The Great Amulet

by Maud Diver

Desmond's lips whitened: but he braced his shoulders. "She's not. I don't believe it," he answered, on a toneless note of decision. And the other knew that only the slow torture of the night-watches could brand the truth into his brain.

With a gesture of weariness, infinitely pathetic, he turned back to the bed, and bending down, mechanically rearranged the sheet, and smoothed a crease or two out of the pillow. The bowed back and shoulders, despite their suppleness and strength, had in them a pathos too deep for tears: and Mackay, feeling himself dismissed, went noiselessly out.

For a long moment Desmond's unnatural stoicism held firm. Then, deep down in him, something seemed to snap. With a dry, choking sob, he flung himself on his knees beside the bed, and the waters came in even unto his soul.

It seemed a thing incredible that one hour could hold such a store of anguish. The half of his personality, the hidden life of heart and spirit, seemed dead already: and in that first shuddering sense of loneliness, time was not.

A familiar choking sensation recalled him to outward things. The punkah coolie had fallen asleep; and in a fever of irritation he sprang to his feet. Then the thought pierced him: "What on earth does it matter . . now?"

But the trivial prick of discomfort had, in some inexplicable fashion, readjusted the balance of things; reawakened the conviction that had so strangely upheld him throughout the day; and with it the spirit of 'no surrender,' which was the very essence of the man. All the tales he had heard of cholera patients literally dragged from the brink of the grave by devoted nursing crowded in upon him, like reinforcements backing up a forlorn hope, and once again he bent over his wife, caressing the crisp upward sweep of her hair.

"Honor, you shall live. By God, you shall!" he whispered low in her ear, as though her spirit could hear and take comfort from the assurance.

A downward jerk of the punkah rope set the great frill flapping with ostentatious vigour; and he himself set to work again no less vigorously; fighting death hand to hand with every weapon at command. He clung to his renewed hope with a desperation that was terrible; realising more acutely than before that to let go of her was to fall into nameless spaces void of companionship and love. Once or twice the flicker of the punkah frill created an illusion of movement in the face, and his heart leapt into his throat, only to sink to the depths again when he discovered his mistake. But nothing now could turn him from his purpose; or quench that indomitable determination to succeed which is one of the strongest levers of the world.

And at long-last, when persistence had begun to seem mere folly, came the first faint shadow of change. Slowly, very slowly, her face appeared to be losing the bluish tinge of cholera. Fearful lest imagination should be cheating him, he fetched the lamp, and held it over her. Unquestionably the colour had improved.

The loose chimney rattled as he set down the lamp; and he spilled half the brandy he tried to pour into a spoon. Then, steadying himself by a supreme effort, he managed to pour a little of it between her lips, watching with suspended breath for the least sign of moisture at the corners. A drop or two trickled uselessly out, but the muscles of her throat stirred slightly, and the rest was retained.