Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

“ The clock on the mantel struck the quarter before twelve.
"She has been as she is an hour and a quarter," said Dr. Thorne. His voice and manner were disheartened. He stood a moment pondering, with a dark face.
"Do you call her dead?" entreated Avery. It seemed to him that he had reached the limit of endurance. He would pull the worst down on his head at one toppling blow.
"No!" cried the physician, in a deep, reverberating tone.
"But is it death?" persisted Avery wildly.
"I do not know," said Dr. Thorne. ”

“ But Jean did not reply. He sprang to her, and tore open the nightdress at her throat; he crushed at her hands; they were quite cold. He put his ear to her heart; he could not hear it beat. Jean lay in her loveliness, with gentle, half-open eyes, and a desolate little smile on her sweet lips, as she might have looked when she called him and asked him to come back and kiss her good-night. And he had not come. One of her hands clasped the cord of the electric bell. But no one had heard Jean's bell.
Now, the truth smote the man like the hammer of Thor. His wandering spirit—gone ”

“ But the horses of Aurora, flying and flaming through the morning skies, could not have held the man back. A madman—delirious with joy—he swept through the hall and flung the door open. Dr. Armstrong ran after him to give him his hat, but Avery paid no attention to the dentist.
Bareheaded, fleet-footed, with quivering lip, with shining eye, he fled down the street. Like the hurricane that had never sunk the Dream, he swept past the club. He saw the fellows through the window; their cigars gleamed in their mouths and in their hands ”

“ Off there on the Shoals, reaching up around the gray Cape, inch upon patient inch, the waves climbed to their appointed places. With them the vitality of the woman, obeying the most mysterious law in Nature's mighty code, advanced, and held its own.
Avery looked at his wife, sleeping, as she, waking, would never see him look. All that was noble in shame, all that was permanent in love, harmonized in his eyes. ”

“ Avery does n't like me not to meet him.... My husband is so good to me!" she urged, in the plaintive staccato that her short breath cut, till Helen's eyes blazed and then brimmed to hear her. And now Helen was gone, and the children; and Jean lay quite still and alone, smiling tranquilly, as we said.
Her thoughts were long-distance wires, as the thoughts of the sick are, and they covered the spaces of ether and of earth that afternoon—the unexplored wastes into which the soul invites no fellow-traveler. Her heart fled to the rose-red star of their early dream. ”

“ For Jean sighed gently and turned her face, and her husband's eyes were the first she saw when the light of her own high soul returned to hers.
In the dim of the dawn Avery followed the exhausted physician into the hall, and led him to an empty room.
"Rest, if you can, doctor," he pleaded; "we can call you. If she sleep, she shall do well," he added in a broken voice. The miracle was yet in his mind.
"Unless you see some change, she may sleep one hour. Call me by then," said Dr. Thorne abstractedly. "And telephone my wife and the hospital that I spend the morning here." ”

“ The wind was fair, and the yacht fled under full canvas.
"She walks right along!" cried Romer. He was exhilarated by the speed of his boat, which was, in fact, a racer, and built in all her lines to get over a triangular course in the least possible time. He talked about her safe points to the landsman (who responded with the satisfaction of ignorance) , but the final end of the Dream's being was speed, unqualified by inferior considerations. To this American idol, boats, like men, are sacrificed as matters of course. One scarcely makes conversation on so obvious a topic. ”

“ Armstrong was a good fellow, and they often met Saturdays at the club. But the great Electric case was up just then, and necessary dentistry was an impossible luxury to the young lawyer. Endurance was a novelty, and Avery grew nervous under it. He bore pain neither better nor worse than most men; and he was really suffering. Any wife but Jean would have called him cross. Jean called him her poor boy. She dragged herself from her lounge—she had been a little less well the last few days—and lavished herself, as women like Jean do, pouring out her own tenderness—a rare wine. ”

“ Stern, uncompromising, rigid, he flung his whole being against the fate which had snatched his old patient beyond his rescue. His face was almost as white as Jean's.
"There sits the man as fights with death!" cried Molly, in uncontrollable excitement. She and the cook fell on their knees. Pink, in her nightdress, stole in, and leaned against the door; the child was too frightened to cry. The baby had gone to sleep. The house grew ominously still. The mantel clock struck the half-hour. It was now half-past eleven. Avery glanced at the physician's face, and buried his own in his hands. ”

“ She had not reproached him ... he wished from his soul, now, that she had reproached him, sometimes; it would have done him good; it would have dashed cold water on his fainting sense of duty to her; he was the kind of man who would have responded to it like a man. But she was not the kind of woman to do it. And she never had. So he had slid into those easy habits of accepting the invalid, anyhow; as a fact not to be put too much in the foreground of his daily life ... ”

“ The doctor could not sleep. He stole in anxiously.
Jean had closed her eyes once more. They opened happily as he entered.
"Why, doctor! You here? What for?"
As if by accident Dr. Thorne's fingers brushed her wrist. The physician's face assumed a noble radiance. He looked affectionately at his old patient.
"Oh, I thought I 'd drop in and see how you were getting along." He smiled indulgently. "Go to sleep again," he said, in a comfortable tone.
But Avery followed the doctor; as love has pursued the healers of all ages from the sick-room to the garrison of the utter truth. ”

“ He knelt beside the bed, and with great gentleness, curiously at contrast with his imperious and one might have called it angry manner, put his ear to Jean's heart.
"It's dead she is. The other doctor do be sayin' so," sobbed Molly, who found it perplexing that Mr. Avery did not speak, and felt that the courtesies of the distressing occasion devolved upon herself. Dr. Thorne held up an imperious finger. In the stillness which obeyed him the clock on the mantel ticked obtrusively, like the rhythm of life in a vital organism. ”

“ Avery," said Helen. She stooped and picked up the tea-roses, which had fallen and were scattered on the floor, put them into his cold hand—and then drew away. "She 'd rather you would go up alone," said Helen Thorne.
He passed out through the open door. His two friends fell back. The children could be heard in the dining-room: Molly was trying to keep them quiet there. It seemed to him as if he waded through hot-house flowers, the air was so thick with their repugnant scent. He crawled upstairs, steadying himself by the banister. The hall below looked small and dark, like a pit. ”

“ Nobody is to blame. If only—you"— Dr. Thorne checked himself, savagely, as he did when he was moved beyond endurance.
"Oh, I take it all!" cried Avery. He stooped as if he bent his broad shoulders to receive some mighty burden. "I shall carry it all ... forever. Men have gone mad," he added, more calmly, "for much less than I have got to face."
"If you find yourself strong enough," said the physician, "I shall try to put you in possession of the facts." Again, as before, Avery thought he noticed an expression of aversion on the countenance of his old friend. ”

“ And I 'll call Molly as I go down."
He tried to add something about telegrams, and how short a trip it was, and so on. But Jean's eyes silenced him. Solemn, mute, distant, they looked upon him like the eyes of an alien being moving through the experiences of an unknown world. For a moment their expression appalled him; it was not reproach; it was scarcely to be called anguish; rather a fine and tragic astonishment, for which speech would have been too coarse a medium. But he shut the door, caught Pink, who was crying for her breakfast, kissed the child, and went. ”

“ A kind of maniacal hurry possessed him.
"Drive for your life!" he said. He did not lean back in the carriage, but sat up straight, as if he could not spare time to be comfortable. When the hack door slammed Avery saw the man no more, but seemed to crouch and crawl so far within his personality that it was impossible to observe the traveler from the outside.
Avery had never in his life before been in the throat of death, and been spewed out, like a creature unwelcome, unfit to die. The rage of the gale was in his ears yet ”

“ One night he came home late, and as irritable as better men than he may be, and be forgiven for it, for the sake of that species of modern toothache in which your dentist neither extracts nor relieves, but devotes his highly developed and unhappy ingenuity to the demonic process which is known as "saving a tooth."
"He calls it killing a nerve," sputtered Avery. "I should call it killing a patient. This performance is the Mauser bullet of up-to-date dentistry. It explodes all over you— Oh, do let me alone, Jean! You can't do anything for me. A man does n't want to be bothered. ”

“ She must remember that the yacht was as safe as a Cunarder; they were only going to the Sound. He said nothing about ducks or guns. He gave her a Cape address to which she could send any message she chose. She must not get nervous. She must take the best care of herself for his sake. And he was her devoted husband.
He slipped this letter under her door—slept a few hours—and waked at five. At half-past five he crept downstairs, his valise in his hand, and his heart in his throat. He heard Pink talking and grinding her teeth in her sleep; but Jean did not stir, thank Heaven. ”

“ After all, there are not too many tender women; Jean was a genius in sympathy. She spent more sweetness and strength on that toothache than the other kind of woman has to give her husband if he meets a mortal hurt. Avery received this calmly. He was used to it. To do him justice, he did not know how cross he was. He was used to that, too. And so was she. The baby was ailing, besides, and things went hard. The sick woman's breath began to shorten again; and the coy color which had been so hard to win to her lips fled from them unobserved. The doctor was not called; Helen Thorne was out of town ”

“ She was troubled sometimes to find that sickness creates new heavens and a new earth, and that the very virtues of health may turn again and rend one. It was as if one had acquired citizenship in a strange planet, where character and nature change places. ”

“ The yacht was keeling and pitching weakly. Tom Romer stood beside the berth, looking at his guest; he did not smile. It was an uncommon thing to see Tom Romer without a smile. The yachtsman wore oilskins and a sou'wester, and dripped with salt water like a Grand Banker.
"God! Romer, what's the matter?" Avery got to his feet at once. He forgot that he was seasick. His bodily distresses fled before the swift, strong lash of fright.
"The fact is," replied Romer slowly, "we 've struck a confounded gale—a November gale," he added. "It's turned easterly. ”

“ Only the invalid mistress of a home knows how to value the presence of another lady in a household where children and servants fill the foreground, and where, as Dr. Thorne once put it, "every care as fast as it arises is taken to the bedside of the patient." ”

“ I don't want Dr. Thorne. I can't call the doctor so often. I 'm no worse than ... I sometimes ... am. It's only that I cannot breathe.... Molly! Molly! Quick, Molly! The window! Air!"
As Molly dashed the window up, Mrs. Avery's head fell back upon the pillows of the lounge. They were blue pillows, and her blanching cheek took a little reflection from the color. But she was not ghastly; she never was. At the lowest limit of her strength she seemed to challenge death with an indomitable vitality. ”

“ The physician was the first to speak.
"Well, I 've done my part, Avery. Now"—
"You have wrought a miracle," said the husband, with much emotion.
"Work you a greater, then!" commanded Dr. Thorne. He did not speak gently. But a certain entreaty in the attitude of the shaken man subdued him.
"With love all things are possible," persisted the physician in his other voice. "I have always said that she was not incurable. Now the difference is"—
Avery did not reply. It was not for the doctor to know what the difference was. That was for Jean ... only for Jean. ”

“ Thorne was not at home, but that Mrs. Thorne had bade her call the nearest doctor; she had rung up the one at the corner, and he was coming.
The nearest doctor came, and he lost no time about it. He was a stranger, and young. Avery looked stupidly at his inexperienced face. The physician stooped and put his ear to Jean's heart. He went through the form of feeling the pulse, and busied himself in various uncertain ways about her. In a short time he rose, and stood looking at the carpet. He did not meet the husband's eye.
"You can keep on stimulating if you like," he said. ”

“ It set forth in the tenderest terms his devotion to her, and to her true interests, which, plainly, would be best served by some attention to his own health; he was really overworked; the Electric case had got where it could be left for a few days, and he would distinctly be gone but a few days; he promised her that—a week at the outside—and she was always so glad to have him get any sort of a vacation. He felt sure that he could count upon her sympathy in going. He would think of her constantly, and fly back to her with that constant—etc.—faithful, true, and tender—etc.—etc. ”

“ She had been quite troubled about Helen's cold.
"Oh, never mind," said Dr. Thorne; "only it is n't natural, that's all—when patients come out of attacks like yours. Their minds are not concentrated on other people's colds. Helen is quite well, thank you. Now, Mrs. Avery, I want to ask you"—
"Don't," interrupted Jean Avery.
"But I find it necessary," growled Dr. Thorne.
She shook her head, and turned her face, which shrank against the blue pillow. Pink and the baby began to quarrel in the nursery, and then both cried belligerently. ”

“ He felt his hands and feet turn as cold as the seas of Cape Cod.
"Drive slower," he said. But the fellow did not hear him, and the hack rushed on. At the passenger's door it stopped with a lurch. Avery got out slowly. The house looked much as usual, except that a shade in Jean's bedroom was drawn. It was just the hour when she sometimes tried to sleep after an ill night. The husband trod softly up the long steps. ”

“ I don't like guns much better than you do, dear.... I 'm getting late," he observed abruptly. "But I won't go, Jean, if you don't want me to. I thought it might set me up a little," he added, before she could reply.
In fact, she did not seem to incline to reply, or did not feel able to do so; he could not tell which. She lay looking up at him quite steadily. Molly had taken both the children into the nursery, and the two were alone. A clock ticked on the mantel in a loud, irritating tone. The white silk Spanish shawl which had fallen from the lounge hung to his coat-sleeve ”

“ Hers quivered as she lifted it to his kiss.
"Did you lose the case, poor dear?" she said.
"Curse the case!" cried Avery. "What's a case? ... I 'm not going gunning, Jean. I 'm going to stay with you."
Color brushed all over her wan cheek, her brow, her lips.
"I was so afraid of guns!" she pleaded. "I always have been!"
"It is one of your weaknesses," replied the husband, a shade less tenderly.
"I know, dear. I have so many! Guns—and boats—I am ashamed of myself. They 're like snakes. The terror is born in me. I don't know how to help it. You are very patient with me, Marshall. ”

“ AVERY
PART I
"Oh, Pink! Mother can't lift you.... I would if I could.... Yes, I know I used to—
"Molly, take the baby. Couldn't you amuse him, somehow? Perhaps, if you tried hard, you could keep him still. When he screams so, it seems to hit me—here. It makes it harder to breathe. He cried 'most all night. And if you could contrive to keep Pink, too—
"What is it, Kate? You'll have to manage without me this morning. Pick up anything for luncheon—I don't care. I couldn't eat. You can warm over that mutton for yourselves. We must keep the bills down. They were too large last month. ”

“ To say, "We snapped an oar; we had to scull in a hurricane," would convey little idea to her. And she would be so distressed that one of the crew was lost. The Dream was sunk. Romer had remained on the Cape to try to recover the body of his mate. He, Marshall Avery, her husband, had been saved alive, and had come back to her. What else concerned, or, indeed, what else could interest her? In ten minutes nothing would interest either of them, except that he had her in his arms again.... Jean! He thrust his face out of the hack window and cried:—
"Drive faster, man! ”

“ But in my opinion it is of no use."
"For God's sake, man, are n't you going to do something?" demanded the husband in a voice which the nearest doctor had occasion to remember.
"In my opinion the patient is dead," persisted the stranger. He turned and took up his hat. "I will do anything you like, of course, sir," he added politely. "But life is extinct."
Avery made no reply, and the strange physician went uncomfortably away. Avery stared after him with bloodshot eyes. He now held his wife, half sitting, against his own warm body ”

“ His insouciant black eyes peered suddenly at his guest as if from a small, keen, marine lens.
"Say, old fellow," he said slowly, "I hope there was n't any sort of a quarrel,—you know,—any domestic unpleasantness, before you came on this trip? I wish to blank I 'd left you ashore."
"Quarrel? A demon could n't quarrel with my wife!" exploded Avery.
"That was my impression," returned his host. "Beg pardon, Avery. You see—to be honest, I can't say exactly how we 're coming out of this. There are several things which might happen. I thought"—the sportsman stammered, and stopped. ”

“ Romer. He is very tired. He takes it hard when he does not win things—cases, I mean. He might—you see"— She faltered into a pathetic silence.
"I will send Helen at once," replied the physician. He felt that he had offered his subtlest and most artistic prescription. More than most wives are valued, Dr. Thorne loved his. ”