XXXVIII The Greater Love
I
The consulting surgeon was still upstairs with Dr. Schubert and the nurse. In the sun-room, the Venetian blinds drawn to shut out the hot July rays, the family sat, awaiting the verdict. Sydney and Eileen had hurried home from the West in response to a conservative telegram from Lary. Sylvia and her husband were already there. The meeting of the sisters was reserved, befitting the occasion. Now Sylvia forgot her father—her growing resentment because of the general misunderstanding with regard to her mother’s alleged visit—as she gazed across the spacious room at the beautiful young woman whom she could with difficulty accept as Mrs. Sydney Schubert.
“I can’t understand it,” she whispered to Oliver. “You know what a raw, scraggy girl she was when we left here. I couldn’t make out what Hal Marksley saw in her. But for Syd—he had such an eye for beauty. He never went with a girl who was plain or homely. Mamma never wrote us how she had changed.”
“I told you a long time ago,” her husband retorted, “that the ugly duckling had a way of growing into the swan of the family.”
Sylvia flushed, annoyed, and lapsed into silence.
II
Outside the passer-by paused to look curiously at the house. David Trench hovered between life and death, and the town forgot the summer heat in its anxious sympathy. No one had known what a great man he was, what an irreparable loss his death would mean to the community. All over the town little groups of prominent men discussed the catastrophe with hushed breathing. The labourers who had done David’s bidding for years wiped furtive tears from their eyes when they were told that the case was all but hopeless.
Fifty—the meridian of life! A younger man would stand a better chance. Dr. Schubert feared a spinal lesion. Yet the shock to the nervous system might account for the torpor that had prevailed, with fleeting lucid intervals, for four days. If that were all, the human machine would right itself presently.
Early Sunday morning Mr. Marksley had come to the house to inquire about the patient, and to repudiate any responsibility for the accident ... and had encountered Lavinia Trench’s tongue in a manner that he was not likely to forget. She had another score to settle with this man and his family, unnamed but not absent from the motive power of her attack. The outburst had a salutary effect on the woman who, after the first excitement of David’s home-coming, had moved with the automatism of a sleep-walker. When he had gone, she sought Judith. Larimore must go at once and arrange with Dr. Schubert for consultation, the best surgeon in St. Louis.
III
When they were alone, she fell on her daughter-in-law’s neck, sobbing hysterically: “Oh, oh, oh, if he dies I shall go distracted. He doesn’t dare to die ... now. If he was going to die, why couldn’t it have been sooner? Oh, my God in heaven, what am I saying? Judith, can’t you save him? Don’t you know what it would mean for him to die now?”
“Try to be calm, mother. The case isn’t quite desperate.”
“Oh, but my case is desperate. You don’t know.... If you could have heard him, last night! He said the most terrible thing. He must have been thinking it, or it wouldn’t have slipped out like that, when his mind was wandering. When you think a thing over and over, you say it without meaning to. He took my hands and said he was only a carpenter’s son ... but Ch—rist was a carpenter’s son, too ... and it was worth carrying a cross all these years, to have me, when I belonged to another man.”
“Mother! Oh, this is pitiful.”
“I wanted to get down on my knees and tell him that I never belonged to any other man. I wanted to confess that I was the vilest sinner, and unworthy of his love. It wasn’t me, at all. I was standing to one side, looking at David and me, and thinking what I would do it I was in Vine Larimore’s place. And when I walked away, there didn’t seem to be any floor under my feet.”
“Mother, dear, why didn’t you open your heart to him, when you were so close?”
“No, no!” she cried, beating back the suggestion with baffled hands. “You never had David look at you with condemnation. Oh, I would rather have him slap my face. I could resent that. But to have him condemn—and then forgive....” She swayed weakly, all her force concentrated in the relentless mouth. “Judith, if he dies, it will be on my head. You told me that it was as bad to sin in thought as to carry out the desire. I wanted to kill David. Don’t look at me like that. I have to tell you. There is no one else I can trust—and I’ll babble it, when I don’t know I’m talking, if I don’t get it out of my mind.”
“How do you mean, mother?”
“Twice I tried. Once when you were in Europe—when his health was so poor—and I was going to give him the wrong medicine. And six weeks ago, when he brought a lot of money home—and I thought it would look as if a burglar did it. It was just after you took Theo to New York, and we were alone in the house. At the last moment, my courage failed. But if he dies, I will be held accountable for his murder. Judith, he has to live. Don’t you see....”
IV
And thus it came about that the great specialist had been sent for. Already he had been up there in David’s room for more than an hour. Now a door was opening, two pairs of feet were descending the stairs. Before those in the sun-room realized it, the distinguished man had passed to the waiting cab and was gone. Lavinia was on her feet, aquiver with excitement.
“Where is he going? I want to ask him a hundred questions.”
“He has told me everything you need to know,” the old family physician told her sternly. “He will send us another nurse from St. Louis—a young man capable of handling a dead weight. My diagnosis, unfortunately, was correct.”
“Will he get well?” Lavinia’s lips were blue and her eyes protruded.
“We must wait and see. He will be paralysed from the waist down.”
David to sit in a wheel-chair the rest of his life! Vine staggered from the room. Her daughter-in-law followed, fearful for one or the other of those two actors in life’s sorry drama. But the stricken woman only paused an instant at her husband’s door, and passed on to the performance of some commonplace duty. Judith returned to the lower hall, to hear Dr. Schubert say:
“He begged me not to let them prolong his life. Said it was wrong to hang on, when he had finished his task. He would have a fighting chance, if he had the least recuperative desire. David doesn’t want to get well. He said that death was nothing to be afraid of—after a man had lived.”
“He sees an honourable way out of the hell he has had for thirty years,” Syd muttered, his blue eyes wrathful, his slender hands clenched. “I hope there is a heaven—that he’s so sure of. We know what it would be for him here, chained down to a pair of helpless legs. All his life he has walked away from it, when he had taken all he could endure. It would break Eileen’s heart to see her father—”
Out in the kitchen Drusilla burst all at once into song:
“God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform.
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.”
The nurse hurried down to check the stridulous singing, and to say that Mr. Trench wanted to see his two daughters, Judith and Eileen, together. The specialist had said it would do him no harm to talk quietly with his family.
V
At the threshold Eileen asked, her face white with grief: “Judith, did I do this? Am I to blame for his fall? Last night he told Theo that when he was up on that ledge, he saw something. And the pity and horror of it made him lose his footing. The poor baby thought he meant the burning of that ugly gable.”
“I know what he had in mind, dear. You can go to him without a pang of regret.”
A moment later the girl was kneeling at her father’s side. There was no blemish on the beautiful face, no wasting, as of disease, and the blue eyes smiled tenderly, their smile changing to protest, as she cried:
“Oh, papa, this is the hardest part of my punishment—to know that I made you suffer. If only I had known!”
“You brought me the only real happiness of my life. It was worth all I paid. When I saw you—the day you came home from Europe—I almost died of joy. And when I heard you give your vow to Sydney, I said: ‘My cup runneth over.’ I know now why Sylvia had to treat him so cruelly. I asked God to make her realize his worth. What foolish children we are, when we pray. I knew the sorrow of his boyhood, and how pure his heart was. Eileen, none of us knew that he had to minister to a gentle, afflicted mother, all those years ... just to fit him to be your husband.”
“Papa!” The girl’s tears wet her father’s face. “And only you could have seen it. There isn’t another man in the world who could have taken me—without ever humiliating me—and made me want to be the best woman that ever lived.”
“And you won’t ever forget that men need love?”
“They need it more than we do. Perhaps I can make up some of what I owe you—when I take care of Syd’s father ... make his home bright and happy.”
David stroked her hand, his eyes wandering to the face of Judith who stood, shaken with emotion, at the foot of the bed.
“Come to me, dear daughter. I have something to tell you, while I have my wits about me. It may be our last chance.”
The woman pressed her hand to her quivering chin, as the sobs surged up in her throat. Then she hid her face in the pillow, her cheek close to the dear face, so that David could whisper in her ear:
“You took care of the paper? You won’t let her know I saw it? After I am gone, she can go to him and be happy. I forgive them, as Christ has forgiven me.”
“Father! Now I can believe there was a Christ.”
“It wasn’t her fault, Judith. You were never harsh with Eileen. You must not be harsh with her. She was too brilliant for me. I was never anything but a drag. I was too stupid to understand, when she told me I had won her away from him. If I had had any wit—but I did love her so!”
It was not a wail of regret. Just a simple statement of fact. He had bought a priceless treasure and had paid for it with the sorrow of the loveless years. He looked up, to see Eileen gazing in troubled wonder.
“I didn’t mean to say so much; but I believe it would be all right for you to tell her—about her mother. If it was right for Eileen—it couldn’t have been wrong for her mother. We can’t see the flowers when we put the ugly bulbs into the ground. Perhaps her own child can help you show her the path.”
“Father, I can’t endure it,” Judith cried. “It was I who blundered. I tried to show her the way. I didn’t know what her ailment was. I opened the wrong medicine.”
“You gave her your best. That’s all any of us can do. You and Eileen and I have suffered; but for my poor Vine it is terrible. She had so much love to give, and it was all sealed up in her heart until it—putrified—poisoned her. Tell her that she was not to blame. Tell her that ... Christ died ... to make others ... happy....”
The words trailed off in a half audible whisper, and David Trench slept.