Sickness is held to solemnize the soul, to chasten the understanding, and purge the passion out of man. It is considered to be a season of severe self-judgment, and of inward searchings of the heart, a season when religious impulses should struggle to the surface, and solemn promises be made to propitiate the god who has granted health. Such is the orthodox exposition of the doctrine of disease. The pious hand points to the precipice that has provided the mortal with a chance of realizing the abysses of the unknown.
But with Jeffray his recovery was as the coming forth of a moth from the cramping sack of custom. He had much to repent of in the past, but the repentance was romantic rather than religious. It was a lifting up of the hands to the light, not the wan and sickly light of prosaic morality, but the glow of the instincts that burn on the altar of nature, the life fire of love, of wonder, and of worship.
It was towards Bess—Bess of the Woods—that Jeffray’s thoughts flew feverishly as he lay in bed or sat propped up in his chair before the window. He yearned to see that face again, to watch the light kindling in the keen-sighted eyes, to hear the deep and husky modulations of her voice. He was eager to learn whether she were safe from Dan or no, and to tell her why the tryst at Holy Cross had been broken. His thoughts hovered more tenderly about her radiant face bathed by the splendor of its dusky hair than about Miss Jilian’s tawny head. His recollections of Miss Hardacre were neither satisfying to his soul nor flattering to the future. He remembered her as vain, peevish, ready to wax petulant over trifles, selfishly jealous of her own safety.
It is scarcely necessary to spin a flimsy tissue of words about Richard Jeffray’s thoughts. Probably his illness had suffered his convictions to sink to the solid earth instead of drifting feather-like in air. Frankly, he discovered in himself a strong and aggressive disinclination to make Miss Jilian Hardacre his wife. It was no great psychological problem, but merely a question of nature asserting herself in the magic person of poor Bess. Bess was a finer and lovelier being than Miss Hardacre; she had more soul, more splendor of outline, more womanly suggestiveness. And thus Mr. Richard sat brooding in his chair, watching the clouds drift across the blue, and wondering what the near future had in store for him.
Perhaps Jeffray was not sorry to have his solitude broken by the sound of Dick Wilson’s heavy and deliberate footsteps in the gallery, and the shining of his red face round the edge of the oak door. The painter wore the same rusty suit of clothes, and he had been mourning his approaching parting with these well-worn retainers, for Surgeon Stott had ordered him to burn every shred of them before he left Rodenham. In danger of being “nonsuited,” Mr. Dick was contemplating a descent upon the late Mr. Jeffray’s wardrobe, since it was certain that he could not turn Adamite in the cause of cleanliness, and perhaps end in a mad-house by reason of his nudity.
Jeffray’s pale face, with the shadow-rings under the eyes, lighted up at Wilson’s coming. The painter had a roll of manuscript in his hand. He went and sat in the window-seat, after pushing aside the bowl of king-cups, and patted the roll of paper with peculiar and amusing emphasis.
“May I congratulate you, sir,” he said, “on having revived the spirit of the Elizabethans?”
Jeffray colored, like a boy whose mother has caught him inditing verses to a pretty milliner.
“What! You have been reading my epic, Dick?”
“I have, sir, I have. I discovered it in the library, and you will pardon the friendly curiosity that prompted me to bury my nose in it.”