If we could know how each man feels who hears in the felon's dock the sentence of penal servitude for life, it may be we should find that Vereker's sense of being for the moment a cold, unexplained unit in an infinite unfeeling void, was no unusual experience. But this unit knew mechanically what had happened perfectly well, and its duty was clear before it. Just half a second for this sickness to go off, and he would act.
It was a longer pause than it seemed to him, as all things appeared to happen quickly in it, somewhat as in a photographic life-picture when the films are run too quick. At least, that remained his memory of it. And during that time he stood and wondered why he could not feel. He thought of her mother and of Fenwick, and said to himself they were to be pitied more than he; for they were human, and could feel it—could really know what jewel they had lost—had hearts to grieve and eyes to weep with. He had nothing—was a stupid blank! Oh, he had been mistaken about himself and his love: he was a stone.
A few moments later than his first sight of that silent crowd—moments in which the world had changed and the sun had become a curse; in which he had for some reason—not grief, for he could not grieve—resolved on death, except in an event he dared not hope for—he found himself speaking to the men who had borne up the beach the thing whose germ of life, if it survived, was his only chance of life hereafter.
"I am a doctor; let me come." The place they had brought it to was a timber structure that was held as common property by the fisher-world, and known as Lloyd's Coffeehouse. It was not a coffeehouse, but a kind of spontaneous club-room, where the old men sat and smoked churchwarden pipes, and told each other
tales of storm and wreck, and how the news of old sea-battles came to St. Sennans in their boyhood; of wives made widows for their country's good, and men all sound of limb when the first gun said "Death!" across the water, crippled for all time when the last said "Victory!" and there was silence and the smell of blood. Over the mantel was an old print of the battle of Camperdown, with three-deckers in the smoke, flanked by portraits of Rodney and Nelson. There was a long table down the centre that had been there since the days of Rodney, and on this was laid what an hour ago was Sally; what each man present fears to uncover the face of, but less on his own account than for the sake of the only man who seems fearless, and lays hands on the cover to remove it; for all knew, or guessed, what this dead woman might be—might have been—to this man.
"I am a doctor; let me come."
"Are ye sure ye know, young master? Are ye sure, boy?" The speaker, a very old man, interposes a trembling hand to save Vereker from what he may not anticipate, perhaps has it in mind to beseech him to give place to the local doctor, just arriving. But the answer is merely, "I know." And the hand that uncovers the dead face never wavers, and then that white thing we see is all there is of Sally—that coil and tangle of black hair, all mixed with weed and sea-foam, is the rich mass that was drying in the sun that day she sat with Fenwick on the beach; those eyes that strain behind the half-closed eyelids were the merry eyes that looked up from the water at the boat she dived from two days since; those lips are the lips the man who stands beside her kissed but yesterday for the first time. The memory of that kiss is on him now as he wipes the sea-slime from them and takes the first prompt steps for their salvation.
The old Scotch doctor, who came in a moment later, wondered at the resolute decision and energy Vereker was showing. He had been told credibly of the circumstances of the case, and gave way on technical points connected with resuscitation, surrendering views he would otherwise have contended for about Marshall Hall's and Silvester's respective systems. Perhaps one reason for this was that auscultation of the heart convinced him that the case was hopeless, and he may have reflected that if any other
method than Dr. Vereker's was used that gentleman was sure to believe the patient might have been saved. Better leave him to himself.