“How does she seem to you today?”
“The general conditions are about the same. The heart keeps up wonderfully, but there is a little more oppression of the diaphragm.”
“Yes—her breathing is harder. Last night she suffered horribly at times.”
“Oh—she’ll suffer,” Wyant murmured. “Of course the hypodermics can be increased.”
“Just what did Dr. Garford say this morning?”
“He is astonished at her strength.”
“But there’s no hope?—I don’t know why I ask!”
“Hope?” Wyant looked at her. “You mean of what’s called recovery—of deferring death indefinitely?”
She nodded.
“How can Garford tell—or any one? We all know there have been cases where such injury to the cord has not caused death. This may be one of those cases; but the biggest man couldn’t say now.”
Justine hid her eyes. “What a fate!”
“Recovery? Yes. Keeping people alive in such cases is one of the refinements of cruelty that it was left for Christianity to invent.”
“And yet—?”
“And yet—it’s got to be! Science herself says so—not for the patient, of course; but for herself—for unborn generations, rather. Queer, isn’t it? The two creeds are at one.”
Justine murmured through her clasped hands: “I wish she were not so strong–-“
“Yes; it’s wonderful what those frail petted bodies can stand. The fight is going to be a hard one.”
She rose with a shiver. “I must go to Cicely–-” The rector of Saint Anne’s had called again. Justine, in obedience to Mrs. Gaines’s suggestion, had summoned him from Clifton the day after the accident; but, supported by the surgeons and Wyant, she had resisted his admission to the sick-room. Bessy’s religious practices had been purely mechanicaclass="underline" her faith had never been associated with the graver moments of her life, and the apparition of a clerical figure at her bedside would portend not consolation but calamity. Since it was all-important that her nervous strength should be sustained, and the gravity of the situation kept from her, Mrs. Gaines yielded to the medical commands, consoled by the ready acquiescence of the rector. But before she left she extracted a promise that he would call frequently at Lynbrook, and wait his opportunity to say an uplifting word to Mrs. Amherst.
The Reverend Ernest Lynde, who was a young man, with more zeal than experience, deemed it his duty to obey this injunction to the letter; but hitherto he had had to content himself with a talk with the housekeeper, or a brief word on the doorstep from Wyant. Today, however, he had asked somewhat insistently for Miss Brent; and Justine, who was free at the moment, felt that she could not refuse to go down. She had seen him only in the pulpit, when once or twice, in Bessy’s absence, she had taken Cicely to church: he struck her as a grave young man, with a fine voice but halting speech. His sermons were earnest but ineffective.
As he rose to meet her, she felt that she should like him better out of church. His glance was clear and honest, and there was sweetness in his hesitating smile.
“I am sorry to seem persistent—but I heard you had news of Mr. Langhope, and I was anxious to know the particulars,” he explained.
Justine replied that her message had overtaken Mr. Langhope at Wady Haifa, and that he hoped to reach Alexandria in time to catch a steamer to Brindisi at the end of the week.
“Not till then? So it will be almost three weeks—?”
“As nearly as I can calculate, a month.”
The rector hesitated. “And Mr. Amherst?”
“He is coming back too.”
“Ah, you have heard? I’m glad of that. He will be here soon?”
“No. He is in South America—at Buenos Ayres. There will be no steamer for some days, and he may not get here till after Mr. Langhope.”
Mr. Lynde looked at her kindly, with grave eyes that proffered help. “This is terrible for you, Miss Brent.”
“Yes,” Justine answered simply.
“And Mrs. Amherst’s condition–-?”
“It is about the same.”
“The doctors are hopeful?”
“They have not lost hope.”
“She seems to keep her strength wonderfully.”
“Yes, wonderfully.”
Mr. Lynde paused, looking downward, and awkwardly turning his soft clerical hat in his large kind-looking hands. “One might almost see in it a dispensation—_we_ should see one, Miss Brent.”
“We?“ She glanced up apologetically, not quite sure that her tired mind had followed his meaning.
“We, I mean, who believe…that not one sparrow falls to the ground….” He flushed, and went on in a more mundane tone: “I am glad you have the hope of Mr. Langhope’s arrival to keep you up. Modern science—thank heaven!—can do such wonders in sustaining and prolonging life that, even if there is little chance of recovery, the faint spark may be nursed until….”
He paused again, conscious that the dusky-browed young woman, slenderly erect in her dark blue linen and nurse’s cap, was examining him with an intentness which contrasted curiously with the absent-minded glance she had dropped on him in entering.
“In such cases,” she said in a low tone, “there is practically no chance of recovery.”
“So I understand.”
“Even if there were, it would probably be death-in-life: complete paralysis of the lower body.”
He shuddered. “A dreadful fate! She was so gay and active–-“
“Yes—and the struggle with death, for the next few weeks, must involve incessant suffering…frightful suffering…perhaps vainly….”
“I feared so,” he murmured, his kind face paling.
“Then why do you thank heaven that modern science has found such wonderful ways of prolonging life?”
He raised his head with a start and their eyes met. He saw that the nurse’s face was pale and calm—almost judicial in its composure—and his self-possession returned to him.
“As a Christian,” he answered, with his slow smile, “I can hardly do otherwise.”
Justine continued to consider him thoughtfully. “The men of the older generation—clergymen, I mean,” she went on in a low controlled voice, “would of course take that view—must take it. But the conditions are so changed—so many undreamed-of means of prolonging life—prolonging suffering—have been discovered and applied in the last few years, that I wondered…in my profession one often wonders….”
“I understand,” he rejoined sympathetically, forgetting his youth and his inexperience in the simple desire to bring solace to a troubled mind. “I understand your feeling—but you need have no doubt. Human life is sacred, and the fact that, even in this materialistic age, science is continually struggling to preserve and prolong it, shows—very beautifully, I think—how all things work together to fulfill the divine will.”
“Then you believe that the divine will delights in mere pain—mere meaningless animal suffering—for its own sake?”
“Surely not; but for the sake of the spiritual life that may be mysteriously wrung out of it.”
Justine bent her puzzled brows on him. “I could understand that view of moral suffering—or even of physical pain moderate enough to leave the mind clear, and to call forth qualities of endurance and renunciation. But where the body has been crushed to a pulp, and the mind is no more than a machine for the registering of sense-impressions of physical anguish, of what use can such suffering be to its owner—or to the divine will?”
The young rector looked at her sadly, almost severely. “There, Miss Brent, we touch on inscrutable things, and human reason must leave the answer to faith.”
Justine pondered. “So that—one may say—Christianity recognizes no exceptions—?”
“None—none,” its authorized exponent pronounced emphatically.
“Then Christianity and science are agreed.” She rose, and the young rector, with visible reluctance, stood up also.
“That, again, is one of the most striking evidences—” he began; and then, as the necessity of taking leave was forced upon him, he added appealingly: “I understand your uncertainties, your questionings, and I wish I could have made my point clearer–-“