He found her in the sick-room. She had changed her dress for something that gave out no assertive silken rustle in answer to her movements, something that draped the charming contour of her figure—she had a charming figure—with soft, quiet folds, like the wings of a dun hawkmoth. That fell composure still walled her in as with ramparts of steel. She held the bed-curtain back as the Doctor stooped over the livid, discolored face upon the pillow. She took a linen cloth from the nurse, and deftly, lightly wiped away the froth and mucus that had gathered about the cracked and bleeding lips. But the hand that rendered these offices was as steady as though it had been carved out of white marble.
Disturbed from his lethargy by the invasion of candlelight upon his haggard eyelids and the Doctor’s bass murmur in his ear, the sick man began to talk a little. For the most part it was mere gabble, but some sentences were plain. He moaned piteously for a barber, because he was unshaven. Rosval had always been foolishly vain of his personal appearance. And he damned the one glass of bad water, to the imbibition of which he attributed his disease, promising, if he got well, never to drink any more. To do him credit, he had never been addicted to that particular form of liquid refreshment. The Doctor inferred as much from his diagnosis—and from the faint sarcastic quiver of Mrs. Rosval’s white lips. Then the tongue of the man ceased wagging—but the burning head began to thresh to and fro upon the pillow, and the claw-like hands to scratch at the bed-clothes in a fresh access of the maddening enteric irritation. Alleviating measures proved as effective as alleviating measures generally do prove; the head went on rolling, and the crooked talons continued to tear. All at once they were quiet. Mrs. Rosval had laid her hand upon the clammy forehead—about as tenderly, to all appearance, as she would have laid it upon the back of a chair. And the man was still. She placed the other hand beside the first—the drawn lines about the nostrils relaxed, the clenched teeth parted, the breast rose and fell with the indrawing and outgoing of a sigh of relief. And the man slept. So soundly that she moved from him presently, without disturbing him, and passed into the room adjoining, where the Doctor and the nurse were holding a whispered confabulation.
There would be no need to send in another professional attendant, the nurse said, now that the patient’s wife had arrived. She possessed a remarkable ability for nursing, and extraordinary self-command. She shrank from nothing—not even the most repugnant duties of the sick-chamber. The nurse had met in her time with ladies who took things coolly; but this lady really surprised her.
The Doctor was in the act of shaking his head—not from side to side, but up and down—a gesture which expressed indulgent tolerance of the nurse’s surprise while it repudiated the notion of his entertaining any on his own account—when he jumped. For a calm, quiet voice at his elbow said:
“You told me that Mr. Rosval was dangerously ill. Is he dying?�
The nurse had vanished into the carbolic-laden atmosphere of the Chamber of Horrors.
“My dear madam, your husband is in the Hands——� So the Doctor was beginning, when the obvious inappropriateness of the stereotyped formula stopped him short. Then he admitted that the condition of the man in the other room was very precarious. That he could not, when not in articulo mortis, be said to be dying—but that, toward the small hours of the morning, he might attain to a pitch of prostration closely allied to that condition. And that nothing could be done for him but to give him milk and medicine regularly, and—— The Doctor would have ended “and trust in Providence,� but for obvious reasons he thought better of it. Then he went away, feeling quite certain in his own mind that Mrs. Rosval would be a widow before twenty-four hours were over.
That lady, meanwhile, returning to the sick-room, had persuaded the fagged nurse to go and lie down. She understood how to do all that was necessary, she whispered, and would call the attendant if any change occurred. Then she sat down at the foot of the bed, and prepared to keep her vigil with unshaken fortitude. The sleeping woman in the next room breathed heavily, the sounds of rolling wheels and jarring voices grew less and less—then all fell quiet. About three hours before the dawn the sleeper awakened. The hollow eyes no longer turned on her with the blind, glassy stare of delirium. There was reason in Rosval’s look, and memory.
He seemed to beckon, and she came near. She had to stoop to catch the moaning whisper that asked: “How—did you—come here?�
She answered steadily, “They sent for me.�