. Garford or one of his colleagues. In her hospital experience she had encountered cases where the useless agonies of death were mercifully shortened by the physician; why was not this a case for such treatment? The answer was simple enough—in thefirst place, it was the duty of the surgeons to keep their patient alive till her husband and her father could reach her; and secondly, there was that faint illusive hope of so-called recovery, in which none of them believed, yet which they could not ignore in their treatment. The evening after Mr. Tredegar's departure Wyant was setting this forth at great length to Justine. Bessy had had a bad morning: the bronchial symptoms which had developed a day or two before had greatly increased her distress, and there had been, at dawn, a moment of weakness when it seemed that some pitiful power was about to defeat the relentless efforts of science. But Wyant had fought off the peril. By the prompt and audacious use of stimulants—by a rapid marshalling of resources, a display of self-reliance and authority, which Justine could not but admire as she mechanically seconded his efforts—the spark of life had been revived, and Bessy won back for fresh suffering.
"Yes—I say it can be done: tonight I say it more than ever," Wyant exclaimed, pushing the disordered hair from his forehead, and leaning toward Justine across the table on which their brief evening meal had been served. "I say the way the heart has rallied proves that we've got more strength to draw on than any of them have been willing to admit. The breathing's better too. If we can fight off the degenerativeprocesses—and, by George, I believe we can!" He looked up suddenly at Justine. "With you to work with, I believe I could do anything. How you do back a man up! You think with your hands—with every individual finger!"
Justine turned her eyes away: she felt a shudder of repulsion steal over her tired body. It was not that she detected any note of personal admiration in his praise—he had commended her as the surgeon might commend a fine instrument fashioned for his use. But that she should be the instrument to serve such a purpose—that her skill, her promptness, her gift of divining and interpreting the will she worked with, should be at the service of this implacable scientific passion! Ah, no—she could be silent no longer....
She looked up at Wyant, and their eyes met.
"Why do you do it?" she asked.
He stared, as if thinking that she referred to some special point in his treatment. "Do what?"
"It's so useless...you all know she must die."
"I know nothing of the kind...and even the others are not so sure today." He began to go over it all again—repeating his arguments, developing new theories, trying to force into her reluctant mind his own faith in the possibility of success.