The little man flopped duly to his knees, followed by Swanson. Mary waited, watching Philip, and then she saw him kneel along with the others. He didn’t protest. He knelt and bowed his head. She knew suddenly why he was doing this—because it would have pleased Naomi. Then she knelt, too, with the old fear in her heart. She was afraid, because he was praying.... He kept slipping further and further....
“O Just and Almighty God,” said the dry, flat voice of the withered Mr. Murchison, “we thank Thee for having brought these poor humble travelers safely through their perilous journey....” Swanson knelt dumbly, his head bowed. It was the gnatlike Mr. Murchison who ruled the mission. But it was the meek Swanson who was the servant of God. Mary saw all at once the vast and immeasurable difference.
3
Philip made no effort to paint. The box containing his things lay forgotten in a dark corner of the hut, and for three days he went out to spend hours wandering alone along the shores of the tepid lake. Mary only waited, fighting a queer unnatural jealousy of the ghost that walked with him. And on the fourth night she was awakened by his voice saying, “Mary, I feel ill. I’m afraid I’ve caught the fever again.” It was a voice peaceful and full of apology.
By noon the fever had taken possession of his thin body, and by evening he lay still and unconscious. For three days and three nights Mary sat beside him, while Swanson fumbled with his medicines, and kept saying in his kind, clumsy way, “He’ll be all right now. You mustn’t fret. Why, he’s strong as an ox. I’ve seen him like this before.” She sat by the bed, bathing Philip’s thin face, touching his head gently with her hand. In her weariness she deceived herself, thinking at times, “He’s cooler now. It will pass,” but in the end she always knew the bitter truth—that the fever hadn’t passed. It was always there, burning, burning, burning the little life that remained.
Sometimes in his delirium he talked of Lady Millicent and Swanson, but nearly always of Naomi. She was always there, as if she, too, stayed by the side of the crude bed ... watching.
In the middle of the fourth night, when Swanson had come in to look at him, Philip stirred slowly, and opened his eyes. For a moment he looked about him with a bewildered look in the burning blue eyes, and then he reached out weakly, and took her hand. “Mary,” he said, “my Mary ... always mine since the beginning.”
He asked her to get a pencil and a block of paper out of his box, and then he said, “I want you to write something for me. I’ll tell you what it is....” When she returned, he lay silent for a time, and then he said, “It’s this, Mary. Listen.... Write.... I think it ought to go like this.... ‘Whatever happens, after my death, I mean that my children, Philip and Naomi ... whom I had by my first wife, Naomi Potts, are never to be left in the care of my mother, Emma Downes.’” He hesitated for a moment, and then weakly murmured, “‘The same is my wish with regard to any child who may be born after my death ... of my second wife, Mary Conyngham.’” Again he paused. “‘This is my express wish.’” He beckoned with his eyes to Swanson. “Raise me up,” he said. “Here, Mary, give me the pencil and the paper.” She held the drawing-block for him while the thin, brown hand wrote painfully the words “Philip Downes.”
The pencil dropped to the floor. “Now, Swanson ... you must sign it as witness....” Swanson laid him back gently and then wrote his own name and went quietly out.
As his grotesque figure shut out from the doorway the blue of the African night, she knelt beside him, and, pressing the dry, hot hands against her cheek, she cried out, “But you’re not going to die, Philip.... You’re not going to die! I won’t let you!” She would hold him by her own will. Anything was possible in this strange, terrifying world by the lake.