But Mr. Latimer said only: “As you please,” and left the room.
Stacey knelt on the rug before the couch, but, though Mrs. Latimer touched his hair tremblingly and had sent away her husband to have him there, it was to Catherine that she turned, clasping her hand and making the young woman sit down close beside her on the divan.
The half-hour that followed was atrocious, worse than anything Stacey had ever been through. For he had seen bodies shockingly tortured and minds driven to madness by pain and terror, but this was the destruction of a noble personality, of a character built up bravely through long effort; it was the negation of everything. And the worst of it was that in the broken phrases that Mrs. Latimer cried out—sometimes to him, mostly to Catherine—traces remained of her high, clear, unified intelligence, like drifting debris of a wrecked ship. “My little girl! My poor baby!” she broke out once. “A child again only when—dying! Wasted—wasted—all for nothing, a whole life! Oh, it’s my fault!—no, his! his! his!” (this with a terrible fierceness). “No, mine, too! mine, too!”
But there were pauses of exhaustion between her outbursts, and after a while she grew slightly calmer, merely clinging to Catherine, who spoke little, but in a tone of infinite tenderness. Beneath everything else Stacey felt an awe of Catherine for her deep calm that expressed the very opposite of indifference. As for himself, he could find nothing to do (which was perhaps as well) save once to slip out into the hall and telephone the doctor whom he had seen at Marian’s bedside, to say that he must come with something to put Mrs. Latimer to sleep.
“If I make you some chocolate, dear, you will drink it, will you not?” asked Catherine at last, pleadingly.
“If you wish,” Mrs. Latimer answered, worn out and quieted.
But she kept the young woman’s hand tight clasped in hers, so that Catherine looked up at Stacey for a moment with a faint questioning smile. For the first time tears started to his eyes; there was so much of selfless weary beauty in the look she gave him. He nodded, went quickly out to the kitchen, found the scared cook, and presently himself brought in the chocolate, which Mrs. Latimer drank with trembling gulps, Catherine holding the cup.
Then the doctor came and with Catherine’s help put Mrs. Latimer to bed, while Stacey waited below.
At last Catherine came down again and they went out to the car. Her face looked tired and drawn. The strain had been horrible. Stacey himself, who had perforce borne so small a share of it, was ready to drop.
“Thank you,” he said almost timidly after a moment. “I’m sorry not to have been able to do more. It wasn’t fair to you. You did so much.”