And that singleness of purpose, so discernible in her outward demeanour, possessed Katherine's being throughout. She was as one who walks in sleep, pushed by blind impulse. She was not conscious of herself, not conscious of joy or fear, or any emotion. She moved forward dumbly, and without volition, towards the event. Her senses were confused by this transition to stillness from noise, by the immobility of all surrounding objects after the reeling landscape on either hand the swaying train, by the bland and tempered light after the harsh contrasts of glare and darkness so constantly offered to her vision of late. She was dazed and faint, moreover, so that her knees trembled, her sensibility, her powers of realisation and of sympathy, for the time being, atrophied.
The house-steward ushered her into a large, square room. The low, darkly-painted, vaulted ceiling of it produced a cavernous effect. An orderly disorder prevailed, and a somewhat mournful dimness of closed, green-slatted shutters and half-drawn curtains. The furniture, costly in fact, but dwarfed, in some cases actually legless, was ranged against the squat, carven bookcases that lined the walls, leaving the middle of the room vacant save for a low, narrow camp-bed. The bed stood at right angles to the door by which Katherine entered, the head of it towards the shuttered, heavily-draped windows, the foot towards the inside wall of the room. At the bedside a man knelt on one knee, and his appearance aroused, in a degree, Katherine's dormant powers of observation. He had a short, crisp, black beard and crisp, black hair. He was alert and energetic of face and figure, a man of dare-devil, humorous, yet kindly eyes. He wore a blue serge suit with brass buttons to it. He was in his stocking-feet. The wristbands and turn-down collar of his white shirt were immaculate. Katherine, lost, trembling, the support of the habitual taken from her, a stranger in a strange land, liked the man. He appeared so admirable an example of physical health. He inspired her with confidence, his presence seeming to carry with it assurance of that which is wholesome, normal, and sane. He glanced at her sharply, not without hint of criticism and of command. Authoritatively he signed to her to remain silent, to stand at the head of the bed, and well clear of it, out of sight. Katherine did not resent this. She obeyed.
And standing thus, rallying her will to conscious effort, she looked steadily, for the first time, at the bed and that which lay upon it. And so doing she could hardly save herself from falling, since she saw there precisely that which the shape of the room and the disarray of it, along with vacant space and the low camp-bed in the centre of that space, had foretold—for all her dumbness of feeling, deadness of sympathy—she must assuredly see.—All these last four-and-twenty hours she had solaced herself with the phantom society of Dickie the baby-child, of Dickie the eager boy, curious of many things. But here was one different from both these. Different, too, from the young man, tremendous in arrogance, and in revolt against the indignity put on him by fate, from whom she had parted in such anguish of spirit nearly five years back. For, in good truth, she saw now, not Richard Calmady her son, her anxious charge, whose debtor—in that she had brought him into life disabled—she held herself eternally to be, but Richard Calmady her husband, the desire of her eyes, the glory of her youth—saw him, worn by suffering, disfigured by unsightly growth of beard, pallid, racked by mortal weakness, the sheet expressing the broad curve of his chest, the sheet and light blanket disclosing the fact of that hideous maiming he had sustained—saw him now as on the night he died.
Captain Vanstone, meanwhile reassured as to the newcomer's discretion and docility, applied his mind to his patient.
"See here, sir," he said, banteringly yet tenderly, "we were just getting along first-rate with these uncommonly mixed liquors. You mustn't cry off again, Sir Richard."
He slipped his arm under the pillows, dexterously raising the young man's head, and held the cup to his lips.
"My dear good fellow, I wish you would let me be," Dickie murmured.
He spoke courteously, yet there were tears in his voice for very weakness. And, hearing him, it was as though something stirred within Katherine which had long been bound by bitterness of heavy frost.
Vanstone shook his head.—"Very sorry, Sir Richard," he replied. "Daren't let you off. I've got my orders, you see."
The bold and kindly eyes had a certain magnetic efficacy of compulsion in them. The sick man drank, swallowed with difficulty, yet drank again. Then he lay back, for a while, his eyes closed, resting. And Katherine stood at the head of the bed, out of sight, waiting till her time should come. She folded her hands high upon her bosom. Her thought remained inarticulate, yet she began to understand that which she had striven so sternly to uproot, that which she had supposed she had extirpated, still remained with her. Once more, with a terror of joyful amazement, she began to scale the height and sound the depth of human love.