The Helpmate Part 83

"Well, make that man in front move on. Make him turn--up there."

The van turned into a side street, and they drove on.

The Scarby train was drawn up along the platform. They had five minutes before it started; but she hurried into the nearest compartment. They had it to themselves.

The train moved on. It was a two hours' journey to Scarby.

A strong wind blew through the open window and she s.h.i.+vered. She had brought no warm wrap with her. Hannay laid his overcoat over her knees and about her body. His large hands moved gently, wrapping it close.

She thanked him and tried to smile. And when he saw her smile, Hannay was sorry for the things he had thought and said of her. His voice when he spoke to her vibrated tenderly. She resigned herself to his hands. Grief made her pa.s.sive now.

Hannay sank back in the far corner and left her to her grief. He covered his eyes with his hands that he might not see her. Poor Hannay hoped that, if he removed his painful presence, she would allow herself the relief of tears.

But no tears fell from under her closed eyelids. Her soul was withdrawn behind them into the darkness where the body's pang ceased, and there was help. She started when the train stopped at Scarby Station.

As they stopped at the hotel there came upon her that reminiscence which is foreknowledge and the sense of destiny.

A woman was coming down the staircase as they entered. She did not see her at first. She would not have seen her at all if Hannay had not taken her arm and drawn her aside into the shelter of a doorway. Then, as the woman pa.s.sed out, she saw that it was Lady Cayley.

She looked helplessly at Hannay. Her eyes said, "Where is he?" She wondered where, in what room, she should find her husband.

She found him upstairs in the room that had been their bridal chamber. He lay on their bridal bed, motionless and senseless. There was a deep flush on one side of his face, one corner of his mouth was slightly drawn, and one eyelid drooped. He was paralysed down his left side.

His lips moved mechanically as he breathed, and his breath came with a deep grating sound. His left arm was stretched outside, upon the blanket.

A nurse stood at the head of the bed. She moved as Anne entered and gave place to her. Anne put out her hand and touched his arm, caressing it.

The nurse said, "There has been no change." She lifted his arm by the wrist and laid it in his wife's hand that she might see that he was paralysed.

And Anne sat still by the bedside, staring at her husband's face, and holding his heavy arm in her hand, as if she could thus help him to bear the weight of it.

Hannay gave one look at her as she sat there. He said something to the nurse and went out of the room. The woman followed him.

After they went Anne bowed her head and laid it on the pillow beside her husband's, with her cheek against his cheek. She stayed so for a moment.

Then she lifted her head and looked about her. Her eyes took note of trifles. She saw that the blankets were drawn straight over his body, as if over the body of a dead man. The pillow-cases and the end of the sheet, which was turned down over the blankets, were clean and creaseless.

He could not move. He was paralysed. They had not told her that.

She saw that he wore a clean white nights.h.i.+rt of coa.r.s.e cotton. It must have been lent by one of the people of the hotel. His illness must have come upon him last night, when he was still up and dressed. They must have carried him in here, and laid him in the clean bed. Everything about him was very white and clean. She was glad.

She sat there till the nurse came back again. She had to move away from him then. It hurt her to see the woman bending over his bed, looking at him, to see, her hands touching him.

A bell rang somewhere in the hotel. Hannay came in and told her that there was luncheon in the sitting-room. She shook her head. He put his hand on her shoulder and spoke to her as if she had been a child. She must eat, he said; she would be no good if she did not eat. She got up and followed him. She ate and drank whatever he gave her. Then she went back to her husband, and watched beside him while the nurse went to her meal. The terrible thing was that she could do nothing for him. She could only wait and watch. The nurse came back in half an hour, and they sat there together, all the afternoon, one on each side of the bed, waiting and watching.

Towards evening the doctor, who had come at midnight and in the morning, came again. He looked at Anne keenly and kindly, and his manner seemed to her to say that there was no hope. He made experiments. He brought a lighted candle and held it to the patient's eyes, and said that the pupils were still contracted. The nurse said nothing. She looked at Anne and she looked at the doctor, and when he went away, she made a sign to Anne to keep back while she followed him. Anne heard them talking together in low voices outside the door, and her heart ached with fear of what he would say to her presently.

He sent for her, and she came to him in the sitting-room. He said, "There is no change." Her brain reeled and righted itself. She had thought he was going to say "There is no hope."

"Will he get better?" she said.

"I cannot tell you."

The doctor seated himself and prepared to deal long and leisurely with the case.

"It's impossible to say. He _may_ get better. He may even get well. But I should do wrong if I let you hope too much for that."

"You can give _no_ hope?" she said, thinking that she uttered his real thought.

"I don't say that. I only say that the chances are not--exclusively--in favour of recovery."

"The chances?"

"Yes. The chances." The doctor looked at her, considering whether she were a woman who could bear the truth. Her eyes a.s.sured him that she could. "I don't say he won't recover. It's this way," said he. "There's a clot somewhere on the brain. If it absorbs completely he may get well--perfectly well."

"And if it does not absorb?"

"He may remain as he is, paralysed down the left side. The paralysis may be only partial. He may recover the use of one limb and not the other.

But he will be paralysed. Partially or completely."

She pictured it.

"Ah--but," she said, laying hold on hope again, "he will not die?"

"Well--there may be further lesions--in which case--"

"He will die?"

"He may die. He may die any moment."

She accepted it, abandoning hope.

"Will there be any return of consciousness? Will he know me?"

"I'm afraid not. If consciousness returns we may begin to hope. As it is, I don't want you to make up your mind to the worst. There are two things in his favour. He has evidently a sound const.i.tution. And he has lived--up till now--Mr. Hannay tells me, a rather unusually temperate life. That is so?"

"Yes. He was most abstemious. Always--always. Why?"

The doctor recalled his eyes from their examination of Mrs. Majendie's face. It was evident that there were some truths which she could not bear.

"My dear Mrs. Majendie, there is no _why_, of course. That is in his favour. There seems to have been nothing in his previous history which would predispose to the attack."

"Would a shock--predispose him?"

"A shock?"

"Any very strong emotion--"

"It might. Certainly. If it was recent. Mr. Hannay told me that he--that you--had had a sudden bereavement. How long ago was that?"

"A month--nearly five weeks."