iv
The next day in the midst of a conference with Mordecai Galt’s eyes closed. The doctor was in the house. He shook his head knowingly.
There followed a fortnight of horrible suspense. Most of the time we did not know at a given moment whether he was alive or dead. Once for three days he did not open his eyes and we thought it was over. Then he looked at us again and we knew he had been conscious all the time. The faculty of speech never returned. There would be a rumor that he was dead and prices would fall on the Stock Exchange; then a rumor that he wasn’t, and prices would rise again. The newspapers established a death watch in the private Galt station and kept reporters there day and night to flash the news away. To keep them from the house I had to promise them solemnly that I would send word down promptly if the fatality happened.
Mrs. Galt and Natalie watched alternately. One or the other sat at his bedside all the time. One evening about 8 o’clock I was sharing the vigil with Natalie when Galt opened his eyes. We were sitting on opposite sides of his bed. He looked from one of us to the other slowly, several times, and then fixed a wanting expression on me.
I knew what he wanted without asking. Natalie knew also. It concerned us deeply, uniting our lives, yet at that moment we were hardly conscious of ourselves. What thrilled us was the thought of something we should do for him, because he wanted it.
I put out my hand to her across the bed. She clasped it firmly.
“That is what you mean,” I said.
“Yes,” he answered.
A flood of recollection swept through me. I saw Natalie all the way back to girlhood, to that night of our first meeting in her father’s house. I could not remember when I had not loved her. I saw everything that had happened between us, saw it in sunlight, and wondered how I could have been so unaware. Trifling incidents, almost forgotten, became suddenly luminous, precious and significant. And this instant had been from the beginning appointed!
Natalie, still clasping my hand, leaned far over and gazed intently into his eyes.
“You want me to marry Coxey?” she asked, in a tone of caressing anxiety, which seemed wholly unconscious of me, almost excluding.
“Yes,” he answered, repeating it several times, if that may be understood. The answer lingered in his eyes. Then they closed, slowly, as ponderous gates swing to, against his utmost will, and they never opened again.
He was buried in the side of Moonstool. All of his great enemies came to assist at the obsequies. Bullguard was one of the pallbearers.