"It will soon be over now," he said cheerfully. "What's his name—the doctor--" His voice wavered angrily, while he felt himself floundering in the desolation of age. "I know his name as well as I know my own. But I can't think of it now when I want it. I'm getting too old, Eva. I'm getting too old, and I'm not reconciled to forgetting. Not to forgetting names I know as well as my own."
"Bridges," she said softly, stroking his hand.
"Bridges. Yes, I've known him all his life. I went to school with his father, and yet his name went out of my mind like that when I wanted it." For an instant, no longer, it seemed to him that every misfortune was dwarfed, was blotted out, by the tragedy of the old. By growing infirm, by fumbling for things, by forgetting names that you know as well as your own. "In a few months, he says, you'll feel better than ever."
"Yes, he says so, but it isn't that. I'm not worrying about that."
"Then what is it, my dear? What is it?"
She turned toward the sunset, and he saw that she was still beautiful. The thin cheeks, the pinched nostrils, the silver lustre on her bronze hair made no difference. Nothing on the surface could alter the serene integrity of her loveliness. While the glow from the sky transfigured her, he told himself that her head had the quality of light, the pure outline of legend. "Even when she is dead," he thought, "her skeleton will have beauty."
Aloud he repeated tenderly, "What is it, my dear?"
"I'm not afraid of dying," she said slowly, and her words were as empty as the April breeze that stirred the lace on her bosom.
"Thank God, there isn't any danger of that," he maintained stoutly. The chair felt very small, and he shifted his weight.
"But nobody knows what may happen. I want you to stay with George until it is over. I want you to come in the morning and stay with George."
"I'll be here. You know I'd be here even if you hadn't asked me." Her arm, with the blue sleeve falling away, lay on the coverlet, and he reached out his trembling hand and stroked it softly from elbow to wrist. How delicate her skin looked beneath his swollen and mottled fingers! The bark of a tree, he thought in disgust; his skin beside hers was as harsh and rough as the bark of a tree. "I promise to stay with him. I'll be here with him the whole time. But it won't be long. They tell me it will all be over within an hour."
"They don't know. They don't know anything."
"Well, you'll have that boy, John Welch, with you. He will help Bridges, and he worships you, Eva."
"Yes, he's a good boy, and George--" She broke off and began again, "George has been wonderful."
"I never doubted that. You've been the apple of his eye since you were as young as Jenny Blair."
"He hasn't had any sleep since I was taken ill. Every night he has sat up with me. It has been terrible for him. I sometimes think it has been harder for him than for me. He has never thought of himself for a minute. He has been wonderful."
"He would be, my child. I used to tell him that he must have been born in a crisis. Do you remember the time I was caught in that panic, and George was the first man to stand by me? If I'd let him, he would have turned over every penny he had." Drawing out his white silk handkerchief, on which Mrs. Archbald had embroidered his monogram, he blew his nose and furtively wiped the moisture from his eye. Strange that age should be so much more sentimental than youth! "That is the kind of thing," he added, "that stays by a man till the end."
Her face brightened. "I remember. That was before we lost our money."
"Well, as long as I have a penny left, my dear, it is yours. You won't deny me that privilege?"
She smiled at his courtliness. "You are always generous. I sometimes think men are more generous than women."
"You can't have all the virtues. That wouldn't be fair."
Her smile changed to a laugh. "Have you ever expected us to be fair? Have you ever expected life to be fair?"
"I am not sure." He was trying desperately to preserve the gaiety, though he knew it was only the false gaiety that thrives in hospitals. "Anyhow, women are life, aren't they, for most of us?"
"I think," she answered, and the thought, he could see, spun in her mind like a slowly revolving wheel to which she was bound, "that I have really made George's life."
"You couldn't have helped it. He loves you too much."
"Yes, he loves me. He has always loved me." Her voice was so quiet and detached that she seemed to be listening for an echo. "If I hadn't believed that he loved me, I couldn't have borne it."
"You couldn't have borne being poor."
"I couldn't have borne—everything."
"It has been hard for you, I know. You were not made to pinch and scrape.
"If I hadn't known that he loved me," she repeated, as if he had not spoken, "I couldn't have borne everything."
"But you never doubted. You had no reason to doubt."
"So you feel that? You understand? Nobody else does."
"You oughtn't to say that. All your friends understand."
"As long as there is love," she continued, thinking aloud, and excited (the suspicion crossed his mind) by the drugs they had given her, "a woman can forgive anything. A man can be amused in strange ways, I understand that, though some women cannot. But if it were real—if it were not just amusement—if it were real--" She broke off with a shiver, and threw him a frightened glance. Then, after a short silence, she murmured in a voice that ran like a thread of pain through his nerves, "So often, too, it is kindness. It is nothing more than trying to help people. You and I know that George has the kindest heart in the world."
"He would strip himself of his coat for a friend—or even for a stranger who was colder than he was. I have often said that he is generous to extravagance." After all, that was true that was just, and he delighted to praise George when he could.
"To extravagance! You are right. Over and over again designing persons have taken advantage of him, and he has been too proud to explain to anybody but me. Do you remember the night he was taken so ill in that—that dreadful place, and they sent for us because they thought he was dying?"
"Don't think of that. It isn't worth thinking of." For he remembered the night only too well. Hastily summoned, he had gone with Eva and Doctor Bridges to bring George home or to be near him at the end.
Afterwards there had been a great deal of gossip. They had found George unconscious (ptomaine poisoning, Bridges had said). Well, even in memory, it was an ugly picture. A kaleidoscopic blur assailed him—paper roses, plush furniture, pink shades, and straw-coloured hair. The woman had managed to dress George before she summoned a doctor, and Bridges had picked up a pair of socks and stuffed them into his pocket. It was the last place on earth George would ever wish to see Eva; but after she heard he was in danger, there was nothing anybody could do with her. Self-willed, beneath all her softness. Why, he had seen her become unmanageable when her primitive emotions rushed to the surface. That night, she had been frantic at first, going suddenly quiet, as still as marble, as soon as they ceased to oppose her. But it was an occasion of horror for them all, indecent, repulsive, grotesque. Yet in some strange way known only to religion and lust, the shadow of death or the substance of scandal worked, temporarily at least, a miracle of reform. For several years after that George had appeared to reform, or at least to refrain. Then, when his health was restored, nature again had its way with him. His exuberant vitality overflowed afresh into the old channels. Yes, Eva was right. It was George's impulse to spend himself, somehow, anyhow, just as it might be another's impulse to spare himself and to save. But John Welch, who had the straight outlook of science, showed little patience with George. "No man has a right to make a muddle of life," he had said, and then bitterly, "God! how I hate a muddle!"