Greene looked helplessly at Markham, who merely nodded; and we entered the invalid’s room. It was a spacious chamber, with windows on three sides, furnished elaborately with all manner of conflicting objects. My first glance took in an East Indian rug, a buhl cabinet, an enormous gilded Buddha, several massive Chinese chairs of carved teak-wood, a faded Persian tapestry, two wrought-iron standard lamps, and a red-and-gold lacquered high-boy. I looked quickly at Vance, and surprised an expression of puzzled interest in his eyes.
In an enormous bed, with neither head-piece nor foot-posts, reclined the mistress of the house, propped up in a semi-recumbent attitude on a sprawling pile of varicolored silken pillows. She must have been between sixty-five and seventy, but her hair was almost black. Her long, chevaline face, though yellowed and wrinkled like ancient parchment, still radiated an amazing vigor: it reminded me of the portraits I had seen of George Eliot. About her shoulders was drawn an embroidered Oriental shawl; and the picture she presented in the setting of that unusual and diversified room was exotic in the extreme. At her side sat a rosy-cheeked imperturbable nurse in a stiff white uniform, making a singular contrast to the woman on the bed.
Chester Greene presented Markham, and let his mother take the rest of us for granted. At first she did not acknowledge the introduction, but, after appraising Markham for a moment, she gave him a nod of resentful forbearance and held out to him a long bony hand.
“I suppose there’s no way to avoid having my home overrun in this fashion,” she said wearily, assuming an air of great toleration. “I was just endeavoring to get a little rest. My back pains me so much to-day, after all the excitement last night. But what do I matter—an old paralyzed woman like me? No one considers me anyway, Mr. Markham. But they’re perfectly right. We invalids are of no use in the world, are we?”
Markham muttered some polite protestation, to which Mrs. Greene paid not the slightest attention. She had turned, with seemingly great difficulty, to the nurse.
“Fix my pillows, Miss Craven,” she ordered impatiently, and then added, in a whining tone: “Even you don’t give a thought to my comfort.” The nurse complied without a word. “Now, you can go in and sit with Ada until Doctor Von Blon comes.—How is the dear child?” Suddenly her voice had assumed a note of simulated solicitude.
“She’s much better, Mrs. Greene.” The nurse spoke in a colorless, matter-of-fact tone, and passed quietly into the dressing-room.
The woman on the bed turned complaining eyes upon Markham.
“It’s a terrible thing to be a cripple, unable to walk or even stand alone. Both my legs have been hopelessly paralyzed for ten years. Think of it, Mr. Markham: I’ve spent ten years in this bed and that chair”—she pointed to an invalid’s chair in the alcove—“and I can’t even move from one to the other unless I’m lifted bodily. But I console myself with the thought that I’m not long for this world; and I try to be patient. It wouldn’t be so bad, though, if my children were only more considerate. But I suppose I expect too much. Youth and health give little thought to the old and feeble—it’s the way of the world. And so I make the best of it. It’s my fate to be a burden to every one.”
She sighed and drew the shawl more closely about her.