At this moment these words had no particular significance to me, but there chanced a time when they came home with great force. I think, indeed, that she was speaking more to herself than to me. Suddenly she turned to me.
"I wonder," she said, "if I am as cruel as you think me—for, indeed,
I do not know. But I have been through many things."
Here her eyes grew cold and hard. The words that followed seemed in no sequence. "Yet," she said, "I will go and see him to-morrow. . . . Good-night." After about an hour I went below to Galt Roscoe's cabin. I drew aside the curtain quietly. Justine Caron evidently had not heard me. She was sitting beside the sick man, her fingers still smoothing away the pillow from his fevered face and her eyes fixed on him. I spoke to her. She rose. "He has slept well," she said. And she moved to the door.
"Miss Caron," I said, "if Mrs. Falchion is willing, you could help me to nurse Mr. Roscoe?"
A light sprang to her eyes. "Indeed, yes," she said.
"I will speak to her about it, if you will let me?" She bowed her head, and her look was eloquent of thanks. After a word of good-night we parted.
I knew that nothing better could occur to my patient than that Justine Caron should help to nurse him. This would do far more for him than medicine—the tender care of a woman—than many pharmacopoeias.
Hungerford had insisted on relieving me for a couple of hours at midnight. He said it would be a good preparation for going on the bridge at three o'clock in the morning. About half-past two he came to my cabin and waked me, saying: "He is worse—delirious; you had better come."
He was indeed delirious. Hungerford laid his hand on my shoulder. "Marmion," he said, "that woman is in it. Like the devil, she is ubiquitous. Mr. Roscoe's past is mixed up with hers somehow. I don't suppose men talk absolute history in delirium, but there is no reason, I fancy, why they shouldn't paraphrase. I should reduce the number of nurses to a minimum if I were you."
A determined fierceness possessed me at the moment. I said to him: "She shall nurse him, Hungerford—she, and Justine Caron, and myself."