“Then must I give you credit for the patience of Job.”
“That you may do.” She took the glass from Collingwood, who, after an ineffectual effort to convince himself that it was not empty, yielded it reluctantly.
The Judge, with a delicacy which he practised with almost ceremonial observance, turned on his pillow and gave them the benefit of a wealth of grizzled black hair, covering a massive head. He would not intrude upon the act of changing the young man’s wearied posture. His excess of delicacy robbed the act of its naturalness, made it seem personal and intimate.
Collingwood felt the nurse’s hesitation. His heart thumped in glad triumph. Let her rule her manner as she would, she could not make that service impersonal. He saw her teeth catch her underlip as she bent over him. Her eyes would not meet his, which glued themselves appealingly upon her face. She slipped her arm under him, however, while his own went about her neck.
In spite of her care, and the perfect training of her action, the slight change which she made in his position wrenched a groan from him. Yet as she laid him back and still stooped, drawing her arms from under him, his own clinging arms tightened, and he pressed his lips ardently against the cheek so near his own.
For a breath, the very shortest breath a man ever drew, he could have sworn he felt a response to the caress, a womanly yielding to all that affection and dependence may imply. Then her eyes, startled, met his, and on the heels of a fawn-like timidity, a wave of fierceness sent the red blood dyeing her cheek, set the high arched nostril aquiver. The intuition flashed into his brain that it was the first man’s caress which had ever touched her soft cheek, and that she was no less frightened than indignant. The joy of the thought drove his blood leaping and stifled his cry of protest, as she drew hurriedly back and left him. She moved rapidly toward the corridor, whence the babble of a woman’s voice, which grew louder as the owner advanced, came floating in.
The lady, weighted with flowers, who had come to bring the season’s remembrances to the suffering dignitary, had paid him several previous visits, was known to Charlotte, and was an object of no little curiosity to Collingwood. She was a member of a very fashionable set, and bore its stamp in dress and mannerisms. She was tall and large-boned, with an ugly, intense face framed in a mass of the then fashionable chestnut-red hair. Save for its haughty demand for consideration, her countenance was not unlike those of her fallen sisters in the suburbs of Manila. There were the same suggestions of life drained to the dregs, the challenge, the hard look about the eyes. She had the manner of an actress, a kind of studied, feline grace which fell into postures and left the observer in doubt whether her next move would be a purr or the stroke of a treacherous paw.
The lady took Miss Ponsonby’s hand and held it during the course of several honeyed utterances. Yet the effect of her courtesy was an impression not of kindness, but of insolence. She managed to convey the idea that civility to one’s inferiors is an attribute of a great lady, and that she was living up to the demands of her position. When she passed to the bedside of the afflicted one, however, a warmth, a glow of the magnetism which she could exert diffused itself like an essence in the bare, ugly room. She addressed the Judge in the abusive strain of intimacy.
“You fraudulent creature!” she reproached him, “lying here, pretending to be ill when I want you at my dinner.”
“Dear lady, don’t.” The Judge gestured away the phantom of that dinner. Being shut out of paradise, he could not talk of its glories.