Ewing's Lady

by Harry Leon Wilson

She had shrewdly rejected the specialist Birley had named for another who would not know her. She wanted no mistaken kindness, no polite reluctance or glossing, and she feared to find this in one who might regard her as something more than a casual human body in evil case. She had felt bound to have plain words. She would know what she faced as one knows heat or cold.

And she had gained the full of her wish. The man had taken her as casually as she offered herself. His questions were few, his examination mechanically impersonal, his diagnosis cool and informing. She had felt herself a culprit, listening to sentence.

"You think I have a year to live?"

"Longer, perhaps, if you take it this way, without worry. Worry eats the tissue even faster than those little vegetable parasites. I take it you eliminate worry?" He drew on his gloves.

She smiled now, with pride in her cunning. Her simulation of unconcerned curiosity had been perfect, as if it were another's wasting body she brought him. She had hidden all that fond love of life, her life of action, sensation; of hope ever enlarging, of fruitions certain, innumerable, and dear. No sign had the practiced eyes read of the inner rage that maddened her at thought of so much life unlived—life of mirth and tears, height and depth, grief, ecstasy and common levels. She was avid of them all, dared them all, wished only to play the game, vaunting a fine zest for the sport with all its hazards.

She had found in her hour alone there that she did not fear death—only detested it. She feared it as little as a child fears sleep; hated it as a child, torn untimely from play, hates to go to bed.

"Longer, perhaps, if you take it this way—eliminate worry." But she knew she could not take it "this way;" could not give up as this judge believed she had done. She must rebel to the last. As long as she played she must play in the true spirit. She might be vanquished, but she would not debase the sport. She smiled at a reminiscence of her brother's college life, catching at a phrase. "It seems I'm not a 'quitter,'" she thought.

Then she halted this race of thought in sudden amusement. She felt her evening fever rising, the sinister warmth and false glow that burned like a red flame below the outer corners of her eyes. It had come earlier than usual, hurried, doubtless, by the very passion of her rebelling. The man had been right. But she would have no waiting, half-hearted conflict, for all that.

She sat up quickly. A certain battle was set for this day, one that would test her gameness. She rose to look at a clock, and knew that Teevan probably awaited Ewing. But she could be first there, and she felt equal to the clash. The very fever would sustain her. And she would be wary once more that day, cunning to learn what she had to oppose. Then she would be valiant. If the fever only gave her strength, small matter the fuel that fed it.

She smoothed her hair, flung a scarf over her shoulders, and stepped out into the early twilight. She felt a slight giddiness as she walked the short distance to Teevan's door, but she had shrugged this away by the time she rang the bell. There was a wait, and she rang again. Then, when she began to fear that she assailed an empty house, she heard rapid steps; the door swung back, and Teevan himself stood before her, Teevan jaunty in summer negligee of flannels and silken shirt, who deftly covered with his froth of gallantry whatever surprise he felt at sight of her.