“If there could be something that would rouse her,” murmured one; “something that would prick her will-power and goad it into action! But this lethargy--this wholesale giving up!” he finished with a gesture of despair.
“I know,” frowned the other; “and I’ve tried--day after day I’ve tried. But there’s nothing. I’ve exhausted every means in my power. I didn’t know but you--” He paused questioningly.
The younger man shook his head.
“No,” he said. “If you can’t, I can’t. You’ve been her physician for years. If anyone knows how to reach her, you should know. I suppose you’ve thought of--her son?”
“Oh, yes. Jed was sent for long ago, but he had gone somewhere into the interior on a prospecting trip, and was very hard to reach. It is doubtful if word gets to him at all until--too late. As you know, perhaps, it is rather an unfortunate case. He has not been home for years, anyway, and the Nortons--James is Mrs. Darling’s nephew--have been making all the capital they can out of it, and have been prejudicing her against him--quite unjustly, in my opinion, for I think it’s nothing more nor less than thoughtlessness on the boy’s part.”
“Hm-m; too bad, too bad!” murmured the other, as he turned and led the way to the street door.
Back in the sick-room the old woman still lay motionless on the bed. She was wondering--as she had wondered so often before--why it took so long to die. For days now she had been trying to die, decently and in order. There was really no particular use in living, so far as she could see. Ella and Jim were very kind; but, after all, they were not Jed, and Jed was away--hopelessly away. He did not even want to come back, so Ella and Jim said.
There was the money, too. She did not like to think of the money. It seemed to her that every nickel and dime and quarter that she had painfully wrested from the cost of keeping soul and body together all these past years lay now on her breast with a weight that crushed like lead. She had meant that money for Jed. Ella and Jim were kind, of course, and she was willing they should have it; yet Jed--but Jed was away.
And she was so tired. She had ceased to rouse herself, either for the medicine or for the watery broths they forced through her lips. It was so hopelessly dragged out--this dying; yet it must be over soon. She had heard them tell the neighbors only yesterday that she was unconscious and that she did not know a thing of what was passing around her; and she had smiled--but only in her mind. Her lips, she knew, had not moved.
They were talking now--Ella and Jim--out in the other room. Their voices, even their words, were quite distinct, and dreamily, indifferently, she listened.