Even as the words turned themselves like poisoned wires through his mind the conviction that his sorrow was not like the sorrow of other men rushed upon him. What had he done to her? Oh, what had he been to her--his poor Jean? He turned his head and thrust his face into the depths of her blue pillow. A delicate breath stole from it--the violet perfume that Jean used about her bedroom because he fancied it. He sprang from the lounge, and began to pace the room madly to and fro.
Now there rose about him, wave by wave, like the rising of an awful tide, the overlooked but irresistible force of the common life which married man and woman share--incidents that he would rather have died than recall, words, looks, scenes, which it shattered his soul and body to remember.
A solemn sea, they widened and spread about him. He felt himself torn from his feet and tossed into the surge of them.
It seemed to him that every tenderness he had shown his wife was drowning out of his consciousness. But every hard thing he had ever done rose and rolled upon him--an unkind look, a harsh word, a little neglect here, a certain indifference there; an occasion when he had made her miserable and could just as easily have made her happy; a time when she had asked--Jean so seldom asked--for some trifling attention which he had omitted to bestow; the desolate look she wore on a given day; the patient eyes she lifted, heart-sick with sore surprise, once when he ...
The worst of it was in thinking how it was when she began to be weak and ill. Jean was not a complaining woman, never a whining invalid, but resolute, sweet, and cheerful. Like an air-plant on oxygen, she existed on his tenderness. He had offered it to her when he felt like it. Well, busy, bustling man--out of his bounteous health and freedom, what comfort had he given to this imprisoned woman? The pa.s.sing of his moods? The attention of his whims? The fragments of his time? The blunt edge of his sympathy?
One night he had come in late, when he could quite as well have come two hours before; he found her by the open window, gasping for breath in the cold night air, in her blue gown, with her braided hair, her lovely look, the dear expression in her eyes. She had not reproached him ... he wished from his soul, now, that she had reproached him, sometimes; it would have done him good; it would have dashed cold water on his fainting sense of duty to her; he was the kind of man who would have responded to it like a man. But she was not the kind of woman to do it. And she never had. So he had slid into those easy habits of accepting the invalid, anyhow; as a fact not to be put too much in the foreground of his daily life ... not to intrude too much. And she had not protested, had not cried out against the frost that gathered in his heart.
She had trodden her via dolorosa alone. As she had endured, so she had died. He thought that if he had only been with her then, he could have borne it all.
His mind veered off from this swiftly, almost as if it were unhinged, and began to dwell upon what he would do for her if he had her again, living, warm, breathing, sweet. The only comfort he could get was in thinking how he would comfort her ... now; how he would cherish her ... now; the love he would waste, the tenderness he would invent--new forms of it, that no husband in the world had ever thought of, to make a wife happy. Oh, the honor in which he would hold her least and lightest wish! The summer of the heart in which she should blossom!--she who had perished in the winter of his neglect; she who was under the catafalque of autumn leaves out there in the gathering November storm. Terrible that it should storm the first night that Jean lay in her grave!
"G.o.d! G.o.d!" he cried. "If I could have her back for one hour--for one instant!"
"This way, Avery--turn your head this way. Here is the air. The window is open. Don"t struggle so. It is all right. Breathe naturally," added the dentist. "Come, take it quietly. There is no harm done. The tooth is out. I never knew the gas work more easily."
Marshall Avery battled up and pushed his friend away. The cold air, dashing in from the open window, chafed his face smartly. He drank it in gulps before he could manage to speak. It was raining, and the storm wet the sill. A few drops spattered over and hit his hand.
"Armstrong!--for Heaven"s sake!--if there"s any mercy in you"-- "That"s a large phrase for a small occasion, Avery. I have n"t committed murder, you know."
"I "m not so sure of it," muttered Avery, staring about. "I don"t understand. Did I have another tooth out--after all that--happened?"
"I should hope not. I must say you make as much fuss over this one molar as a child or a clergyman," answered the dentist brusquely. "We regard those as our most troublesome cla.s.ses."
"Did you give me chloroform?"
"I don"t give chloroform."
"Gas, then?"
"Why, certainly, I gave gas."
"Did I ask for it?"
"Yes. You asked for it. Even if you had n"t--You don"t bear pain, you know, Avery, with that composure"-- "Armstrong? Say, Armstrong. When you went over to the club with me"-- The dentist twisted his mustache.
--"was Romer"s yacht lying out in the river then? I seem to remember that you did n"t want me to take that trip. And you did n"t know it would blow a gale, either. And you did n"t know that she"-- "Get up, Avery, and walk about the room. You come to slowly."
"And when the wreck got into the papers--she could n"t bear that.... She was so ill when I left her ... Armstrong! Was it you kept me here in this blanked chair while my wife was dying?"
Dr. Armstrong laughed aloud. Avery sprang towards him. He had a muddy intention of seizing the dentist by the throat. But a thought occurred to him which held him back. Now, as his consciousness clarified, he saw brilliant and beautiful light throbbing about him; he seemed to float in it, as if he were poised in mid-heaven. A scintillation in his brain shot into glory, and broke as it fell into a thousand rays and jets of joy.
"Do you mean to tell me I never went on that accursed cruise--with a fool gun--to murder ducks ... and left my wife dangerously sick? Do you mean that Jean ... is n"t ... Say, Armstrong, you would n"t make game of a man in a position like mine, if you knew... Armstrong!" piteously, "my wife is n"t living--is she, Armstrong?"
"She was, the last I heard," replied the dentist, sterilizing his instruments with a cool and scientific attention. "That was when you sat down in this chair to have your tooth out."
As Avery dashed by him the dentist put out a detaining hand.
"Wait a second, Avery. I don"t consider you quite fit to go yet. Here--wait a minute!"
But the horses of Aurora, flying and flaming through the morning skies, could not have held the man back. A madman--delirious with joy--he swept through the hall and flung the door open. Dr. Armstrong ran after him to give him his hat, but Avery paid no attention to the dentist.
Bareheaded, fleet-footed, with quivering lip, with shining eye, he fled down the street. Like the hurricane that had never sunk the Dream, he swept past the club. He saw the fellows through the window; their cigars gleamed in their mouths and in their hands; they looked to him like marionettes moving on a mimic stage; he felt as if he would like to kick them over, and see if they would rattle as they rolled. As he rushed, hatless, past the Church of the Happy Saints, an officer on night duty recognized the lawyer, and touched his helmet in surprise, but did not follow the disordered figure--Mr. Avery was not a drinking man. He was allowed to pursue his eccentricity undisturbed. He met one or two men he knew, and they said, "Hilloa, Avery!" But he did not answer them. He ran on in the rain; his heart sang:-- "I did n"t do it--I never did it! I did not treat her so. I was not that fellow. Oh, thank G.o.d, I was not that brute!" He hurried on till he lost his breath; then collected himself, and came up more quietly to his own door.
He felt for his latch-key, and was relieved to find it in his pocket, as usual; the impression that it lay off the Shoals somewhere at the bottom had not entirely vanished yet. He opened the door and closed it softly. The hall gas was burning. Otherwise the house was dark. It was perfectly still. The silence somewhat checked his mood, and the violence of his haste abated; with it abated an indefinable measure of his happiness. He raised his hand to take off his hat; then found that he had not worn any. It occurred to him that he had better not waken Jean too abruptly--it might hurt her: he was going to be very thoughtful of Jean. She must not be startled. He went upstairs quietly.
In the upper hall he paused. Pink, in the nursery, was grinding her teeth in her sleep. The baby was not restless, and Molly was sleeping heavily. From his wife"s room there came no sound.
Jean almost always waked when he came home late, if indeed she had slept at all before she heard his step. But this was not inevitable. Sometimes he did not arouse her. And he remembered that to-night she had been feeble, and had not got to sleep as early as usual. As he stood uncertain before her door the clock on the mantel struck eleven.
He pa.s.sed on, and into his own room. He wondered if he ought to undress and go to bed without disturbing her. But he could not bring himself to do this. He was still too much agitated; and the necessity of keeping quiet did not tend to calm him. He turned up his gas, and the light rose warmly. Then he saw that the door into his wife"s room was partly open. "Jean!" he said softly. She did not answer him. Sometimes, if she were sleepy, or exhausted, she did not incline to talk when he came home.
"Jean?" he repeated, "are you awake, my darling? I want to speak to you.... I must speak to you," added the husband impetuously, when Jean did not reply.
He pushed the door wide and went in. The only light in the room came from the night candle, which was burning dimly. It was a blue candle, and it had a certain ghastly look to him, as he stood gazing across the little table at the bed.
"After all," he thought, "I suppose I ought not to wake her--just because I "ve got all that to tell her."
He stood, undecided what to do.
Jean was lying on the bed in her lace-frilled nightdress, with her bright hair braided in long braids, as she wore it for the night. Something in her att.i.tude and expression startled him. So she had lain--so she had looked-- His temples throbbed suddenly. The blood froze at his heart.
"Jean!" he cried loudly. "Dear Jean!"
But Jean did not reply. He sprang to her, and tore open the nightdress at her throat; he crushed at her hands; they were quite cold. He put his ear to her heart; he could not hear it beat. Jean lay in her loveliness, with gentle, half-open eyes, and a desolate little smile on her sweet lips, as she might have looked when she called him and asked him to come back and kiss her good-night. And he had not come. One of her hands clasped the cord of the electric bell. But no one had heard Jean"s bell.
Now, the truth smote the man like the hammer of Thor. His wandering spirit--gone; who knew how? who knew where? while the brain drifted into anaesthesia--had sought out and clutched to itself the terrible fact. At the instant when this perception reached his consciousness there came with it the familiar delusion of his vision.
"Jean cannot be dead. There must be some mistake."
He dashed to the window, opened it wide, and raised her towards the air. The sleeping maid, aroused and terrified, rushed to his help. In his agony he noticed that the children were both crying--Pink like a lady, and the boy like a little wild beast. Pink began to wail: "Mummer Dee! Mummer Dee!"
Jean did not stir.
He dispatched the servants madly--one to the telephone, one for stimulants; while he rubbed his wife"s hands and feet, and tried to get brandy between her lips in the futile fashion of the inexperienced. He could not stimulate any signs of life, and he dared not leave her. Molly reported, sobbing, that Dr. Thorne was not at home, but that Mrs. Thorne had bade her call the nearest doctor; she had rung up the one at the corner, and he was coming.
The nearest doctor came, and he lost no time about it. He was a stranger, and young. Avery looked stupidly at his inexperienced face. The physician stooped and put his ear to Jean"s heart. He went through the form of feeling the pulse, and busied himself in various uncertain ways about her. In a short time he rose, and stood looking at the carpet. He did not meet the husband"s eye.
"You can keep on stimulating if you like," he said. "Perhaps you would feel better. But in my opinion it is of no use."
"For G.o.d"s sake, man, are n"t you going to do something?" demanded the husband in a voice which the nearest doctor had occasion to remember.
"In my opinion the patient is dead," persisted the stranger. He turned and took up his hat. "I will do anything you like, of course, sir," he added politely. "But life is extinct."
Avery made no reply, and the strange physician went uncomfortably away. Avery stared after him with bloodshot eyes. He now held his wife, half sitting, against his own warm body; he had a confused idea that he could will her alive, or love her alive; that if he could make her understand how it all was, she could not die. She loved him too much. But Jean"s gray face fell upon his breast like stiffening clay. Her pulse was imperceptible. He turned piteously to the Irish girl.
"Molly! Can"t you think of anything more we can do for her?"
At this moment a carriage dashed to the door, and came to a violent stop.
"Mother of G.o.d!" cried Molly. "Here is Dr. Thorne!"
With a resounding noise Esmerald Thorne flung back the opening front door. With his hat on his head he cleared the stairs. Molly stood wringing her hands on the threshold of Mrs. Avery"s room. He hurled the girl away as if she had been a wrong prescription left by a blundering rival. His blazing eye concentrated itself on the patient like a burning-gla.s.s. That which had been Jean Avery, half reclining, held against her husband"s heart, lay unresponsive. One arm with its slender hand hung over the edge of the bed, straight down.
"Change the position!" cried Dr. Thorne loudly. "Put her head down--so--flat--perfectly horizontal. Now get out of my way--the whole of you."
He knelt beside the bed, and with great gentleness, curiously at contrast with his imperious and one might have called it angry manner, put his ear to Jean"s heart.
"It"s dead she is. The other doctor do be sayin" so," sobbed Molly, who found it perplexing that Mr. Avery did not speak, and felt that the courtesies of the distressing occasion devolved upon herself. Dr. Thorne held up an imperious finger. In the stillness which obeyed him the clock on the mantel ticked obtrusively, like the rhythm of life in a vital organism.
At the instant when he reached her side, Dr. Thorne had laid Jean"s hanging hand gently upon the bed, warming it and covering it as he did so. But he had paid no attention to it otherwise till now, when he was seen to put his fingers on the wrist. It occurred to Avery that the physician did this rather to satisfy or to sustain hope in the family than from any definite end which he himself hoped to attain by it. The husband managed to articulate.
"Is there any pulse?"
"No."
"Does her heart beat?"
Dr. Thorne made no reply. He was putting a colorless, odorless liquid between her lips. His expression of indignation deepened. One might have said that he was in a rage with death. His first impulse to express that emotion noisily had pa.s.sed. He issued his orders with perfect quiet and consummate self-possession, but the family fled before them like leaves before the wind. Stimulants, hot water, hot stones, fell into the doctor"s hands. He took control of the despairing household as a great general takes command of a terrible retreat. Stern, uncompromising, rigid, he flung his whole being against the fate which had s.n.a.t.c.hed his old patient beyond his rescue. His face was almost as white as Jean"s.
"There sits the man as fights with death!" cried Molly, in uncontrollable excitement. She and the cook fell on their knees. Pink, in her nightdress, stole in, and leaned against the door; the child was too frightened to cry. The baby had gone to sleep. The house grew ominously still. The mantel clock struck the half-hour. It was now half-past eleven. Avery glanced at the physician"s face, and buried his own in his hands.
The doctor rose, and stood frowning. He seemed to hesitate for the first time since he had been in the room.
"Is there no heart-beat yet? Can"t you detect anything?" asked Avery again. He could not help it. Dr. Thorne looked at him; the physician seemed to treat the question as he would an insult.
"When I have anything to say, I "ll say it," he answered roughly. He stood pondering.
"A gla.s.s!" he called peremptorily. Molly handed him a tumbler. He pushed it away.
"I said a gla.s.s! A mirror!"
Some one handed him Jean"s little silver toilet hand-gla.s.s. The physician held it to her lips, and laid it down. After a moment"s irresolution he took it up, and bending over the body put it to the woman"s lips again, and studied it intently for some moments. Avery asked no questions this time, nor did he dare glance at the gla.s.s.
"How long," demanded Dr. Thorne suddenly, "has she been like this?"
"I found her so when I came in. It was then eleven o"clock."
"How long had she been alone?"
"I went out at twenty minutes past ten. I went to have a tooth extracted. That was forty minutes."
"Did she speak to you when you went out?"
"Yes--she spoke to me."
"What did she say?"
Marshall Avery made no reply.
"Were there any symptoms of this heart-failure then? Out with it!--No. Never mind. It"s evident enough."
The clock on the mantel struck the quarter before twelve.
"She has been as she is an hour and a quarter," said Dr. Thorne. His voice and manner were disheartened. He stood a moment pondering, with a dark face.
"Do you call her dead?" entreated Avery. It seemed to him that he had reached the limit of endurance. He would pull the worst down on his head at one toppling blow.
"No!" cried the physician, in a deep, reverberating tone.
"But is it death?" persisted Avery wildly.
"I do not know," said Dr. Thorne.
"Do you give her up?"
"No!" thundered Dr. Thorne again. "The drowned have been resuscitated after six hours," he added between his teeth. "That"s the latest contention."
At this moment a messenger summoned by telephone from the corner pharmacy arrived, running, and pealed and thundered at the door. Some one laid upon the bed within the doctor"s reach a small pasteboard box. He opened it in silence, and took from it a tiny crystal or sh.e.l.l of thin gla.s.s. This he broke upon a handkerchief, and held the linen cautiously to Jean"s face. A powerful, pungent odor filled the room. Avery felt his head whirl as he breathed it. The doctor removed the handkerchief and scrutinized Jean"s face. Neither hope nor despair could be detected on his own. Without a word he went to work again.
Not discarding, but not now depending altogether on the aid of warmth, stimulants, and the remedies upon which he had been trained to rely in his duels with death, the physician turned the force of his will and his skill in the direction of another cla.s.s of experiments.
So far as he could, and at such disadvantage as he must, he put certain of the modern processes of artificial respiration to the proof. He did not allow himself to be hampered in this desperate expedient by an element of danger involved in lifting the patient"s arms above her head; for Jean had pa.s.sed far beyond all ordinary perils. Obstacles seemed to serve only to whip his audacity. His countenance grew dogged and grim. He worked with an ineffable gentleness, and with an indomitable determination that gave a definite grandeur to his bearing.
Avery looked on with dull, blind eyes; he felt that he was witnessing an unsuccessful attempt at miracle. He began to resent it as an interference with the sanct.i.ty of death. He began to wish that the doctor would let his wife alone. The clock on the mantel struck twelve. Pink had fallen asleep, and somebody had carried her back to her own bed. The two women huddled together by the door. The physician had ceased to speak to any person. His square jaws came together like steel machinery that had been locked. In his eyes immeasurable pity gathered; but no one could see his eyes. The clock timed the quarter past midnight.
Avery had now moved round to the other side of the bed; he buried his face in his wife"s pillow, and, un.o.bserved, put out his hand to touch her. He reached and clasped her thin left hand on which her wedding-ring hung loosely. Her fingers were not very cold,--he had often known them colder when she was ill,--and as his hand closed over them it seemed to him for a wild instant that hers melted within it; that it relaxed, or warmed beneath his touch.
"I am going mad," he thought. He raised his head. The clock called half-past twelve. Dr. Thorne was holding the little mirror at Jean"s lips again. A silvery film--as delicate as mist, as mysterious as life, as mighty as joy--clouded it from end to end.
"Jean Avery!" cried the physician, in a ringing tone.
Afterwards Avery thought of that other Healer who summoned his dearest friend from the retreat of death "in a loud voice." But at the moment he thought not at all. For Jean sighed gently and turned her face, and her husband"s eyes were the first she saw when the light of her own high soul returned to hers.
In the dim of the dawn Avery followed the exhausted physician into the hall, and led him to an empty room.
"Rest, if you can, doctor," he pleaded; "we can call you. If she sleep, she shall do well," he added in a broken voice. The miracle was yet in his mind.
"Unless you see some change, she may sleep one hour. Call me by then," said Dr. Thorne abstractedly. "And telephone my wife and the hospital that I spend the morning here." He turned his face to the window. Avery, glancing at it in the gray light, saw that great tears were falling unashamed down the doctor"s cheeks.
"These sudden deaths are so horrible!" he muttered. "They are the felonies of Nature." Long after this, when the eminent physician met the fate which has been elsewhere recorded of him, and which those who have read his memoirs may recall, Marshall Avery remembered these words; and the expression of the man"s face as he uttered them.
He went back to his wife"s room, and lay down on the bed by her side. She slept like some sweet child who was tired out with a nervous strain, and would wake, by the sanct.i.ties of Nature, refreshed for vigorous life. He dared not fall asleep himself for a careless moment, but propped himself on one elbow and watched her hungrily. Her pulse beat weakly yet, but with some steadiness, and rose in volume as the day deepened. In fact, the tide was coming to the flood.
Off there on the Shoals, reaching up around the gray Cape, inch upon patient inch, the waves climbed to their appointed places. With them the vitality of the woman, obeying the most mysterious law in Nature"s mighty code, advanced, and held its own.