Chapter III

That evening the doctor came again. He left a little before nine o’clock, the hour when Nurse Eden would begin her night watch. He refused to hold out any hope. She was sinking fast.

As Hollyer turned from the front-door he met Nurse Eden coming downstairs. She signed to him to follow her into the drawing-room, moving before him without a sound. She shut the door.

He was afraid of Nurse Eden; there was something—he didn’t know what it was, but—there was something unbearable in her small, pure face; in the thrust of her chin tilted by the stiff cap-strings; in her brave, slender mouth, straightening itself against the droop of its compassion; and in the stillness of her dense, grey eyes. Her eyes made him feel uneasy, somehow, and unsafe. He was going to sit up with her to-night; but he would rather have shared his night-watch with old Martha.

“Well?” she said.

“He says this is the end.”

“It may be,” said Nurse Eden. “But it needn’t.”

“You’ve seen her.”

“Yes.”

“_Well—?_”

“She hasn’t gone yet, Mr. Hollyer— She’s on the edge. She’s in that state when a breath would tip her one way or the other.”

“A breath?”

“Yes, Mr. Hollyer. Or a thought.”

“A thought?”

“A thought. If I had Mrs. Hollyer to myself, I believe I could bring her round even now.”

“Oh, Nurse—”

“I _have_ brought her round. Night after night I’ve brought her.”

“What do you do?”

“I don’t know what I do. But it works. Haven’t you noticed she gets better in the night when I’ve had her; and that she slips back in the day?”

“Yes, I have.”

“You see, Mr. Hollyer, Dr. Ransome’s made up his mind. And when the doctor makes up his mind that the patient’s going to die, ten to one the patient does die. It lowers their resistance. It isn’t every one that would feel it; but your mother would.”

“If,” she went on, “I had her day _and_ night, I might save her.”

“You really think that?”

“I think there’s a chance.”

He didn’t know whether he believed her or not. Dr. Ransome shrugged his shoulders and said Nurse Eden could try it if she liked. She had a wonderful way with her; but he wouldn’t advise Hollyer to count on it. Nothing but a miracle, he said, could save his mother.

Hollyer didn’t count on Nurse Eden’s way. But he thought—something stronger than himself compelled him to think—that his mother would not die.

And each hour showed her slowly coming back. Under his eyes the miracle was being accomplished. At midnight her breathing and temperature and pulse were normal; and by noon of the next day even Ransome was convinced. He wouldn’t swear to the miracle, but whatever Nurse Eden had or had not done, he believed Mrs. Hollyer would recover.

Hollyer not only believed it, but he was certain, as Nurse Eden was certain. She came to him, radiant with certainty, and told him that his mind could be at rest now.

But his mind was not at rest. It had only rested while he doubted, as if doubt absolved him from knowledge of some secret that he could not face. With the first moment of certainty he was aware of it. It was given to him in physical sensations, a weight and pain about his heart that did not lie. In a flash he saw himself back in his old life of dependence and frustration. There would be no Effie sitting with him in the house, no Effie running up and down the stairs. He would not sleep with Effie in the big, white bed. They would grow old, wanting each other.

He tried to jerk his mouth into a smile, but it had stiffened. It opened, gasping, as his muffled heart-beats choked him.

He went upstairs to his mother’s room. She was sitting up in bed, clear-eyed, almost alert, and she turned her face to him as he entered.

“I don’t know how it is,” she said. “I thought I was going, but there’s something that won’t let me go. It keeps on pulling me back and back.” (Nurse Eden looked at him.) “Is it you, Wilfrid?”

He knelt down and buried his face in the bedclothes by her side. His sobs shook the mattress. The nurse took him by the arm; he got up and stared at her as if dazed and drunk with grief. She led him from the room.

“You’re upsetting her,” she said. “Don’t come back till you’ve pulled yourself together.”

When he went back his mother was sleeping calmly. Hollyer and the nurse withdrew from the bedside to the window and talked there in low voices.

“Did you hear what she said. Nurse?”

“Yes. We can get her through, between us, if we make up our minds she’s to live. Think of what she was yesterday.”

“But do you think we ought to? I don’t want her brought back to suffer.”

“She isn’t going to suffer. There’s no reason why she shouldn’t be as well as ever. If you want her to live.”

“Want her? Of course I want her to live.”

“I know you do. But you must get rid of your fear.”

“My fear?”

“Your fear of her dying.”

“Do you think my fear could—could make her?”

“I know it could. Make up your mind with me that she’s going to get well.”

“Supposing she wants to go? Supposing she’s fighting against us all the time?”

“She isn’t fighting. She hasn’t any fight in her— Now, while she’s sleeping, is the time. You’ve only got to say to yourself ‘She shall live. She’s going to live.’ There—you sit in that chair, make yourself quite comfortable, shut your eyes, and keep on saying it. Don’t think of anything else.”

He sat down. He said it over and over again: “She shall live. She’s going to live. She shall live—” He tried to think of nothing else; but all the time he was aware of the dragging of his heart. He shut his eyes, but he couldn’t get rid of the vision of Effie. Effie sitting in his mother’s place. Effie sleeping beside him in the big bed.

“She _shall_ live. She’s going to live.” The words meant nothing. Only the dragging weight at his heart had meaning. And it didn’t lie.

He thought: If that’s how I feel about it, I’d better keep my mind off her.

Then he was aware that he was tired, dead beat, too tired to think. And presently, sitting upright in the chair, he fell asleep.

He was waked by Nurse Eden’s voice calling to him from the bed: “Mr. Hollyer! She’s going!”

His mother lay in the nurse’s arms, her head had fallen forward on her chest, her mouth was open; and through it there came a groaning, grating cry. Once, twice, three times; and she was gone.

After the funeral Hollyer went up into his mother’s room. Nurse Eden was there, removing the signs of death. She had covered the bed with a white counterpane. She had opened the door and window wide, and a flood of clean cold air streamed through the room.

“Nurse,” he said, “come here a minute.”

She followed him into his bed-sitting room on the other side of the landing. Hollyer shut the door.

“You remember that night when my mother got better?”

“Indeed I do.”

“Do you still think you brought her back?”

“I do think it.”

“Do you really believe that a thought—_a thought_ could do that?”

“Yes.”

“But it doesn’t always work. It breaks down.”

“Sometimes. That night she died I felt it wasn’t working. I was up against a wall. I couldn’t get through. But remember, before that, she was going when I brought her back.”

“Could a thought—another thought—kill?”

“It depends. Perhaps, if it was a very strong thought. A wish.”

Her queer eyes looked through him and beyond him, not seeing him, seeing some reality that was not he. He had gone to her for her truth and she had given it him. A wish, even a hidden wish, could kill. In the dark, secret places of the mind your thoughts ran loose beyond your knowing; they burrowed under the walls that shut off one self from another; they got through. It was as if his secret self had broken loose, and got through to his mother, and had killed her secretly, in the dark. His wish was a part of himself, but stronger than himself. The force behind it was indestructible, for it was a form of his desire for Effie; so that while he lived he could not kill it.

It had been there all the time, cunningly disguised. It was there in his fear of Nurse Eden; it was there in that obstinate belief of his that his mother would live. His beliefs were always the expression of his fears. He had been afraid that his mother would not die. That was his fear. He saw it all clearly in the moment while Nurse Eden’s voice went on.

“But it wasn’t _that_, Mr. Hollyer,” she was saying. “We were all wishing her to live— No. I think she was too far gone. She had got beyond us.”

It was too late for Nurse Eden to go back on it. He knew. He was certain.