“No,” he murmured. “I’m very tired, but I can’t rest. How can I when those brutes are burning the gang-saw shed?”
The doctor gave Ruth a warning glance, whispered to the nurse, and went out, passing Clay, who had crept upstairs without his shoes and stood lurking in the shadow on the landing.
“No change,” he said, and drew the anxious man away.
It was after midnight now and getting colder. There was no sound in the house, and none from outside, except when now and then a faint elfin sighing came from the tops of the pines. A breeze was waking, and Ruth, oppressed by the heat and fatigue, was thankful for it. She looked at her watch, and then wrapped it in a handkerchief because its monotonous ticking had grown loud in the deep silence. She knew that the dreaded time when human strength sinks lowest was near, and she felt with a curious awe that death was hovering over her patient’s bed.
“I can’t see,” he said very faintly, and stretching out a thin hand searched for touch of her.
She took it in a protecting grasp, and Aynsley sighed and lay quiet. After a while the doctor came in again, noiselessly, and, looking down at the motionless figure, nodded as if satisfied, while Ruth sank into the most comfortable pose she could adopt. It was borne in upon her as she felt his fingers burn upon her hand that she was holding Aynsley’s life; and whatever the effort cost her she must not let go. Soon she grew cramped and longed to move, but that was impossible: Aynsley was asleep at last, and it might be fatal to disturb him. Then, though she tried to relax her muscles, the strain of the fixed pose became intolerable; but she called up all her resolution and bore it. After all, the pain was welcome, because it kept her awake, and she was getting very drowsy.
Clay, creeping up again, stopped outside the door. He could not see his son, but he watched the girl with a curious stirring of his heart. The dim light fell on her face, showing the weariness and pity in it, and the man, though neither a sentimentalist nor imaginative, was filled with a deep respect. He could not think it was a woman’s tenderness for her lover he saw. There was no hint of passion in her fixed and gentle eyes; hers was a deep and, in a sense, an impersonal pity, protective and altogether unselfish; and he wondered, half abashed, how she would have looked had she loved his son. Then, encouraged by her attitude and the quietness of the nurse, he softly moved away.
Day was breaking when the doctor came down into the hall, followed by Ruth, and stopped when Clay beckoned him.
“My news is good,” he said. “He’s sound asleep, and I think the worst is past.”
He moved on, and Clay turned to Ruth, feeling strangely limp with the reaction. The girl’s face was white and worn, but it was quiet, and Clay noticed with a pang the absence of exultant excitement.