Studies in Wives

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

Mrs. Panfillen went towards her with slow, hesitating steps.

"He is here," she said in a low tone, "behind the screen. He was sitting on the sofa reading me the notes of his speech, and—and he fell back." She began moving the screen, and as she did so she went on, "I sent for Bolt—she was a nurse once, you know, and she got the brandy which you see there——"

But Althea hardly heard the words; she was gazing, with an oppressed sense of discomfort and fear, at her husband. Yes, Perceval looked ill—very ill,—and he was lying in so peculiar a position! "I suppose when people faint they have to put them like that," thought Althea to herself, but she felt concerned, a little frightened....

Perceval Scrope lay stretched out stiffly on the sofa, his feet resting on a chair which had been placed at the end of the short, frail-looking little couch. His fair, almost lint white, hair was pushed back from his forehead, showing its unusual breadth. The grey eyes were half closed, and he was still wearing, wound about his neck so loosely that it hid his mouth and chin, a silk muffler.

Althea had the painful sensation that he did not like her to be there, that it must be acutely disagreeable to him to feel that she saw him in such a condition of helplessness and unease. And yet she went on looking at him, strangely impressed, not so much by the rigidity, as by the intense stillness of his body. Scrope as a rule was never still; when he was speaking, his whole body, each of his limbs, spoke with him.

By the side of the sofa was a small table, on which stood a decanter, unstoppered.

"Has he been like that long?" Althea whispered at length. "He—he looks so strange."

Joan Panfillen came close up to the younger woman; again she put her hand on her companion's arm.

"Althea," she said, "don't you understand? Can't you see the dreadful thing that has happened?"—and as the other looked down into the quivering face turned up to hers, she added with sudden passion, "Should I want you to take him away if he were still here?—should I want him to go if there were anything left that I could do for him?"

And then Althea at last understood, and so understanding her mind for once moved quickly, and she saw with mingled terror and revolt what it was that the woman on whose face her eyes were now riveted was requiring of her.