The Readjustment Part 23

A buckboard, driven furiously, came over the hill-rise before them--the doctor's rig.

"Ask him--ask him!" she called to her driver. As they drew up alongside, the doctor's driver began talking without need for inquiries.

"Spread rail! The rear car just bucked over the trestle--"

"Anybody dead?"

"Two that I saw--and everybody in the rear car hurt. They're loading 'em on the front car to take 'em to town. Good bye--I've got to bring back medicine before they start!"

The chances were even--the chances were even. If he had been in the front car--relief. If he had been in the rear car--

The thing opened before them like a panorama as they topped the hill.

The engine puffing regularly, normally, the baggage car and one coach on the rails behind it; a little crowd buzzing and rushing up and down the trestle; a black, distorted ma.s.s of iron and splinters at the edge of the water below. Three or four heads appeared above the trestle, and the people swarmed in that direction. The heads grew to four men, carrying between them a bundle covered by a red blanket.

Judge Tiffany spoke for the first time.

"You'd better not see it, Nell!"

His words seemed to draw the curtain away from her self-control.

"Oh, go on--for G.o.d's sake, go on!"

As they drew up beside the undamaged coach, the bearers had just arrived with another body. Eleanor jumped down, rushed to the platform. The thing under the blanket was a woman. She turned into the coach, apprehension growing into certainty. She had not seen him in the crowd. If he were unhurt, he must be first and foremost among the workers.

The coach was a hospital--limp, bandaged people propped up on every seat; in a little s.p.a.ce by the further door, a row of quiet figures which lay as though sleeping. Above them bent two men. Their business-like calm showed that they were physicians. The half of her which stood aloof, observing all things, wondering at all things, the half whose influence kept her now so calm and sane, marvelled that she heard no moaning, tormented sounds. They were in the second stage of injury; the blessed anaesthesia of nature was upon them. For human speech, she heard only the low, quick voices of those who healed and nursed.

She saw a bare arm lifted from the press of huddled forms, saw that a physician had pressed a black bulb to it. The hand--the inevitable configuration of that arm which she had never seen bare--and she knew him.

Bertram lay on his side. His eyes were closed, his whole figure huddled; yet something more than the quiver of his body at the p.r.i.c.k of the syringe told her that he was alive. His color had changed but little; hovering death showed mainly by a sharpening of all the lines of his face. Yet it did not seem to be Bertram, but rather some statue, some ghastly replica of him.

The physician stood up and stretched his back. She came close.

"Will he live?"

He turned impatiently, but he caught her eyes.

"He has a chance. He's young and strong--Is he--yours?"

"Yes--yes! What shall I do for him?"

"Are you sure you're strong enough--you won't faint nor carry on?"

"No--no! I'm sure of that. What may I do?" Judge Tiffany was beside her now. He looked, understood, and said nothing.

"Thank G.o.d for you, then! With all the crowd we haven't sane people enough to nurse one baby! Everything's the matter with him--broken arm, broken collar-bone, shock, and maybe he's injured internally. We can't be sure about that yet. I'm trying to make him comfortable, but"--here the agitated man broke through the calm physician for a moment--"No braces, no slings, no anything! We're going to town as soon as this company will let us. And he must be held. It's the only way to keep him comfortable. Come!"

Judge Tiffany touched the doctor's arm, but he spoke to Eleanor.

"Nell--you'd better let a man do that."

"No. You may help. How shall I hold him?"

All her will concentrated on obedience to direction, she followed the doctor while he drew Bertram's bare arm over her shoulder, set a cushion at his back, showed her how she must support his neck with her right hand.

"Hold him as long as you can, then have your friend relieve you. But change no more often than you find necessary. He'll get jostled enough before we reach town."

The Judge seated himself calmly. She was alone with the care of her dying. The necessity for comforting and rea.s.suring him came into her mind.

"It's all right, Bertram; it's all right!" she whispered. He returned no answer, even of a flickering eyelash. He lay still, inert, a great bulk that tugged at the muscles of her arms.

After a time, her frame adjusted itself to the position. Her perceptions, still keenly alive, told her that her doctor was working over a woman in the corner. Just as the train started, she saw him rise, wipe his hands on his handkerchief, and motion calmly to two of the men. They lifted the woman. Eleanor realized all at once what the motion signified. They had taken her to join the dead in the baggage car.

Next to Bertram lay an old man, his head so wrapped in bandages that she could see only the tip of his grey beard. A middle-aged woman--Eleanor recognized her as a camper whom they had pa.s.sed on the road but yesterday--knelt beside him, talking into his ear about his soul. "Do you lean on your Savior?" she whispered. A kind of pa.s.sing impatience touched Eleanor. So much had her sympathetic spirit absorbed the feelings of these dying ones, that she resented this as an intrusion, an unwelcome distraction from the business of sloughing off the flesh.

A little sag of Bertram's body, which alarmed her for a moment until she saw that the movement came from relaxation of her own arms, called her back to responsibility. The realization that it _had_ called her back brought with it the amazing, shameful realization that it had ever wandered away.

Why--

From the moment when she took him into her arms, she had never thought of him as her dying lover--never as her lover at all!

A man in extremis, a thing so beaten and suffering that she called for it on her Christ--he was all that, in common with the other beaten and battered and senseless wrecks about them. But the feeling that he was her own, about to go from her, had never entered her heart. She was ashamed while she thought of it; but it persisted. Not hers? Why, she had suffered him to kiss her only yesterday! Must she think of such things with a life to save?

Now, her body was giving way with weariness; it seemed that she could hold him no longer. She nodded to Judge Tiffany, therefore; the old man rose and gently took her burden from her. She sank back on the empty seat. When the faintness of fatigue had pa.s.sed, she fixed her eyes on the still face of him who had been her lover.

Why was it? The clear-cut profile, so refined and beautiful since suffering gave it the final touch, had thrilled her only yesterday and through a succession of yesterdays. It had no power to thrill her now.

She tried to put back this unworthy thought, but it persisted. In spite of pity and all decency of the heart, that outer self of hers kept saying it to her like an audible voice. Were he to die now, in her arms, she should work and weep and pray over his pa.s.sing--but only as she would work and weep and pray over that alien old man who lay beside him, that woman whom they had just carried away.

The Judge was flagging. He glanced wearily over his shoulder, as though he hesitated to ask for relief. She rose; and without a word she took his place. And now, as she knelt with Bertram's slight yet heavy breathing in her ear, her thoughts became uncontrollable nightmare--scattered visions and memories of old horrors, as when she saw her father drunk on the pavement; a mult.i.tude of those little shames which linger so long. One incident which was not quite a shame thrust itself forward most insistently of all. It was that episode under the bay tree, when she was only a little girl. Why did that memory start to the surface those tears which had been falling so long within? Her weeping seemed to lift her to a tremendous height of perception, as though that outer self had flowed in upon her.

That which had lured her and dragged her to him in the end, was the life in him, the strong, vigorous body, the gestures, the smiles. That which had held her away from him was the soul within him--high and clean enough as souls go, but not one which she could ever know, and not one which could ever know hers. In this struggle of pa.s.sing, he was all soul; the body was not in it.

She held the plan of her puzzle; it was necessary only to set the scattered blocks into place.

She found herself whispering to him; she checked herself until she remembered that he could not hear:

"O Bertram, you are not mine! O Bertram, you could never be mine!"

Now she could look straight at the possibility of his death or recovery. And she could weigh and choose, in case it was life, between telling him what she felt, or going on with him to the end--walking with a soul apart, yet choosing paths for it, too. That last might be the road of honor. That fine and heroic course, indeed, came to her with a high appeal. She had made her one resolve of duty. Perhaps it was her destiny to immolate herself for duty to the end.

The train bowled on, stopping for no stations. The old man in the corner was unconscious or asleep; the woman who tended him had stopped her spiritual ministrations. A child, propped up in one of the rear seats, had awakened to cry, fallen asleep, awakened and wept again.

She had in her voice a thick, mucous note, which became to Eleanor the motif in that symphony of misery. Otherwise, no one seemed to be making sound except the two physicians. Her own doctor came up once, pressed a syringe again into the bare arm, whispered that it was all going well.

A whistle came m.u.f.fled through the fog; they were slowing down. It was a station; the lights, the clamor of human voices, proved it. Eleanor looked out of the window. A knot of young men had broken for the platform; and she could distinguish the black boxes of cameras. There arose a sharp parley at the rear door; her doctor muttered "reporters--d.a.m.n!" and hurried back. Judge Tiffany rose and followed him. Over her shoulder Eleanor caught the white, intent face of Mark Heath. "He knows; they have told him," she thought.

Judge Tiffany, his mind on the practical necessities of the case, still had it in him to admire the control of that good soldier, the modern reporter. When he told simply what had happened, how the issue lay balanced between life and death, Mark only said:

"My G.o.d!--and me with the story to do!" Then his eye caught Eleanor.