There had been only two tours. After the second, she had watched his "card" anxiously. Three months had slipped away, and between his and his agent's name nothing had been added but the "Resting."
At last, after reading from the London paper to Mrs. Kincaid one day, she derived some further news. A word of the theatrical gossip had caught her eye, and unperceived by the lady, she started violently. She had seen "Seaton Carew." For a minute she could not quell her agitation sufficiently to pick the paper up; she sat staring down at it and deciphering nothing. Then she learnt that Miss Olive Westland, and her husband, Mr. Seaton Carew, encouraged by their successes in the provinces, had completed arrangements to open the Boudoir Theatre at the end of the following month. It was added that this of late unfortunate house had been much embellished, and a reference to an artist, or two already engaged showed Mary that Carew was playing with big stakes.
Henceforth she had had a new source of information, and one attainable without trouble, for the London paper was delivered at the Lodge daily. As the date for the production drew near, her impatience to hear the verdict had grown so strong that the walls of the country parlour cooped her; she saw through them into the city beyond—saw on to a draughty stage where Carew was conducting a rehearsal.
The piece had failed. On the morning when she learned that it had failed, she participated dumbly in the chagrin of the failure. "Yes" and "No" she had answered, and seen with the eyes of her heart the gloom of a face that used to be pressed against her own. She did not care, she vowed; her sole feeling with regard to the undertaking had been curiosity. If it had been more than curiosity she would despise herself!
But she looked at the Boudoir advertisement every day. And it was not long before she saw that another venture was in preparation. And she held more skeins of wool, and watched with veiled eagerness this advertisement develop like its predecessor. Recently the play had been; produced, and she had read the notice in Mrs. Kincaid's presence. When she finished it she guessed that Carew's hopes were over; unless he had a great deal more money than she supposed, the experiment at the Boudoir would see; it exhausted. There was not much said for his performance, either; he was dismissed in an indifferent sentence, like his wife. High praise of his acting might have led to London engagements, but his hopes seemed to have miscarried as manager and as actor too.
When Kincaid went round to the house one evening, the servant told him his mother had; gone to her room, and that Miss Brettan was sitting with her.
"Say I'm here, please, and ask if I may go up." Mary came down the stairs as he spoke.
"Ah, doctor," she said; "Mrs. Kincaid has gone to bed."
"So I hear. What's the matter with her?"
"Only neuralgia; she has had it all day. She has just fallen asleep."
"Then I had better not go up to see her?"
"I don't think I would. I have just come down to get a book."
"Are you going to sit with her?"
"Yes; she may wake and want something."
They stood speaking in the hall, outside the parlour door.
"Where is your book?" he said.
"Inside. I am sorry you have come round for nothing; she'll be so disappointed when she hears about it. May I tell her you'll come again to-morrow?"
"Yes, I'll look in some time during the day, if it's only for a moment. I think I'll sit down awhile before I go."
"Will you?" she said. "I beg your pardon." She opened the door, and he followed her into the room.
"You won't mind my leaving you?" she asked; "I don't want to stay away, in case she does wake."
It was nearly dark in the parlour; the lamp had not been lighted, and the fire was low. A little snow whitened the laburnum-tree that was visible through the window. It was an evening in January, and Mary had been in Westport now nearly two years.
"Can you see to find it?" he said. "Where did you leave it?"
"It was on the sideboard; Ellen must have moved it, I suppose. I'll ask her where she's put it."
"No, don't do that; I'll light the lamp."
She lifted the globe while he struck a match. It was his last, and it went out.
"Never mind," he said; "we'll get a light from the fire."
"Oh," she exclaimed, "but I'm giving you so much trouble; you had better let me call the girl!"
A dread of what might happen in this darkness was coming over her. "You had better let me call the girl," she repeated.
"Try if you can get a light with this first," he said—"try there, where it's red."
She bent over the grate, the twist of paper in one hand, and the other resting on the mantelpiece. He leant beside her, stirring the ashes with his foot.
It flashed back at her how Tony had stood stirring the ashes with his foot that night in Leicester, while he broke his news. A sickening anxiety swept through her to get away from Kincaid before he could have a chance to touch her. The paper charred and curled, without catching flame, and in her impatience she hated him for the delay. She hated herself for being here, lingering in the twilight with a man who dared to feel about her in the same way as Tony had once felt.
She rose.
"It's no use, doctor; Ellen will have to do it, after all."
"Don't go just yet," he said; "I want to speak to you, Miss Brettan."
"I can't stay any longer," she said. "I——"
"You'll give me a minute? There's something I have been waiting to say to you; I've been waiting a long while."
She raised her face to him. In the shadows filling the room, he could see little more than her eyes.
"Don't say it. I think I can guess, perhaps.... Don't say it, Dr. Kincaid!"
"Yes," he insisted, "I must say it; I'm bound to tell you before I take your answer, Mary. My dear, I love you."
Memory gave her back the scene where Tony had said that for the first time.
"If you can't care for me, you have only to tell me so to-night; it shall never be a worry to I you—I don't want my love to become a worry to you, to make you wish I weren't here. But if you can care a little ... if you think that when I'm able to ask you to come to me you could come.... Oh, my dear, all my life I'll be tender to you—all my life!"
He could not see her eyes any longer; her head was bowed, and in her silence the big man trembled.
The servant came in with the taper, and let down the blinds. They stood on the hearth, watching her dumbly. When the blinds were lowered, she turned up the lamp; and the room was bright. Kincaid saw that Mary was very pale.
"Is there anything else, miss?"
"No, Ellen, thank you; that's all."
"Mary?"
"I'm so sorry. You don't know how sorry I am!"
"You could never care—not ever so little—for me?"
"Not in that way: no."
He looked away from her—looked at the engraving of Wellington and Blucher meeting on the field of Waterloo; stared at the filter on the sideboard, through which the water fell drop by drop. A heavy weight seemed to have come down upon him, so that he breathed under it laboriously. He wanted to curtail the pause, which he understood must be trying to her; but he could not think of anything to say, nor could he shake his brain clear of her last words, which appeared to him incessantly reiterated. He felt as if his hope of her had been something vital and she had stamped it out, to leave him confronted by a new beginning—a beginning so strange that time must elapse before he could realise how wholly strange it was going to be. Even while he strove to address her it was difficult to feel that she was still very close to him. Her tones lingered; her dress emphasised itself upon his consciousness more and more; but from her presence he had a curious sense of being remote.
"Good-night," he said abruptly. "You mustn't let this trouble you, you know. I shall always be glad I'm fond of you; I shall always be glad I told you so—I was hoping, and now I understand. It's so much better to understand than to go on hoping for what can never come."
She searched pityingly for something kind; but the futility of phrases daunted her.
"I had better close the door after you," she murmured, "or it will make a noise."
They went out into the passage, and stood together on the step.
"It's beginning to snow," he said; "it looks as if we were going to have a heavy fall."
"Yes," she said dully, glancing at the sky.
She put out her hand, and it lay for an instant in his.
"Well, good-night, again."
"Good-night, Dr. Kincaid."
As he turned, she was silhouetted against the gaslight of the hall. Then her figure was with-drawn, and the view of the interior narrowed—until, while he looked back, the brightness vanished altogether and the door was shut.
And so it was all over.
"All over," he said to himself—"over and done with, Philip. Steady on, Philip; take it fighting!"
But they were only words—as yet he could not "take it fighting." Nor was the knowledge that he was never to hold her quite all the grief that lay upon him as he made his way along the ill-lit streets. There was, besides, a very cruel smart—the abstract pain of being such a little to one who was so much to him.
He visited the patients who were still awake, and dressed such wounds as needed to be dressed. He heard the little peevish questions and the dull complaints just as he had done the night before. The nurse walked softly past the sleepers with her shaded lamp, and once or twice he spoke to her. And when, the doctor's duties done, the man had gained his room, he thought of his hopes the night before, and sat with elbows on the table while the hours struck, remembering what had happened since.
The necessity for returning to the house so speedily, to see his mother, was eminently distasteful; he longed to escape it. And then suddenly he warmed towards her in self-reproach, thinking it had been very hard of him to wish to neglect his mother in order to spare awkwardness to another woman. His repugnance to the task was deep-rooted, all the same, and it did not lessen as the afternoon approached. But for the fact of yesterday's indisposition, he could never have brought himself to overcome it.
The embarrassment that he had feared, however, was averted by Miss Brettan's absence.
Mrs. Kincaid said that she was quite well again to-day; Mary had told her of his call the previous evening; how long was it he had stopped?
"Oh, not very long," he said; "has the neuralgia quite gone?"
"I feel a little weary after it, that's all. Is there anything fresh, Philip?"
"Fresh?" he answered vaguely. "No, dear. I don't know that there's anything very fresh."
"You look tired yourself," she said; "I thought that perhaps you were troubled?"
She thought, too, that Miss Brettan had looked troubled, and instinct pointed to something having occurred. A conviction that her son was getting fond of her companion had been unspoken in her mind for some time, and under her placid questions now rankled a little wistfulness, in feeling that she was not held dear enough for confidence. She wanted to say to him outright: "Philip, did you tell Miss Brettan you were fond of her when I was upstairs last night?" but was reluctant to seem inquisitive. He, with never an inkling that she could suspect his love, meanwhile reflected that for Mary's continued peace it was desirable that his mother should never conjecture he had been refused.
It is doubtful whether he had ever felt so wholly tender towards her as he did in these moments while he admitted that it was imperative to keep the secret from her; and perhaps the mother's heart had never turned so far aside from him as while she perceived that she was never to be told.
They exchanged commonplaces with the one grave subject throbbing in the minds of both. Of the two, the woman was the more laboured; and presently he noticed what uphill work it was, and sighed. She heard the sigh, and could have echoed it, thinking sadly that the presence of her companion was required now to make her society endurable to him. But she would not refer to Mary. She bent over her wool-work, and the needle went in and out with feeble regularity, while she maintained a wounded silence, which the man was regarding as an unwillingness to talk.
He said at last that he must go, and she did not offer to detain him.
"I want to hurry back this afternoon; you won't mind?"
"No," she murmured; "you know what you have to do, Philip, better than I."
He stooped and kissed her. For the first time in her life she did not return his kiss. She gave him her cheek, and rested one hand a little tremulously on his shoulder.
"Good-bye," she said; her tone was so gentle that he did not remark the absence of the caress. "Don't go working too hard, Phil!"
He patted the hand reassuringly, and let himself out. Then the hand crept slowly up to her eyes, and she wiped some tears away. The wool-work drooped to her lap, and she sat recalling a little boy who had been used to talk of the wondrous things he was going to do for "mother" when he became a man, and who now had become a man, living for a strange woman, and full of a love which "mother" might only guess.
She could not feel quite so cordial to Mary as she had done. To think of her holding her son's confidence, while she herself was left to speculate, made the need for surmises seem harder. And Philip was unhappy: her companion must be indifferent to him; nothing but that could account for the unhappiness, or for the reservation. She could have forgiven her engrossing his affections—in time; but her indifference was more than she could forgive.
Still, this was the woman he loved—and she endeavoured to hide her resentment, as she had hidden her suspicions. Their intercourse during the next week was less free than usual, nevertheless. Perhaps the resentment was less easy to hide, or perhaps Mary's nervousness made her unduly sensitive, but there were pauses which seemed to her significant of condemnation. She was exceedingly uncomfortable during this week. Sometimes she was only deterred from proclaiming what had happened and appealing to the other's fairness to exonerate her, by the recollection that it was, after all, just possible that the avowal might have the effect of transforming a bush into an officer.
She could not venture to repeat the retirement to her room the next time the doctor came. Nearly a fortnight had gone by. And she forced herself to turn to him with a few remarks. He was not the man to disguise his feelings successfully by a flow of small-talk; his life had not qualified him for it; and it was an ordeal to him to sit there in the presence of Mary and witness attempts in which he perceived himself unqualified to co-operate. His knowledge that the simulated ease should have originated with himself rather than with her made his ineptitude seem additionally ungracious, and he feared she must think him boorish, and disposed to parade his disappointment for the purpose of exciting her compassion.
Strongly, therefore, as he had wished to avoid a break in the social routine, his subsequent visits were made at longer intervals, and more often than not curtailed on the plea of work. It was, as yet at all events, impossible for him to behave towards her as if nothing untoward had happened, and to shun the house awhile looked to him a wiser course than to haunt it with discomposure patent. Thus the restraint that Mrs. Kincaid was imposing on herself had a further burden to bear: Miss Brettan was keeping her son from her side. The pauses became more frequent, and, to Mary, more than ever ominous. Indeed, while the mother mused mournfully on the consequences of her engagement, the companion herself was questioning how long she could expect to retain it. She began to consider whether she should relinquish it, to elude the indignity of a dismissal. And even if Mrs. Kincaid did fail to suspect the reason for her son's absenting himself, the responsibility was the same, she reflected. It was she who divided the pair, she who was accountable for the hurt expression that the old lady's face so often wore now. She felt wearily that women had a great deal to endure in life, what with the men they cared for, and the men for whom they did not care. There seemed no privileges pertaining to their sex; being feminine only amplified the scope for vexation. A fact which she did not see was that one of the most pathetic things in connection with the unloved lover is the irritability with which the woman so often thinks about him.
With what sentiments she might have listened to Kincaid had she met him prior to her intimacy with Carew one may only conjecture. Now he touched her not at all; but the intimacy had been an experience which engulfed so much of her sensibility, that she had emerged from it a different being. Kincaid's rival, in truth, was the most powerful one that can ever oppose a lover; the rival of constant remembrance—always a doughty antagonist, and never so impregnable as when the woman is instinctively a virtuous woman and has fallen for the man that she remembers.
It occurred to Mary to seek an opportunity for letting the doctor know that he was paining his mother by so rarely coming now; but such an opportunity was not easy to gain, for when he did come his mother of course was present. She thought of writing, but by word of mouth a hint would suffice, while a letter, in the circumstances, would have its awkwardness.
More than two months had gone by when Mrs. Kincaid made her plaint. It was on a Sunday morning. Mary was standing before the window, looking out, while the elder woman sat moodily in her accustomed seat.—
"Are we going to church?" asked Mary.
"Yes, I suppose so; there's plenty of time, isn't there?"
"Oh, yes, it's early yet—not ten. What a lovely day! The spring has begun."
"Yes," assented the other absently.
There was a short silence, and then:
"I shan't run any risk of missing Dr. Kincaid by going out; I needn't be afraid of that!" she added.
Her voice had in it so much more of pathos than of testiness, that after the instant's dismay her companion felt acutely sorry for her.
"A doctor's time is scarcely his own, is it?" she murmured, turning.
Mrs. Kincaid did not reply immediately, and the delay seemed to Mary to accentuate the feebleness of her answer.
"I mean," she said, "that it isn't as if he were able to leave the hospital whenever he liked. There may be cases——"
"He used to be able to come often; why shouldn't he be able now?"
"Yes——" faltered Mary.
"I haven't asked him; it is a good reason that keeps him from me, of course. But it's hard, when you're living in the same town as your son, not to have him with you more than an hour in a month. I don't see much more of him than that, lately. The last time he came, he stayed twenty minutes. The time before, he said he was in a hurry before he said, 'How do you do?' He never put his hat down—you may have; noticed it?"
"Yes, I noticed it," Mary admitted.
"You know; oh, you do know!" she cried inwardly, with a sinking of the heart. "Now, what am I to do?"
"Don't imagine I am blaming him," went on Mrs. Kincaid, "I am not blaming anybody; the reason may be very strong indeed. Only it seems rather unfair that I should have to suffer for it, considering that I don't hear what it is."
"Then why not speak to Dr. Kincaid? If he understood that you felt his absence so keenly, you may be sure he'd try to come oftener. Why don't you tell him that you miss him?"
"I shall never sue to my son for his visits," said the old lady with a touch of dignity, "nor shall I ask him why he stays away. That is quite his own affair. At my age we begin to see that our children have rights we mustn't intrude into—secrets that must be told to us freely, or not told at all. We begin to see it, only we are old to learn. There, my dear, don't let us talk about it; it's not a pleasant subject. I think we had better go and dress."
Mary looked at her helplessly; there was a finality in her tone which precluded the possibility of any advance. It was more than ever manifest that the task of remonstrating with him devolved upon Mary herself, and she decided to write to him that afternoon. Shortly after dinner Mrs. Kincaid went into the garden, and, left to her own devices in the parlour, Mary drew her chair to the escritoire. She would write a few lines, she thought, however clumsy, and send them at once. Still, they were not easy lines to produce, and she nibbled her pen a good deal in the course of their composition; the self-consciousness that invaded some of the sentences was too glaring. When the note was finished at last, she slipped it into her pocket, and told Mrs. Kincaid she would like to go for a walk.
"Oh, by all means; why not?"
"I thought perhaps you might want me."
"No," said Mrs. Kincaid; "I shall get along very well—I'm gardening."
She was, indeed, more cheerful than she had been for some time, busying herself among the violets, and stooping over the crocuses to clear the soil away.
"Go along," she added, nodding across her shoulder; "a walk will do you good!"
Though the wish had been expressed only to avoid giving the letter to a servant, Mary thought that she might as well profit by the chance; and from the post-office she sauntered as far as the beach. Then it struck her that the doctor might pay his overdue visit this afternoon, and she was sorry that she had gone out. The laboured letter might have been dispensed with—she might have had a word with him before he joined his mother in the garden! She turned back at once—and as she neared the Lodge, she saw him leaving it. They met not fifty yards from the door.
"Well, have you enjoyed your walk—you haven't been very far?" he said.
"Not very," said she; "I changed my mind. How did you find your mother?"
"She had been pottering about on the wet ground, which wasn't any too wise of her. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, I ... She has been missing you a little, I think; she wants you there more often."
"Oh?" he said; "I'm very sorry. Are you sure?"
"Yes, I am sure; it is more than a little she misses you. As a matter of fact, I have just written to you, Dr. Kincaid."
"To me? What—about this?"
"Yes."
"I didn't know," he said; "I never supposed she'd miss me like that. It was very kind of you."
"I wanted to speak to you about it before. I have seen for some time she was distressed."
"Has she said anything?"
"She only mentioned it this morning, but I've noticed."
"It was very kind of you," he repeated; "I'm much obliged."
Both suffered slightly from the consciousness of suppression; and after a few seconds she said boldly:
"Dr. Kincaid, if you're staying away with any idea of sparing embarrassment to me, I beg that you won't."
"Well, of course," he said, "I thought you'd rather I didn't come."
"But do you suppose I can consent to keep you from your mother's house? You must see ... the responsibility of it! What I should like to know is, are you staying away solely for my sake?"
"I didn't wish to intrude my trouble on you."
"No," she said; "that isn't what I mean. I am glad I have met you; I want to speak to, you plainly. I have thought that perhaps it hurt you to come; that my being there reminded—that you didn't like it? If that's so——"
"I think you're exaggerating the importance of the thing! It is very nice and womanly of you, but you are making yourself unhappy for nothing. I have had a good deal to occupy me of late—in future I'll go oftener."
"I feel very guilty," she answered. "If I am right in thinking it would be pleasanter for you to stay away than to go there and see me, my course is clear. It's not my home, you know; I'm in a situation, and it can be given up."
"You mustn't talk like that. I must have blundered very badly to give you such an idea. Don't let's stand here! Do you mind turning back a little way? If what I said to you obliged you to leave Westport, I should reproach myself for it bitterly."
They strolled slowly down the street; and during a minute each of the pair sought phrases.
"It's certain," she said abruptly, "that my being your mother's companion is quite wrong! If I weren't in the house you'd go there the same as you used to. I can't help feeling that."
"But Iwillgo there the same as I used to. I have said so."
"Yes," she murmured.
"Doesn't that satisfy you?"
"You'll go, but the fact remains that you'd rather not; and the cause of your reluctance is my presence there."
"It is you who are insisting on the reluctance," he fenced; "I'venot said I am reluctant. I thought you'd prefer me to avoid you for a while; personally——"
"Oh!" she said, "do you think I've not seen? I know very well the position is a false one!"
"I told you I'd never become a worry to you," he said humbly; "I've been trying to keep my word."
"You've been everything that is considerate; the fault is my own. I ought to have resigned the place the day after you spoke to me."
"I don't think that would have helped me much. You must understand that a change like that was the very last thing I wanted my love to effect."
At the word "love" the woman flinched a little, and he himself had not been void of sensation in uttering it. The sound of it was loud to both of them. But to her it added to the sense of awkwardness, while to the man it seemed to bring them nearer.
"It was very dense of me," he went on; "but with all the consequences of speaking to you that I foresaw I never took into account the one that has happened. I wondered if I was justified in asking you to give up a comfortable living for such a home as I could offer; I considered half a dozen things; but that I might be making the house unbearable to you I overlooked. Now, with your interest at heart all the time, I've injured you! I can't tell you how sorry I am to learn it."
"It's not unbearable," she said; "'unbearable' is much too strong. But I do see my duty, and I know the right thing is for me to go away; your mother would have you then as she ought to have you. While I stop, it can never be really free for either of you. And of course she knows!"
"Do you think she does?" he exclaimed.
"Are women blind? Of course she knows! And what can she feel towards me? It's only the affection she has for you that prevents her discharging me."
"Oh, don't!" he said. "'Discharging' you!"
"What am I? I'm only her servant. Don't blink facts, Dr. Kincaid; I'm your mother's companion, a woman you had never seen two years ago. It would have been a good deal better for you if you had never seen me at all!"
"You can't say what would have been best forme," he returned unsteadily; "I'd rather have known you as I do than that we hadn't met. For yourself, perhaps——"
"Hush!" she interrupted; "we can neither of us forget what our meeting was. For myself, I owe my very life to meeting you; that's why the result of it is so abominable—such a shame! I haven't said much, but I remember every day what I owe you. I know I owe you the very clothes I wear."
"Oh, for God's sake!" he muttered.
"And my repayment is to make you unhappy—and her unhappy. It's noble!"
Her pace quickened, and to see her excited acted upon him very strongly. He longed to comfort her, and because this was impossible by reason of the disparity of their sentiments, the sight of her emotion was more painful. He had never felt the hopelessness of his attachment so heavy on him as now that he saw her disturbed on account of it, and realised at the same time that it debarred him from offering her consolation. They walked along, gazing before them fixedly into the vista of the shut-up shops and Sunday quietude, until at last he said with an effort:
"If you did go you'd make me unhappier than ever."
She did not reply to this; and after a glance at the troubled profile:
"I am ready to do whatever you want," he added; "whatever will make the position easiest to you. It seems that, with the best intentions, I've only succeeded in giving annoyance to you both. But the wrong to my mother can be remedied; and if I drive you away I shall have done some lasting harm.... Why don't you say that you'll remain?"
"Because I'm not sure about it. I can't determine."
"Your objection was the fancy that you were responsible for my seeing her so seldom; I've promised to see her as often as I can."
She bit her lip. She said nothing.
"I can't do any more—can I?"
"No," she confessed.
"Then, what's the matter?"
"The matter is that——"
"What?"
"You show me more plainly every minute that Ioughtto go."
Something in the dumbness with which the announcement was received told her how unexpected it had been. And, indeed, to hear that his love, unperceived by himself, had been fighting against him was the hardest thing that he had had to bear. Sensible that every remonstrance that escaped him would estrang them further, the man felt helpless. They were crossing the churchyard now, and she said something about the impracticability of her going any further.
"Well, as you'll come oftener, our talk hasn't been useless!"
"Wait a second," he said. He paused by the porch, and looked at her. "I can't leave you like this. Mary——!"
"Oh!" she faltered, "don't say anything—don't!"
"I must. What's the good?—I keep back everything, and you still know! You'll always know. Nothing could have been more honestly meant than my assurance that I'd never bring distress to you, and I've brought distress. Let's look the thing squarely in the eyes: you, won't be my wife, but you needn't go away. What would you do? Whom do you know? Leaving my loss of you out of the question, think of my self-reproach!"
Inside the church an outburst of children's voices, muffled somewhat by the shut door, but still too near to be wholly beautiful, rose suddenly in a hymn. She stood with averted face, staring over the rankness of the grass that the wind was stirring lightly among the gravestones.
"Let's look at the thing squarely for once," he said again. "We're both remembering I love you—there's nothing gained by pretending. If the circumstances were different, if you had somewhere to go I should have less right to interfere; but as it is, your leaving would mean a constant shame to me. All the time I should be thinking: 'She was at peace in a home, and you drove her out from it!' To see the woman he cares for go away, unprotected, among strangers, to want perhaps for the barest necessaries—what sort of man could endure it? should feel as if I had turned you out of doors." A sudden tremor seized her; she shivered.
"Sit down," he said authoritatively. "We must come to an understanding!"
But his protest was not immediately continued, and in the shelter of the porch both were thoughtful. She was the first to speak again, after all.
"You're persuading me to be a great coward," she said; "and I am not a very brave woman at the best. If I do what is right, I may give you pain for a little while, but I shall spare you the unhappiness you'll have if you go on meeting me."
"You consider my happiness and her happiness, but not your own. And why?—you'd spare me nothing."
"You'll never be satisfied. Oh, yes, let us be honest with each other, you're right! Your misgivings about me are true enough; but you are principally anxious for me to stop that you may still see me. And what'll come of it? I can never marry you, never; and you'll be wretched. If I gave you a chance to forget——"
"I shall never forget, whether you stop or whether you go."
"Youmustforget!" she cried. "You must forget me till it is as if you had never known me. I won't be burdened with the knowledge that I'm spoiling your life. I won't!"
"Mary!" he said appealingly.
"Oh," she exclaimed, "it's cruel! I wish to God I had died before you loved me!"
"You don't know what you're saying! You make me feel——Why," he demanded, under his breath—"why could it never be—in time, if you stay? I'll never speak of it any more till you permit it, not a sign shall tell you I'm waiting; but by-and-by—will it be always impossible? Dearest, it holds me so fast, my love of you. Don't be harsher than you need; it's so real, so deep. Don't refuse me the right to hope—in secret, by myself; it's all I have, all I'll ask of you for years, if you like—the right to think that you may be my wife some day. Leave me that!"
"I can't," she said thickly; "it would be a lie."
"You could never care for me—not so much as to letmecare foryou?"
A movement answered him, and his head was lowered. He sat, his chin supported by his palm, watching the restless working of her hands in her lap. The closing words of the hymn came out distinctly to them both, and they listened till the hush fell, without knowing that they listened.
"May I ask you one thing? You know I shall respect your confidence. Is it because you care for some other man?"
"No, no," she said vehemently, "I do not care!"
"Thank God for that! While there's no one you like better, you'll be the woman I want and wait for to the end."
Her hands lay still; the compulsion for avowal was confronting her at last. To hear this thing and sanction it by leaving him unenlightened would be a wrong that she dared not contemplate; and under the necessity for proclaiming that her sentiments could never affect the matter, she turned cold and damp. Twice she attempted the finality required, and twice her lips parted without sound.
"Dr. Kincaid——"
He raised his eyes to her, and the courage faded.
"Don't think," he said, "that I shall ever make you sorry for telling me that. You've simply removed a dread. I'm grateful to you."
"Oh," she murmured, in a suffocating voice, "it makes no difference. How am I to explain the—why don't you understand?"
"What is it I should understand?"
"You mustn't be grateful; you're mistaken. Never in the world, so long as we live! There was someone else; I——"
"Be open with me," he said sternly; "in common fairness, let us have clearness and truth! You just declared that you didn't care for anyone?"
"No," she gasped, "I did say that—I meant I didn't care. I don't—we neither care; he doesn't know if I am alive, but ... there used to be another man, and——"
"Oh, my God, you are going to tell me you are married?"
She shook her head. His eyes were piercing her; she felt them on her wherever she looked.
"Then speak and be done! 'There was another man.' What more?"
Suddenly the first fear had entered his veins, and, though he was conscious only of a vague oppression, he was already terrified by the anticipation of what he was going to hear.
"'There was another man,'" he repeated hoarsely. "What of him?"
She was leaning forward, stooping so that her face was completely hidden. With the silence that had fallen inside the church, the scene was quieter than it had been, and the stillness in the air intensified her difficulty of speech. She struggled to evolve from her confusion the phrase to express her impurity, but all the terms looked shameless and unutterable alike; and the travail continued until, faint with the tension of the pause and the violent beating of her heart, she said almost inaudibly:
"I lived with him three years."
She heard him catch his breath, and then they sat motionless for a long while, just as they had been sitting when she spoke. Now that she had wrenched the fact out, the poignancy of her suffering subsided; even by degrees she realised that, after this, her leaving the town was inevitable, and her thoughts began to concern themselves vaguely with her future. In him consciousness could never waver from the sound of what she had said. She was impure. She had known passion and shame—she herself! The landscape lost its proportion as he stared; the clouds of the sky and the hue of the distance, everything had altered—she was impure.
The laboured minutes passed; he turned and looked slowly down at her averted profile. The curve of cheek was colourless; her hands were still lying clasped on her knee. He watched her for a moment, striving to connect the woman with her words. Something seemed bearing on his brain, so that it did not feel quite near. It did not feel so alive, nor so much his own, as before the vileness of this thing was uttered.
"I have never told you a falsehood," she murmured, "I didn't tell you any falsehood in London. Don't think me all deceit—every word of what I said that day was true."
"I dare say," he answered dully; "I have not accused you."
The change in his tone was pregnant with condemnation to her, and she wondered if he was believing her; but, indeed, he hardly recognised that she had said anything requiring belief. Her assurance appeared juvenile to him, incongruous. There was an air almost of unreality about their being seated here as they were, gazing at the blur of churchyard. Something never to be undone had happened and she was strange.
The service had ended, and, trooping out, the Sunday-school pupils clattered past their feet, shiny and clamorous, and eyeing them with sidelong inquisition. She rose nervously, and, rousing himself, he went with her through the crowd of children as far as the gate. There their steps flagged to a standstill, and for a few seconds they remained looking down the lane in silence.
To her, stunned by no shock to make reality less real, these final seconds held the condensed humiliation of the hour. The rigidity with which the man waited beside her seemed eloquent of disgust, and she mused bitterly on what she had done, how she had abased herself and destroyed his respect; she longed to be free of his reproachful presence. On the gravel behind them one of the bigger girls whispered to another, and the other giggled.
She made a slight movement, and he responded with something impossible to catch. She did not offer her hand; she did not immediately pity him. Had a stranger told him this thing of her, she would have pitied and understood; told him by herself, she understood only that she was being despised. They separated with a mechanical "good-afternoon," quietly and slowly. The two girls, who watched them with precocious eagerness, debated their relationship.
The road lay before him long and bare, and lethargically he took it. He continued to hear her words, "There used to be another man," but he did not know he heard them—he did not actively pursue any train of thought. It was only in momentary intervals that he became aware that he was thinking. The sense of there being something numbed within him still endured, and as yet his condition was more of stupor than of pain.
"There used to be another man!" The sentence hummed in his ears, and as he went along he awoke to it, the persistence of it touched him; and he began to repeat it—mentally, difficultly, trying to spur his mind into comprehension of it and take it in. He did not suffer acutely even then. There was nothing acute in his feelings whatever. He found it hard to realise, albeit he did not doubt. She was what she had said she was; he knew it. But he could not see her so; he could not imagine her the woman that she had said she used to be. He saw her always as she had been to him, composed and self-contained. The demeanour had been a mask, yet it clung to his likeness of her, obscuring the true identity from him still. He strove to conceive her in her past life, contemning himself because he could not; he wanted to remember that he had been loving a disguise; he wanted to obliterate it. The fact of its having been a disguise and never she all the time was so hard to grasp. He tried to look upon her laughing in dishonour, but the picture would not live; it appeared unnatural. It was the inception of his agony: the feeling that he had known her so very little that it was her real self which seemed the impossible.
And that other man had known it all—seen every mood of her, learned her in every phase!
"Mary!" he muttered; and was lost in the consciousness that actually he had never known "Mary."
He perceived that the man was moving through his thoughts as a dark man, short and suave, and he wondered how the fancy had arisen. Vaguely he began to wonder what he had been like indeed. It was too soon to question who he was—he wondered only how he looked, in a dim mental searching for the presence to associate her with. Next, the impression vanished, and sudden recollections came to him of men he was accustomed to meet.
The manner and mien of these riveted his attention. It was not by his own will that he considered them; the personalities were insistent. He did not suppose that any one of them had been her lover; he knew that it was chimerical to view any one of them as such; but his brain had been groping for a man, and these familiar men obtruded themselves vividly. The lurking horror of her defilement materialised, so that the sweat burst out on him; the significance of what he had heard flared red upon his vision. To think that it had pleased her to lend herself for the toy of a man's leisure, that some man had been free to make her the boast of his conceit, twisted his heart-strings.
The solidity of the hospital confronted him on the slope that he had begun to mount. Beneath him stretched the herbage of cottage gardens somnolent in Sabbath calm. Out of the silence came the quick yapping of a shop-boy's dog, the shrillness of a shop-boy's whistle. They were the only sounds. Then he went in.
That evening Miss Brettan told Mrs. Kincaid that she wished to leave her.
The old lady received the announcement without any mark of surprise.
"You know your own mind best," she said meditatively; "but I'm sorry you are going—very sorry."
"Yes," said Mary; "I must go. I'm sorry too, but I can't help myself. I——"
"I used to think you'd stop with me always; we got on so well together."
"You've been more than kind to me from the very first day; I shall never forget how kind you have been! If it were only possible. But it isn't; I——"
Once more the pronoun as the stumbling-block on delicate ground.
"I can't stop!" she added thickly; "I hope you'll be luckier with your next companion."
"I shan't have another; changes upset me. And you must go when it suits you best, you know; don't stay on to give me time to make fresh arrangements, as I haven't any to make. Study your own convenience entirely."
"This week?"
"Yes, very well; let it be this week."
They said no more then. But the following afternoon, Mrs. Kincaid broached the subject abruptly.
"What are you going to do, Miss Brettan?" she inquired. "Have you anything else in view?"
"No," said Mary hesitatingly; "not yet."
The suppression of her motive made plain speaking difficult to both.
"I've no doubt, though," she added, "that I shall be all right."
"What a pity it is! What a pity it is, to be sure!"
"Oh, you mustn't grieve about me!" she exclaimed; "it isn't worth that;I'mnot worth it. You know—you know, so many women in the world have to make a living; and they do make it, somehow. It's only one more."
"And so many women find they can't! Tell me,mustyou go? Are you quite sure you're not exaggerating the necessity? I don't ask you your reasons, I never meddle in people's private affairs. But are you sure you aren't looking on anything in a false light and going to extremes?"
"Oh!" responded Mary, carried into sudden candour, "do you suppose I don't shiver at the prospect? Do you suppose it attracts me? I'm not a girl, I'm not quixotic; Ican'tstop here!"
The elder woman sighed.
"Why couldn't you care for such a good fellow as my son?" she thought. "Then there would have been none of this bother for any of us!"
"I hope you'll be fortunate," she said gently. "Anything I can do to help you, of course, I will!"
"Thank you," said Mary.
"I mean, you mustn't scruple to refer to me; it's your only chance. Without any references——"
"Yes, I know too well how indispensable they are; but——"
"You have been here two years. I shall say I should have liked it to remain your home."
"Thank you," said Mary, again. But she was by no means certain that she could avail herself of this recommendation given in ignorance of the truth. It was precisely the matter that she had been debating. If she attempted to avail herself of it, the doctor might have something to say; and she was loath to be indebted for testimony from the mother which the son would know to be undeserved, whether he interfered, or not; she wanted her renunciation to be complete. Yet, without this source of aid——She trembled. How speedily the few pounds in her possession would vanish! how soon there would be a revival of her past experience, with all its heartlessness and squalor! In imagination she was already footsore, adrift in the London streets.
"Mrs. Kincaid——" she cried. A passionate impulse seized her to declare everything. If she had been seventeen, she would have knelt at the old woman's feet, for it is not so much the vehemence of our moods that diminishes with time as the power of restraint that increases.
"Mrs. Kincaid, you must know? You must guess why——"
"I know nothing," said the old woman, quickly; "I don't guess!" The colour sank from her face, and Mary had never heard her speak with so much energy. "My son shall tell me—I have a son—I will not hear from you!"
"I beg your pardon," said Mary; and they were silent.
The same evening Mrs. Kincaid sent a message to the hospital, asking her son to come round to see her.
She had not mentioned that she was going to do so, and it was with a little shock that Mary heard the order given. She supposed, however, that it was given in her presence by way of a hint, and when the time-approached for him to arrive, she withdrew.
He came with misgivings and with relief. The last twenty-four hours had inclined him to the state of tension in which the unexpected is always the portentous, but in which one waits, nevertheless, for something unlooked-for to occur. He did not know what he dreaded to hear, but the summons alarmed him, even while he welcomed it for permitting him to go to the house.
He threw a rapid glance round the parlour, and replied to his mother's greeting with quick interrogation.
"What has happened?"
"Nothing of grave importance has happened. I want to speak to you."
"I was afraid something was the matter," he said, more easily. "What is it?"
He took the seat opposite to her, and she was dismayed to observe the alteration in him. She contemplated him a few seconds irresolutely.
"Philip," she said, "this afternoon Miss Brettan was anxious to tell me something; she was anxious to make me her confidant. And I wouldn't listen to her."
"Oh?" he said.... "And you wouldn't listen to her?"
"No, I wouldn't listen to her. I said, 'My son shall tell me, or I won't hear.' This afternoon I had no more idea of sending for you than you had of coming. But I have been thinking it over; she's in your mother's house, and she's the woman you love. You do love her, Philip?"
"I asked her to be my wife," he answered simply.
"I thought so. And she refused you?"
"Yes, she refused me. If I haven't told you before, it was because she refused me. To have spoken of it to you would have been to give pain—needless pain—to you and to her."
Mrs. Kincaid considered.
"You are quite right," she admitted; "your mistake was to suppose I shouldn't see it for myself." She turned her eyes from him and looked ostentatiously in another direction. "Now," she added, "she is going away! Perhaps you already knew, but——"
"No," he replied, "I didn't know; I thought it likely, but I didn't know. I understand why you sent for me."
He got up and went across to her, and kissed her on the brow.
"I understand why it was you sent for me," he repeated. "What a tender little mother it is! And to lose her companion, too!"
Where he leant beside her, she could not see how white his face had grown.
"Are we going to let her go, Phil?"
He stroked her hand.
"I am afraid we must let her go, mother, as she doesn't want to stop."
"You don't mean to interfere, then? You won't do anything to prevent it?"
"I am not able to prevent it," he rejoined coldly. "I have no authority."
"Indeed?" murmured Mrs. Kincaid. "It seems I might have spared my pains."
"No," said her son; "your pains were well taken. I'm very glad you have spoken to me—or rather I'm very glad to have spoken to you—for you know now I meant no wrong by my silence."
"But—but, Philip——"
"But Miss Brettan must go mother, because she wishes to!"
"I don't understand you," exclaimed Mrs. Kincaid, bewildered. "I never thought you would care for any woman at all—you never struck me as the sort of man, somehow; but now that you do care, you can't surely mean that you think it right for the woman to leave the only place where she has any friends and go out into the world by herself? Don't you say you are in love with her?"
"I asked Miss Brettan to marry me," he answered. "Since you put the question, I do think it right for her to leave the place; I think every woman would wish to leave in the circumstances. I think it would be indelicate to restrain her."
"Your sense of delicacy is very acute for a lover," said the old lady grimly; "much too fine a thing to be comfortable. And I'll tell you what is greater still—your pride. Don't imagine you take me in for a moment; look behind you in the glass and ask yourself if it's likely!"
He had moved apart from her now and was lounging on the hearth, but he did not attempt to follow her advice. Nor did he deny the implication.
"I look pretty bad," he acknowledged, "I know. But you're mistaken, for all that; my pride has nothing to do with it."
"You're making yourself ill at the prospect of losing her, and yet you won't——Not but what she must be mad to reject you, certainly I am not standing up for her, don't think it! I don't say I wanted to see you fond of her—I should have preferred to see you marry someone who would have been of use to you and helped you in your career. You might have done a great deal better; and I am sure I understand your having a proper pride in the matter and objecting to beg her to remain. But, for all that, if you do find so much in this particular woman that you are going to be miserable without her, why,Ican say something to induce her to stop!"
"To the woman you would prefer me not to marry?" he said wearily. "But you mustn't do it, mother."
"I do want to see you marry her, Philip; I want to see you happy. You don't follow me a bit. Since the dread of her loss can make you look like that, you mustn't lose her; that's what I say."
"Ihavelost her," he returned; "I follow you very well. You think I might have married a princess, and you would have viewed that with a little pang too. You would give me to Miss Brettan with a big pang, but you'd give me to her because you think I want her."
"That is it—not a very big pang, either; I know every man is the best judge of his own life. Indeed, it oughtn't to be a pang at all; I don't think it is a pang, only a tiny A sweet-heart is always a mother's rival just at first, Phil; and I suppose it's always the mother's fault. But one day, when you're married to Mary, and a boy of your own falls in love with a strange girl, your wife will tell you how she feels. She'll explain it to you better that I can, and then you'll know howyourmother felt and it won't seem so unnatural."
"Oh," he said, "hush! Don't! I shall never be married to Mary."
"Yes," she declared, "you will. When you say that, you're not the 'best judge' any longer; it isn't judgment, it's pique, and I'm not going to have your life spoiled by pique and want of resolution. Phil, Phil, you're the last man I should have thought would have allowed a thing he wanted to slip through his fingers. And a woman—women often say 'no,' to begin with. It's not the girls who are to be had for the asking who make the best wives; the ones who are hardest to win are generally the worthiest to hold. Don't accept her answer, Phil! I'll persuade her to stay on, and at first you needn't come very often—I won't mind any more, I shall know what it means; and when you do come, I'll help you and tell you what to do. Sheshallget fond of you; youshallhave the woman you want—I promise her to you!"
"Mother," he said—the pallor had touched his lips—"don't say that! Don't go on talking of what can't be. It's no misunderstanding to be made up; it isn't any courtship to be aided. I tell you you can no more give me Mary Brettan for my wife than you can give my childhood back to me out of eternity."
"And I tell you I will!" said she. "'Faint-heart——' But youshallhave your 'fair lady'! Yes, instead of—you remember what we used to say to you when you were a little boy? 'There's a monkey up your back, Phil!'—you shall have your fair lady instead of the monkey that's up your back. It's a full-grown monkey to-night and you're too obstinate to listen to reason. By-and-by you'll see you were wrong. She is suited to you; the more I think about it, the more convinced I am she would make you comfortable. You might have thrown yourself away on some silly girl without a thought beyond her hats and frocks! And she's interested in your profession; you've always been able to talk to her about it; she understands these things better than I do."
"Listen," exclaimed Kincaid with repressed passion, "listen, and remember what you said just now—that I am a man, to judge for myself! You mustn't ask Miss Brettan to stay, and you are not to think that it is her going that makes me unhappy. My hope is over. Between her and me there would never be any marriage if she remained for years. Everything was said, and it was answered, and it is done."
He bit the end from a cigar, and smoked a little before he spoke any more. When he did speak, his tones were under control; anyone from whom his face had been hidden would have pronounced the words stronger than the feeling that dictated them.
"Something else: after to-night don't talk to me about her. I don't want to hear; it's not pleasant to me. If you want to prove your affection, prove it by that! While she's here I can't see you; when she's gone, let us talk as if she had never been!"
The aspect of the man showed of what a tremendous strain this affected calmness was the outcome. Indeed, the deliberateness of the words, even more than the words themselves, hushed her into a conviction of his sincerity, which was disquieting because she found it so inexplicable. She smoothed the folds of her dress, casting at him, from time to time, glances full of wistfulness and pity; and at last she said, in the voice of a person who resigns herself to bewilderment:
"Well, of course I'll do as you wish. But you have both very queer notions of what is right, that's certain; help seems equally repugnant to the pair of you."
"Why do you say that?" inquired Kincaid. "What help has Miss Brettan declined?"
"She was reluctant to refer anybody to me, I thought, when I mentioned the matter to-day. I suppose that was another instance of delicacy over my head."
"The reference? She won't make use of it?"
"She seemed very doubtful of doing so. I said: 'Without any reference, what on earth will become of you?' And she said, 'Yes, she understood, but——' But something; I forget exactly what it was now."
"But that's insane!" he said imperatively.
"She'll be helpless without it. She has been your companion, and you have had no fault to find with her; you can conscientiously say so."
He rose, and shook his coat clear of the ash that had fallen in a lump from the cigar.
"Nothing that has passed between Miss Brettan and me can affect her right to your testimony to the two years that she has lived with you; I should like her to know I said so."
"I will tell her," affirmed his mother. "What are you going to do?"
"It's getting late.... By the way, there's another thing. It will be a long while before she finds another home, at the best; she mustn't think I have anything to do with it, but I want her to take some money before she goes, to keep her from distress.... Where did I leave my hat?"
"You want me to persuade her to take some money, as if it were from me?"
"Yes, as if it were from you—fifty pounds—to keep her from distress.... Did I hang it up outside?"
His mother went across to him and wound her arms about his neck.
"Can you spare so much, Philip?"
"I have been putting by," he said, "for some time."
Mary had spent the evening very anxiously. The formless future was a terror that she could not banish; she could evolve no definite line of action to sustain a hope.
She awoke from a troubled sleep with a startled sense of something having happened. After a few seconds, the cause was repeated. The silence was broken by the jangling of a bell, and nervous investigation proved it to be Mrs. Kincaid's.
The old lady explained that she was feeling very unwell—an explanation that was corroborated by her voice—and, striking a light, Mary saw that she was shivering violently.
"I can't stop it; and I'm so cold. I don't know what it is; it's like cold water running down my back."
Her companion looked at her quickly. "We'll put some more blankets on the bed. Wait a minute while I run upstairs!"
She returned with the bedclothes from her own room.
"You'll be much warmer before long," she said; "you must have taken a slight chill."
Mrs. Kincaid lay mute awhile.
"I've such a pain!" she murmured. "How could I have taken a chill?"
"Where is your pain?"
"In my side—a sharp, stabbing pain."
The servant appeared now, alarmed by the disturbance, and Mary told her to bring some coals, and then to dress herself as speedily as she could.
"Is there any linseed? Or oatmeal will do. I must make a poultice."
"I'll see, miss. There's some linseed, I think, but——"
"Fetch it, and a kettle. We'll light the fire at once; then I can make it up here."
The old lady moaned and shivered by turns; and some difficulty was experienced in getting the fire to burn. Mary held a newspaper before it, and the servant advanced theories on the subject of the chimney.
At last, when it was possible for the poultice to be applied, Mary sent her down for a hot-water bottle and the whisky.
"You'll be quite comfortable directly," she said to the invalid. "Something warm to drink, and the hot flannel to your feet 'll make a lot of difference."
"So cold I am, it's bitter—and the pain! I can't think what it can be."
"Let me put this on for you, then; it's all ready. It won't—is that it?... There! How's that?"
"Oh!" faltered Mrs. Kincaid, "oh, thank you! Ah! you do it very nicely."
"See, here we have the rest of the luxuries!" She mixed the stimulant, and took it to her. "Just raise your head," she murmured; "I'll hold the glass for you, so that you won't have to sit up. Take this, now, and while you're sipping it, Ellen will get the bottle ready."
"There isn't much in the kettle," said Ellen. "I don't——"
"Use what there is, and fill it up again. Then see if you can find me any brown paper."
In quest of brown paper, Ellen was gone some time; and, having set down the empty tumbler and made the bed tidier, Mary proceeded to search for some herself.
She found a sheet lining a drawer, and rolling it into the form of a tube, fixed it to the kettle spout, to direct the steam into the room. She had not long done so when the girl returned disconsolate to say there was no brown paper in the house. Mary drew her outside.
"Are you going to sit in there all night, miss?"
"Speak lower! Yes, I shall sit up. What time is it?"
The girl said that she had just been astonished to see by the kitchen clock that it was half-past four; it had seemed to her that she had not long fallen asleep when the bell rang.
"I want you to go and fetch Dr. Kincaid, Ellen; I'm afraid Mrs. Kincaid is going to be ill."
"Do you mean I'm to go at once?"
"Yes. Tell him his mother isn't well, and it would be better for him to see her. Bring him back with you. You aren't frightened to go out—it must be getting light?"
They drew up the blind of the landing window, and saw daylight creeping over the next-door yard.
"Do you think she's going to be very bad, miss?"
"I don't know; I can't tell. Hurry, Ellen, there's a good girl! get back as quickly as you can!"
A deep flush had overspread the face on the pillow. The eyes yearned, and an agonised expression strengthened Mary's belief in the gravity of the seizure; she feared it to be the beginning of inflammation of the lungs. Three-quarters of an hour must be allowed for Kincaid to arrive, and, conscious that she could now do nothing but wait, the time lagged dreadfully. The silence, banished at the earlier pealing of the bell, had regained its dynasty, and once more a wide hush settled upon the house, indicated by the occasional clicking of a cinder on the fender. At intervals the sick woman uttered a tremulous sigh, and met Mary's gaze with a look of appeal, as if she recognised in her presence a kind of protective sympathy; but she had ceased to complain, and the watcher abstained from any active demonstration. In the globe beside the mirror the gas flared brightly, and this, coupled with the heat of the fire, filled the room with a moist radiance, against which the narrow line of dawn above the window-sill grew slowly more defined. The advent had been long expected, when sharp footfalls on the pavement smote Mary's ear, and, forgetting that Kincaid had his own key, she sprang up to let him in. The hall-door swung back, and she paused with her hand on the banisters. He came swiftly forward and passed her with a hurried salutation on the stairs.
There was, however, no anxiety visible on his face as he approached the bed. Merely a little genial concern was to be seen. His questions were put encouragingly; when a reply was given, he listened with an air of confidence confirmed.
"Am I very ill?" she gasped.
"Youfeelvery ill, I dare say, dear; but don't go persuading yourself youare, or that'll be a real trouble!"
His fingers were on her pulse, and he was smiling as he spoke. Yet he knew that her life was in danger. The worthiest acting is done where there is no applause—it is the acting of a clever medical man in a sick-room.
Mary stood on the threshold watching him.
"Who put that funnel on the kettle?" he inquired, without turning. He had not appeared to notice it.
"I did," she answered. "Am I to take it off?"
"No."
He signed to her to go below, and after a few minutes followed her into the parlour.
"Give me a pen and ink, Miss Brettan, please."
"I've put them ready for you," she said.
He wrote hastily, and rose with the prescription held out.
"Where's Ellen?"
"Here, waiting to take it."
A trace of surprise escaped him. He said curtly:
"You're thoughtful. Was it you who put on that poultice?"
Her tone was as distant as his.
"We did all we could before you came;Iput on the poultice. Did I do right?"
"Quite right. I asked because of the way it was put on."
With that expression of approval he left her and returned to his mother. Mary, unable to complete her toilette, not knowing from minute to minute when she might be called, occupied herself in righting the disorder of the room. She had thrown on a loosely-fitting morning dress of cashmere, one of the first things that she had made after she was installed here. An instant; she had snatched to dip her face in water, but she had been able to do little to her hair, the coil of which still retained much of the scattered; softness of the night, and after Ellen came back from the chemist's she sent her upstairs for some; hairpins. She stood on the hearth, before the looking-glass, shaking the mass of hair about her shoulders, and then with uplifted arms winding it deftly on her head. The supple femininity of the attitude, so suggestive of recent rising, harmonised with the earliness of the sunshine that tinged the parlour; and when Kincaid reentered and found her so, he could not but be sensible of the impression, though he was indisposed to dwell upon it.
She looked round quickly:
"How is Mrs. Kincaid, doctor?"
"I'm very uneasy about her. I'm going back to the hospital now to arrange to stay here."
"What do you think has caused it?"
"I'm afraid she got damp and cold in the garden on Sunday."
"And it has gone to the lungs?"
"It has affected the left lung, yes."
She dropped the last hairpin, and as she stooped for it the swirl of the gown displayed a bare instep.
"I can help to nurse her, unless you'd rather send someone else?"