“You must face the fact that you can no longer afford to live at full pressure. You must be content to let others work, and to look on quietly. I fear you must face increasing weakness and languor.”
“And for—how long? My children are still young. I should like to see them settled. I should like to feel my husband had other homes open to him when he was left alone. If I am very careful—for how long?”
Peggy closed her eyes with a feeling of suffocation. The pulses in her ears were beating like hammers, the floor seemed to rock to and fro beneath her feet, and the doctor’s voice sounded from an immense distance.
“Perhaps three years. I don’t think more. If you ask me for an honest opinion, I should say probably three years—”
Three years to live, and then—death. Three years longer in that happy home, and then good-bye to all who loved her. Three years! Three years! The words repeated themselves over and over in Peggy’s brain as she sat motionless in her chair, staring at the opposite wall. Outside in the street an organ was grinding out a popular air, the front door opened and shut, and footsteps passed along the hall, a little heathen idol upon the mantelpiece nodded his head at her in mocking fashion. Some one was talking at the other end of the room in a quiet, level tone, as if nothing extraordinary had happened. It was surely—surely not Mrs Asplin herself?
“Thank you! It is kinder to tell me the truth; but the time is shorter than I expected. I should like to ask one more question. Shall I be doing my husband a wrong in keeping this from him? Could he do anything to prolong my life? I am most anxious not to throw this shadow over our home; but if he could help in any way, it would, of course, be my duty to spare him the pain of knowing afterwards that more might have been done.”
“He could do nothing except shield you from exertion, and that you can do for yourself. I should say, on the whole, that it would be better for you, even physically speaking, to secure the cheerfulness of surrounding that would come from ignorance, than to be continually reminded of yourself by the anxiety of your family. Remember always that you are your own best doctor! I have told you the worst, and now I may add that I have known people in as precarious a condition as yourself live twice, and even three times the time specified by their doctors. You know what is needful—a peaceful life without excitement; fresh air, rest, and, above all things, the specific which our Quaker friends have named for us, ‘The quiet mind.’”
His voice dropped to a softened cadence as he spoke those last words, and the tears started in the listener’s eyes.
“Yes—yes! I know. I’ll remember that. Thank you, thank you for all your kindness!”
The eyes of doctor and patient met in a long, steady glance, which had in it a light, as of recognition. They were friends indeed, though they met for the first time to-day; for they were bound together by the closest of ties, in that they both served and trusted a common Master! In that moment, when as it seemed she stood upon the brink of death, Mrs Asplin’s mind travelled with lightning speed over the years which had passed since she first gave herself and her concerns into the hands of her Saviour, and trusted Him to care for her in this world and the next. Had He ever failed her? A thousand times, no! Sickness, anxiety, even death itself, had visited her home, but the peace which was Christ’s parting gift to His disciples had dwelt in her heart, and He Himself had never seemed so near as when trouble fell, and for a time hid the sun in the skies. If she had known beforehand that she was to lose her first-born darling, to spend long years in painful anxiety about her husband’s health, and to see her children’s future crippled for lack of means to give them the best opportunities, her heart would have sunk with fear, and she would have declared the trial too great for her strength; yet He had enabled her to bear them all, and with each fresh trial had given a fresh revelation of His mercy. She had submitted to His will, weeping, it may be, but without bitterness or rebellion, and the reward had come in the serene peacefulness which possessed her soul. Christ had done all this for her, and now in this latest trial she looked to Him to support and comfort to the end.