The rustle and stir of the early waking city soaked in fine-filtered sounds through the window. Of what use were its multitudinous strivings, its tangled hopes, its varied suffering? The unending quiet of softened noises beyond the spotless, ruffled screens hurt her. She could have screamed, inarticulately, frantically, to scare away that dreadful, stolid, lethargic thing that sprawled in the air. Her nails left little, curved, purpled dents in her palms that smarted when she unclenched her fingers. It would be easier to bear it if he cried out—if he babbled unmeaningness, or hurled reproaches. Only—that still prostration, that anxious expression about the lines of the forehead, that silence, growing into—— No, no! Not that! Not—death!
Lois sat aching fiercely at the smouldering longing in the shadowy depths of the other’s spaniel-like eyes. The tawny-brown surge of her hair, swept back from her forehead, stood out against the white of the blank wall, cameo-like. She suddenly crouched by Lois’s chair, grasping at her. “Lois, Lois!” she said, low and with fearful intensity; “it’s come! Help me to fight it! Help me!”
“What has come? What?”
“Fear! It’s looking at me everywhere. It’s looking between the screens! I must keep it away. If I give up to it, he’ll die! Press my hands—that’s good. Look at him! Didn’t he move then? Wasn’t his face turned more? I’m—cold, Lois.”
An icy frost had silvered her soul. Gaunt arms seemed to stretch from the dimness toward the bed. Then, with an effort which left her weak, she thrust back her imaginings, rose, and sat down by the pillow. Her eyes glanced fearfully from side to side, then above, as though questioning from what direction would come this relentless foe.
Through her dazed brain rushed, clamorous, reiterating, a prayer-blent, defiant appeal. She saw God sitting on a draped throne, but His face was merciless. He would not help her! Of what virtue was this all-filling love of hers if it could not save one little human life? He was dying—dying—dying! And he must not die! She remembered a night, far back in her misty childhood, when she had crept through evening shadows to see a soul take flight. The Death Angel then was a kindly friend sent to set free a shining twin; now it was a ghastly monster, lying in wait and chuckling in the silences.
She pressed Daunt’s nerveless hand between her warm palms and strove to put the whole force of her being into a great passionate desire—a desire to send along this human conductivity the extra current of vitality which she felt throbbing and pressing in her every vein. It seemed as though she must give—give of her own bounding life, to eke out the fading powers of that dying frame. Again and again she breathed out her longing, until the very intensity of her will made her feel dizzy and weak. She would have opened her veins for him. Like the Roman daughter, she would have given her breast to his lips and the warmth from her limbs to aid him.
Once she started. “You shall! You shall!” seemed to patter in flying echoes all about her. It was Daunt’s cry by the fields at Warne, that had gone leaping from his lips to her heart like a vibrant, inspiring fire. Did that virile will still lie living, overlapped with the wing of disease, sending its stubborn strength out now to bolster her own? She glanced at the waxy face, half expecting to see the bloodless lips falling back from the words.
Daunt lay motionless. The ice-pack had been removed from his head, and the shaven temple showed paste-like beneath the bandage-edge. From time to time Lois poured between his lips a teaspoonful of diluted brandy, and, at such times, Margaret would put her strong arms under his head and raise it from the pillow, outwardly calm, but inwardly shuddering with wrenching jerks of pain.