Two hours later the doctor was bending over her, anxiously scrutinizing her passive face. “Nurse, bring me some ice-water,” he was saying. “She takes her time coming to.” And sharply he struck her cheek and forehead with his finger-tips; but she showed no sign.
Deep down in some mysterious inner chamber, beneath the calm face, there was being enacted a grim spirit-drama. Corydon’s soul was making a monstrous effort to return to its habitation; Corydon felt herself hanging, a tortured speck of being, in a dark and illimitable void. “This may be Hell,” she thought. “I have neither hands nor feet, and I cannot fight; but I can will to get back!” This effort cost her inexpressible agony.
A strange incessant throbbing was going on in the black pit over which she seemed suspended. It had a kind of rhythm—metallic, and yet with a human resonance. It began way down somewhere, and proceeded with maddening accuracy to ascend through the semi-tones of a gigantic scale. Each beat was agony to her; it ascended to a certain pitch in merciless crescendo, then fell to the bottom again, and began anew its swift, maddeningly accurate ascent. Each time it ascended a little higher, and always straining her endurance to the uttermost, and bringing a more vivid realization of agony. “Will you stop here,” it seemed to pulsate. “No, no, I will go on,” willed Corydon. “You shall not keep me, I must escape, I must get out.” But it kept up incessantly, ruthlessly, its strange, formless, soundless din, until the spirit writhed in its grasp.
Finally it seemed to Corydon that she was getting nearer—nearer to something, she knew not what. The blackness about her seemed to condense, and she found herself in what was apparently the middle of a lake, and some dark bodies with arms were trying to drag her down. “No, no,” she willed to these forms, “you shall not. I do not belong here, I belong up—up!” And by a violent effort she escaped—into sensations yet more agonizing, more acute. The vibrations were getting faster and faster, whirling her along, stretching her consciousness to pieces. “Will it never end?” she thought. “Have mercy!” But after an eternity of such repetition, she found a bright light staring at her, and a frightful sense of heaviness, like mountains piled upon her. Also, eating her up from head to foot, was a strange, unusual pain; yes, it must be pain, though she had never felt anything like it before. She moaned; and there came a spasm of nausea, that seemed to tear her asunder.
The doctor was standing by her. “She gave me quite a fright,” he was saying. “There, that’s it, nurse. She’ll be sleeping sweetly in a minute.” The nurse hurried forward, and Corydon felt a stinging sensation in her side, and then a delightful numbness crept over her. “Oh, thank you, doctor,” she whispered.
Section 5. The next week held for Corydon continuous suffering, which she bore with a rebellious defiance—feeling that she had been betrayed in some way. “If you had only told me,” she wailed, to the doctor. “I would rather have stayed as I was before!” For answer he would pat her cheek and tell her to go to sleep.
The days dragged on. Every afternoon her mother came and read to her for several hours; and in the afternoons Mr. Harding would come, and sit by her bedside in his kind way and talk to her. Sometimes he only stayed a few minutes, but often he would spend an hour or so, trying to dispel the clouds of gloom and despondency that were hanging over her. Corydon told him of her vision in the operating-room, and strange to say he declared that he had known it all; also he said that he had helped her to fight her way back to life.
He seemed to understand her every need, and from his sympathy gave her all the comfort he could. But he little realized all that it meant to her—how deeply it stirred her gratitude and her liking for him. During the day she would find herself counting the hours until the time he had named; and when the expected knock would come, and his tall figure appear at the door, her heart would give a sudden jump and send the blood rushing to her head. Her lips would tremble slightly as she held out her hand to him; and as he sat and looked at her, she would become uncomfortably conscious of the beating of her heart; in fact at times it would almost suffocate her, and her cheeks would become as fire.
She wondered if he noticed it. But he seemed concerned only for her welfare, and anxiously inquired how she felt. She was not doing well, it seemed, and the doctor was greatly troubled; her temperature had not become normal since the operation, and they could not account for it, as she was suffering no more than the usual amount of pain. To Corydon this was a matter of no importance; she was willing to lie there all day, if only the hour of Mr. Harding’s visit would come more quickly. She was beginning to be alarmed because she had such difficulty in controlling her excitement.
The magic hour would strike, and the door of hope open, and there upon the threshold he would appear, in all his superb manhood. Corydon thought she had never before met a man who gave her such an impression of vitality. He was splendid; he was like a young Viking, who brought into the room with him the pure air of the Northern mountains. When he looked at her, his eyes assumed a wonderful expression, a “golden” expression, as Corydon described it to herself. And day after day she clothed this Viking in more lustrous garments, woven from the threads of her imagination, her innermost desires and her dreams. And always at sight of him, her heart beat faster, her head became hotter; until the bed she lay upon became a bed of burning coals. She realized at last what had happened to her, that she loved—yes, that she loved! But she must not let her Viking see it; that would be unpardonable, it would damn her forever in his sight. And so she struggled with her secret. At night she slept in fitful starts, and in the morning she lay pale and sombre. But when he came she was all brilliancy and animation.