He rose promptly. The woman stood aside at the upper door and he at once saw Nettie lying with her vigorous black hair sprawling in a thick twist across the pillow. Her face was pinched, it seemed thin, and the brilliancy and size of her eyes were exaggerated. One arm, clumsy and inanimate in splints, was extended over the cotton spread; but with the other hand she was feverishly busy with her appearance. She smiled, a wan tremulous movement that again shut the pain like a leaden casket about his heart.
"Do go away, mother!" Nettie directed Kate Vollar hovering behind them. "Your fidgeting will make me scream." With an incoherent murmur she vanished from the room. The girl motioned toward a chair, and Gerrit drew it forward to a table that bore water and a small glass bowl partly covered by a sheet of paper, holding a number of symmetrical reddish-black pills. "Opium," Nettie told him, following his gaze; "I cried dreadfully with the hurt at first. It's dear, and Edward made those from some he had. You know, I watched him roll them right here; it was wonderful how quickly he did it, each exactly alike, two grains." She told him the circumstances of her accident while he sat with his eyes steadily on her face, his hands folded.
He was quiet, without visible emotion or speech; but there was an utter tumult, a tumult like the spiral of a hurricane, within him. Rebellious feelings, tyrannical desires and thoughts, swept through him in waves of heat and cold. Nettie's voice grew weak, the shadows deepened under her eyes, for a little they closed; and but for the faint stir of the coverlet over her heart she was so pallid, so still, that she might have been dead. Moved by an uncontrollable fear he bent toward her and touched her hand. Her gaze slowly widened, and, turning over her palm, she weakly grasped his fingers. A great sigh of contentment fluttered from her dry lips. "Gerrit," she whispered, barely audible. He leaned forward, blinded by his passion for her.
He admitted this in an honest self-knowledge that he had refused recognition until now. Tender and reassuring words, wild declarations and plans for the future, crowded for expression; nothing else before the immensity of desire that possessed him was of the slightest concern; but not a syllable was spoken. A sharp line was ploughed between his brows; his breath came in short choked gusts, he was utterly the vessel of his longing, and yet an ultimate basic consideration, lost in the pounding of his veins, still restrained him.
"I love you, Gerrit," Nettie said; "I'll never stop till I die." Her face and voice were almost tranquil; she seemed to speak from a plane above the ordinary necessities of common existence, as if her pain, burning out her color and vigor and emotions, had given her the privilege of truth. Curiously enough when it seemed to him that she had expressed what should have sent him into a single consuming flame he grew at once completely calm. He, too, for the moment, reached her state of freedom from earth and flesh.
"I love you, Nettie," he replied simply.
However, he speedily dropped back into the sphere of actual responsibilities. He saw all the difficulties and hovering insidious shadows in which they might be lost. This, in turn, was pushed aside by the incredulous realization that Nettie's life and his had been spoiled by a thing no more important than a momentary flare of temper. If, as might have happened, he had overlooked Barzil Dunsack's ridiculous tirade, if he had turned into the yard where Nettie was standing instead of tramping away up Hardy Street, everything would have been well.
It was unjust, he cried inwardly, for such infinite consequences to proceed from unthinking anger! A great or tragic result should spring from great or tragic causes, the suffering and price measured by the error. He could see that Nettie was patiently waiting for him to solve the whole miserable problem of their future; she had an expression of relief which seemed to take a happy issue for granted. None was possible. A baffled rage cut his speech into quick brutal words flung like shot against her hope.
"I love you," he repeated, "yes. But what can that do for us now? I had my chance and I let it go. To-day I'm married, I'll be married to-morrow, probably till I die. Perhaps that wouldn't stop a man more intelligent—it might be just that—than I am; perhaps he'd go right after his love or happiness wherever or however it offered. There are men, too, who have the habit of a number of women. That is understood to be a custom with sailors. It has never been with me; as I say, maybe I am too stupid.
"What in the name of all the heavens would I do with Taou Yuen?" he demanded. "I can't desert her here, in America, leave her with William. I brought her thousands of miles away from her home, from all she knows and is. If I took her back and dropped her in China it would be murder."