Chapter XVII: Trouble Still

NEARLY a month had passed since the day of the collision, and George Rutherford still lay in the Cross Arms Hotel. It had been impossible to move him to his own home.

He had gone very near to the gates of death. Had the scalds alone been in question, it would have been, as Mr. Forest said, a hard fight to pull him through; but there were severe injuries in addition to these. A less vigorous constitution must have succumbed.

For three weeks there came no glimmer of consciousness. He escaped much suffering thereby, and the surface wounds healed, as they hardly could have healed if he had been awake to pain, and restless under it. Danger from the scalds was not now talked of, but the doctors still looked serious, and spoke with increasing gravity of the blow to the head. Some signs of his awaking to life had shown themselves, only they were faint and feeble signs; and when he spoke it was like a little child speaking.

All through this month Marian Brooke had not seen Joan a second time. For Joan was in close attendance upon her father at the hotel, and Marian was in attendance upon Dulcibel at the Hall.

Almost immediately after the accident Dulcibel had been ordered home by Mr. Forest; and she continued from day to day so weak and shaken as to be still quite an invalid, able to sit up only for an hour or two in the day, and strictly forbidden to see her husband. Indeed, the mention of his name, or the slightest hint of peril to his life, brought on violent hysterical attacks.

Nessie devoted herself to Dulcibel, and Marian became gradually a necessity to them both. Dulcibel took a fancy to this stranger from the first, and waywardly refused attendance from anybody else, thereby giving no little offence to the Hall servants. Marian showed calm indifference to their displeasure, and quietly submitted to Dulcibel’s will, never revealing her ceaseless desire for one more glimpse of Joan. Thus far she was known at the Hall only as “Marian,” or “Nurse.”

Leonard Ackroyd had taken up his abode in Woodleigh, though it would be hard to say whether the Hall or the hotel was more strictly his headquarters; he was constantly backwards and forwards between the two. Indeed, had he been George Rutherford’s own son he could not possibly have acted with more kind thought and helpfulness.

Two London trained nurses undertook the actual care of George Rutherford, but Joan was constantly present also. From the first there had been no withholding her.

She did not look well, though the cut on her forehead was healed. The long and terrible anxiety about her adopted father had told upon her severely. Even Mr. Forest’s authority did not suffice to make her take enough sleep and exercise. Appetite and energy were alike gone, and she seemed to care for nothing but to sit hour after hour, day after day, in the semi-darkness of the sick-room, gazing on the loved features, for the first time in her life irresponsive to her voice.

“Joan, you cannot go on like this,” Leo said one day.

He had called at the hotel, as usual, for news of his uncle, and Joan came downstairs to see him. He was struck with the change in her appearance, the fixed pallor, and the spiritless, sad droop of the black eyes. She shook hands, saying, “Good-morning,” and then sat down in an easy-chair, leaning back with a worn-out, strengthless air.

“Joan, you cannot go on like this. We must make a change. It is too much for you to be constantly in the room.”

“Oh, no—I could not be anywhere else,” said Joan. She raised her eyes to meet his, with a mournful smile. “It is nothing,” she said. “If only father were himself again I should be all right: I can’t be well while he is ill.”

“He is better,” Leo began, and then paused. “But—”

“Yes, I know,” Joan responded. “Mr. Forest says ‘But’ so often. I suppose it isn’t cruel of you both. I suppose one ought to understand.”

Leonard was silent, his eyes bent pityingly upon Joan from beneath the full brows; and he passed the fingers of one hand slowly through his tawny beard with a puzzled gesture. Joan looked up, and an expression of sharp pain crossed her face.

“Don’t, Lee—oh, don’t!” she cried. “Oh, please don’t! I can’t bear it.”

“Don’t—what?” he asked, in surprise.

“That! Father does it. Oh, don’t, please! If only you were not so like him!”

She held both hands over her eyes, shivering. “Joan, you are quite overwrought,” he said gravely. “We shall have you ill next.”

“I’m not ill. I am not going to be ill. I am only—only—wretched.”

“But things are a little better than they were, dear Joan,” he said in soothing tones, which thrilled her again.

“Yes, I know. I wish you wouldn’t speak in that voice—like his! Yes, I know he is better from the burns; but it is so dreadful to see him like this, day after day the same, just knowing all of us, and not seeming to care—like himself speaking from behind a great thick curtain; and I can’t get at him—I can’t touch him. It isn’t he that speaks, and it isn’t me that he hears. I never thought illness could be so dreadful—could change a person so. And he isn’t changed really. It is his own dear self that is there, only one can’t reach him, one can’t touch him. And nobody seems able to do anything. Mr. Forest only says we are to wait—wait. I wonder how long! It’s enough to kill one.”

Her hands went over her eyes again, with a moan.

“‘Call upon me in the day of trouble!’” Leo said quietly.

“Yes. Father would tell me to think of that; but I can’t,” said Joan, looking up again, with inexpressible dreariness in her black eyes. “How can I? I can’t think of anything except father. I have tried to pray, and it is no use—there seems nobody to hear. God is so far-away; and now father seems far-away too; even when I am close beside him there is that dreadful far-away feeling, as if a black cloud were wrapping him all round, and keeping us off. Do you know the feeling? I always have it when I try to pray, and that keeps me from praying. But I never had it with dear, dear father before. I have always had him, and it was all I wanted; and now he can’t understand or answer, and nobody else is of any use. All the world is nothing to me except father.”

Joan did not know that she had given Leo pain, perhaps she would not have cared if she had known it. Sorrow makes some people selfish, and Joan was selfish in this grief. There seemed no room in her oppressed and burdened heart for sympathy with others. She could not have told why she turned now to Leonard in her trouble, only it was a relief to speak freely to somebody, and he had always stood in the position of brother to herself and Nessie. The years of his absence in India had modified that position, perhaps much more than any of them were aware. It might have been that the very resemblance to George Rutherford, from which she shrank with positive suffering, yet helped to draw her out.

“What does Mr. Forest say to you about father?” she asked suddenly.

He was thinking of Joan’s last words, and did not at once take in the meaning of the question.

“Mr. Forest? About your father?” Leo repeated dreamily.

“Yea, of course—about father,” said Joan with impatience.

“Much the same, I suspect, as he says to you.”

“He says nothing to me—about what we may expect, I mean. He only talks of waiting, and being patient, and taking each day as it comes. But I am tired of waiting, and I never was patient; and I like to look on. And then he lectures me about going out; and I hate to go out. The sunshine seems such a mockery, when father is lying like this. I can’t enjoy anything if he can’t enjoy it too. I only want to sit in a dark room till he is well.”

“But is that right, Joan?”

“Right I don’t know. And I am sure I don’t know why I should talk to you like this,” continued Joan, lifting her eyes once more, with a perplexed look. “It seems so foolish, only one must speak out a little now and then, and nobody else can understand. I don’t know whether you can—but you look a little as if you could. Nessie can say nothing, except ‘I’m sorry;’ and mother and I never do understand each other the very least.”

“I think you and I do, Joan,” said Leo.

“Oh, I don’t know!” repeated Joan, falling into a languid tone. “Only, as I say, one must speak to some one. But I am going back to father now, unless you will tell me first what Mr. Forest really thinks. I do want to know.”

“It is hardly possible that he should say anything decided at present,” said Leo.

“Of course. Everybody knows that,” responded Joan, listlessly, yet with a touch of petulance. “But I suppose he says a good deal more to you than he does to me. He thinks I can’t stand hearing the truth. And he doesn’t guess how much worse it is not hearing, only being left to think and imagine, and—Leo, won’t you tell me?”

“Yes,” Leo said in his gentlest voice. “If you will put your bonnet on and come for a little walk, Joan, I will tell you all Mr. Forest has said to me?”

“And not without?”

“No.”

“It is cruel,” Joan said, rising. “I am so tired, and the sunshine makes me miserable. But I suppose you will keep to what you say.”

“For your sake, Joan,” he said, apologetically. “You must have air, and you have not been out for three days.”

“I don’t want to go out.”

Yet he did not withdraw his condition, and she moved away, returning presently in hat and jacket.

“Where are you going to take me?” she asked, as they left the hotel together.

Leo was watching anxiously her faltering steps. “Do you think that you can walk, Joan?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I must,” she said, with a faint smile. “It is only the glare of the light and the fresh air that make me so dizzy. Oh, yes, I’ll manage, if I may take your arm for a moment!”

Leonard gave her his arm, but stood still, sending a boy round the corner for a carriage. Another minute, and Joan was leaning back against the cushions, with shut eyes, and a strange sensation of being whirled through space. She made no attempt to rouse herself; and Leo said not a word; but presently the keen air, at first too strong, proved reviving, and Joan sat up.

They were by this time in a country lane, flanked by hedges, dressed in a sparkling veil of hoar-frost. Though a cold day, it was entirely still, and the sun shone from a blue sky.

“Better?” her companion asked.

“Yes. It is nothing—I am only stupid! What are you going to tell me about father?”

“We have not had our walk yet. No, I am not going to be unreasonable—” as she exclaimed indignantly. “But I don’t wish you to look again as you did ten minutes ago.”

She gave him a terrified glance.

“Then it is to be bad news?”

“Nothing definite; only uncertainties and possibilities.”

Joan sighed heavily.

“Try not to think for a little while. Look at that coating of hoar-frost on the trees. Cannot you enjoy this?”

There was no enjoyment in Joan’s face. She looked from side to side with a weary indifference, and at last said—

“Are you taking me home?”

“I had not made up my mind whether to turn that way. Would you like to see Aunt Dulcibel and Nessie?”

“I don’t care.”

Leo seemed to be debating the point. When they reached a certain turn, which would have led them round by the Hall, he said nothing to the driver, and they went straight on. Something of relief appeared in Joan’s face; but presently she said—

“There’s another turning that would do as well.”

“Yes. Better for you to have a good round first,” Leo replied.

“Then you mean to stop at home on the way back?”

“Not if you decide against it.”

A pause; and then—

“No; perhaps we may as well—just for five minutes. I needn’t stay longer than that. Perhaps we may as well—before you tell me more exactly what Mr. Forest thinks about father.”

The same thought had occurred to Leo, though he by no means expected to hear it from Joan’s lips.

“Mother is sure to question me,” added Joan. “I had better be able to say that I really don’t know. But please don’t make me stay long, Leo. I do want to get back to father quickly.”