Grit Lawless Part 49

"At this stage, impossible to say. It will be touch and go. But as I dislike losing my patients, I never admit the go until the hammer falls."

The Colonel looked after him as he walked away in the sunshine, feeling oddly discouraged, and very disinclined to re-enter the sitting-room.

When, bracing himself to face it, he turned the door-handle and went in, he found that Mrs Lawless had dried her eyes, and was sitting very quiet and entirely composed, looking out of the window.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

Who shall tell of the moods and feelings, the alternating between hope and despair, that govern the mind of the looker-on at the conflict between life and death about the bed of one who is dear; the futility of tears, of intercession; the long drawn agony of suspense? Day by day, hourly almost, the mood varies, hope fluctuates, till finally depression settles upon the spirit, crushes it, reduces it to a state of dull acquiescence in the inevitable ordering of things.

Had Zoe Lawless been permitted to take an active part in the nursing the suspense would have told on her less, but it was almost beyond endurance to be denied all access to the room where the man she loved, and had so little understood, lay for the greater part of the time delirious, yielding up his life without a struggle for it, owning himself beaten,-- done.

Mr Burton gave her frequent bulletins, sometimes hopeful, sometimes, despite his utmost endeavour to appear sanguine before her, depressed.

The final issue had become to him also a matter of tremendous importance. He had a very warm regard for this man of striking personality, who had come into his quiet monotonous life and drawn him as a protagonist into the midst of startling and unusual events. And he was profoundly sorry for the beautiful woman who was his wife, and yet appeared to have no place nor share in his life. Mr Burton, knowing nothing of the circ.u.mstances surrounding the lives of these two, refrained from criticising either. He formed his liking impartially, and reserved judgment.

Every morning Mrs Lawless accompanied him part of the way to the school, and sometimes in the evening she would meet him coming home. He was the only human being to whom she could talk unreservedly. Colonel Grey had gone back to the coast after having arranged for a daily bulletin. He told Mr Burton to telegraph for him if his presence was needed, and this Mr Burton also undertook to do, supposing him to mean in the event of a fatal termination.

The days pa.s.sed; they grew warmer; but Lawless made no progress towards recovery.

"He is not going to get well," Zoe said with conviction one morning to the doctor when she interviewed him after he left the sick-room.

The doctor looked nonplussed.

"He makes no fight," he answered, as though puzzled to account for this ready giving in. Then he added, with one of his rare attempts at encouragement: "But he is still with us."

The hope thus sparingly dealt out was not sufficiently convincing to rea.s.sure her. She felt that the sand in the gla.s.s was running low. If only she might be allowed to sit beside him, to touch him! ... She feared that he might slip from her in his sleep perhaps, and that she might not know in time.

"You'll call me--you'll be sure to call me," she said to the nurses continually, "if there's any change for the worse?"

And one morning the call came. She was in bed when the nurse tapped at the door. She did not stay to dress herself, but slipping on a loose wrapper, pinned her hair up carelessly, and hurried to the sick-room.

The doctor had been sent for but had not yet arrived. Both nurses were in the room. The night-nurse, who was only then relieved, remained to be of a.s.sistance. Lawless had been violently sick. He now lay back on the pillow exhausted with closed eyes, breathing so slightly that he scarcely seemed to breathe at all. He had all the appearance of a man who is rapidly sinking.

"Is it the end?" Zoe whispered to one of the nurses in an awestruck voice.

"I'm afraid so," the woman answered, and placed a chair for her beside the bed.

She sank into it, and leaning forward looked fearfully at the quiet figure, the closed eyes, the pinched grey features. Almost she could fancy that he was dead already. She took one of the listless hands. It lay in hers limply, without response, without sense of feeling. She drew it to her and kissed it. Then she laid her head upon the pillow beside his and drew his face to hers, and held it pressed close against her cheek.

And so the doctor found her when he entered with her jealous arms clasping the inert figure, satisfying their long starvation of denial by contact, and with the glowing beauty of her warm rounded cheek resting against the shrunken colourless face on the pillow that had given no sign of life or movement since her entry. The doctor leant over the bed. He placed a quiet hand upon her shoulder to prevent her moving, and bending, low looked intently into the still face.

"He is asleep," he said, and straightened himself and moved noiselessly away.

And Zoe Lawless remained where she was, undisturbed by everything and everyone about her, as oblivious as the sick man of external things.

She was beyond thinking of the issues. She had ceased to wonder whether this crisis in his illness which meant the turning-point one way or the other would decide in his favour or not. He was hers. That was all that mattered then. Whether it were life or death that claimed him, it had given him to her. In the detachment of the moment that was the only thing that held any reality for her. She had got outside of life for a time. The things that went on in the world did not concern her; she had drawn apart from it all to a remote distance and was happy in her isolation with the body of her love.

All that day Lawless lay in the same comatose condition. It was impossible to say when he slept and when he was awake. He never appeared entirely conscious. At intervals the nurse gave him nourishment or a dose of medicine. She did not disturb Mrs Lawless, save at meal times to insist on her leaving the room in quest of food.

Zoe went reluctantly, and wandered back after a brief absence, and took her place as before. Whether she had eaten in the interval was problematical; but the change and movement were a relief.

She stayed with him until nine o'clock that night. When she left he was sleeping soundly and comfortably; and, white and weary but extraordinarily happy, she went to bed and fell promptly into a deep and dreamless sleep.

And the next day the bedroom door was closed against her again. He was better. He was fully conscious, but he made no demand to see her; and in compliance with the doctor's wishes she remained outside.

"Yesterday was the crisis," he said to her. "He's turned the corner.

He isn't out of the wood, but if there are no excitements he ought to pull through."

She smiled when he unnecessarily cautioned her to keep out of sight.

She was not at all likely to prejudice her husband's chances of recovery, even though she never saw him again.

Her chief pleasure during the next few days was in listening to Mr Burton's sc.r.a.ps of information concerning the wonderful doings and sayings of the invalid on the occasions when he went, as he usually did twice a day, into the sick-room. Even the accounts of the nourishment he took were absorbingly interesting.

Mr Burton came out of the bedroom one morning laughing, and, accompanied by Zoe, set out for his work. She looked at him wistfully as they left the hotel together. The smile still lingered in his eyes when they were out upon the road.

"I am all impatience," she said, "to hear what amuses you. Was it something--Hugh said?"

"He called me a fool," Mr Burton said, and chuckled,--"a very p.r.o.nounced fool." He had, as a matter of fact, called him a d.a.m.ned fool, but Mr Burton could not bring himself to use such an expression before a woman. "That shows a very decided improvement. I think if there had been anything handy he would have thrown it. Impatience is a healthy sign."

"Oh!" she said, and the tears welled in her eyes so that she turned aside her face to hide them. "If you only knew how jealous I feel--of you!" And on another occasion she asked him: "Does he never mention me?"

"No," Mr Burton answered with obvious reluctance. "You must remember,"

he added in a kindly desire to soften the negative, "that since he saw you he has been so very ill that probably what happened before has been entirely wiped out. It is possible that he has forgotten seeing you, that he does not know you are here."

That day she gathered a great bunch of wild flowers, and arranged them in a vase, and asked him to carry them to the sick-room.

"Say that a lady staying at the hotel sent them to him," she said.

He did her bidding. He carried the vase into the bedroom and placed it on the dressing-table where the tired eyes could rest on it without effort.

"Bloemetjes," he explained, and smiled at the patient.

"Ah!" Lawless smiled too. "Been botanising, have you? And I benefit by the fruits of your labour. It's kind of you to remember a poor devil who can't even crawl out into the sunshine. It's precious dull work lying here, Burton. I don't know what I should do if it wasn't for your visits--cut my throat, if they'd give me a chance."

"Oh! you grow better now with every day," Mr Burton answered cheerfully. "Discontent is a proof of convalescence. You'll soon be able to do your own botanising. By the way, I don't wish to appropriate thanks that are not due to me. I had nothing to do with the gathering of those flowers. A lady staying in the hotel sent them to you."

Lawless made no immediate response. His weary, fretful gaze sought the flowers, rested upon them a moment, and then turned deliberately away.

"Very kind of her," he answered briefly, and was careful not to refer to the subject again.

Mr Burton regretted that he had no more expansive message of appreciation to carry away with him. But Mrs Lawless did not appear disappointed. She had not expected more. His want of curiosity as to the ident.i.ty of the sender of the flowers told her what she desired to know. He was fully aware that she was staying in the hotel.

The next day she gathered fresh flowers, and Mr Burton carried them in as before. On this occasion the recipient made no remark; so far as Mr Burton saw he did not even look at them.

The little man carried away a sorely troubled heart. After his simple fashion he had grown fond of Zoe Lawless. It was a real delight to him to bear her any small crumb of comfort, to have to go to her empty-handed distressed him beyond measure. She shook her head at sight of his serious face and smiled faintly. She could always judge the nature of the news he brought before he imparted it by the gravity or gladness of his look. To-day it was very grave, and since the patient's condition no longer called for serious anxiety, she knew her offering had not been well received.

"He snubbed my poor little gift," she said.

And he wondered how she had divined it, and sought, as he always did when he believed she was feeling hurt, to offer consolation.

"He's rather peevish to-day," he explained excusingly. "He gets weary of lying there with nothing to do, and it makes him irritable. Not that he said anything unkind about the flowers... He--he didn't appear to notice them."

She nodded.