"No, sir," she answered. "The doctor says all immediate danger is over, and he requires nobody with him. I am going to look after my baby. And please, sir, nobody is to go in, for he says she must not be disturbed. The slightest noise might spoil every thing: she must sleep now all she can."
"Very well," said Polwarth, and sat down again.
The day went on; the sun went down; the shadows deepened; and not a sound came from the room. Again and again Dorothy came and peeped up the stair, but seeing the little man at his post, like Zacchaeus up the sycamore, was satisfied, and withdrew. But at length Polwarth bethought him that Ruth would be anxious, and rose reluctantly. The same instant the door opened, and Faber appeared. He looked very pale and worn, almost haggard.
"Would you call Miss Drake?" he said.
Polwarth went, and following Dorothy up the stair again, heard what
Faber said.
"She is sleeping beautifully, but I dare not leave her. I must sit up with her to-night. Send my man to tell my assistant that I shall not be home. Could you let me have something to eat, and you take my place? And there is Polwarth! he has earned his dinner, if any one has. I do believe we owe the poor lady's life to him."
Dorothy ran to give the message and her own orders. Polwarth begged she would tell the groom to say to Ruth as he passed that all was well; and when the meal was ready, joined Faber.
It was speedily over, for the doctor seemed anxious to be again with his patient. Then Dorothy went to Polwarth. Both were full of the same question: had Faber recognized his wife or not? Neither had come to a certain conclusion. Dorothy thought he had, but that he was too hard and proud to show it; Polwarth thought he had not, but had been powerfully reminded of her. He had been talking strangely, he said, during their dinner, and had drunk a good deal of wine in a hurried way.
Polwarth's conclusion was correct: it was with an excitement almost insane, and a pleasure the more sorrowful that he was aware of its transientness, a pleasure now mingling, now alternating with utter despair, that Faber returned to sit in the darkened chamber, watching the woman who with such sweet torture reminded him of her whom he had lost. What a strange, unfathomable thing is the pleasure given us by a likeness! It is one of the mysteries of our humanity. Now she had seemed more, now less like his Juliet; but all the time he could see her at best only very partially. Ever since his fall, his sight had been weak, especially in twilight, and even when, once or twice, he stood over her as she slept, and strained his eyes to their utmost, he could not tell what he saw. For, in the hope that, by the time it did come, its way would have been prepared by a host of foregone thoughts, Dorothy had schemed to delay as much as she could the discovery which she trusted in her heart must come at last; and had therefore contrived, not by drawn curtains merely, but by closed Venetian shutters as well, to darken the room greatly. And now he had no light but a small lamp, with a shade.
He had taken a book with him, but it was little he read that night. At almost regular intervals he rose to see how his patient fared. She was still floating in the twilight shallows of death, whether softly drifting on the ebb-tide of sleep, out into the open sea, or, on its flow, again up the river of life, he could not yet tell. Once the nurse entered the room to see if any thing were wanted. Faber lifted his head, and motioned her angrily away, making no ghost of a sound. The night wore on, and still she slept. In his sleepless and bloodless brain strangest thoughts and feelings went and came. The scents of old roses, the stings of old sins, awoke and vanished, like the pulsing of fire-flies. But even now he was the watcher of his own moods; and when among the rest the thought would come: "What if this should be my own Juliet! Do not time and place agree with the possibility?" and for a moment life seemed as if it would burst into the very madness of delight, ever and again his common sense drove him to conclude that his imagination was fooling him. He dared not yield to the intoxicating idea. If he did, he would be like a man drinking poison, well knowing that every sip, in itself a delight, brought him a step nearer to agony and death! When she should wake, and he let the light fall upon her face, he knew—so he said to himself—he knew the likeness would vanish in an appalling unlikeness, a mockery, a scoff of the whole night and its lovely dream—in a face which, if beautiful as that of an angel, not being Juliet's would be to him ugly, unnatural, a discord with the music of his memory. Still the night was checkered with moments of silvery bliss, in the indulgence of the mere, the known fancy of what it would be if it were she, vanishing ever in the reviving rebuke, that he must nerve himself for the loss of that which the morning must dispel. Yet, like one in a dream, who knows it is but a dream, and scarce dares breathe lest he should break the mirrored ecstasy, he would not carry the lamp to the bedside: no act of his should disperse the airy flicker of the lovely doubt, not a movement, not a nearer glance, until stern necessity should command.