Yes, he had promised. He had promised, and he had no idea of breaking his word. But the very thought of George put him into an ill humour. Ever since last evening, ever since he had had those abrupt words with John Welch in the hospital, he had preferred not to see George. He liked him; he did justice to his good intentions; but he wanted to keep out of his way, at least until the morning was over. Of course it couldn't be done. He had given his promise to Eva. George was probably waiting for him at this minute. "I suppose," he said aloud, and Mrs. Archbald jumped at the grim sound of his voice, "fortitude will be the last thing to go."
"You are so wonderful, Father," she replied, and he realized, with an inward chuckle, that her artificial resources had failed.
An admirable woman, he mused, looking at her profile in the oblique light from the window, admirable and unscrupulous. Even the sanguine brightness of her smile, which seemed to him as transparent as glass, was the mirror, he told himself, of persevering hypocrisy. A living triumph of self-discipline, of inward poise, of the confirmed habit of not wanting to be herself, she had found her reward in that quiet command over circumstances. From her first amiable word, he had known that the excuse on her lips was merely another benign falsehood. Ever since he had complained of the tingling in his limbs, she had determined, he realized, not to let him go out alone. Sitting rigidly beside this small, compact, irresistible force, he felt the hot flush of temper spread in a stinging wave over his features. He was easily nettled nowadays, sometimes by trifles, sometimes by nothing at all; and whenever his temper was ruffled, that hollow drumming began all over again in his ears, as if the universe buzzed with a question he could not hear clearly.
All night (and it had been a bad night) he had dreaded the return to the hospital; but as they went down the long hall upstairs, Eva's door opened, and he heard her voice speaking in natural tones. A minute later, when they entered the room, he saw that she had been placed on a stretcher which the nurses had wheeled away from the bed. They had put on her one of the hospital nightgowns; he could see the neck of it rising above the grey blanket, which covered her smoothly and was folded back almost under her chin. Her hair was combed away from her forehead, and the two thick braids, tied at the waving ends with blue ribbon, fell over her shoulders and bosom. So she had worn her hair as a child, he remembered, and so had the shining mist escaped from the parting. Her face was very pale; even the full, soft lips had lost their clear red and were faintly pink as they had been when she was little. It seemed to him, too, that her eyes were the eyes of a child, not of a woman, large, wistful, as changeable as the April sky, and encircled by violet shadows which made them appear sunken.
So seldom had he, or any other man, he imagined, surprised her with the animation drained from her face, that he had thought of her spirit as effortless. Not until the last few months had he suspected that the sudden radiance of her smile was less natural than the upward flight of her eyebrows. But, as he looked at her now, a quiver ran through his heart, and he felt, with agitated senses, that he was seeing her stripped naked, that he was helplessly watching a violation. For they were looking at her through the ruin of her pride, and her pride, he understood, with a stab of insight, was closer to her than happiness, was closer to her even than love.
"I've had a good night," she said cheerfully, "and I am just going up. You must stay with George and try to keep him from worrying. There isn't anything really to worry about. It will all come right. Whatever happens," she added, in a whisper, "it will be right." For an instant, when he bent over her, she gazed up into his eyes, and he knew, even without the note of weariness in her voice, that she did not wish to come back alive, that she did not wish to go on. What she feared most was not death, but life with its endless fatigue, its exacting pretense. As George turned to the door, she seemed to give way, to snap somewhere within, and the old man saw that John Welch, whose eyes never left her, leaned down quickly and put his hand on the grey blanket. Then George glanced round again, and an inner miracle happened. A long breath shuddered through her; her slender body straightened itself on the stretcher, and her look, her voice, her gestures, were charged with a fresh infusion of energy. Radiance streamed from her anew. Her face was glowing but not with colour; her eyes were shining but not with warmth.
"I am feeling so well," she began again in a voice that sounded excited yetremote. "Ever since John gave me that last hypodermic, I've felt as if nothing were the matter. George is suffering more than I am this minute. He ought to be out in the air with a cigar."
Yes, it was true. George was really suffering more than she was at the moment. His handsome florid face had changed utterly since the beginning of her illness. The rounded contour, so youthful a few weeks before, had sagged and hardened, and there were lines of anxiety between nose and mouth and beneath the still boyish grey eyes.
"I shan't smoke so much as a cigarette or touch a drop to drink till you've come through it, Eva," he said with obstinate misery. "I told you I wouldn't, and this time I'm going to keep my word."
The scene was so painful to General Archbald that he glanced from the stretcher to the bare little room, which was stripped also. Surely there was nothing worse in a crisis than the way it tore away all pretenses. Nothing, he reflected, not even external objects could withstand tragedy. Even if she doesn't die, he thought, we shall never be the same, for we have gone through the expectation of death. He stared at the sickly green of the walls, at the white iron bed, as hideous, he told himself, as a rack; at the painted bureau, with drawers that stuck when the nurse tried to open them. The vases of flowers were still outside the door; but there were violets in a cream-coloured bowl on the window-sill, and their fragrance seemed to him faded and sad. Then, while he still looked away, the stretcher was rolled out into the hall, and turning at last, he found that he was alone with George in the room.
"Did Cora go up with her?"
George nodded. "Only to the door. Eva wouldn't let me go even that far."
"Well, she has John. John will stay with her until it is over. That's a fine boy," the General added, for the sake of hearing himself speak. "He will make a good doctor."
"Yes, he will make a good doctor."
"It was a fortunate day when you took him to live with you. Let me see, he is Eva's cousin's child, isn't he?"
"Betty Bolingbroke's. His father was a rolling-stone, and the poor little chap was knocked about from pillar to post. He always bore a grudge, even as a child. I was sorry when Eva took him in, but I'm glad now that she did."
"It was a good thing. Yes, it was a very good thing." Walking back to the window, the old man looked out with dazed eyes on the yard. Rain was falling. The jonquils were beaten down and spattered with earth. At the end of the asphalt walk, he could see drenched ivy on a summer-house. Well, he had nothing to say to George. He had no time to listen to him. "We need rain," he said aloud. "This country needs rain." He turned to George and their eyes met. Nobody ought to look like that. There was such a thing as proper pride, even in misery. Nobody ought to look stripped to the soul.
"Try to brace up," he said. Somewhere he had heard that phrase before, and it was the only one he could think of that sounded as unnatural as the moment, as unnatural as life.
"There are some things I can't stand up against," George replied, smoothing the hair back from his damp forehead. Walking slowly across the room, he dropped into a wicker rocking-chair by the window. "Why," he asked despairingly the next instant, "should it have to be Eva?"