Chapter XL

“No! at noon-day, in the bustle of man’s work time, Greet the unseen with a cheer! Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be! Strive and thrive! Cry! speed! fight on! fare ever _there_ as _here_!”

ROBERT
BROWNING.

The night was dark, and the dinner-table gleamed with light and silver. Long sprays of autumn leaves covered the white cloth, and large pots of early chrysanthemums stood about the room. Katherine, glancing over the faces of the guests, felt an unreasoning anger at their beautiful costumes and easy laughter. The hour she had just spent face to face with her patient’s agony seemed the only reality; the dream (which almost made her rub her eyes) was their host’s face. Arthur Field had rarely looked more handsome as he glanced across the table at his wife, or flashed keen wit and two-edged compliments at Lady Cheston, sitting at his right hand. Katherine could only rest on the truest of all platitudes, the exceeding strangeness of Truth.

Rosamonde looked flushed and a little stupid. Reggie had frequently to repeat his remarks twice before she understood them. She kept up little bursts of nervous laughter, that made Miss Smith wish to choke her. It was impossible to tell what Arthur Field wished.

“Now you’re here, Mr. Field,” Lady Cheston began in a voluble aside, “do tell us what Miss Linton’s doing, and why that woman, who looks like a poached egg on a rasher of bacon, should manage things for your wife?” Mr. Field glanced down the table at Miss Smith. She certainly looked better in uniform. Her hair, uncapped, was very yellow, and her face, without a dark background, very red.

“Miss Linton,” he explained, “came here for a holiday; she’s a nurse, you know, in my hospital. I brought her here. She is a nice girl.”

“Oh! all girls are nice!” chuckled Lady Cheston, “and all rice puddings are healthy, but I prefer ’em in the nursery.”

“As for Miss Smith,” said her host, ignoring her interruption, “she is perhaps not what one could call a girl, but she is certainly a treasure.”

“In that case,” said Lady Cheston, “pray bury her—or send for Captain Kidd!”

Lilian Courteny, who was on Arthur’s other side, leaned forward. She was a beautiful woman still, in spite of that inexplicable, hard barrier of an unhappy marriage which was written in her eyes, and in the guarded watchfulness of her proud head. Arthur Field, looking at her, felt that she expected to be made to wince. He had seen the same look in the faces of children with cruel mothers; if you spoke suddenly to them, they put up their hands to protect themselves. Lilian Courtney merely raised her eyebrows and tried to smile, but it gave one the same effect.

“Do you believe in treasures, Mr. Field,” she asked. “I always thought doctors and nurses got a little farther than that.”

“How far,” questioned Arthur, “did you think we got?”

“Far enough,” she said, deepening her little smile, “to know that treasures grow best in a fool’s paradise.”

“Ah,” said the surgeon, “I am not so sure that the only paradise belongs to fools; if so, one certainly does well to lose it, yet I am inclined to believe that in becoming more or less wise, one regains the paradise without reassuming the folly.”

“And how can you regain it?” Lilian asked lightly. Rosamonde’s nervous giggle sounded along the table. Lilian watched him.

“The old way, I suppose,” he said slowly; “we go through the world—and die.”

“Ah! but I don’t want to die,” broke in Lady Cheston quickly. “I want, I want—something quite different from that!”

“Then you’re still in the Fool’s Paradise,” said Arthur, “depending upon the unexpected to be favourable.” Rosamonde’s laugh grew too loud, Lilian stared a little. Miss Smith moved uneasily in her chair. Then the surgeon rose to his feet. Katherine’s lips parted; she, too, half-rose from her chair; she noticed the peculiar swaying motion he had when he stood erect; but no one saw her, they were all looking at him. Standing, with his glass in his hand, he made them a little speech. He welcomed them in his wife’s name, and in his own, telling them that although the pleasure of their friendship, was for him in anticipation, he felt sure that in this case the reality would be pleasanter still. He told them that his long bachelorhood, owing to his wife’s ill-health, he believed, had positively ended, and he congratulated himself on their all being there to celebrate the event. Then, in terms which afterwards, his guests unanimously agreed, were simply touching, he asked them to drink to Rosamonde’s health and their future acquaintanceship.

Katherine watched him breathlessly. His eyes shone exultantly, in a kind of savage mastery over his physical weakness. Someone rose opposite to him, and replied courteously and heartily. There was a general tilting up of glasses, and the toast was drunk. Arthur Field leaned forward a little to return thanks. His lips moved, but no words came. Silence fell over the party like a pall. How long it lasted no one could tell. A grey pallor spread over the surgeon’s face, his hand shook, the glass slipped out of it on to the floor with a crash, and, with a long, sighing groan, he fell forward on his face. In an instant Katherine was beside him. The guests’ attention was called off by Rosamonde—she broke into shriek after shriek of hysterical laughter; Miss Smith went over to her, and shook her. Lady Cheston said, “Well! I never!” There seemed nothing else to say.

Reggie suggested that they should all go into the drawing-room. He and the man who had made the nice little speech carried the surgeon upstairs. When Reggie came down to get some more brandy for Katherine, he found Miss Smith still shaking Rosamonde in the dining-room.

“Hadn’t you better take her to her room?” he asked. Miss Smith glared at him, and he hurried away on his errand. After he had gone Miss Smith took Rosamonde by the shoulders, and pushed her, before her, upstairs, and into her room.

Rosamonde fell asleep on her bed, while Miss Smith was undressing her. Lilian Courtney went out into the garden wondering if Arthur Field had regained his Paradise.

Lady Cheston talked a great deal to everybody about the way poor, dear Lord Cheston, who was always eating the wrong things, went off in an apoplectic fit, and her companions listened respectfully, awed by her experience with the unseen; certainly Lord Cheston had died, but they had never fully realized it before. Then a bustling young country doctor who had been called in, came downstairs to say that though undoubtedly Mr. Field was in a serious way, there was no immediate danger, and that his patient had particularly begged him to ask everybody to remain, as he hoped to be about again soon.

“I may say, on my own authority,” said the little doctor, with great importance, “that in _my_ opinion, I greatly fear my esteemed colleague is not correct in his last statement.” A buzz of talk started up after his departure, which was interrupted by Reggie stating lazily that he had lit everybody’s candles, and that they would probably all go out soon.

The guests went upstairs on tiptoe, and possibly, for the first time in their lives, noticed that silk skirts are noisy. After all there was no thunderstorm—the clouds had moved on elsewhere. The big harvest moon swung high, and clear over the trees, and rays of moonlight crept through the blind into the surgeon’s room. Katherine, sitting by his bed-side, thought it was already morning; the night was very long.

“Nurse!” said the voice from the bed. The girl turned towards him startled. He beckoned to her to come nearer.

“Oh! but you mustn’t talk!” she said.

“That means I shall not have much longer to talk,” he said slowly; “I know that quite well. All the more reason, to my mind, to express myself fully. I have not more than a day or two to live.” Katherine put her fingers on his pulse; it was intermittent and very feeble. “A thread with knots,” he explained, still smiling; “we shall come by-and-bye to a knot that won’t come undone. I have always felt badly at losing a case. It’s a thing one can’t get used to. Death interferes with skill, and won’t explain. When one is puzzling out a sum he rubs it off the slate like a child in a temper, ‘I can’t do it, and you sha’n’t.’” There were pauses between his words. He seemed like a swimmer coming through the surf—he had to dive each wave as it came, or he would be carried off his feet, before the breath came. He was being beaten to exhaustion, but he was a strong swimmer. “Have you ever thought,” he went on, “how arbitrary nature is? Idiot children are always very strong; they can’t reason, but they can do harm. Nature is like that; she cuts through a law by a catastrophe, and claps her hands at the débris. One can clap too, only in this case, I am the débris.” He stopped exhausted, and she gave him a stimulant by his side. “We have learned to make compromises,” he said, as she put the glass down, “this will float the débris a little longer.”

“Oh! don’t talk like that!” said Katherine, feeling an immense pity, and an immense weakness rush over her. “Indeed, indeed there is a reason! a destination! a completion of things! If your powers leave this world it is because there is a fuller, richer channel for them in some other world. There is no waste, no loss.” She saw, with passionate terror in her eyes, that he could not follow her. He saw that she was troubled, and he made an effort to understand, but the words were beyond his attenuated powers of sense; he could only shake his head.

“All right,” he said, after a little, “don’t worry—that was a good thought of yours about the duplicate key.” But consciousness in him was too strong a force to be left in abeyance; a moment more and it flashed out again. She saw a new look come into his eyes—a look she had never even dreamed of; it was so infinitely gentle, as if his sight enclosed some picture too fragile to risk a fall.

“What is it?” Katherine asked him.

“You’re very good,” he whispered, “but I want—Daphne,” and his eyes closed to shut out the difference. When he opened them again he looked at her coldly. “You need not sit up, nurse,” he said, in usual tones. “I have everything I need.”

She leaned over him. “To-morrow,” she said, “Daphne goes to stay with Lady Middleton. I heard from her to-day. I will send over for her to come here. You would like to see her.” He gazed fixedly in front of him.

“I am—obliged,” he said at last. “You are very thoughtful.” Katherine felt the tears rush to her eyes, and to avoid his seeing them turned to pull a curtain straight; but she need not have done so, for Arthur Field would not have seen her. His own eyes were full of tears—tears that had never fallen over a grief that had never died.

“Nurse,” he said, after a moment. She stood beside him again with the little glass, but he pushed it from him, “don’t be cheated,” he said, looking at her with piercing eyes, “some things are pretty good, but they don’t satisfy, and some things are pretty terrible to face, but they are worth the facing. I can see such a lot now only—it’s too late!” Katherine knelt by him, and laid her hand on his.

“No! no! no!” she said, “you leave out God.” He lay watching her grieved, earnest eyes.

“So He won’t let go?” he said, smiling. “Well, then—if He’s there—I’ll go to Him, and if He isn’t—I’ll just rest!” He closed his eyes, and presently as she watched him, she saw that he was asleep.

Then, in a flash, her old thoughts became new to her. She felt a passionate hope and pain, that changed her from a good woman into an infinite being; immortality, which had been her faith, became a certainty. Her life rose from its narrow, outward landmarks, into a thing of eternity, a spark of that which neither knows death, nor accepts it. It seemed in that instant of time, as if she had passed scatheless through a fire, had leapt into some strong, unbroken circle of life in whose centre, was the very source of it all. A fire which indeed consumed, until nothing was left, but the answering spark of Life and Light, unhindered and unfettered utterly. “I will not be cheated,” she cried in her heart. “The perishable perishes simply to show the Imperishable its invincible, unutterable Triumph.” Her thoughts swept over her past life, catching up memories, hopes, ambitions, as if to hurry with them into the warmth and shelter that had mastered every fear, she had ever known or feared to know. She grew radiant over this new wonder, and longed, as the human soul must long, for the soul she loved best to grow radiant too. Then she ceased to think of things in the abstract, and the face of the man she did not wish to believe she loved, by turns entreated and compelled her to answer, not as she might have answered before the change of a moment had illuminated her life, but with the eternal answer of the heart that sees beyond. “I love—not because you are—but because God is. I am Love’s answer to you, your eternal counterpart, which claims us Children of God, who are not afraid to enter into His Courts with the Light of Him in our faces, and the Love of Him in our hearts.” So Death and Love together seemed equal pledges to Katherine of other worlds; and duty (by which she had lived before) was a word she had forgotten, she turned quickly to do all she could for Arthur, but not because she ought—ought had lost itself in the privilege of service. The shaded lamp burned low, and the growing outlines of things by the window told her the night was over.

The surgeon’s pulse beat very feebly now, his nostrils worked painfully, and his lips were blue. The curious sharpness of feature that the approach of Death reveals showed in his face. She wondered if his spirit could wait till Daphne came. She heard a faint tap at the door, and crept noiselessly to answer it.

The increasing light showed, to her astonishment, Miss Smith. “You cannot come in,” said Katherine, “he is asleep.”

“I will come in!” hissed the other nurse, “get out of my way!” Katherine gazed at her in surprise, but she was strong, and firmly barred the way against the intruder. “You cannot possibly come in,” she repeated, “and if you do not go away, he will wake, and it will kill him!” Miss Smith’s glare at her was of something rendered too furious for reason, then, with a sudden, miserable sense of impotence, the poor woman began to shake with sobs. Katherine very gently closed the door and locked it.

“What is it?” said her patient quite composedly.

“Miss Smith, sir, to ask how you were.” The surgeon looked annoyed, then his face lightened.

“Let her come in,” he said, “but don’t go away.”

“I shall certainly not do that, sir,” said Katherine quickly. She obeyed him unwillingly. Miss Smith hung back at first and came in frightened. She was not placed more at her ease by the surgeon’s sharp, cold glance at her.

“Come nearer,” he said. “It is very tiresome to have to shout—when one is—dying!”

“Oh, sir—Mr. Field, I mean—you aren’t! I can’t bear it!” Miss Smith murmured desperately.

“You are not asked to,” said the surgeon quietly, “at present. I have sent for you because you are the only person who has ever understood—my wife. I have tried to cure her, that is why I am here. I should like to feel that it has not been quite useless. Will you help her? I have settled most of my money on her, on the condition that she places herself under your orders—or some substitute to be chosen by Miss Linton. If, in ten years’ time she is not a complete cure, her income will be very much limited, and you will be freed from the care of her, the rest of my money will then go to the hospital, except that you or your substitute shall have a small income for life. Choose?” He closed his eyes and Katherine held the glass to his lips; he struggled to swallow it, and, after a moment’s terrible tension, he rallied. Miss Smith, who had started forward, made up her mind.

“Miss Linton need not look for a substitute, sir!” she cried, “I will stay with your wife until I die, or she dies—so help me, God.”

“I daresay He will,” murmured the surgeon with an amused look. “If He exists. He certainly ought to—if He can!” Katherine opened the door and Miss Smith, with her heart full of anger and pain, looked passionately and unavailingly at the man who held her in obedience, even at the door of death. Then, seeing that for the moment he had left consciousness behind him, she tossed her head at her enemy and ran to her own room.

Katherine, closing the door again, took up a new wonder. She had seen a small soul in a great moment, but the moment had not been great enough to enlarge the soul. “It takes more to redeem a soul,” she remembered hearing. She imagined, as she thought of Miss Smith, that it would take a great deal more.