"She's going to be all right, Miss Summers, isn't she?" he asked.
"Oh, perfectly all right!" The nurse's accents were more than cheerful, they were almost jubilant, as if she were singing in chorus. "It isn't really so bad, you know. The whole thing will be over soon, and in a few months she will feel as well as she ever felt in her life. I have a friend Doctor Bridges operated on for this same trouble, and she told me she felt like a girl afterwards. It isn't serious. Not really. Nothing is so serious as people think," added the nurse, who knew, because she had a mother dying of cancer and a father serving a life sentence in prison.
"You hear that, my dear?" the General said, but he was unable to sustain the pitch of Miss Summers' sprightliness.
"Yes, I hear," Eva replied indifferently. The light had ebbed from her face, and she looked wan and tired and almost old. "I hear, but there are times when I am worn out with hoping. I've hoped too much in my life."
"There, now, you're letting yourself droop again," Miss Summers remonstrated. "You must try to fix your thoughts on pleasant things. Nothing is so bad for you as depression."
"I'd better go," the General repeated. "I've let her talk too much. Old men are like that." Patting her shoulder, he added, "Try to sleep well, my dear, and remember I'll be here the first thing in the morning."
She looked up over the glass of milk. "Nine o'clock is the hour, isn't it, Miss Summers?"
"Yes, nine o'clock. I always like my patients to be first. Then it's over before you begin to expect it." She had a gold eyetooth which flashed when she smiled.
"And you'll stay with George? You won't leave him?" Eva was clinging to the hand he held out.
He stooped to kiss her cheek. "Not for a minute. John Welch will see you through. Where is John?"
"He was here just before you came. Nobody knows how good he has been." As he was turning away, she caught his sleeve and asked in a tone that was faintly hysterical, "You won't forget?"
"I shan't forget. Take the rest of your milk, and try to settle down for the night."
He walked hurriedly to the door, and without looking back, shut it after him when he went out into the long and narrow hall. Through the window at the end he could see the paling afterglow, and from this afterglow a thick shadow approached him. Then the electric light flashed on, and he saw that the shadow was John Welch.
"I couldn't see you against the light, John." Grasping his arm, he drew him farther away from Eva's door into the sun-room, where a few friends of patients were waiting. As he entered, they glanced at him curiously over old magazines, every eye rolling automatically in his direction, and he noticed that all the faces wore the same look of vacant expectancy. Turning hastily from the room, he walked to the farther end of the hall. "I am anxious, John," he said in a shaken voice. "I can't help feeling anxious. But I suppose the nurse is right when she says the operation is simple."
"Did she say that? Oh, of course she would." His face was drawn and sallow, as if he had not slept, and there was a frown beneath his still flaming crest. While he looked at him General Archbald remembered that John had once called the romantic mind "disorderly." But that was his favourite criticism. All emotion, even a love of beauty, seemed disorderly to him, and his ideal world had all the clean bareness of a laboratory or a tiled bathroom. A fine character, no doubt. Yes, certainly a fine character if it is possible to make character according to formula. "I don't know how simple," John continued, lowering his voice until his words were almost inaudible. "She has a fifty-fifty chance, I should say. Her heart isn't quite as strong as it ought to be, but her kidneys are sound."
The General stared back mutely, while he moistened his lips which felt suddenly blistered. It was distressing, it was indelicate, to hear Mrs. Birdsong's vital organs spoken of as plainly as if they were blocks of wood. Young people were more direct than they used to be, and he knew that John, after the habit of all realists in every age, disliked sentimentality. Well, perhaps he was right. There was no doubt that he loved Mrs. Birdsong devotedly, though he was able to stand by and watch a surgeon cut into her body. He was clean, competent, and as hard as nails even in his affection. "I'm not sure," the old man thought, "that it isn't the better way. Wherever there is softness, life is certain to leave its scar." Glancing over his shoulder at the vases of flowers which had been placed outside the doors for the night, he asked in a muffled tone, "Everything, then, is in her favour?"
John nodded. He had pleasant, sharply cut features, with lips that were too thin and tight beneath the reddish shade of a moustache. When he smiled, his light eyes behind rimless glasses appeared to change colour, and his face was not, the General thought, unattractive. If only he would smile frequently, any girl might be forgiven for falling in love with him. But he smiled very seldom, only when he meant it, and he was not smiling now.
"Everything," he replied, "except that worry. There's something on her mind. You know how secretive she is."
The other's assent was scarcely more than a sigh. "I think you'll find her easier. She talked to me very frankly."
"I am glad of that. For weeks, for years, I suppose, she has been worrying. She has gone round and round in her mind, like a squirrel in a cage, but not a word has escaped. All the conditions of her life are unnatural. I honestly believe," he burst out harshly, "that she has never drawn a natural breath since she was married. If she dies," he added, dropping his voice again, "it will be the long pretense of her life that has killed her."
The old man glanced nervously down the deserted hall. "I understand that better than you can. We were brought up that way. It was part of the code."
John's thin lips curled, and the General expected a laugh. But none came. Instead, the young man merely muttered under his breath, "And no doubt the code takes care of George too?"
"Not entirely; but George has his points, you know."
"I admit that. God knows, I'm no moralist, but I dislike a muddle. I dislike a—a disorderly world."
"It's easy to blame George," the old man rejoined sadly. "All of us are ready to do that, but we must remember that the wrong side of his life has had nothing whatever to do with—with his marriage."
John glared at him. "The devil it hasn't!" he exclaimed, and bit back his unuttered laugh. "Well, I'm no moralist. I'll look in on Cousin Eva again before she goes to sleep."
There was an abrupt, angry note in his voice; but, then, as the General reflected, John was always a little abrupt. That was why he could never really talk to him. It would be easier to talk of himself to George, who was unstable and sympathetic, than to John, who was hard and sincere. Again he was convulsed by the longing to speak of himself, to let the past gush out in a torrent of memory. But what could he tell? What was left of his joy, his anguish, and his despair? No, there was nothing he could put into words. Nothing had ever happened to him. Nothing but life; and life had happened to all persons everywhere under the sun. He felt dazed and tremulous, and it seemed to him that his will to live was spinning down, like a top that revolves more and more slowly before it comes to rest.
"After all," he said to himself, in a futile effort to restore his equilibrium, "I suppose fortitude will be the last thing to go."
CHAPTER 3
As Jenny Blair went out into the yard, spring rushed to meet her, and she thought, with wistful vagueness, "I wish I knew what I wanted!" The breeze on her cheek and the scent of pale spring flowers made her restless. Though the ground near the house was bare, an uneven border of jonquils trailed beside the new asphalt walk, and the cool afternoon shadows spread like pleated silk under the magnolia trees by the gate. Between the walk and the gate, the unmown grass was sprinkled with small white heads of clover, and all the clover blossoms and the fringed grasses seemed to be running before the wind. Suddenly, the whole world, even the magnolias and the shadows, joined in the race. The April afternoon was running somewhere—but where? A flushed light was blown into her mind. "Spring is so lovely. Everything is so lovely. Oh, I feel as if I were melting!" A little ahead of her, William looked back, sniffed the air, and bounded over the jonquils in pursuit of an unattainable scent.