A hand grabbed him, or he, beyond recovery of his balance, had followed her. A coastguard grabbed him and dragged him back. He said in a thick, odd voice: "What the devil's the use of that now? You fool, what the devil's the use of that?"
He lay there, the rain stopped, in the sunshine. He just lay there—a minute, an hour, a year, a lifetime, eternity? They went down—a circuitous path to where she lay. They brought her up. They carried her, on a shutter, past him. He gave some wordless sound from his lips and scrambled on his knees towards their burden and threw his arms about it and clung there, with wordless sounds.
One man said: "She's alive, sir."
Another man said: "We'd best try to get her home before—"
A third man said: "Can you walk to show us the way?"
He got up and went stumbling along.
CHAPTER XII
THE SEEING
They carry her to her room. There is only one doctor in Whitecliffe. He is found and fetched; and leaving Mr. and Mrs. Bickers by the bedside, comes down to the sitting-room where is a man stunned to apparent speechlessness by grief, whom he takes to be the patient's brother. The doctor says he will stay till the end, and for "the end" then substitutes "for the night." There is nothing he can do immediately and by himself. He speaks of the possibility of an operation in the morning, but seemingly has no thought of telegraphing to a surgeon he names who could perform it. She will pass away without recovery of consciousness, he fears. There is not only the injury to her head but of her spine. More than that there is the question of— If the case had been taken to the hospital at Market Redding.... The man whom he takes to be her brother drags with blundering fingers from his pocket a packet of banknotes and thrusts them towards him with a curious action—an action suggestive (were not the idea ridiculous) of their being some horrible thing.
Well, are they not the price of her that was to buy her?