Through a doctor whom he knew Falkner arranged the visit to the surgeon, who was difficult of access. And he went in the evening after the visit to learn the result.
"He thinks there is a chance!" and Margaret added more slowly: "It is a great risk. I supposed it must be so."
"You will take it?"
"I think," she said slowly, "that Ned would want me to. You see he is like me. It may accomplish nothing, Dr. Renault said. It may be partially successful.... Or it may be--fatal. He was very kind,--spent all the afternoon here. I liked him immensely; he was so direct."
"When will it be?"
"Next week."
The operation took place, and was not fatal. "Now we shall have to wait,"
the surgeon said to the mother,--"and hope! It will be months before we shall know finally what is the result."
"I shall wait and hope!" Margaret replied to him. Renault, who had a chord in common with this Southern woman, stroked her hand gently as he left.
"Better take the little chap away somewhere and get a change yourself," he said.
It was a still, hot night of late June, the last time that Falkner climbed the hill to the old place. The summer, long delayed, had burst these last days with scorching fury. Margaret was to leave on the morrow for Bedmouth, where she would spend the summer with old Mrs. Pole. She was lying on the veranda couch. She smiled as Falkner drew a chair to her side, the frank smile from the deep blue eyes, that she gave only to her children and to him, and there was a joyous note in her voice:--
"At last there is a sign. I have a little more hope now!"
She told him of the first faint indications of life in the still limbs of the child.
"It will be months before we can tell really. But tonight I have strong hope!"
"What we need most in life is hope," he mused. "It keeps the thing going."
"As long as a man can work, he has hope," she replied stoutly.
"I suppose so,--at least he must think so."
Margaret knew that the work the engineer was engaged on was nearly finished. It might last at the most another six weeks, and he did not know where he should go then; but it was altogether unlikely that the fall would find him at Dudley Farms.
"I was in the city to-day," he said after a time, "and in the company"s office I ran across my old chief. He"s going to Panama in the fall."...
Margaret waited with strange expectancy for what Falkner might say next.
She rarely asked questions, sought directly to know. She had the power of patience, and an unconscious belief that life shaped itself largely without the help of speech. Here and there in the drama of events the spoken word might be called for--but rarely.
"They have interesting problems down there," Falkner continued; "it is really big work, you know. A man might do something worth while. But it is a hole!"
She still waited, and what she expected came:--
"He asked me to go with him,--promised me charge of one of the dams, my own work,--it is the biggest thing that ever came my way."
And then the word fell from her almost without her will:--
"You must go! _Must_ go!"
"Yes," he mused on; "I thought so. There was a time when it would have made me crazy, such a chance.... It"s odd after all these years, when I thought I was dead--"
"Don"t say dead!"
"Well, rutted deep in the mire, then,--that this should happen."
She had said "go," with all the truth of her nature. It was the thing for him to do. But she did not have the strength to say another word. In the moment she had seen with blinding clearness all that this man meant in her little firmament. "This was a Man!" She knew him. She loved him! yes, she loved him, thank G.o.d! And now he must go out of her life as suddenly as he had come into it,--must leave her alone, stranded as before in the dark.
"It isn"t so easy to decide," Falkner continued. "There isn"t much money in it,--not for the under men, you know."
"What difference does that make!" she flashed.
"Not to me," he explained, and there was a pause. "But I have my wife and child to think of. I need all the money I can earn."
It was the first time any reference had been made to his family. After a time Margaret said:--
"But they pay fair salaries, and any woman would rather be pinched and have her husband in the front ranks--" And then she hesitated, something in Falkner"s eyes troubling her.
"I shall not decide just yet.... The offer has stirred my blood,--I feel that I have some youth left!"
They said little more. Margaret walked with him down the avenue. In her summer dress she looked wasted, infinitely fragile.
"This is not good-by," he said at last. "I shall go down the coast in a boat for a week, as I used to do when I was a boy, and my sister has a cottage at Lancaster. That is not far from Bedmouth?"
"No, it isn"t far," she answered softly.
They paused and then walked back, as if all was not said yet.
"There is another reason," Falkner exclaimed abruptly, "why I did not wish to go--and you must know it."
She raised her head and looked at him, murmuring,--
"Yes! I know it! ... But _nothing_ should keep you here."
"No, not keep me.... But there is something infinitely precious to lose by going.... You have made me live again, Margaret. I was dead, dead,--a dead soul."
"We were both dead ... and now we live!"
"It were better not said, perhaps--"
"No!" she interrupted pa.s.sionately. "It ought to be said! Why not?"
"There can be nothing for us," he muttered dully.
"No!" and her hands touched his. "Don"t say that! We are both in the world,--don"t you see?"
His face drew near to hers, they kissed, and she clung to him for the moment, then whispered: "Now go! You must live, live,--live greatly,--for us both!"
Margaret fled to her room, knelt down beside the boy"s bed, with clasped hands, her eyes shining down on the sleeping child, a smile on her face.