CHAPTER XV.

UNDER SENTENCE.

"I wish I could give you better hope, Mr. Lester."

"Is there any loophole?"

John Lester's face was white and drawn as he leaned against the fence, staring at Dr. Brereton. There were streaks of grey in his hair that had not been there before the night of Dick's agony.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

"There is always a loophole where the patient has youth and strength on his side. But I would not be justified in telling you to hope. I have known no case of the kind that recovered more than a measure of power. These spinal cases are terribly difficult; I suppose in the future we may find out more about them."

"But the operation was successful?" Mr. Warner put in.

"The operation was entirely successful--so far as it could go. If it had not been the boy could only have lived a few hours--I was only just in time. Indeed, how he lived through what he must have borne is rather a mystery."

"And now--tell me again what the sentence is. I want to get it clearly," said the father.

"He may outlive you both--though these cases sometimes don't last more than a few years. Your boy is so strong that I should not anticipate any change for the worse, however. He should have a fair measure of health and strength--given every possible chance, as he will be, with skilled nursing. But--it would only be false kindness to mince matters, Mr. Lester--he will never walk again."

The world was going black about John Lester. Mr. Warner caught at his arm.

"You can do a great deal for him," the doctor's steady voice went on. "Fill his life with all the interests you can; get hold of nurses who know how much incurable cases can be trained to do. Keep an atmosphere of happiness about him--remember, always, how strongly the mind acts upon the body. He has more pluck than anyone I ever saw, and he will respond." The deep voice was wrung with pity. "I'm sorry for you, Lester, from my heart--I've sons myself."

"I had only one," said John Lester, with dry lips, "and I was too proud of him, I suppose. I was proud of every inch of him, mind and body--his pluck, his strength, his manliness and his clean, straight mind. Even as a baby he was always such a plucky kid. I used to say he was ordinary enough, even to his mother, but in my heart I thought no one ever had a son like him. And now--well, I suppose I've got my punishment for being too proud."

"You have his pluck still," the doctor said. "He'll need it, as he never needed it before; and your pride in him, too. You can't let yourself get down, mind; Dick will need every ounce of help you can give him. Don't let him ever feel he is less your son because he can't be the son you've hoped for. You've got to put every personal feeling aside for him and his mother."

"His mother! Oh, my God!" said John Lester desperately. He turned from them and went across the paddock with his head down.

"No--don't go after him. He's got to work it out alone, poor chap!" said the surgeon, pityingly.

"You haven't told the mother yet?"

"No. He wants to tell her himself. But she won't feel it as much."

"She! Why, she adores the boy!"

"Yes, but women are different, which is something to be thankful for," said the doctor. "She has the boy still, and the relief of his being alive is so intense that the other part will be secondary. He'll be her baby again; she'll be able to attend him ceaselessly; to spend her whole life on him. That's always going to help a mother. Lester won't have as much comfort that way, and he has all a father's broken pride and thwarted ambitions. It's a hard sentence for a man with an only son."

From the shadow of a great clump of desert pea a little figure crept--Merle, her lank black hair hanging about her tear-stained face. She caught at her father's coat with shaking fingers.

"Daddy! It isn't true--Dick won't be a cripple! Say it, daddy!"

Robert Warner looked down at her gloomily.

"I wish to God I could," he said. "And I wish I'd never asked them on this unlucky visit." His face hardened as he looked at his daughter. "You'd better go inside, Merle--and remember you're not to talk about it."

She went obediently, not crying, but with her childish face set in a look of horror that was not good to see. The doctor looked after her.

"Poor child!" he said. "She came to me last night, and knelt down in front of me and begged me to make Dick well. Someone has told her it's all her fault."

"And so it is," Robert Warner said heavily.

"No good telling a baby that--and she's little more." The doctor lit a cigarette. "And it was only a bit of childish disobedience."

"Well, its consequences will darken my house as long as I live," Mr. Warner said.

Out in the paddocks Dick Lester's father tramped up and down, trying to realise the thing that had befallen them, and praying for courage to tell his wife. How could he tell her? How to find words to shatter the hopes and the joy that thirteen years had built up so happily? She had always known his love of physical perfection, and from the very first days of Dick's dimpled babyhood she had seconded his efforts to make the boy's body splendidly fit. Together they had trained him, proud of every fresh step of physical achievement and muscular development. And now--the body they had gloried in lay a helpless log for ever. Never to walk, never to ride through the bush and the paddocks that he loved; never to spring to meet them with all his happy soul in his eyes. He groaned aloud in his misery.

"I won't tell her to-day," he said. "To-morrow will do."

Then he saw her coming towards him across the grass, fresh and dainty in her white gown. He went to meet her.

"Mrs. Warner saw you going over here," she said, slipping her hand into his arm. "Dick's asleep, and the nurse bullied me into coming out for some fresh air. He's so well this afternoon, the darling! No pain to speak of, and he's quite merry. The nurse says he's doing splendidly."

"That's something to be thankful for," her husband said. "Are you rested, dear?"

"I? Oh, it's rest just to see Dick out of pain, and to know that he'll be all right soon," she said happily.

He tried to answer, and could not. Suddenly she turned, looking keenly at his face.

"John, there is something wrong!" She went white. "Is it Dick? Tell me quickly!"

"Dick is doing well," he said hastily. For she trembled so that he was afraid she would faint. "But there is something. Sit down on this log." He put her down gently, and stood looking at her, and then in broken words he told her of the doctor's sentence.

She heard him almost in silence, uttering now and then a quick question. The colour died even from her lips, but she took the blow without flinching.

"Are we to tell him?"

"No--not until we must."

"He was asking the nurse this afternoon when he could get up," she said with a pitiful little smile. "I--I do not know how one could ever tell him. Dick--my Dick--a cripple! It doesn't seem the sort of thing that could possibly happen."

Suddenly she stood erect, facing him.

"I don't believe it," she said fiercely. "It may seem so now, and I suppose Dr. Brereton knows as much as most men; but, beloved, we'll never give up hope. He's so young, so strong, so perfect! I don't believe that science won't find the way to cure him. We'll make him as well and strong as we can, and take him to Melbourne--to England, to America, to Germany, if necessary. Thank God, there's money enough! You mustn't believe it, either. We've got to keep happy thoughts all round him; to be certain in our own minds that he'll get well. If we let ourselves despair we make ourselves less able to help him."

"You haven't talked to Brereton," he said sadly.

"No, and, if necessary, I won't talk to him!" she flashed back. "I won't do anything to lessen my faith that Dick will get well. Doctors have made mistakes before; and you know he said himself that they don't understand spinal trouble yet, John!"--she caught at him fiercely--"don't believe it! God never meant our boy to be a cripple all his life!"

"I haven't your pluck," he said. "Warner tells me Brereton's about the best man in Perth; he should know. But there's nothing to be gained, at any rate, by giving way to despair. We'll do all we can to fight the verdict. Brereton did say there was always a loophole where there was youth and strength."

He took her hands, looking at her.

"Well, thank God for you, anyhow," he said. "I wonder if there are any depths you wouldn't draw a man from. I came out wondering how I could ever tell you; picturing your despair as black as my own; and instead, you've given me--well, if not hope, at least something to fight for. And that is always something. Come home, and we'll see if Dick's awake."

He wondered often, in the long, hard days that followed, if there were secret moments when her splendid faith and courage did indeed waver. If there were, she did not show them. To Dr. Brereton she listened calmly, taking in all he said, trying in vain to gather from him a shred of encouragement. At the end she thanked him for saving the boy's life.

"I wish I could have given him health as well as life," the doctor said pityingly.

"That will come--some day," she told him. "Please don't try to make me believe anything else."

He shook his head.

"It would not be fair to let you hope."

"It would not be fair to take hope from me," she said. "That's not going to help Dick. Perhaps, in ten years, if everything fails, I might believe you. But we're never going to cease believing and trying."

"You are a brave woman," he said.

"Brave! Why, I am not brave enough to do without hope," she answered. "If I once believed that Dick would never walk again, I would not know how to face life. But he will walk--I know it!"

The doctor went back to Perth when it was safe to leave Dick to the care of the two nurses--experienced, matter-of-fact women, who settled down to the care of an incurable case with a calm professional certainty as to the future that often goaded their patient's mother to the limit of endurance; a fact which they never suspected. Dick himself gave little trouble. He was very weak; so tired that it was happiness to lie still, now that there was no longer pain to dread. "I'm jolly lazy," he said--"but if I move I know the pain will come back, so I don't try." He did not dream that movement was impossible.

Gradually his clean youth triumphed over the minor injuries, and his wounds healed quickly. The Westown doctor, who came out twice weekly, professed himself delighted with him; the nurses allowed themselves a touch of pride over his fast-disappearing scars. A faint tinge of colour crept back into his white face. He had no inclination but to lie still; but interest in the outer world awoke once more, and he liked to hear the station talk; the daily stories of work among the cattle--to hear what horses were in use, and how the young ones were shaping in their work. His room, as he grew stronger, became a kind of centre for the household, and everybody drifted there throughout the day--Bobby and the twinses, with queer offerings of flowers and such curiosities as stick insects and blue-tongued lizards; Mr. Warner solemnly asking advice on station matters; Macleay, the storekeeper, with dry Scots stories. Each evening the three jackeroos came to him with the history of the day; tip-toeing at first, with exaggerated caution, and gradually forgetting it, at Dick's quick questions, so that the sickroom would become a Babel of cheery voices, until the nurse on duty would plead over-excitement for her patient, and turn them all out. Dick hated to see them go, although he would be too tired to want them to stay. "Makes you nearly forget you're lying on your back," he would say.

But there were long hours when he did not seem to want to talk; lying quietly, his eyes always on the patch of sky outside his window, where the gum leaves made a wavering pattern against the blue. Hours when he wanted nothing, he said; neither reading nor stories, nor any of the hundred devices with which they sought to make his day less long. What did he think of? his mother wondered wretchedly, watching the still face against the white pillows. Were there fears in his brave heart? Unknown terrors of the future, that he would not tell even to her? She would ask him if he were in pain, and he would shake his head with a little smile--the smile that never failed for her. But if there were times when Mrs. Lester's own courage wavered, it was in those quiet hours when something beyond her knowledge seemed to be drawing Dick away from her into a silence where she might not enter.

One shadow haunted the verandah outside the room--Merle, white-faced and wretched, haunted by self-reproach too agonising for a child's mind. Whatever bitterness might have been in Dick's mother vanished at the dumb misery in her eyes. She put her arm about the little girl, holding her tightly, while Merle clung to her, shaken with dry sobs.

"I wish I was dead!" she had gasped.

"You mustn't say that," Mrs. Lester said. "Dick would hate to hear you. And you must help us to get him well!"

"But they say he'll never be well!"

"Hush!" The mother's hand was across her mouth. "I don't believe that. You must come to see him when he is stronger, and help to cheer him up."

Curiously, it became apparent after a time that Dick liked to have Merle in the room. She never talked much, and it did not seem that she knew how to smile; but a queer sympathy sprang up between them, for which words were not necessary. She developed an instinct, almost uncanny, for knowing what he wanted. At all times he was slow to voice any need--his sturdy independence was one of the hardest sacrifices he had to make on the altar of his helplessness, and it died hard. Merle divined needs almost before they shaped themselves in his mind. He would find a book, a fresh handkerchief, a piece of fruit, within reach of his hand, put there with a silence that wished to avoid thanks. She saw him feeling awkwardly for his watch, and presently a little clock from her own room was placed at an angle where he could always see it. If the blind flapped, or the door creaked, or the light fell too strongly on his eyes, it was Merle who saw it first, and went quietly to mend matters. "I think she sits there just trying to imagine what Dick may want, so that she may do it for him," Mrs. Lester said to her husband.

"That child's a born nurse, if only she had a decent bedside manner," said one nurse to the other.

But Dick liked her manner. It was "not fussy," he said. She did things quietly, and he soon learned that she hated to be thanked by anything but a glance and a nod. A silent comprehension drew them together, until, after his mother and father, he preferred Merle to any other attendant.

So the weeks went by; and at last one day the Westown doctor declared his part of the work done.

"I can't do any more for him," he said to Mr. Lester. "He has a clean bill of health now, except for the one big thing."

"And that is no better?"

The other man shook his head.

"It can't be any better, Mr. Lester. I wish I could think otherwise."

"What about moving him?" the father asked. "We can't quarter ourselves at Narrung for ever--even if we wished. And I want to get the boy to Melbourne."

"It's a brute of a journey," the doctor said. "Still, it must be faced some time, and the hot weather will make it worse, the longer you wait." He thought deeply. "The train is vile; and the drive to it, even in the Warners' big car, would be a strain."

"My own idea," John Lester said, "was to get a motor ambulance from Perth, and do the whole journey by road. Do you think it's workable?"

"It's your best plan, I believe," the doctor said, with relief. "Brereton would fix it up for you."

"We can make the stages what we choose, according to Dick's strength," said Mr. Lester. "I should take tents, and, if necessary, we could camp on the road. Dick would be better off in the ambulance than in some of the wayside hotels. If it took us a fortnight or more it would be easier for him than that jolting, grinding train."

"There's no risk to the boy," the doctor said. "Only weariness, and you want to spare him as much of that as you can."

A week later Mrs. Lester sat on the verandah outside Dick's room. Her husband had been reading to Dick; the boy had fallen asleep under the spell of the low, deep voice, and now the father sat watching him. She looked wearily across the garden to the wide paddocks beyond. Two months ago they had driven over them for the first time, radiant in the happiness, still a new thing, of being all together; to-night she looked at them for the last time, and there was bitterness in her soul. They were to take Dick away in the morning, the wreck of what he had been; that had been Fate's gift to them at Narrung, the sorry end of the visit that had promised such brightness. Before them lay new happiness or despair--which?

A soft step roused her. Merle stood there, with a kind of trembling determination in her face.

"Mrs. Lester," she said, "will you take me with you?"

"Take you, Merle? My dear child, how could we?"

Merle suddenly slipped to the floor beside her, catching at her skirt.

"I'll slave for you," she said wildly. "I'll do any mortal thing I can. If you leave me here I'll go mad. I 'spect you must hate me, but Dick doesn't, though I don't know why he doesn't. Nobody can hate me like I do myself."

"Nobody hates you at all, Merle."

"People must. D'you think I don't know what I've done?" the child stammered. "Wouldn't you let me come, just for a bit, to work for you--to help you to look after Dick? I'd never be any trouble. I can do my own hair and everything. I'd just be legs for Dick!"

"Legs?" queried Mrs. Lester, puzzled.

"Yes. It's all my fault he can't use his. If I came I could just be there to hand him things and run his errands. He doesn't mind telling me to do things, but he won't ask you, 'cause he hates you to get tired. Oh, couldn't I come, just as Dick's legs?"

Mr. Lester appeared in the doorway.

"Take care--Dick is awake."

They heard Dick's voice, "Mother."

"Yes, sonnie." Mrs. Lester put Merle aside and went in.

"Don't let that poor kiddie cry," he said. "I say, couldn't we take her?"

"You want her, Dick?" said his mother, amazed.

"Oh, she's not a bad kid," Dick said. "I give you an awful lot of work now, and she'd save you a bit. And she wants to come ever so. Might as well let her, don't you think?"

Mrs. Lester looked at her husband uncertainly.

"If you want her I expect you can have her, old son," he said. "I'll see what her father and mother say."

He went out, leaving Dick and his wife alone. A small, sobbing figure crept after him.

Dick looked at his mother steadily.

"I say, mother--am I getting better?"

"Why, of course you are, old man," she said brightly.

"When am I going to sit up?" It was the question she had long dreaded, and she was ready for it.

"When your back strengthens sufficiently. You must give it time, beloved."

"It's not the spear wound? Nurse says that's all right."

"Oh, the spear wound was nothing--beyond being painful at first. You see, when Conqueror threw you, you fell on an outcrop of ironstone, and that is what has given you the real trouble." She forced a smile. "You know, you can't bounce about on ledges of rock as if you were india-rubber!"

He was silent a moment, and then spoke suddenly; and there was terror in his eyes.

"Mother--my back isn't broken?"

"No!" she said quickly.

"You'd tell me--straight?"

"On my honour, Dick."

He heaved a big sigh.

"I've been wondering ... lying here," he said, "I'd heard about fellows with broken backs, and I do feel so queer and helpless. Of course I knew I couldn't get well all in a hurry; but I thought it was about time I could move my legs."

He looked at her with the absolute trust that all his life she had seen in his eyes. Twice she tried to speak before words would come.

"Will you just go on being patient, Dick?" she said at last. "I know it is hard--and you have been wonderfully good. Try not to get impatient yet."

"I can stick it all right if I know I'm going to get better," Dick said. "And you say I am, mother."

She met his eyes.

"I believe you are, Dick--with God's help."

"Well, that's all right--mother-est," he said; and he took her hand and carried it to his cheek. So they stayed together while darkness crept into the room. She would have stirred once to switch on the light, but he said, "Ah, don't go away," and she drew closer to him. Through the open windows the kind stars looked down in pity as her lips moved, praying.