Neil pushed the wicker chair a few inches nearer the side of the bed for Lewis’ benefit. Lewis, taking the chair, was moved by the effect the dark crucifix, bathed in afternoon light from New England earth and sky, produced on his mood. For, out of doors like this, superimposed against New England fields and sky, the crucifix threw new proportions, as it were, athwart Lewis’ concepts. It produced space for infinities and eternities of joyful well-being. Without analyzing it—indeed scarcely noting it—Lewis accepted the shifting of proportions, the touch of sweetness his passing glance at the cross had brought, with simple gratitude: an unuttered thank-you to the Savior.
Neil was saying, “I’ll be within call, Doctor, if you want anything.” As Neil spoke, he came around past Lewis’ shoulder and adjusted Teresa’s pillow, his arm for an instant back of it, under her shoulders. “Isn’t that better? Is it all right, Teresa?”
The look that passed between the boy and the girl then was one that Lewis charged his heart to remember. It was love, of course. And love between a man and a woman. Complete recognition of all that such love implies. Yet, although this recognition was no new thing with them, they had kissed each other only when both thought Teresa was dying, and in farewell. And beyond this, not even in farewell—since they were forewarned, having “fallen” once—their lips would never touch again this side of Paradise. Lewis knew. If Neil had not confided in him on the drive here, by silences and broken words, Lewis would still have seen the definiteness of their renunciation in the light of the smiling glance that had passed between them as Neil adjusted the pillow, and known that their love held no flaw of possible betrayal in it. These two were at peace with their Faith and everything of both agony and joy that it entailed for them. But this was not renunciation as religionless moralists think of it. It was simplicity, the simplicity of spiritual health.
When Neil had gone, leaving Lewis and the sick girl alone, Lewis was suddenly shy of Teresa. It was she who should measure his health, not he hers. For it is not the whole but the sick who need a physician. Yet he took Teresa’s wrist, lying there on her counterpane, and started counting her pulse.
Then Teresa laughed—putting him off, making him lose the count. “I thought you never made an examination without Janet to take down notes,” she protested. “She’s here, quite handy. Sha’n’t we call her?”
“No, thanks. This is an exception. I’ll remember well enough.” And indeed he would. Every word that Teresa gave him, as he asked it, of family history, the course of the development of her disease and the treatment it had had, was etched on his mind for all of life, he felt. He needed no filing card for Teresa. But neither had he needed her answers to his short, quick questions. When he came to it, the examination he gave her lungs told him that she was doomed.
After that examination he sat back, trying to smile at Teresa, trying to be natural. Wasn’t there something simple and of ordinary day that he could say? But he was shy of this girl as he had never been shy of any one in all this mortal world before. Shy but not ill at ease. It was good to be here, he felt. Simply that.
Teresa was smiling into his attempted smile. “Are you really all done?” she asked.
“I think so. The specialists will be more thorough, of course. But I know what to do now, what man we want for you.”
“But you will tell me what you think yourself, Doctor? How ill I am?” She put her hand under her pillow as she asked the brave question and kept it there. Lewis knew that she had found her rosary and was holding it. “They say—Neil and Doctor Clark—even Petra—that I must go away to a sanitarium somewhere. Leave Mary’s Field. But that won’t happen, will it? I can stay here. I needn’t leave Mary’s Field. Is that what you think?”