She stopped me, raising her hand. “I cannot take Tom,” she continued, “for reasons. And the horses? Will you arrange about them? I am—I am very tired.” She turned her back on me, and with a weary sigh she sat down.
I told her that I would do everything and see to everything, and I hastened away to find the woman on whom we were quartered. I had a meal prepared, and Paton’s room made ready, and water brought and brushes and soap. To do this, to do anything relieved my pent-up feelings, yet while I went about the task, the look that she had given me, when she had asked me to go with her, haunted me. What did it mean? It had impressed itself unpleasantly upon me as at variance with the rest of her conduct, with her confidence, her docility, her dependence on me. For in other matters she had turned to me as a helpless child might turn; and though her acts proved that she had a course of action marked out, and was following that course, her manner would have appealed to a heart of stone.
Presently I was aware of Paton looking in to the room with the same scared face. He beckoned me to him. “You will want horses, won’t you?” he whispered.
“Yes,” I said.
“How many?”
“Two,” I said. “Good ones.”
“I’ll arrange it,” he answered. “Leave it to me and stay where you are. At what time?”
“Four,” I said.
He went away. The next to appear was Tom, who talked with his mistress for some minutes while I was above stairs, making ready for the journey. Presently he departed. By that time the hasty meal I had ordered was laid and I induced her to sit down to it, while I waited on her. Need I say that then, more than ever, the strangeness of the relations between us came home to me? That she should be here, in my room, in my care, eating an ordinary meal while I attended on her, handed her this or that, and caught now and again the sad smile with which she thanked me—could anything exceed the marvel of it? Her trust in me, the intimacy of it, the silence—for she rarely spoke—all increased the air of unreality; an unreality so great that when the meal was finished and she went to Paton’s room to lie down and rest, it had scarcely seemed out of the question had I gone in with her, covered her, and tucked her up!
After that, through three hours of stillness and silence I kept guard in the outer room, staring at the door behind which she lay; and love and pity choked me, and swelled my heart to bursting. How was she suffering! How was she doomed to suffer! What a night and a day were before her! What horror, what despair! For her father was all the world to her. He was all that she had. I could only pray that the exertions she was making, the fatigue that she was enduring, the pains of endless journeys would dull the shock when it came, and that she would not be able to feel or to suffer or to hate as at other times.