“He can’t put new works into an old machine. Not even the cleverest doctor can do that. The springs are giving out, Peg, and I can only be repaired, not cured. I don’t expect to be made well, but I want to keep going if possible, for the sake of Austin and the children. I have been intending to pay this visit for a year back, but I kept putting it off and off. I was afraid of what he might say.”
“Nonsense! Afraid, indeed! He’ll laugh at your fears, and give you a tonic which will make you perfectly well again.”
Mrs Asplin smiled, and was silent. Twenty-one could not be expected to realise the weakness and pain which come as companions, and not as guests; the weakness which must grow greater instead of less; the pain which cannot be charmed away. It is not to be wished that it should, for youthful optimism has its own work to accomplish in the world; but it would tend to a better understanding between old and young, if the latter would remember that it is the lack of hope which makes the bitterest drop in the cup of age! To bear the weary ache, and know that it will grow worse; to feel one power after another slipping away, and to realise that it is for ever; to be lonely, and to see the loneliness closing in ever deeper and deeper. Ah, think of it, young impatient soul! Think of it and be tender, be loving! Spare not the sweet gift of sympathy. The time will come when you will long to have done still more.
Peggy held Mrs Asplin’s hand in her own as they sat waiting together in the doctor’s study, and kept her seat sturdily through the interview which followed. She felt instinctively that her presence was a support to her friend, and that the consciousness of her sympathy was a support during the trying ordeal. The doctor questioned, and the patient replied. He scanned her face with his practised eyes, felt her pulse, and produced a stethoscope from the table. Then for a time there was silence, while he knelt and listened, and listened again, and Peggy heard her own heart throb through the silence. He was an old man, with an expression full of that large tenderness which seems the birthmark of the true physician, and he lingered over his task, as if unwilling to face what lay beyond. At last he rose and laid the stethoscope carefully on the table, letting his fingers linger over the task. Peggy heard him catch his breath in a struggling sigh, and for a moment his eyes met her own, anxious and troubled.
“Well?” queried Mrs Asplin gently. “Well, tell me the verdict!”—and the doctor crossed the room again and seated himself by her side.
“My dear lady, you ask a hard question. It is difficult to say in a few words all that one thinks of a case. You are not strong; you need rest. I will prescribe for you, and see you again later on, and meanwhile I should like to see your husband, if he could have a talk with me here. There are certain rules which I should like you to observe, but we don’t care to trouble patients with these matters. It is simpler and better to instruct their friends.”
Mrs Asplin looked at him steadily, a smile lighting up her face.
“Ah, doctor, it won’t do. You can’t take me in at all!” she cried in her winsome Irish voice. “It’s the truth I want, and no pretence. My husband believes that I am shop-gazing in Regent Street, and that’s all he is going to hear about this visit. He is delicate himself, and puts an altogether exaggerated value on his old wife. Indeed, he’d worry us both to death if he knew I were ill. Don’t be frightened to speak plainly. I am not a coward! I can bear the truth, whatever it may be. It is the heart that is wrong?”
“Yes,” he said, and looked at her with kindly eyes. There was an invincible fascination about Mrs Asplin which strangers were quick to acknowledge, and it was easy to see that admiration and respect combined to make his task exceptionally trying. “Yes, the heart is very weak. It can never have been strong, I think, and you have not spared yourself. You are the kind of woman who has lived, in the fullest sense of the word; lived in every faculty—”
“Every single one, and I’m thankful for it! I’ve been so happy, so rich, so sheltered! Whatever happens now, I have been one of the most fortunate of women, and dare not complain. So tell me, please, what does it mean? To what must I look forward?”