"I will stay here, of course," Isabelle replied, "and you can bring Molly and the governess back with you. I will telegraph them." It was all easily decided, what had seemed perplexing earlier in the evening, when she had been occupied merely with herself and John. "I can be of some help to Alice any way, and if he should die—"
"Yes," Lane agreed. "That is best. I will be back in a week." And he added casually, announcing a decision arrived at on the way to the city:—
"I'll have my lawyer look up that mortgage. You can tell Alice to-morrow and try to get Steve to understand, so that he will have it off his mind as soon as possible."
Her heart responded with a glow. Yes, that was the very thing to do! She had money enough to help them, but she did not know just what to do. It was like John, this sure, quick way of seeing the one thing to be done immediately and doing it. It was like him, too, to do generous things. How many poor boys and young men he had helped along rough roads in their struggle up,—given them the coveted chance in one way and another, without ostentation or theory, simply in the human desire to help another with that surplus strength which had given him his position of vantage.
"I will write the note to Mather now, telling him what to do about the mortgage," he continued in his methodical, undemonstrative manner. As he sat down at the desk and drew pen and paper towards him, he paused a moment. "You will see to the nurses,—they should have two. The doctors may decide on an operation. Have the best men, of course."
He struck pen into the paper with his broad, firm stroke. Isabelle stood watching him, her heart beating strangely, and suddenly leaning over him she kissed his forehead, then fled swiftly to the door.
CHAPTER LXXV
Isabelle waited in the carriage outside the station for her husband and Molly. The New York train was late as usual. She had driven in from Bryn Mawr, where she had spent most of the ten days since Lane's departure. She was steeped now in the atmosphere of that suburban house covered by the April mist, with the swelling bushes and trees all about it. There had been an operation, decided on after consultation with the eminent surgeons that Isabelle had summoned. After the operation hope had flickered up, as the sick man breathed more easily, was able to articulate a few intelligible words, and showed an interest in what was going on about him. But it had waned again to-day, and when Isabelle left, Alice was holding her husband's large hand, talking to him cheerfully, but there was no response…. How wonderful she was,—Alice! That picture of her filled Isabelle's thought as she waited in the carriage. Never a tear or a whimper all these anxious days, always the calm, buoyant voice, even a serene smile and little joke at her husband's bedside, such as she had used to enliven him with,—anything to relax his set, heavy features. "How she loves him!" thought Isabelle, almost with pain.
When she left that afternoon, Alice had sent a grateful message to John. "He will come out to-morrow if he can?" she had asked. She knew now that the hours were numbered without being told so by the doctors. And never a tear, a self-pitying cry! Oh, to be like that,—sturdy in heart and soul,—with that courage before life, that serene confidence in face of the worst fate can offer! Alice was of the faith of Renault.
Lane came down the platform, followed by Molly and her governess. As he raised his hat in greeting, Isabelle noticed the deep lines at the corners of his mouth, and the line above his broad, straight nose. When they were in the carriage, she realized that her husband had been living these ten days in another world from the one she had inhabited, and in spite of his questions about Steve and Alice, he was preoccupied, still held by the anxieties and perplexities of his business in New York, still in the close grip of his own affairs, his personal struggle. So she talked with Molly, who was almost articulately joyful over her escape from the country, at the sight of streets and motor carriages.