He saw her again, and in her wasted, helpless form, her hollow cheeks, her bloodless face, with its weary, hopeless look, her mortal weakness, he clearly recognized his _sombre rivals_, _Grief and Death_; and with a look of indomitable resolution he raised his hand and vowed that he would enter the lists against them. If it were within the scope of human will he would drive them from their prey.
His aunt met him in the hall and whispered, "Be gentle."
"Remain here," was his low reply. "I have also sent for Dr. Markham;"
and he entered.
Grace reached out to him both her hands as she said, "Oh, Alford, you are barely in time. It is a comfort beyond all words to see you before--before--" She could not finish the sinister sentence.
He gravely and silently took her hands, and sat down beside her.
"I know I disappoint you," she continued. "I"ve been your evil genius, I"ve saddened your whole life; and you have been so true and faithful!
Promise me, Alford, that after I"m gone you will not let my blighted life cast its shadow over your future years. How strangely stern you look!"
"So you intend to die, Grace?" were his first, low words.
"Intend to die?"
"Yes. Do you think you are doing right by your father in dying?"
"Dear, dear papa! I have long ceased to be a comfort to him. He, too, will be better when I am gone. I am now a hopeless grief to him.
Alford, dear Alford, do not look at me in that way."
"How else can I look? Do you not comprehend what your death means to _me_, if not to others?"
"Alford, can I help it?"
"Certainly you can. It will be sheer, downright selfishness for you to die. It will be your one unworthy act. You have no disease: you have only to comply with the conditions of life in order to live."
"You are mistaken," she said, the faintest possible color coming into her face. "The bullet that caused Warren"s death has been equally fatal to me. Have I not tried to live?"
"I do not ask you to _try_ to live, but to _live_. Nay, more, I demand it; and I have the right. I ask for nothing more. Although I have loved you, idolized you, all these years, I ask only that you comply with the conditions of life and live." The color deepened perceptibly under his emphatic words, and she said, "Can a woman live whose heart, and hope, and soul, if she has one, are dead and buried?"
"Yes, as surely as a man whose heart and hope were buried long years before. There was a time when I weakly purposed to throw off the burden of life; but I promised to live and do my best, and I am here to-day.
You must make me the same promise. In the name of all the past, I demand it. Do you imagine that I am going to sit down tamely and shed a few helpless tears if you do me this immeasurable wrong?"
"Oh, Alford!" she gasped, "what do you mean?"
"I am not here, Grace, to make threats," he said gravely; "but I fear you have made a merely superficial estimate of my nature. Hilland is not. You know that I would have died a hundred times in his place. He committed you to my care with his last breath, and that trust gave value to my life. What right have you to die and bring to me the blackness of despair? I am willing to bear my burden patiently to the end. You should be willing to bear yours."
"I admit your claim," she cried, wringing her hands. "You have made death, that I welcome, a terror. How can I live? What is there left of me but a shadow? What am I but a mere semblance of a woman? The snow is not whiter than my hair, or colder than my heart. Oh, Alford, you have grown morbid in all these years. You cannot know what is best. Your true chance is to let me go. I am virtually dead now, and when my flickering breath ceases, the change will be slight indeed."
"It will be a fatal change for me," he replied, with such calm emphasis that she shuddered. "You ask how you can live. Again I repeat, by complying with the conditions of life. You have been complying with the conditions of death; and I will not yield you to him. Grief has been a far closer and more cherished friend than I; and you have permitted it, like a shadow, to stand between us. The time has now come when you must choose between this fatal shadow, this useless, selfish grief, and a loyal friend, who only asks that he may see you at times, that he may know where to find the one life that is essential to his life. Can you not understand from your own experience that a word from you is sweeter to me than all the music of the world?--that smiles from you will give me courage to fight the battle of life to the last? Had Hilland come back wounded, would you have listened if he had reasoned, "I am weak and maimed--not like my old self: you will be better off without me"?"
"Say no more," she faltered. "If a shadow can live, I will. If a poor, heartless, hopeless creature can continue to breathe, I will. If I die, as I believe I must, I will die doing just what you ask. If it is possible for me to live, I shall disappoint you more bitterly than ever. Alford, believe me, the woman is dead within me. If I live I shall become I know not what--a sort of unnatural creature, having little more than physical life."
"Grace, our mutual belief forbids such a thought. If a plant is deeply shadowed, and moisture is withdrawn, it begins to die. Bring to it again light and moisture, the conditions of its life, and it gradually revives and resumes its normal state. This principle applies equally to you in your higher order of existence. Will you promise me that, at the utmost exertion of your will and intelligence, you will try to live?"
"Yes, Alford; but again I warn you. You will be disappointed."
He kissed both her hands with a manner that evinced profound grat.i.tude and respect, but nothing more; and then summoned his aunt and Dr.
Markham.
Grace lay back on the sofa, white and faint, with closed eyes.
"Oh, Alford, what have you done?" exclaimed Mrs. Mayburn.
"What is right and rational. Dr. Markham, Mrs. Hilland has promised to use the utmost exertion of her will and intelligence to live. I ask that you and my aunt employ your utmost skill and intelligence in co-operation with her effort. We here--all four of us--enter upon a battle; and, like all battles, it should be fought with skill and indomitable courage, not sentimental impulse. I know that Mrs. Hilland will honestly make the effort, for she is one to keep her word. Am I not right, Grace?"
"Yes," was the faint reply.
"Why, now I can go to work with hope," said the physician briskly, as he gave his patient a little stimulant.
"And I also," cried the old lady, tears streaming down her face. "Oh, darling Grace, you will live and keep all our hearts from breaking."
"I"ll try," she said, in almost mortal weariness.
When she had been revived somewhat by his restoratives, Dr. Markham said, "I now advise that she be carried back to her room, and I promise to be unwearied in my care."
"No," said Graham to his aunt. "Do not call the servants; I shall carry her to her room myself;" and he lifted her as gently as he would take up a child, and bore her strongly and easily to her room.
"Poor, poor Alford!" she whispered--"wasting your rich, full heart on a shadow."
CHAPTER x.x.xVI
ALL MATERIALISTS
When Graham returned to the library he found that the major had tottered in, and was awaiting him with a look of intense anxiety.
"Graham, Graham!" he cried, "do you think there is any hope?"
"I do, sir. I think there is almost a certainty that your daughter will live."
"Now G.o.d be praised! although I have little right to say it, for I"ve put His name to a bad use all my life."
"I don"t think any harm has been done," said Graham, smiling.
"Oh, I know, I know how wise you German students are. You can"t find G.o.d with a microscope or a telescope, and therefore there is none. But I"m the last man to criticise. Grace has been my divinity since her mother died; and if you can give a reasonable hope that she"ll live to close my eyes, I"ll thank the G.o.d that my wife worshipped, in spite of all your new-fangled philosophies."
"And I hope I shall never be so wanting in courtesy, to say the least, as to show anything but respect for your convictions. You shall know the whole truth about Grace; and I shall look to you also for aid in a combined effort to rally and strengthen her forces of life. You know, Major, that I have seen some service."
"Yes, yes; boy that you are, you are a hundred-fold more of a veteran than I am. At the beginning of the war I felt very superior and experienced. But the war that I saw was mere child"s-play."
"Well, sir, the war that I"ve been through was child"s play to me compared with the battle begun to-night. I never feared death, except as it might bring trouble to others, and for long years I coveted it; but I fear the death of Grace Hilland beyond anything in this world or any other. As her father, you now shall learn the whole truth;" and he told his story from the evening of their first game of whist together.
"Strange, strange!" muttered the old man. "It"s the story of Philip Harkness over again. But, by the G.o.d who made me, she shall reward you if she lives."
"No, Major St. John, no. She shall devote herself to you, and live the life that her own feelings dictate. She understands this, and I _will_ it. I a.s.sure you that whatever else I lack it"s not a will."