Chapter 11

The intensity of the white light was agreeably tempered by a grey mist. Through the vapour, he saw the outlines of his own chiffonier, across the room. A woman in spotless white moved noiselessly about. Even though she did not look at him, he felt a certain friendliness toward her. She seemed to have been with him while he swayed through the shadow and it was pleasant to know that he had not been alone.

On the table near the window, his violin lay as he had left it. The case was standing in a corner and his music stand had toppled over. The torn sheets of music rustled idly on the floor, and he wondered, fretfully, why the woman in white did not pick them up.

As if in answer to his thought, she stooped, and gathered them together, quietly sorting the pages and putting them into the open drawer that held his music. She closed the drawer and folded up his music stand without making a sound. She seemed far removed from him, like someone from another world.

Cloud surrounded her, but he caught glimpses of her through it occasionally. She took up his violin, very carefully, put it into its case, and carried it out of the room. He did not care very much, but it seemed rather an impolite thing to do. He knew that he would not have stolen a violin when the owner was in the same room.

Soon she came back and he was reassured. She had not stolen it after all. She might have broken it, for she seemed to feel very sorry about something. She was wiping her eyes with a bit of white, as women always did when they cried.

It was not necessary for her to cry, on account of one broken violin, for he had thousands of them--Stradivarius, Amati, Cremona; everything. Some of them were highly coloured and very rare on that account. He had only to go to his storehouse, present a ticket, and choose whatever he liked--red, green, yellow, or even striped.

Everybody who played the violin needed a great many of them, for the different moods of music. It was obvious that the dark brown violin with which he played slow, sad music could not be used for the Hungarian Dances. He had a special violin for those, striped with barbaric colour.

The woman who had broken one of his violins stood at the window with her back toward him. Her shoulders shook and from time to time she lifted the bit of white to her eyes. It was annoying, he thought; even worse than the shadows and the fire. He was about to call to her and suggest, ironically, that she had cried enough and that the flowers would be spoiled if they got too wet, when someone called, from the next room: "Miss Rose!"

She turned quickly, wiped her eyes once more, and, without making a sound, went out on the white cloud that surrounded her half way to her waist.

He tried to change his position a little and felt his own bed under him. His body was stiff and sore, but he had the use of it, except his left arm. Try as he might, he could not move it, for it was weighted down and it hurt terribly.

"Miss Rose, Miss Rose, Miss Rose, Miss Rose." The words beat hard in his ears like a clock ticking loudly. The accent was on the "Miss"--the last word was much fainter. "Rose Miss" was wrong, so the other must be right, except for the misplaced accent. Did the accent always come on the first beat of a measure? He had forgotten, but he would ask the man at the storehouse when he went to get the striped violin for the Hungarian Dances.

His left hand throbbed with unbearable agony. The room began to spin slowly on its axis. There was no mist now, or even a shadow, and every sense was abnormally acute. The objects in the whirling room were phenomenally clear; even a scratch on the front of his chiffonier stood out distinctly.

He could hear a clock ticking, though there was no clock in his room. Afar was the sound of women sobbing--two of them. Above it a strange voice said, distinctly: "There is not one chance in a thousand of saving his hand. If I had nurses, I would amputate now, before he recovers consciousness."

The words struck him with the force of a blow, though he did not fully realise what they meant. The pain in his left arm and the sickening odour nauseated him. The cool black shadow drowned the objects in the room and crept upon him stealthily. Presently he was swaying again, up and down, up and down, in the all-encompassing, all-hiding dark.

So it happened that he did not hear Colonel Kent's ringing answer: "You shall not amputate until every great surgeon in the United States has said that it is absolutely necessary. I leave on the next train, and shall send them and keep on sending until there are no more to send. Until a man comes who thinks there is a chance of saving it, you are in charge--after that, it is his case."

Day by day, a continuous procession came to the big Colonial house. Allison became accustomed to the weary round of darkness, pain, sickening odours, strange faces, darkness, and so on, endlessly, without pity or pause.

The woman in white had mysteriously vanished. In her place were two, in blue and white, with queer, unbecoming caps. They were there one at a time, always; never for more than a few minutes were they together. When the fierce, hot agony became unendurable for even a moment longer, one of them would lean over him with a bit of shining silver in her hand, and stab him sharply for an instant. Then, with incredible quickness, came peace.

Once, when two strange men had come together, and had gone into the adjoining room, he caught disconnected fragments of conversation. "Hypersensitive-impossible--not much longer--interesting case." He wondered, as he began to sway in the darkness again, what "hypersensitive" meant. Surely, he used to know.

Still, it did not matter--nothing mattered now. In the brief intervals of consciousness, he began to wonder what he had been doing just before this happened, whatever it was. It took him days to piece out the disconnected memories past the whirling room, the woman in white and the creeping shadows, to the red touring car and Isabel.

His heart throbbed painfully, held though it was by some iron hand, icy cold, in a pitiless clutch. Weakly, he summoned the blue and white woman who sat in a low chair across his room. She came quickly, and put her ear very close to his lips that she might hear what he said.

"Was--she--hurt?"

"No," said the blue and white woman, very kindly. "Only slightly bruised."

The next day he summoned her again. As before, she bent very low to catch the gasping words: "Where is-my--father?"

"He had to go to town on business. He will come back just as soon as he can."

"He-is--dead," said Allison, with difficulty. "Nothing else--could take- him-away--now."

"No," she assured him, "you must believe me. He's all right. Everybody else is all right and we hope you soon will be."

"No use--talking of--it," he breathed, hoarsely. "I know."

Singly, by twos and even threes, the strange men continued to come from the City. Allison submitted wearily to the painful examinations that seemed so unnecessary. Some of the men seemed kind, even sympathetic. Others were cold and impassive, like so many machines. Still others, and these were in the majority, were almost brutal.

It was one of the latter sort who one day drew a chair up to the side of the bed with a scraping noise that made the recumbent figure quiver from head to foot. The man's face was almost colourless, his bulging blue eyes were cold and fish-like, distorted even more by the strong lenses of his spectacles.

"Better have it over with," he suggested. "I can do it now."

"Do what?" asked Allison, with difficulty.

"Amputate your hand. There's no chance."

The blue and white young woman then on duty came forward. "I beg your pardon, Doctor, but Colonel Kent left strict orders not to operate without his consent."

The strange man disdained to answer the nurse, but turned to Allison again. "Do you know where your father can be reached by wire?"

"My father--is dead," Allison insisted. He closed his eyes and would answer no more questions. In the next room, he heard the nurse and the doctor talking in low tones that did not carry. Only one word rose above the murmur: "delusion."

Allison repeated it to himself as he sank into the darkness again, wondering what it meant and of whom they were speaking.

Slowly he recovered from the profound shock, but his hand did not improve. He had an idea that the ceaseless bandaging and unbandaging were dangerous as well as painful, but said nothing. He knew that his career had come to its end before it had really begun, but it did not seem to affect him in any way. He considered it unemotionally and impersonally, when he thought of it at all.

Two more men came together. One was brutal, the other merely cold. They shook their heads and went away. A few days later, a man of the rare sort came; a gentle, kindly, sympathetic soul, who seemed human and real.

After the examination was finished, Allison asked, briefly: "Any chance?"

The kindly man hesitated for an instant, then told the truth. "I'm afraid not."

The nurse happened to be out of the room, none the less, Allison motioned to him to come closer. Almost in a whisper he said: "Can you give me anything that will make me strong enough to write half a dozen lines?"

"Could no one else write it for you?"

"No one."

"Couldn't I take the message?"

"Could anyone take a message for me to the girl I was going to marry-- now?"

"I understand," said the other, gently. "We'll see. You must make it very brief."

When the nurse came back, they gave him a pencil, propped a book up before him, and fastened a sheet of paper to it by a rubber band. After the powerful stimulant the doctor administered had begun to take effect, Allison managed to write, in a very shaky, almost illegible hand:

"MY DEAREST:

"My left hand will have to come off. As I can't ask you to marry a cripple, the only honourable thing for me to do is to release you from our engagement. Don't think I blame you. Good-bye, darling, and may God bless you.

"A. K."

The effort exhausted him greatly, but the thing was done. The nurse folded it, put it into an envelope, sealed it, and took the pencil from him.

"You'll let me address it, won't you?" she asked.

"Yes. Miss Isabel Ross. Anyone in the house can tell you where--anyone will take it to her. Thank you," he added, speaking to the doctor.

That night, for the first time, the situation began to affect him personally. In the hours after midnight, as the forces of the physical body ebbed toward the lowest point, those of the mind seemed to increase. Staring at the low night light, that by its feeble flicker exorcised the thousand phantoms that beset him, he could think clearly. In a rocking chair, across the room, the night nurse dozed, with a white shawl wrapped around her. He could hear her deep, regular breathing as she slept.

His father was dead--he knew that for an absolute fact, and wondered why the two kind women and the endless, varying procession of men should so persistently lie to him about this when they were willing to tell him the truth about everything else.

He also knew that, sooner or later, his left hand would be amputated and that his career would come to an inglorious end--indeed, the end had already come. The ordeal painfully shadowed upon his horizon was only the final seal. Fortunately there was money enough for everything--he would want pitifully little for the rest of his life.

His life stretched out before him in a waste of empty years. He was thirty, now, and his father had lived until well past seventy; might have lived many years more had he not died when his heart broke over the misfortunes of his idolised son. He could remember the rumble of the carriage wheels the night of the funeral. The nurse had dozed in her chair just as she was dozing now, while downstairs they carried his father out of the house in a black casket and buried him. It was all as clear as though it had happened yesterday, instead of ages ago.

A clock, somewhere near by, chimed three quick, silvery strokes. With the last stroke, the clock in the kitchen struck three, also, in a different tone and with an annoying briskness of manner. As the echo died away, the old grandfather's clock on the landing boomed out three portentously solemn chimes. It was followed almost immediately by a cheery, impertinent little clock, insisting that it was four and almost time for sunrise.

The nurse stirred in her chair, yawned, and came over to the bed. She straightened the blankets with a practised hand, changed his hot pillow for a fresh one, brought him a drink of cool water, and went back to her chair without having said a word. The gentle ministry comforted him insensibly. What magic there was in the touch of a woman's hand! But, in the long grey years ahead, there would be no woman, unless--Isabel--

Sometime that afternoon, or early in the evening, she had received his note. It was not strange that they had not allowed her to come to see him, because no one had seen him but the doctors and nurses. Even Aunt Francesca, whom he had known all his life, had not darkened his open door.

But now, Isabel would come--she could not help but come. With the passing of the fateful hour, strength began to return slowly. She would come to-morrow, and every tick of the clock brought to-morrow a second nearer.

A steadily increasing warmth came into his veins and thawed the ice around his heart. The cold hand that had held it so long mercifully loosened its fingers. He turned his face toward the Eastern window, that he might watch for the first faint glow.

A single long, deepening shadow struck across the far horizon like the turning out of a light. Almost immediately, the distant East brightened. Day was coming--the sun, and Isabel.

With the first hint of colour, hope dawned in his soul, changing to certainty as the light increased. It was not in the way of things that he, who had always had everything, should at one fell stroke be left desolate. Out of the wreckage there was one thing he might keep--Isabel.

He laughed at the thought that she would accept her release. What would he have done he asked himself, were it she instead of him? Could mutilation, or even death, change his love for her? He was equally sure that hers could not be changed.

It was fortunate that she was saved--that it was he instead of Isabel. She had pretty hands--such dear hands as men have loved and kissed since, back in the garden, the First Woman gave hers to the First Man, that he might lead her wheresoever he would.

In the midst of the wreckage, he perceived a divine compensation, for Isabel would not fail him--she could not fail him now. Transfigured by tenderness, her coldness changed to the utmost yielding, to-morrow would bring him his goddess, a deeply-loving woman at last.

"How she will come to me," he said to himself, feeling, in fancy, her soft arms around him, and her warm lips on his, while the life-current flowed steadily from her to him and made him a man again, not a weakling. His heart beat with a joy that was almost pain, for he could feel her intoxicating nearness even now. Perhaps her sweet eyes would overflow with the greatness of her love and her tears would fall upon his face when she knelt beside him, to lay her head upon his breast.

"How she will come to me!" he breathed, in ecstasy. "Ah, how she will come!"

And so, smiling, he slept, as the first shaft of sun that brought his dear To-Morrow fell full upon his face.

XVI

HOW ISABEL CAME

Madame Bernard and Rose were so deeply affected by Allison's misfortune that they scarcely took note of Isabel's few bruises, greatly to that young woman's disgust. She chose to consider herself in the light of a martyr and had calmly received the announcement that Allison's left hand would probably have to be amputated.

None of them had seen him, though the two older women were ready to go at any hour of the day or night they might be needed or asked for. Isabel affected a sprained ankle and limped badly when anyone was looking. Once or twice she had been seen to walk almost as usual, though she did not know it.

The upper hall, and, occasionally, the other parts of the house, smelled of the various liniments and lotions with which she anointed herself. She scorned the suggestion that she should stay in bed, for she was quite comfortable upon a couch, in her most becoming negligee, with a novel and a box of chocolates to bear her company.

At first, she had taken her meals in her own room, but, finding that it was more pleasant to be downstairs with the others for luncheon and dinner, managed to go up and down the long flight of stairs twice each day.

Placid as she was, the table was not a cheerful place, for the faces of the other two were haggard and drawn, and neither made more than a pretence of eating. Daily bulletins came from the other house as to Allison's condition, and Madame was in constant communication by telegraph with Colonel Kent. She kept him reassured as much as possible, and did not tell him of Allison's ineradicable delusion that his father was dead.

Allison's note was given to Isabel at luncheon the day after it was written, having been delayed in delivery the night before until after she was asleep. With it was a letter from her mother, which had come in the noon mail.

She opened Allison's note first, read it, and put it back into the envelope. Her mother's letter was almost equally brief. That, too, she returned to its envelope without comment.

"How is your mother, Isabel?" inquired Madame, having caught a glimpse of the bold, dashing superscription which was familiar, though infrequent.

"She's all right," Isabel answered, breaking open a hot muffin. "It's funny that it should come at the same time as the other."

"Why?" asked Rose, merely for the sake of making conversation.

"Because just as Mamma writes to tell me that marriage is slavery, but that if he can take care of me and Aunt Francesca approves of him, it will be all right, Allison writes and releases me from the engagement."

"Poor boy!" sighed Madame.

"I don't know why you should say 'poor boy,'" Isabel observed, rather fretfully. "He's not very ill if he can write letters. I'm sure I don't feel like writing any."

"I wasn't thinking of that," said Madame, half to herself.

"And as for his releasing me," Isabel went on, coolly, "I'm glad he was decent enough to do it and save me the trouble of releasing myself."

Rose got to her feet somehow, her face deathly white. "Do you mean," she cried, "that you would think for a minute of accepting release?"

"Why, certainly," the girl replied, in astonishment. "Why not? He says himself that he can't ask me to marry a cripple."

Rose winced visibly. "Isabel!" she breathed. "Oh, Isabel!"

"My dear," said Madame, with such kindness as she could muster, "have you forgotten that he saved you from death, or worse?"

"He didn't do anything for me but to tell me to jump. I did more for him than that. Nobody seems to think it was anything for me to get up out of the dust, with my best white dress all ruined and my face scratched and my ankle sprained and one arm bleeding, and help the Crosbys carry a heavy man to their machine and lay him on the back seat."

"I thought the Crosbys carried him," put in Madame. "They're strong enough to do it, I should think."

"Well, I helped. I had to take all that nasty raw meat out of the back seat and throw it out in the ditch to the dogs, and stand up all the way home, bruised as I was, to keep him from falling off the seat. We were in a perfect bedlam there for a while, but it doesn't seem to make any difference to anybody. Nobody cares what happens to me."

"Besides," she went on, with her voice raised to a high pitch by excitement, "I don't see why I should be expected to marry a man with only one hand. He can't play any more, and if he can't play, how can he make any money to take care of me, even if I should tie myself to him for life? Do you expect me to take in washing and take care of him?"

"Isabel," said Madame, coldly, "please stop talking so loudly and please listen for a moment. Nobody expects you to marry a man whom, for any reason on earth, you do not love well enough to marry. Kindly consider that as something to be settled in accordance with your own wishes and desires."

"Certainly,"' interrupted the girl. "I'd like to see anybody force me to marry him!"

Madame compressed her lips into a thin, tight line, and her face became stern, even hard. She clenched her small hands tightly and her breath came quickly. A red spot burned on either cheek.

Never having seen Madame angry before, Rose was almost frightened. She herself was not angry, but hurt--for him. At the moment she heard of the accident, her love for him had transcended the bounds of self and merged into prayer for him and for his good, whatever that might prove to be.

"Isabel," said Rose, very softly, "will you do one thing for me?"

"What?" Isabel demanded, suspiciously.

"Listen, dear. For me, if not for him, will you go to him, and--well, simply be kind? Don't let him think that this terrible thing has separated him from you or changed your love. Wait until he is strong and well again before you tell him. Will you, please?"

Isabel's flushed face took on the expression of outraged virtue. "I don't know why I should be expected to lie," she remarked evasively, with a subtle change of manner.

Madame Bernard cleared her throat. "Your love was a lie," she said, in a tone that neither of them had ever heard her use before. "One more won't matter."

Isabel fidgeted in her chair and nervously tapped the edge of her plate with her fork. "I haven't heard anybody say," she began, with the air of one scoring a fine point, "that his father doesn't love him, and yet he hasn't gone near him--hasn't even seen him since we were hurt. If Colonel Kent can stay away from him, I don't know why I can't."

The argument seemed unanswerable, for neither Madame nor Rose spoke. They sat with averted eyes until the silence became oppressive, and Isabel, with ostentatious difficulty, pushed back her chair and limped painfully out of the room.

When she had locked her own door, she was more at ease, and began to survey her unpleasant situation. Nobody seemed to consider her at all-- it was only Allison, and everything and everybody, apparently, must be sacrificed for him. Just because she had promised to marry him, when he had both hands, they wanted her to go on with it, in spite of the fact that he saw it was impossible.

Isabel sighed heavily. Nobody knew how keenly disappointed she was. She had written to her few friends, told them about her engagement ring, the plans made for her trousseau, the promised touring car, and the brilliant social career that lay before her as the wife of a famous violinist.

She pictured a triumphal tour from city to city, with the leaders of fashion everywhere vying with each other in entertaining them--or, at least, her. It would, of course, be necessary for Allison to play occasionally in the evening and they would miss a great deal on that account, but her days would be free, and she could cancel all her own social obligations by complimentary tickets and suppers after the concerts.

She had planned it all as she took lazy stitches in her dainty lingerie. Aunt Francesca and Rose had been helping her, but the whole thing had stopped suddenly. It seemed rather selfish of them not to go on with it, for lingerie was always useful, and even though she should not marry Allison, it was not at all improbable that she would marry someone else.

If she could find anybody who had plenty of money and would be good to her, she knew that she would encounter no parental opposition, in spite of Mrs. Ross's pronounced views upon the slavery of matrimony.