"You'll do very well, I think," he said; and he proceeded to give her some instructions.
She fulfilled these instructions with a capability he found astonishing. Before the day had worn through he perceived that, however her training had been acquired, he possessed in her a coadjutrix reliable and adroit. To herself, she was once more within her native province, but to him it was as if she had become suddenly voluble in a foreign tongue. He had no inclination to meditate upon her skill—to meditate about her was the last thing that he desired now—but there were moments when her performance of some duty supplied fresh food for wonder notwithstanding, and he noted her dexterity with curious eyes. He had, though, refrained from any further praise. The gratitude that he might have spoken was checked by the aloofness of her manner; and, in the closer association consequent upon the illness, the formality that had sprung up between them suffered no decrease. Indeed it became permanent in this contact, which both would have shunned.
After the one scene in which she left the choice to him, she had afforded him no chance to resume their earlier relations had he wished it, and the studied politeness of her address was a persistent reminder that she directed herself to him in his medical capacity alone. She held the present conditions the least exacting attainable, since the distastefulness of renewed intercourse was not to be avoided altogether; but she in nowise exonerated him for imposing them, and she considered that by having done so he had made her a singularly ungracious return for the humiliation of her avowal. She sustained the note he had struck; the key was in a degree congenial to her. But she resented while she concurred, and even more than to her judgment her acquiescence was attributable to her pride.
On the day following there were recurrences of pain, but on Wednesday this subsided, though the temperature remained high. Mary saw that his anxiety was, if anything, keener than it had been, and by degrees a latent admiration began to mingle with her bitterness. In the atmosphere of the sick-room the man and the woman were equally new to each other, and up to a certain point he was as great a surprise to her as was she to him. She saw him now professionally for the first time, and she recognised his resources, his despatch, with an appreciation quickened by experience. The visitor whom she had known lounging, loose-limbed and conversational, in an arm-chair had disappeared; the suppliant for a tenderness that she did not feel had become an authority whom she obeyed. Here, like this, the man was a power, and the change within him had its physical expression. His figure was braced, his movements had a resolution and a vigour that gave him another personality. He even awed her slightly. She thought that he must look more masterful to all the world in the exercise of his profession, but she thought also that everyone in the world would approve the difference.
The confidence that he inspired in her was so strong that on Thursday, when he told her that he intended to have a consultation, she heard him with a shock.
"You think it advisable?"
"I fear the worst, Miss Brettan; I can't neglect any chance."
She had some violets in her hand—it was her custom to brighten the view from the bed as much as she could every morning—and suddenly their scent was very strong.
"The worst?"
"God grant my opinion's wrong!" he said. "Will you ask the girl to take the wire for me?"
It was to a physician in the county town he had decided to telegraph, one whose prestige was gradually widening, and whose reputation had been built on something trustier than a chance summons to the couch of a notability. Mary had heard the name before, and she strove to persuade herself that his view of the case might prove more promising. The day that had opened so gloomily, however, offered during the succeeding hours small food for faith. Towards noon the sufferer became abruptly restless, and the united efforts of doctor and nurse were required to soothe her. She was fired by a passionate longing to get up, and pleaded piteously for permission. To "walk about a little while" was her one appeal, and the strenuousness of the entreaty was rendered more pathetic by her obvious belief that they refused because they failed to comprehend the violence of the desire. She endeavoured with failing energy to make it known, and—prevailed upon to desist at last—lay back with a look that was a lamentation of her helplessness. Later, she was slightly delirious and rambled in confused phrases of her son and her companion—his courtship and Mary's indifference. The man and the woman sat on either side, of her, but their gaze no longer met. At the first reference to his attachment Mary had started painfully, but now by a strong effort her nervousness had been suppressed, and from time to time she moved to wipe the fevered lips and brow with a semblance of self-possession. As the daylight waned, the disjointed sentences grew rarer. Kincaid went down. Except for the deep breathing, silence fell again, until, as dusk gathered, the sudden words "I feel much better" were uttered in a tone of restored tranquillity. Turning quickly, Mary saw that her ears had not deceived her. The assurance was repeated with a feeble smile; the features had gained a touch of the cheerfulness that had been so remarkable in the voice. Soon afterwards the eyes closed in what appeared to be sleep.
Kincaid was striding to and fro in the parlour, his arms locked across his breast. As Mary ran in, his head was lifted sharply.
"She feels much better," she exclaimed; "she has fallen asleep!"
He stood there, without speaking—and she shrank back with a stifled cry.
"Oh! I didn't know.... Is itthat?".
"Yes," he said, scarcely above a whisper. And she understood that what she had told him was the presage of death.
After this, both knew it to be but a matter of time. The arrival of the physician served merely to confirm despondence. He pronounced the case hopeless, and reluctantly accepted a fee to defray the expenses of the journey.
"I wish we could have met in happier circumstances," he said.... "You've the comfort of knowing that you did everything that could be done."
A page with a message of inquiry came up the steps as he left; such messages had been delivered daily. But on Saturday, when the baker's man brought the bread to Laburnum Lodge, he found the blinds down; and within a few minutes of his handing the loaf to the weeping servant through the scullery window, the news circulated in Westport that Mrs. Kincaid had died unconscious at seven o'clock that morning.
While the baker's man derived this intelligence from the housemaid, Mary was behind the lowered blinds on the first floor, crying. She had just descended from her bedroom; seeing how deeply Kincaid was affected, she had retired there soon after the end. He had not shed tears, but that he was strongly moved was evident by the muscles of his mouth; and the quivering face of which she had had a glimpse kept recurring to her vividly.
He came in while she sat there. He was very pale, but now his face was under control again.
She rose, and advanced towards him irresolutely. "I'm so sorry! She was a very kind friend to me."
He put out his hand. For the first time since she had met him after posting the note, hers lay in it.
"Thank you," he said. "Thank you, too, for all you did for her; I shall always remember it gratefully, Miss Brettan."
He seemed to be at the point of adding something, but checked himself. Presently he made reference to the arrangements that must be seen to. That night he reoccupied his quarters in the hospital, and excepting in odd minutes, she did not see him again during the day. She found space, however, to mention that she purposed remaining until the funeral, and to this announcement he bowed, though he refrained from any inquiry as to her plans afterwards. "Plans," indeed, would have been a curious misnomer for the thoughts in her brain. The question that she had revolved earlier had been settled effectually by the death; now that all possibility of Mrs. Kincaid's recommending her had been removed, her plight admitted of nothing but conjecture.
In her solitude in the house of mourning, unbroken save for interruptions which emphasised the tragedy, or for some colloquy with the red-eyed servant, she passed her hours lethargic and weary. The week of suspense and insufficient rest had tired her out, and she no longer even sought to consider. Her mind drifted. A fancy that came to her was, that it would be delightful to be lying in a cornfield in hot sunshine, with a vault of blue above her. The picture was present more often than her thought of the impending horrors of London.
How much the week had held! what changes it had seen! She sat musing on this the next evening, listening to the church bells, and remembering that a Sunday ago the dead woman had been beside her. Last Sunday there was still a prospect of Westport continuing to be her home for years. Last Sunday it was that, in the churchyard, she had confessed her past. Only a week—how full, how difficult to realise! She was half dozing when she heard the hall-door unlocked, and Kincaid greeted her as she roused herself.
"Did I disturb you? were you asleep?"
"No; I was thinking, that's all."
He sighed, and dropped into the opposite chair. She noted his harassed aspect, and pitied him. The Sunday previous she had not been sensible of any pity at all. She understood his loss of his mother; the loss of his faith had represented much less to her, its being a faith on which she personally had set small store.
"There's plenty to think of!" he said wearily.
"You haven't seen Ellen, doctor, have you? She has been asking for you."
"Has she? what does she want?"
"She is anxious to know how long she'll be kept. Her sister is in service somewhere and the family want a parlourmaid on the first of the month. I am sorry to bother you with trifles now, but she asked me to speak to you."
"I must talk to her. Of course the house 'll be sold off; there's no one to keep it on for.... How fagged you look! are you taking proper care of yourself again?"
"Oh yes; it is just the reaction, nothing but what'll soon pass."
"You didn't have the relief you ought to have had; you worked like two women."
He paused, and his gaze dwelt on her questioningly. She read the question with such clearness that, when he spoke, the words seemed but an echo of the pause.
"How did you know so much?" he asked.
"After I lost my father I was a nurse in the Yaughton Hospital for some years."
The answer was direct, but it was brief. Half a dozen queries sprang to his lips, and were in turn repressed. Her past was her own; he confined his inquiries to her future.
"And what do you mean to do now?"
"I'm going to London."
"Do you expect to meet with any difficulties in the way of taking up nursing again?"
"I think you know that thereweredifficulties in the way."
"I have no wish to force your confidence——" he said, with a note of inquiry in his voice.
"I haven't my certificate."
"You can refer to the Matron."
"I know I can; I will not. I told you two years ago there were persons I could refer to, but I wouldn't do it."
"May I ask why you should have any objection to referring to this one?"
She was silent.
"Won't you tell me?"
"I think you might understand," she said in a very low voice. "I went there after my father's death. I am not the woman who left the Yaughton Hospital."
His eyes fell, and he stared abstractedly at the grate. When he raised them he saw that hers had closed. He looked at her lingeringly till they opened.
"Now thatsheis gone," he exclaimed unsteadily, "your position is not so easy! Have you any prospect that you don't mention?"
She shook her head.
"Well, is there anything you can suggest?" he asked. "Any way out of the difficulty that occurs to you? Believe me——"
"No," she said, "I can see nothing that is practicable; I——"
"Would you be willing to come on the nursing-staff here? We're short-handed in the night work. It is an opening, and it might lead to a permanent appointment."
Her heart began to beat rapidly; for an instant she did not reply.
"It is very considerate of you, very generous; but I am afraid that wouldn't do."
"Why not?"
"It wouldn't do, because—well, I should have left Westport in any case."
"You meant to, I know. But between the way you'd have left Westport if my mother had lived, and the way you'd leave it now, there is a vast difference."
"I must leave it, all the same."
"Pardon me," he said, "I can't permit you to do so. I wouldn't let any woman go out into the world with the knowledge that she went to meet certain distress. Your hospital experience appears to solve the problem. You could come on next week. If your reluctance is attributable to myself—hear me out, I must speak plainly!—if you refuse because what has passed between us makes further conversation with me a pain to you, you've only to remember that conversation between us in the hospital will necessarily be of the briefest kind. All that I remember is that I've asked you to be my wife and you don't care for me—I'm the man you've rejected. I wish to be something more serviceable, though; I wish to be your friend. In the hospital I shall have little chance, for there, to all intents and purposes, we shall be as much divided as if you went to London. While the chance does exist I want to use it; I want to advise you strongly to take the course I propose. It needn't prevent your attempting to find a post elsewhere, you know; on the contrary, it would facilitate your obtaining one."
Her hand had shaded her brow as she listened; now it sank slowly to her lap.
"I need hardly tell you I'm grateful," she said, in tones that struggled to be firm. "Anyone would be grateful; to me the offer is very—is more than good." Her composure broke down. "I know what I must seem to you—you have heard nothing but the worst of me!" she exclaimed.
"I would hear nothing that it hurt you to say," he answered; and for a minute neither of them said any more. There had been a gentleness in his last words that touched her keenly; the appeal in hers had gone home to him. Neither spoke, but the man's breath rose eagerly, and; the woman's head drooped lower and lower on her breast.
"Let me!" she said at last in a whisper that his pulses leaped to meet. "It was there—when I was a nurse. He was a patient. Before he left, he asked me to marry him. When I went to him he told me he was married already. Till then there had been no hint, not the faintest suspicion—I went to him, with the knowledge of them all, to be his wife."
"Thank God!" said Kincaid in his throat.
"She was—she had been on the streets; he hadn't seen her for years. He prayed to me, implored me——Oh, I'm trying to exonerate! myself, I'm not trying to shift the sin on to him, I but if the truest devotion of her life can plead I for a woman, Heaven knows that plea was mine!"
"And at the end of the three years?"
"There was news of her death, and he married someone else."
She got up abruptly, and moved to the window, looking out behind the blind.
"I can't tell you how I feel for you," he said huskily. "I can't give you an idea how deeply, how earnestly I sympathise!"
"Don't say anything," she murmured; "you needn't try; I think I understand to-night—you proved your sympathy while my claim on it was least."
"And you'll let me help you?"
The slender figure stood motionless; behind her the man was gripping the leather of his chair.
"If I may," she said constrainedly, "if I can go there like—as you——Ah, if the past can all be buried and there needn't be any reminder of what has been?"
"I'll be everything you wish, everything you'd have me seem!"
He took a sudden step towards her. She turned, her eyes humid with tears, with thankfulness—with entreaty. He stopped short, drew back, and resumed his seat.
"Now, what is it you were saying about Ellen?" he asked shortly.
And perhaps it was the most eloquent avowal he had ever made her of his love.
So it happened that Mary Brettan did not leave Westport the next week. And after a few months she was more than ever doubtful if she would leave it at all. The suggested vacancy on the permanent staff had occurred before then, and, once having accepted the post, there seemed to be no inducement to woo anxiety by resigning it.
At first the resumption of routine after years of indolence was irksome and exhausting. The six o'clock rising, the active duties commencing while she still felt tired, the absence of anything like privacy, excepting in the two hours allotted to each nurse for leisure—all these things fretted her. Even the relief that she derived from her escape into the open air was alloyed by the knowledge that outdoor exercise during one of the hours was compulsory. Then, too, it was inevitable that a costume worn once more should recall the emotions with which she had laid aside her last; inevitable that she should ask herself what the years had done for her since last she stood within a hospital and bade it farewell with the belief she was never to enter one again. The failure of the interval was accentuated. Her heart had contracted when, directed to the strange apartment above the wards, she beheld the print dress provided for her use lying limp on a chair. An unutterable forlornness filled her soul as, proceeding to put it on, she surveyed her reflection in the narrow glass. Yet she grew accustomed to the change, and the more easily for its being a revival.
The speed with which the sense of novelty wore off indeed astonished her. Primarily dismaying, and a continuous burden upon which she condoled with herself every day, it was, next, as if she had lost it one night in her sleep. She had forgotten it until the lightness with which she was fulfilling the work struck her with swift surprise. Little by little a certain enjoyment was even felt. She contemplated some impending task with interest. She took her walk with zest in lieu of relief. She returned to the doors exhilarated instead of depressed. The bohemian, the lady-companion, had become a sick-nurse anew, and because the primary groove of life is the one which cuts the deepest lines, her existence rolled along the recovered rut with smoothness. The scenes between which it lay were not beautiful, but they were familiar; the view it commanded was monotonous, but she no longer sought to travel.
Socially the conditions had been favoured by her introduction. The position that she had occupied in Laburnum Lodge gave her a factitious value, and gained her the friendliness of the Matron, a functionary who has the power to make the hospital-nurse distinctly uncomfortable, and who has on occasion been known to use it. It commended her also to the other nurses, two of whom were gentlewomen, insomuch as it promised an agreeable variety to conversation in the sitting-room. She was by no means unconscious of the extent of her debt to Kincaid, and her gratitude as time went on increased rather than diminished. Certainly the environment was conducive to a perception of his merits—more conducive even than had been the period of his medical attendance at the villa. The king is nowhere so attractive as at his court; the preacher nowhere so impressive as in the pulpit. Ashore the captain may bore us, but we all like to smoke our cigars with him on his ship. The poorest pretender assumes importance in the circle of his adherents, and poses with authority on some small platform, if it be only his mother's hearthrug. Here where the doctor was the guiding spirit, and Mary found his praises on every tongue, the glow of gratitude was fanned by the breath of popularity. Had he deliberately planned a means of raising himself in her esteem, he could have devised none better than this of placing her in the miniature kingdom where he ruled. In remembering that he had wanted to marry her, she was sensible one day of a thrill of pride: nothing like regret, nothing like arrogance, but a momentary pride. She felt more dignity in the moment.
If he remembered it too, however, no word that he spoke evinced such recollection. The promise that he had made to her had been kept to the letter, and the past was never alluded to between them. As doctor and nurse their colloquies were brief and practical. It was the demeanour that he adopted towards her from the day of her instatement that added the first fuel to her thankfulness; and if, withal, she was inclined to review his generosity rather than to regard it, it was because he had established the desired relations on so firm a footing that she had ceased to believe that the pursuance of it cost him any pains. That she had held his love after the story of her shame she was aware; but that on reflection he could still want her for his wife she did not for an instant suppose; and she often thought that by degrees his attitude had become the one most natural to him.
By what a denial of nature, by what rigid self-restraint, the idea had been conveyed, nobody but the man himself could have told. No one else knew the bitterness of the suffering that had been endured to give her that feeling of right to remain; what impulses had been curbed and crushed back, that no scruples or misgivings should cross her peace. The circumstances in which they met now helped him much, or he; would have failed, despite his efforts; and to fail, he understood, would be to prove unworthy of, her trust—it would be to see her go out from his life for ever. Still want her? So intensely, so devoutly did he want her, that, shadowed by sin as she was, she was holier to him than any other woman upon earth—fairer than any other gift at God's bestowal. He would have taken her to his heart with as profound a reverence as if no shame had ever touched her. If all the world had been cognizant of her disgrace, he would have triumphed to cry "My wife!" in the ears; of all the world. A baser love might well have; thirsted for her too, but it would have had its hours of hesitation. Kincaid's had none. No flood of passion blinded his higher judgment and urged him on; no qualms of convention intervened and gave him pause. It was with his higher judgment that he prayed for her. His love burned steadily, clearly. The situation lacked only one essential for the ideal: the love of the penitent whom he longed to raise. The complement was missing. The fallen woman who had confessed her guilt, the man's devotion that had withstood the test—these were there. But the devotion was unreturned, the constancy was not desired. He could only wait, and try to hope; wondering if her tenderness would waken in the end, wondering how he would learn it if it did.
To break his word by pleading again was a thing that he could do only in the belief that she would listen to him with happiness. If he misread her mind and spoke too soon, he not merely committed a wrong—he destroyed the slender link that there was between them, for he made it impossible for her to stay on. And yet, how to divine? how, without speaking, to ascertain? What could be gathered from the deep grey eyes, the serious face, the slim-robed figure, as he sometimes stood beside her, guarding his every look and schooling his voice? How could he tell if she cared for him unless he asked her? how could he ask her unless he had reason to suppose that she did? The nature of their association seemed to him to impose an insurmountable barrier between them; in freer parlance a ray of the truth might be discernible. When she had been here a year he determined to gain an opportunity to talk with her alone. He would talk, if not on matters nearest to him, at least on topics less formal than those to which their conversation was limited in the ward!
Such an opportunity, however, did not lie to his hand. It was difficult to compass without betraying himself, and, in view of the present difficulties, he appeared to have had so many advantages earlier that he marvelled at his having turned them to so little account. Their acquaintance at the villa during his mother's lifetime appeared to him, by comparison, to have afforded every facility that he was to-day denied, and he frequently recalled the period with passionate regret; he thought that he had never appreciated it at its worth, though, indeed, he had only failed to benefit by it. The villa now was tenanted by a lady with two children; and Mary often passed it, recalling the period also, albeit with a melancholy vaguer than his. One morning, as she went by, the door was open—the children were coming out—and she had a glimpse of the hall.
They came down the steps, carrying spades and pails, bound for the beach, like herself. The elder of them might have been nine years old, and, belonging to the familiar house, they held a little sad interest for her. She wondered, as they preceded her along the pavement, in which of the rooms they slept, and if the different furniture had altered the aspect of it much. She thought she would like to speak to them when the sands were reached, and——Then she saw Seaton Carew! Her heart jerked to her throat. Her gaze was riveted on him; she couldn't withdraw it. They were advancing towards each other; he was looking at her. She saw recognition flash across his features, and turned her head. The people to right and left swayed a little—and she had passed him. It had taken just fifteen seconds, but she could not remember what she had been thinking of when she saw him. The fifteen seconds had held for her more emotion than the last twelve months.
Her knees trembled. She supposed he must be at the theatre this week. But, when she saw a playbill outside the music-seller's, she was afraid to examine it lest he might be staring after her. She walked on excitedly. She was filled with a tremulous elation, which she cared neither to define nor to acknowledge. She reflected that she had left the hospital a few minutes earlier than usual, and that otherwise she might have missed him. "Missed" was the word of her reflection. She wondered where he was staying—in which streets the professional lodgings were. She felt suddenly strange in the town not to know. She had been here three years, and she did not know—how odd! In turning a corner she saw another advertisement of the theatre, this time on a hoarding. The day was Monday, and the paper was still shiny with the bill-sticker's paste. She was screened from observation, and for a moment she paused, devouring the cast with a rapid glance. His wife's name didn't appear, so it wasn't their own company. She hurried on again. The sight of him had acted on her like a strong stimulant. Without knowing why, she was exhilarated. The air was sweeter, life was keener; she was athirst to reach the shore and, in her favourite spot, to yield herself up wholly to sensation.
And how little he had changed! He seemed scarcely to have changed at all. He looked just as he used to look, though he must have gone through much since the night they parted. Ah, how could she forget that parting—how allow the fires of it to wane? It was pitiful that, feeling things so intensely when they happened, one was unable to keep the intensity alive. The waste! The puerility of loving or hating, of mourning or rejoicing so violently in life, when the passage of time, the interposition of irrelevant incident, would smear the passion that was all-absorbing into an experience that one called to mind!
She sank on to a bench upon the slope of ragged grass that merged into the shingles and the sand. The sea, vague and unruffled, lay like a sheet of oil, veiled in mist except for one bright patch on the horizon where it quivered luminously. She bent her eyes upon the sea, and saw the past. His voice struck her soul before she heard his footstep. "Mary!" he said, and she knew that he had followed her.
She did not speak, she did not move. The blood surged to her temples, and left her body cold. She struggled for self-command; for the ability to conceal her agitation; for the power she yearned to gather of blighting him with the scorn she craved to feel.
"Won't you speak to me?" he said. He came round to her side, and stood there, looking down at her. "Won't you speak?" he repeated—"a word?"
"I have nothing to say to you," she murmured. "I hoped I should never see you any more."
He waited awkwardly, kicking the soil with the point of his boot, his gaze wandering from her over the ocean—from the ocean back to her.
"I have often thought about you," he said at last in a jerk. "Do you believe that?"
She kept silent, and then made as if to rise.
"Do you believe that I have thought about you?" he demanded quickly. "Answer me!"
"It is nothing to me whether you have thought or not. I dare say you have been ashamed when you remembered your disgrace—what of it?"
"Yes," he said, "I have been ashamed. You were always too good for me; I ought never to have had anything to do with a woman like you."
She had not risen; she was still in the position in which he had surprised her; and she was sensible now of a dull pain at the unexpectedness of his conclusion.
"Why have you followed me?" she said coldly. "What for?"
"What for? I didn't know you were in the town, I hadn't an idea—and I saw you suddenly. I wanted to speak to you."
"What is it you want to say?"
"Mary!"
"Yes; what do you want to say? I'm not your friend; I'm not your acquaintance: what have you got to speak to me about?"
"I meant," he stammered—"I wanted to ask you if it was possible that—that you could ever forgive the way I behaved to you."
"Is that all?" she asked in a hard voice.
"How you have altered!... Yes, I don't know that there's anything else."
She did not reply, and he regarded her irresolutely.
"Can you?"
"No," she said. "Why should I forgive you—because time has gone by? Is that any merit of yours? You treated me brutally, infamously. The most that a woman can do for a man I did for you; the worst that a man can do to a woman you did to me. You meet me accidentally and expect me to forgive? You must be a great deal less worldly-wise than you were three years ago."
She turned to him for the first time since he had joined her, and his eyes fell.
"I didn't expect," he said; "I only asked. So you're a nurse again, eh?"
"Yes."
He gave an impatient sigh, the sigh of a man; who realises the discordancy of life and imperfectly resigns himself to it.
"We're both what we used to be, and we're both older. Well, I'm the worse off of the two, if that's any consolation to you. A woman's always getting opportunities for new beginnings."
She checked the retort that sprang to her lips, eager to glean some knowledge of his affairs, though she could not bring herself to put a question; and after a moment she rejoined indifferently:
"You got the chance you were so anxious for. I understood your marriage was all that was necessary to take you to London."
"I was in London—didn't you hear?" He was startled into naturalness, the actor's naive astonishment when he finds his movements are unknown to anyone. "We had a season at the Boudoir, and opened withThe Cast of the Die. It was a frost; and then we put on a piece of Sargent's. That might have been worked into a success if there had been money enough left to run it at a loss for a few weeks, but there wasn't. The mistake was not to have opened with it, instead. And the capital was too small altogether for a London show; the exes were awful! It would have been better to have been satisfied with management in the provinces if one had known how things were going to turn out. Now it's the provinces under somebody else's management. I suppose you think I have been rightly served?"
"I don't see that you're any worse off than you used to be."
"Don't you? You've no interest to see. I'm a lot worse off, for I've a wife and child to keep."
"A child! You've a child?" she said.
"A boy. I don't grumble about that, though; I'm fond of the kid, although I dare say you think I can't be very fond of anyone. But—— Oh, I don't know why I tell you about it—what do you care!"
They were silent again. The sun, a disc in grey heavens, smeared the vapour with a shaft of pale rose, and on the water this was glorified and enriched, so that the stain on the horizon had turned a deep red. Nearer land, the sea, voluptuously still, and by comparison colourless, had yet some of the translucence of an opal, a thousand elusive subtleties of tint which gleamed between the streaks of darkness thrown upon its surface from the sky. A thin edge of foam unwound itself dreamily along the shore. A rowing-boat passed blackly across the crimsoned distance, gliding into the obscurity where sky and sea were one. To their right the shadowy form of a fishing-lugger loomed indistinctly through the mist. The languor of the scene had, in contemplation, something emotional in it, a quality that acted on the senses like music from a violin. She was stirred with a mournful pleasure that he was here—a pleasure of which the melancholy was a part. The delight of union stole through her, more exquisite for incompletion.
"It's nothing to you whether I do badly or well," he said gloomily. And the dissonance of the complaint jarred her back to common-sense. "Yet it isn't long ago that we—good Lord! how women can forget; now it's nothing to you!"
"Why should it be anything?" she exclaimed. "How can you dare to remind me of what we used to be? 'Forget'?—yes, I have prayed to forget! To forget I was ever foolish enough to believe in you; to forget I was ever debased enough to like you. I wish Icouldforget it; it's my punishment to remember. Not because I sinned—bad as it is, that's less—but because I sinned foryou! If all the world knew what I had done, nobody could despise me for it as I despise myself, or understand how I despise myself. The only person who should is you, for you know what sort of man I did it for!"
"I was carried away by a temptation—by ambition. You make me out as vile as if it had been all deliberately planned. After you had gone——"
"After I had gone you married your manageress. If you had been in love with her, even, I could make excuses for you; but you weren't—you were in love only with yourself. You deserted a woman for money. Your 'temptation' was the meanest, the most contemptible thing a man ever yielded to. 'Ambition'? God knows I never stood between you and that. Your ambition was mine, as much mine as yours, something we halved between us. Has anybody else understood it and encouraged it so well? I longed for your success as fervently as you did; if it had come, I should have rejoiced as much as you. When you were disappointed, whom did you turn to for consolation? But I could only give you sympathy; andshecould give you power. And everything of minehadbeen given; you had had it. That was the main point."
"Call me a villain and be done—or a man! Will reproaches help either of us now?"
"Don't deceive yourself—there are noble men in the world. I tell you now, because at the time I would say nothing that you could regard as an appeal. It only wanted that to complete my indignity—for me to plead to you to change your mind!"
"I wish to Heaven you had done anything rather than go, and that's the truth!"
"Idon't; I am glad I went—glad, glad, glad! The most awful thing I can imagine is to have remained with you after I knew you for what you were. The most awful thing for you as well: knowing that I knew, the sight of me would have become a curse."
"One mistake," he muttered, "one injustice, and all the rest, all that came before, is blotted out; you refuse to remember the sweetest years of both our lives!"
She gazed slowly round at him with lifted head, and during a few seconds each looked in the other's face, and tried to read the history of, the interval in it. Yes, he had altered, after all. The eyes were older. Something had gone from him, something of vivacity, of hope.
"Are you asking me to remember?" she said.
"You seem to forget what the injustice was done for."
"Mary, if you knew how wretched I am!"
"Ah," she murmured half sadly, half wonderingly, "what an egotist you always are! You meet me again—after the way we parted—and you begin by talking about yourself!"
He made a gesture—dramatic because it expressed the feeling that he desired to convey—and turned aside.
"May I question you?" he asked lamely the next minute. "Will you answer?"
"What is it that you care to hear?"
"Are you at the hospital?"
"Yes."
"For long? I mean, is it long since you came to Westport?"
"I have been here nearly all the time."
"And do—how—is it comfortable?"
"Oh," she said, with a movement that she was unable to repress, "let us keep to you, if we must talk at all. You'll find it easier."
"Why will you be so cruel?" he exclaimed. "It is you who are unjust now. If I'm awkward, it is because you're so curt. You have all the right on your side, and I have the weight of the past on me. You asked me why I spoke to you: if you had been less to me than you were—if, I had thought about you less than I have—I shouldn't have spoken. You might understand the position is a very hard one for me; I am altogether at your mercy, and you show me none."
The hands in her lap trembled a little, and after a pause she said in a low voice:
"You expect more from me than is possible; I've suffered too much."
"My trouble has been worse. Ah! don't smile like that; it has been far worse! You've, anyhow, had the solace of knowing you've been illused;I'vefelt all the time that my bed was of my own making and that I behaved like a blackguard. Whatever I have to put up with I deserve, I'm quite aware of it; but the knowledge makes it all the beastlier. My life isn't idyllic, Mary; if it weren't for the child——Upon my soul, the only moments I get rid of my worries are when I'm playing with the child, or when I'm drunk!"
"Your marriage hasn't been happy?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"We don't fight; we don't throw the furniture at each other and have the landlady up, like—what was their name?—the Whittacombes. But we don't find the days too short to say all we've got to tell each other, she and I; and——Oh, you can't think what a dreadful thing it is to be in front of a woman all day long that you haven't got anything to say to—it's awful! And she can't act and she doesn't get engagements, and it makes her peevish. She might get shopped along with me for small parts—in fact, she did once or twice—but that doesn't satisfy her; she wants to go on playing lead, and now that the money's gone she can't. She thinks I mismanaged the damned money and advised her badly. She hadn't been doing anything for a year till the spring, and then she went out with Laura Henderson to New York. Poor enough terms they are for America! But she's been grumbling so much that I believe she'd go on as an Extra now, rather than nothing, so long as I wasn't playing lead to another woman in the same crowd."
She traced an imaginary pattern with her finger on the seat. He was still standing, and suddenly his face lighted up.
"There's Archie!" he said.
"Archie?"
"The boy."
A child of two years, in charge of a servant-girl, was at the gate of one of the cottages behind them.
"You take him about with you?"
"He was left with some people in town; I've just had him down, that's all. We finish on Saturday, and there's the sea; I thought two or three weeks of it would do him good. Will you—may he come over to you?"
He held out his arms, and the child, released from the servant's clasp, toddled smilingly across the grass, a plump little body in pelisse and cape. The gaitered legs covered the ground slowly, and she watched his child running towards him for what seemed a long time before Carew caught him up.
"This is Archie," he said diffidently; "this is he."
"Oh," she said, in constrained tones, "this is he?"
The man stood him on the bench, with a pretence of carelessness that was ill done, and righted his hat quickly, as if afraid that the action was ridiculous. The sight of him in this association had something infinitely strange to her—something that sharpened the sense of separation, and made the past appear intensely old and ended.
"Put him down," she said; "he isn't comfortable."
"Do you think he looks strong?"
"Yes, of course, very. Why?"
"I've wondered—I thought you'd know more about it than I do. Is Archie a good boy?"
"Yes," answered the child. "Mamma!"
"Don't talk nonsense—mamma's over there!" He pointed to the sea. "He talks very well, for his age, as a rule; now he's stupid."
"Oh, let him be," she said, looking at the baby-face with deep eyes; "he's shy, that's all."
"Mamma!" repeated the mite insistently, and laid a hand on her long cloak.
"The thumb's wrong," she murmured after a pause in which the man and woman were both embarrassed; "see, it isn't in!"
She drew the tiny glove off, and put it on once more, taking the fragile fingers in her own, and parting with them slowly. A feeling complex and wonderful crept into her heart at the voice of Tony's child; a feeling of half-reluctant tenderness, coupled with an aching jealousy of the woman that had borne one to him.
They made a group to which any glance would have reverted—the old-young man, who was obviously the father, the baby, and the thoughtful woman, whose costume proclaimed her to be a nurse. The costume, indeed, was not without its influence on Carew. It reminded him of the days of his first acquaintance with her—days since which they had been together, and separated, and drifted into different channels. Having essayed matrimony as a means to an end, and proved it a cul-de-sac, he blamed the woman with whom he had blundered very ardently, and would have been gratified to descant on his mistake to the other one, who was more than ever attractive because she had ceased to belong to him. The length of veil falling below her waist had, to his fancy, a cloistral suggestion which imparted to his allusions to their intimacy an additional fascination; and Archie's presence had seldom occupied his attention so little. Yet he was fonder of this offshoot of himself than he had been of her even in the period that the dress recalled; and it was because she dimly understood the fact that the child touched her so nearly. Like almost every man in whom the cravings of ambition have survived the hope of their fulfilment, he dwelt a great deal on the future of his; son; longed to see his boy achieve the success; which he had come to realise would never be attained by himself, and lost in the interest of fatherhood some of the poignancy of failure. The desire to talk to her of these and many other things was strong in him, but she roused herself from reverie and said good-bye, as if on impulse, just as he was meaning to speak.
"I shall see you again?"
"I think not."
Then he would have asked if they parted in peace, but her leave-taking was too abrupt even for him to frame the inquiry.
It surprised him, and left him vaguely disappointed. To break off their interview thus sharply seemed to him motiveless. He could see no reason for it, and his gaze followed her receding figure with speculative regret. When she was out of sight he picked the child up, and, carrying him into the cottage parlour, sat down beside the open window, smoking, and thinking of her.
It was a small room, poorly furnished, and, fretted by its limitations, the child became speedily fractious. A slipshod landlady pottered around, setting forth the crockery for dinner, while the little servant, despatched with the boy from town, mashed his dinner into an unappetising compound on a plate. From time to time she turned to soothe him with some of the loud-voiced facetiæ peculiar to the little servant species in its dealings with fretful childhood, and at these moments Carew suspended his meditations on his quondam mistress to wish for the presence of his wife. It was only the second, day of his son's visit to him, and his unfamiliarity with the arrangement was not without its effect upon his nerves.
Always dissatisfied with the present time, his capacity for enjoying the past was correspondingly keen. Reflectively consuming a chop, in full view of the unappetising compound and infancy's vagaries with a spoon, he proceeded to re-live it, discerning in the process a thousand charms to which the reality had seen him blind.
He was unable to shake off the influence of the meeting when dinner was done. Fancifully, while the child scrambled in a corner with some toys, he installed Mary in the room; imagining his condition if he had married her, and moodily watching the curls of tobacco smoke as they sailed across the dirty dishes. "Damn it!" he exclaimed, rising. But for the conviction that it would be futile, he would have gone out to search for her.
That he would see her again before he left the place he was determined. But he failed to do so both on the morrow and the next day, though he extended his promenade beyond its usual limits. He did not, in these excursions, fail to remark that a town sufficiently large to divide one hopelessly from the face one seeks, can yet be so small that the same strangers' countenances are recurrent at nearly every turn. A coloured gentleman he anathematised especially for his iteration.
Though he doubted the possibility of the thing, he could not rid himself of the idea that she would be at the theatre some evening, impelled by the temptation to look upon him without his knowledge; and he played his best now on the chance that she might be there. As often as was practicable, he scanned the house during the progress of the piece, and between the acts inspected it through the peep-hole in the curtain.
Noting his observations one night, a pretty girl in the wings asked jocularly if "shehad promised to wait outside for him."
"No, Kitty, my darling, she hasn't; she won't have anything to do with me!" he answered, and would have liked to stop and flirt with her. His brain was hot at the instant, and one woman or another just then——
If Mary had been waiting, he could have talked to her as sentimentally as before; and have felt as much sentiment, too. All compunction for his lapses he could assuage by a general condemnation of masculine nature.
The pretty girl had no part in the play. She was the daughter of a good-looking woman who was engaged in the dual capacity of "chamber-maid" and wardrobe-mistress; but although she had only just left boarding-school, it was a foregone conclusion that, like her mother, she would be connected with the lower branches of the profession before long. Already she had acquired very perfectly, in private, the burlesque lady's tone of address, and was familiar with the interior of provincial bars, where her mother took a "tonic" after the performance.
Carew ran across them both, among a group of the male members of the company, in the back-parlour of a public-house an hour later. Kitty, innocent enough as yet to find "darling" a novelty, welcomed him with a flash of her eyes; but he made no response, and, gulping his whisky, sat glum. The others commented on his abstraction. He replied morosely, and called for "the same again." It was not unusual for him to drink to excess now—he was accustomed to excuse the weakness by compassionating himself upon his dreary life—and to-night he lay back on the settee sipping whisky till he grew garrulous.
They remained at the table long after the closing hour, the landlady, who was a friend of Kitty's mamma, enjoining them to quietude. She was not averse from joining the party herself when the lights in the window had been extinguished nor did Kitty decline to take a glass of wine when Carew at last pressed her to be sociable.
"Because you're growing up," he said with a foolish laugh—"'getting a big girl now'!"
She swept him a mock obeisance in the centre of the floor, shaking back the hair that was still worn loose about her shoulders.
"Sherry," she said, "if mother says her popsy may? Because I'm 'getting a big girl now,' mother!"
The bar was in darkness, and this necessitated investigation with a box of matches. When the bottle was produced, it proved to be empty; the girl's pantomime of despair was received with loud guffaws. Everybody had drunk more than was advisable, and the proprietress again attempted to restrain the hilarity by feeble allusions to her licence.
"The sherry's in the cupboard down the passage," she exclaimed; "won't you have something else instead? Now, do make less noise, there's good boys; you'll get me into trouble!"
"I'll go and get it," said Kitty, breaking into a momentary step-dance, with uplifted arms. "Trust me with the key?"
"AndI'll go and see she doesn't rob you," cried Carew. "Come along, Kit!"
"No you won't," said her mother; "she'll do best alone!" But the remonstrance was unheeded, and, as the girl ran out into the passage, he followed; and, as they reached the cupboard and stood fumbling at the lock, he caught her round the waist and kissed her.
They came back with the bottle together, in the girl's bearing an assertion of complacent womanhood evoked by the indignity. Carew applied himself to the liquor with renewed diligence; and by the time the party dispersed circumspectly through the private door, his eyes were glazed.
The sleeping town stretched before his uncertain footsteps blanched in moonlight as he bade the others a thick "good-night." His apartments were a mile, and more, distant, and, muddled by drink, he struck into the wrong road, pursuing and branching from it impetuously, till Westport wound about him in the confusion of a maze. Once he halted, in the thought that he heard someone approaching. But the sound receded; and feeling dizzier every minute, he wandered on again, ultimately with no effort to divine his situation. The sun was rising when, partially sobered, he passed through the cottage-gate. The sea lapped the sand gently under a flushing sky; but in the bedroom a candle still burned, and it was in the flare of the candle that the little servant confronted him with a frightened face.
"Master Archie, sir!" she faltered; "I've been up with him all night—he's ill!"
"Ill?" He stood stupidly on the threshold. "What do you mean by ill? What is it?"
"I don't know; I don't know what I ought to do; I think he ought to have a doctor."
He pushed past her, with a muttered ejaculation, to the bed where the child lay whimpering.
"What's the matter, Archie? What is it, little chap?"
"It's his neck he complains of," she said; "you can see, it's all swollen. He can't eat anything."
Carew looked at it dismayed. A sudden fear of losing the child, a sudden terror of his own incompetence seized him.
"Fetch a doctor," he stammered, "bring him back with you. You should have gone before; it wasn't necessary to wait for me to come in to tell you that if the child was taken ill, he needed a doctor! Go on, girl, hurry! You'll find one somewhere in the damned place. Wait a minute, ask the landlady—wake her up and ask which the nearest doctor is! Tell him he must come at once. If he won't, ring up another—a delay may make all the difference. Good God! why did I have him down here?"
The waiting threatened to be endless. A basin of water was on the washhand-stand, and he plunged his head into it. The stir of awakening life was heard in the quietude. Through the window came the clatter of feet in a neighbouring yard, the rattle of a pail on stone. He contemplated the child, conscience-stricken by his own condition, and strove to allay his anxiety by repeated questions, to which he obtained peevish and unsatisfactory replies.
It was more than two hours before the girl returned. She was accompanied by a medical man who seemed resentful. Carew watched his examination breathlessly.
"Is it serious?"
"It looks like diphtheria; it's early yet to say. He's got a first-rate constitution; that's one thing. Mother a good physique?... So I should have thought! Are you a resident?"
"I'm an actor; I'm in an engagement here; my wife's abroad. Why do you ask?"
"The child had better be removed—there's danger of infection with diphtheria; lodgings won't do. Take him to the hospital, and have him properly looked after. It'll be best for him in every way."
"I'm much obliged for your advice," said Carew. But the idea was intimidating. "I shall be here, myself, for another week at least," he added, in allusion to the fee. "Is it safe to move him, do you think?"
"Oh yes, no need to fear that. Wrap him up, and take him away in a fly this morning. The sooner the better.... That's all right. Good-day."
He departed briskly, with an appetite for breakfast.
"Archie will have a nice drive," said Carew in a tone of dreary encouragement—"a nice drive in a carriage with papa."
"I'm sleepy," said the child.
"A nice drive in the sunshine, and see the sea. Nursie will put on your clothes."
"I don't want!"
His efforts to resist strengthened Carew's dislike to the proposed arrangement. It was not in the first few minutes that this abrupt presentment of the hospital recalled to the man's mind Mary's connection with it; and when the connection flashed upon him his spirits lightened. If the boy had to be laid up, away from his mother's relatives in London, the mischance could hardly occur under happier conditions than where——The reflection faded to a question-point.Wouldshe be of use? Could he expect, or dare to ask for tenderness from Mary Brettan—and to the other woman's child? He doubted it.
In the revulsion of feeling that followed that leaping hope, he almost determined to withhold the request. Many children were safe in a hospital; why not his own child? He would pay for everything. And then the thought of Archie forsaken among strangers made him tremble; and the little form seemed to him, in its lassitude, to have become smaller still, more fragile.
Again and again, in the jolting cab, he debated an appeal to Mary, wrestling with shame for the sake of his boy. Without knowing what she could do, he was sensible that her interest would be of value. He clung passionately to the idea of leaving the hospital with the knowledge that it contained a friend, an individual who would spare to the child something more than the patient's purchased and impartial due.
The cab stopped with a jerk, and he carried him into the empty waiting-room. It was a gaunt, narrow apartment on the ground-floor, with an expanse of glass, like the window of a shop, overlooking the street. He put him in a corner of one of the forms against the walls, and, pending the appearance of the house-surgeon, murmured encouragement. The minutes lagged. It occurred to him that the ailment might be pronounced trivial, but the hope deserted him almost as it came, banished by the surroundings. The bare melancholy of the walls chilled him anew, and the suggestion of poverty about the place intensified his misgivings. He thought he would speak to her. If she refused, it would have done no harm. And she would not refuse, she was too good. Yes, she had always been a good woman. He remembered——
The door-knob turned, and he rose in the presence of Kincaid. The eyes of the two men met questioningly.
"Your child?" said Kincaid, advancing.
"Yes; it's his neck. I was advised to bring him here, because I'm only in lodgings. I'd like——"
"Let me see!"
Carew resumed his seat. His gaze hung on the doctor's movements; every detail twanged his nerves. A nurse was called in to take the temperature. He watched her with suspense, and smiled feebly at the child across her arm.
"Diphtheritic throat. We'll put him to bed at once. Take him away, Nurse—put him into a special ward."
"I should like——" said Carew huskily; "I know one of the nurses here. Might I see her?"
"Yes, certainly. Which one?"
"Her name is 'Brettan—Mary Brettan.'" He stooped to pat the tearful face, and missed Kincaid's surprise. "If I might see her now——?"
"Ask if Nurse Brettan can come down, please! Say she is wanted in the waiting-room."
A brief pause ensued. The closing of the door left them alone. The father's imagination pursued the figures that had disappeared; Kincaid's was busy with the fact of the man's being an acquaintance of Mary's—the only acquaintance that had crossed his path. Surprise suggested his opening remark:
"You're a visitor here, you say? Your little son's sickness has come at an unfortunate time for you."
"It has—yes, very. I'm at the theatre—and my apartments are none too good."
He mentioned the address; the doctor made some formal inquiries. Carew asked how often he would be permitted to see the boy; and when this was arranged, silence fell again.
It was broken in a few seconds. The sound of a footstep on the stairs was caught by them simultaneously. Simultaneously both men looked round. The footsteps were succeeded by the faint rustle of a skirt, and Nurse Brettan crossed the threshold. She started visibly—controlled herself, and acknowledged Carew's greeting by a slight bow.
Kincaid, in a manner, presented him to her—courteously, constrainedly.
"This gentleman has been waiting to see you. I'll wish you good-morning, sir."
Mary moved to the window, and stood there without speaking. In the print and linen costume of the house she recalled with increased force to Carew the time when he had seen her first.
"Archie has got diphtheria," he said; "he's just been taken upstairs."
"I'm sorry," she said. "Why have you asked for me?"
"They told me I couldn't keep him at home—that I must bring him here.... Mary, you will do what you can for him?"
She raised her head calmly.
"He is sure of careful nursing," she answered; "no patient is neglected."
"I know. I know all that. I thought that you——"
"I'm not in the children's ward," she said; "there isn't anythingIcan do."
He looked at her dumbly. Mere indifference his agitation would have found vent in combating, but the conclusiveness of the reply left him nothing to urge.
"I must be satisfied without you, then," he said at last. "I thought of you directly."
"He'll have every attention; you needn't doubt that."
"Such a little chap—among strangers!"
"We have very young children in the wards."
"And perhaps to be dangerously ill!"
"You must try to hope for the best."
"Ah, you speak like the hospital nurse to me!" he cried; "I was remembering the woman."
"I speak as what I am," she returned coldly; "I am one of the nurses. I have no remembrances, myself."
"You could remember this week, when we met again. And once you wouldn't have found it so impossible to spare a minute's kindness to my boy!"
She moved towards the door, paler, but self-contained.
"I must go now," she said; "I can't stay away long."
"You choose to forget only when something is asked of you!"
"I have told you," she said, turning, "that it is out of my power to do anything."
"And you are glad you can say it!"
"Perhaps. No reminder of my old disgrace is pleasant to me."
"Your reformation is very complete," he answered bitterly; "the woman I used to know would have been unable to retaliate upon a helpless child."
The sting of the retort roused her to refutation. Her hand, extended towards the door, dropped to her side; she faced him swiftly.
"You find me what you made me," she said with white lips. "I neither retaliate nor pity. What is your wife's child to me, that you ask me to care for it? If I'm hard, it was you who taught me to be hard before he was born."
"It'smychild I asked you to care for. And I brought myself to ask it because he's my dearest thing on earth. I thank God to learn he won't be in your charge!"
She shivered, and for a moment looked at him intently. Then her eyelids drooped, and she left him without a word.
She went out into the corridor—her hand was pressed against her breast. But her duties were not immediately resumed. She made her way into the children's wing, moving with nothing of indecision in her manner, but like one who proceeds to fulfil a purpose. The two rows of beds left a passage down the floor, and she scanned the faces till she reached the nurses' table.
By chance, she spoke to the nurse that Kincaid had summoned.
"There's a boy just been brought in with diphtheria, Sophie; do you know where he is?"
"Yes, I'm going back to him in a minute. He's in a special ward."
"Let me see him!"
"Have you got permission?"
"No."
Nurse Gay hesitated.
"I shall get into trouble," she said. "Why don't you ask for it?"
"I don't want to wait; I want to see him now."
"I've been in hot water once this week already——"
"Sophie, I know the mite, and—and his people. Imustgo in to him!"
The girl glanced at her keenly.
"Oh, if it's like that!" she said. "It's only a wigging—go!" And she told her where he was.
He lay alone in the simple room, when Mary entered—a diminutive patient for whom the narrow cot looked large. The nurse had been showing him a picture-book, and this yawned loosely on the quilt, where it had slid from his listless hold. At the sound of Mary's approach, he turned. But he did not recognise her. A doubtful gaze appraised her intentions.
At first she did not speak. She stooped over the pillow, smoothing and re-smoothing it mechanically, a hand trembling closer to the disordered curls. Her own gaze deepened and hung upon him; her lips parted. Her hands crept timidly nearer. Her face was bent till her mouth was yielding kisses on his cheek. She yearned over him through wet lashes, a wondering smile always on her face.
"Archie," she murmured; "Archie, baby-boy, is it comfy for you? Won't you see the pictures—all the pretty people in the book?"
"Not nice pictures," he complained.
"You shall have nicer ones this afternoon," she said; "this afternoon, when I go out. Let me show you these now! Look, here's a little boy in bed, like you! His name was 'Archie,' too; and one day his papa took him to a big house, where papa had friends, and——
"Papa! Iwantpapa!"
"Oh, my darling," she said, "papa is coming! He'll come very, very soon. The other little boy wanted papa as well, and he wasn't happy at first at all. But in the big house everybody was so kind, and glad to have Archie there, that presently he thought it a treat to stop. It was so nice directly that it was better than being at home. They gave him toys, lots and lots of toys; and there were oranges and puddings—it was beautiful!"
She could not remain, she was needed elsewhere; and when Kincaid made his round she was on duty. But she ascertained developments throughout the day, and by twilight she knew that the child was grievously ill. She did not marvel at her interest; it engrossed her to the exclusion of astonishment. If she was surprised at all, it was that Carew could have believed in her neutrality. Yet she was thankful that he had believed in it; and at the same time, rejoiced that his first impulse had been to put faith in her good heart. She did not analyse her sympathy, ashamed of the cause from which it sprang. When she had gazed, during the intervening years, at the faded photograph, she had reproached herself and wept; now it all seemed natural. She sought neither to reason nor to euphemise. The feeling was spontaneous, and she went with it. She called it by no wrong word, because she called it nothing. She was borne as it carried her, blindly, unresistingly, without pausing to name it, or to define its source. It seemed natural. She inquired about Archie when she had risen next morning, and a little later, contrived another flying visit to the room. But he was now too ill to notice her.
In the afternoon, Carew came again. She learnt it while he was there, and gathered something of his wretchedness. She heard how he besieged the nurse with questions: "Had she seen so bad a case before—well, often before? Had those who recovered been so young as Archie? Was there nothing else that could be tried?" She listened, with her head bowed, imagining the scene that she could not enter; deploring, remembering, re-living—praying for "Tony's child."
Not till the man had gone, however, was everything related to her. She was sitting at the extremity of the ward, sewing, shortly to be free for the night. It was the hour when the quiet of the hospital deepened into the hush that preluded the extinction of the patients' lights. The supper-trays had long since been removed from the bedsides. Through the apertures of curtain, a few patients, loath to waive the privilege while they held it, were to be seen reading books and magazines; others were asleep already, and even the late-birds of the ward who dissipated in wheel-chairs, to the envy of the rest, had made their final excursion for the day. The Major had stopped his chair to utter his last wish for "a comfortable night, sir." The chess champion had concluded his conquest on a recumbent adversary's quilt. Where breakfast comes at six o'clock, grown men resume some of the customs of their infancy, and the day that begins so early closes soon. It was very peaceful, very still; and she was sitting in the lamp-rays, sewing.
She looked round as the Matron joined her. It was known that the case interested her, and in subdued tones they spoke of it.
"How is he?"
"He's been dreadfully bad. The worst took place before the father left; Dr. Kincaid had to come up."
"What?—tell me!"
"He had to perform tracheotomy. The father was there all the time; Dr. Kincaid told him what was going to be done, but he wouldn't go. The child was blue in the face and there wasn't any stopping to argue. When the cut in the throat was made and the tube put in, I thought the man was going to faint. He was standing just by me. 'Good God! Is this an experiment?' he said. I told him it was the only way for the child to breathe, but he didn't seem to hear me. And when the fit of coughing came—oh, my goodness! You know what the coughing's like?"
"Go on!"
"He made sure it was all over; he burst out sobbing, and the doctor ordered him out of the room. 'If you're fond of your child, keep quiet here, sir,' he said, 'or go and compose yourself outside!' I think he was sorry he'd spoken so sternly afterwards, though he was quite right, for——"
"Oh!" shuddered Mary. "Did you see him again?"
"Yes; I told him he'd had no business to stop. He said, 'If the worst happens, I shall think it right I was there.' I said he must try to believe that only the best would happen now; though whether I ought to have said it I don't know. When it comes to tracheotomy in diphtheria, the child's chance is slim. Still, this one's as fine a little chap as ever I saw; he's got the strength of many a pair we get here—and the man was in such a state. He's coming back to-night—he's to seeme, anyhow; he had to hurry off to the theatre to act. I can't imagine how he'll get through."
"I must go! I must go to the ward!" She rose, clasping her hands convulsively. "I can, can't I? It's Nurse Mainwaring's time to relieve me—why isn't she here?"
The Matron calmed her.
"Hush! you can go as soon as she comes. Don't take on like that, or I shall be sorry I told you. Nurse Bradley has complained of feeling ill—I expect that's what it is."
Mary raised a faint smile, deprecating her vehemence.
"I'm very fond of the boy," she said, with apology in her voice. "It was very kind of you to tell me; I thank you very much."