I took a step toward the house. “Carstairs’s opinion is worth as much as that of any man living,” I answered.
“But will he tell me the truth?”
I shook my head. “He will tell you what he thinks. No man’s judgment is infallible.”
Turning away from me, she moved with an energetic step to the house. As I followed her into the hall the threshold creaked under my tread, and I was visited by an apprehension, or, if you prefer, by a superstitious dread of the floor above. Oh, I got over that kind of thing before I was many years older; though in the end I gave up medicine, you know, and turned to literature as a safer outlet for a suppressed imagination.
But the dread was there at that moment, and it was not lessened by the glimpse I caught, at the foot of the spiral staircase, of a scantily furnished room, where three lean black-robed figures, as impassive as the Fates, were grouped in front of a wood fire. They were doing something with their hands. Knitting, crocheting, or plaiting straw?
At the head of the stairs the woman stopped and looked back at me. The light from the kerosene lamp on the wall fell over her, and I was struck afresh not only by the alien splendour of her beauty, but even more by the look of consecration, of impassioned fidelity that illumined her face.
“He is very strong,” she said in a whisper. “Until this trouble came on him he had never had a day’s illness in his life. We hoped that hard work, not having time to brood, might save us; but it has only brought the thing we feared sooner.”
There was a question in her eyes, and I responded in the same subdued tone. “His health, you say, is good?” What else was there for me to ask when I understood everything?
A shudder ran through her frame. “We used to think that a blessing, but now—” She broke off and then added in a lifeless voice, “We keep two field hands in the room day and night, lest one should forget to watch the fire, or fall asleep.”
A sound came from a room at the end of the hall, and, without finishing her sentence, she moved swiftly toward the closed door. The apprehension, the dread, or whatever you choose to call it, was so strong upon me, that I was seized by an impulse to turn and retreat down the spiral staircase. Yes, I know why some men turn cowards in battle.