“It’s the only lesson to learn,” he answered—“to be happy while we are young and together.”
About ten o’clock Mr. Lanley left her at home, and she tiptoed up-stairs and hardly dared to draw breath as she undressed for fear she might wake her unhappy mother on the floor below her.
She had resolved to wake early, to breakfast with her mother, to ask to be allowed to accompany her to the hospital; but it was nine o’clock when she was awakened by her maid’s coming in with her breakfast and the announcement not only that Mrs. Farron had been gone for more than an hour, but that there had already been good news from the hospital.
“Il paraît que monsieur est très fort,” she said, with that absolute neutrality of accent that sounds in Anglo-Saxon ears almost like a complaint.
Adelaide had been in no need of companionship. She was perfectly able to go through her day. It seemed as if her soul, with a soul’s capacity for suffering, had suddenly withdrawn from her body, had retreated into some unknown fortress, and left in its place a hard, trivial, practical intelligence which tossed off plan after plan for the future detail of life. As she drove from her house to the hospital she arranged how she would apportion the household in case of a prolonged illness, where she would put the nurses. Nor was she less clear as to what should be done in case of Vincent’s death. The whole thing unrolled before her like a panorama.
At the hospital, after a little delay, she was guided to Vincent’s own room, recently deserted. A nurse came to tell her that all was going well; Mr. Farron had had a good night, and was taking the anesthetic nicely. Adelaide found the young woman’s manner offensively encouraging, and received the news with an insolent reserve.
“That girl is too wildly, spiritually bright,” she said to herself. But no manner would have pleased her.
Left alone, she sat down in a rocking-chair near the window. Vincent’s bag stood in the corner, his brushes were on the dressing-table, his tie hung on the electric light. Immortal trifles, she thought, that might be in existence for years.
She began poignantly to regret that she had not insisted on seeing him again that morning. She had thought only of what was easiest for him. She ought to have thought of herself, of what would make it possible for her to go on living without him. If she could have seen him again, he might have given her some precept, some master word, by which she could have guided her life. She would have welcomed something imprisoning and safe. It was cruel of him, she thought, to toss her out like this, rudderless and alone. She wondered what he would have given her as a commandment, and remembered suddenly the apocryphal last words which Vincent was fond of attributing to George Washington, “Never trust a nigger with a gun.” She found herself smiling over them. Vincent was more likely to have quoted the apparition’s advice to Macbeth: “Be bloody, bold, and resolute.” That would have been his motto for himself, but not for her. What was the principle by which he infallibly guided her?
How could he have left her so spiritually unprovided for? She felt imposed upon, deserted. The busily planning little mind that had suddenly taken possession of her could not help her in the larger aspects of her existence. It would be much simpler, she thought, to die than to attempt life again without Vincent.