At this shadow of hope—for it was only a shadow—the deadly quiet in which she had kept herself was stirred. She began to tremble exceedingly. I took the candle from her, and gave her a chair.
“Never mind me. It is only for a minute,” she said. One or two deep, hard sighs came, and then she recovered herself. “Now, what is to be done?”
I told her I would do all that was necessary, if she would bring me various things I mentioned.
“Can I help you? There is no one else. Penelope has hurt her foot, and cannot move, and the servants are mere girls. Shall I stay? If there is to be an operation, I am not afraid.”
For I had, unguardedly, taken out of my pocket the case of instruments which, after all, would not be needed. I told her so, adding that I had rather she left me alone with my patient.
“Very well. You will take care of him? You will not hurt him—poor papa!”
Not very likely. If he and I could have changed places,—he assuming my strength and life, I lying on that bed, with death before me, under such a look as his child left him with,—I think I should at that moment have done it.
When I had laid the old man comfortably in his bed, I sat with his wrist under my fingers, counting, beat by beat, the slow pulse, which was one of my slender hopes for his recovery. As the hand dropped over my knee, powerless, almost, as a dead hand, it recalled, I know not how or why, the helpless drop of that, the first dead hand I ever saw. Happily the fancy lasted only a moment; in seasons like this, when I am deeply occupied in the practice of my profession, all such phantasms are laid. And the present case was urgent enough to concentrate all my thoughts and faculties.
I had just made up my mind concerning it, when a gentle knock came to the door, and on my answering, she walked in; glided rather, for she had taken off her silk gown, and put on something soft and dark, which did not rustle. In her face, white as it was, there was a quiet preparedness, more touching than any wildness of grief—a quality which few women possess, but which heaven never seems to give except to women, compelling us men, as it were, to our knees, in recognition of something diviner than anything we have, or are, or were ever meant to be. I mention this, lest it might be thought of me, as is often thought of doctors, that I did not feel.
She asked me no questions, but stood silently beside me, with her eyes fixed on her father. His just opened, as they had done several times before, wandered vacantly over the bed-curtains, and closed again, with a moan.