"I don"t think she cared much about you--I"m sure she couldn"t have," she said slowly, finding a certain pleasure in the words.
David did not answer. He was sunk in memory. How far away lay that world of art and the artist from this dusty, practical life in which he was now immersed! At no time had he been really akin to it. The only art to which he was naturally susceptible was the art of oratory and poetry. Elise had created in him an artificial taste, which had died with his pa.s.sion. Yet now, as his quickened mind lingered in the past, he felt a certain wide philosophic regret for the complete divorce which had come about between him and so rich a section of human experience.
He was roused from his reverie, which would have rea.s.sured her, could she have followed it, more than any direct speech, by a movement from Lucy. Dropping the hand which had once more stolen over his brow, he saw her looking at him with wide, wet eyes.
"David!"
"Yes."
"Come here! close to me!"
He moved forward, and laid his arm round her shoulders, as she sat in her low chair beside him.
"What is it, dear? I have been keeping you up too late."
She lifted a hand, and brought his face near to hers.
"David, I am a stupid little thing--but I do understand more than I did, and I would never, _never_ desert you for anything,--for any sorrow or trouble in the world!"
The mixture of yearning, pain, triumphant affection in her tone, cannot be rendered in words.
His whole heart melted to her. As he held her to his breast, the hour they had just pa.s.sed through took for both of them a sacred meaning and importance. Youth was going--their talk had not been the talk of youth. Was true love just beginning?
CHAPTER VIII
"_My G.o.d! My G.o.d!_"
The cry was David"s. He had reeled back against the table in his study, his hand upon an open book, his face turned to Doctor Mildmay, who was standing by the fireplace.
"Of course, I can"t be sure," said the doctor hastily, almost guiltily. "You must not take it upon my authority alone. Try and throw it off your mind. Take your wife up to town to see Selby or Paget, and if I am wrong I shall be too thankful! And, above all, don"t frighten her. Take care--she will be down again directly."
"You say," said David, thickly, "that if it were what you suspect, operation would be difficult. Yes, I see there is something of the sort here."
He turned, shaking all over, to the book beside him, which was a medical treatise he had just taken down from his scientific bookcase.
"It would be certainly difficult," said the doctor, frowning, his lower lip pushed forward in a stress of thought, "but it would have to be attempted. Only, on the temporal bone it will be a puzzle to go deep enough."
David"s eye ran along the page beside him. "Sarcoma, which was originally regarded with far less terror than cancer (carcinoma), is now generally held by doctors to be more malignant and more deadly. There is much less pain, but surgery can do less, and death is in most cases infinitely more rapid."
"Hush!" said the doctor, with short decision, "I hear her coming down again. Let me speak."
Lucy, who had run upstairs to quiet a yell of crying from Sandy immediately after Doctor Mildmay had finished his examination of her swollen cheek, opened the door as he spoke. She was slightly flushed, and her eyes were more wide open and restless than usual.
David was apparently bending over a drawer which he had opened on the farther side of his writing-table. The doctor"s face was entirely as usual.
"Well now, Mrs. Grieve," he said cheerily, "we have been agreeing--your husband and I--that it will be best for you to go up to London and have that cheek looked at by one of the crack surgeons. They will give you the best advice as to what to do with it. It is not a common ailment, and we are very fine fellows down here, but of course we can"t get the experience, in a particular line of cases, of one of the first-rate surgical specialists. Do you think you could go to-morrow? I could make an appointment for you by telegraph to-day."
Lucy gave a little unsteady, affected laugh.
"I don"t see how I can go all in a moment like that," she said. "It doesn"t matter! Why don"t you give me something for it, and it will go away."
"Oh! but it does matter," said the doctor, firmly. "Lumps like that are serious things, and mustn"t be trifled with."
"But what will they want to do to it?" said Lucy nervously. She was standing with one long, thin hand resting lightly on the back of a chair, looking from David, whose face and figure were blurred to her by the dazzle of afternoon light coming in through the window, to Doctor Mildmay.
The doctor cleared his throat.
"They would only want to do what was best for you in every way," he said; "you may be sure of that. Could you be very brave if they advised you that it ought to be removed?"
She gave a little shriek.
"What! you mean cut it out--cut it away!" she cried, shaking, and looking at him with the frowning anger of a child. "Why, it would leave an ugly mark, a hideous mark!"
"No, it wouldn"t. The mark would disfigure you much less than the swelling. They would take care to draw the skin together again neatly, and you could easily arrange your hair a little. But you ought to get a first-rate opinion."
"What is it? what do you call it?" said Lucy, irritably. "I can"t think why you make such a fuss."
"Well, it might be various things," he said evasively. "Any way, you take my advice, and have it seen to. I can telegraph as I go from here."
"I could take you up to-morrow," said David, coming forward in answer to the disturbed look she threw him. Now that her flush had faded, how pale and drooping she was in the strong light! "It would be better, dear, to do what Doctor Mildmay recommends. And you never mind a day in London, you know."
Did she detect any difference in the voice? She moved up to him, and he put his arm round her.
"Must I?" she said, helplessly; "it"s such a bore, to-morrow particularly. I had promised to take Sandy out to tea."
"Well, let that young man go without a treat for once," said the doctor, laughing. "He has a deal too many, anyway. Very well, that"s settled. I will telegraph as I go to the train. Just come here a moment, Grieve."
The two went out together. When David returned, any one who had happened to be in the hall would have seen that he could hardly open the sitting-room door, so fumbling were his movements. As he pa.s.sed through the room to reach the study he caught sight of his own face in a gla.s.s, and stopping, with clenched hands, pulled himself together by the effort of his whole being.
When he opened the study-door, Lucy was hunting about his table in a quick, impatient way.
"I can"t think where you keep your india-rubber rings, David. I want to put one round a parcel for Dora."
He found one for her. Then she stood by the fire, as the sunset-light faded into dusk, and poured out to him a story of domestic grievances. Sarah, their cook, wished to leave and be married--it was very unexpected and very inconsiderate, and Lucy did not believe the young man was steady; and how on earth was she to find another cook? It was enough to drive one wild, the difficulty of getting cooks in Manchester.
For nearly an hour, till the supper-bell rang, she stood there, with her foot on the fender, chattering in a somewhat sharp, shrill way. Not one word would she say, or let him say, of London or the doctor"s visit.
After supper, as they went back into the study, David looked for the railway-guide. "The 10. 15 will do," he said. "Mildmay has made the appointment for three. We can just get up in time."
"It is great nonsense!" said Lucy, pouting. "The question is, can we get back? I must get back. I don"t want to leave Sandy for the night. He"s got a cold."
It seemed to David that something clutched at his breath and voice.
Was it he or some one else that said:--
"That will be too tiring, dear. We shall have to stay the night."