There were nurses now, but Eric Brand would not be turned out. "Every minute that I am away from her," he told Richard, "I'm afraid. It seems as if when I am in sight of her I can hold her—back."
So, night after night, Richard found him in the chair by Beulah's bed, his face shaded by his hand, rousing only when Beulah stirred, to smile at her.
But Beulah did not smile back. She moaned a little now and then, and sometimes talked of things that never were on sea or land. There was a flowered chintz screen in the corner of the room and she peopled it with strange creatures, and murmured of them now and then, until the nurse covered the screen with a white sheet, which seemed to blot it out of Beulah's mind forever.
There was always a pot of coffee boiling in the kitchen for the young doctor, and Eric would go down with him and they would drink and talk, and all that Eric said led back to Beulah.
"If there was only something that I could do for her," he said; "if I could go out and work until I dropped, I should feel as if I were helping. But just to sit there and see her—fade."
Again he said, "I had always thought of our living—never of dying. There can be no future for me without her."
So it was for Eric's future as well as for Beulah's life that Richard strove. He grew worn and weary, but he never gave up.
Night after night, day after day, from house to house he went, along the two roads and up into the hills. Everywhere he met an anxious welcome. Where the conditions were unfavorable, he transferred the patient to Crossroads, where Nancy and Sulie and Milly and a trio of nurses formed an enthusiastic hospital staff.
The mother of little François was the first patient that Richard lost. She was tired and overworked, and she felt that it was good to fall asleep. Afterward Richard, with the little boy in his arms, went out and sat where they could look over the river and talk together.
"I told her that you were to stay with me, François."