"For God's sake, don't go away!"
Stephen still cradled his hand. He looked curiously at the wretched creature, now lying prone and exhausted. He frowned in the effort to concentrate his mind upon a new and very simple problem. He believed that his hand was seriously infected and that it should be treated at once, that haste was imperative. He believed also that the woman left alone might die. A cold sweat broke out upon him. He had been acutely impatient with his father because he had not weighed his valuable life against two worthless lives and had suffered himself to be murdered. His father, however, had merely taken a chance, there had been a possibility of escape, but for him there was no escape. The mischief was done; unless he had speedy aid he might die in agony.
He felt his heart contract and laid his hand upon it. To die! He was not old. Life which he had recently so bitterly complained of—what inestimable happiness it offered! What delight for the eye! What intense pleasure for the mind! And Ellen—what of Ellen, with whom he had expected to be in a few hours? He had anticipated rapture in the assurance of her love. He might now never see her. It was curious that it was easier to risk his life than to forget his passion!
The moments passed; there was no sound within or without the little house; the woman still lay motionless. It might be that she slept; he realized basely that a step would carry him away.
Then, quite suddenly and simply, he knew that for him there was no choice. He had lived, for all his suffering, selfishly, his heart hardened and not softened by the single affliction of his life. He had done many kindnesses, but he had never made a sacrifice. He had helped the poor, but it had cost him nothing; he had performed almost miraculous cures, but they had been performed in a sense easily.
Yet he was not at heart selfish, and now, rising from depths almost unstirred since his youth, a single powerful impulse moved him. He had come unknowing and unsuspecting to his Dark Tower, which, well for him! was set in a familiar landscape, presided over by the guiding spirit of his youth. There was a verse which said, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it." He had been trained by precept and example; was his father's last hour made easy by confidence in his ultimate return? Did his pleading gaze ask only that the period of departure might not be long? As tenderly as though he had been his father, he bent over the poor bed, forgetting life and all its joys and Ellen.
He remembered now that there was a spring a few yards away. He had been sent there by his father and he had dipped the clear water from an open space beside a bed of water-cress. Making his way thither in the starlight, he filled a pail. He found a box half filled with kindling and built a fire and set the water on it, and fetched his traveling bag. He opened the sore wound on his hand and poured into it half the contents of his bottle of peroxide and bound it up. He found in a dirty cupboard a supply of mustard, provided possibly for this emergency and forgotten. He thought with a faint smile of Miss Knowlton—if her professional eye could see him! He remembered that he had sat for a long time on the weedy bank across the road when he and his father had been here—his car stood beside the exact spot. He seemed to hear now distinctly his father's voice—would it be necessary for him to console the dying? He could not offer a formula upon which he had not thought for years!
He heard a moan in the inner room and returned quickly. The woman had turned once more on her back and had seized her thin chest. Lip and brow were beaded. He worked quickly, the perspiration standing on his own brow. When he had done all he could, he knelt down on the floor and took the clutching hands in his. He spoke, scarcely aware that he was speaking, offering all the comfort that he could give. He had never spoken to Hilda in this fashion; not even quite in this fashion had he dreamed of speaking to Ellen.
"I'll stay with you. I'm sorry for you. It will be better soon. I'm sure it will be better."
When the spasm was over he rose to his feet. In the cessation of agony sleep came quickly. He stood motionless for a long time, occupied with strange thoughts. He was intensely, incredibly happy; he understood suddenly that his father had had this happiness often; his own danger became negligible, he quite forgot it. Even when, as he moved about, the pain in his hand quickened, it was still negligible.