She looked at Wyant, and they read each other’s thoughts.
“It’s a long time,” he said.
“Yes.”
“But Garford can do wonders—and she’s very strong.”
Justine shuddered. Just so a skilled agent of the Inquisition might have spoken, calculating how much longer the power of suffering might be artificially preserved in a body broken on the wheel….
“How does she seem to you today?”
“The general conditions are about the same. The heart keeps up wonderfully, but there is a little more oppression of the diaphragm.”
“Yes—her breathing is harder. Last night she suffered horribly at times.”
“Oh—she’ll suffer,” Wyant murmured. “Of course the hypodermics can be increased.”
“Just what did Dr. Garford say this morning?”
“He is astonished at her strength.”
“But there’s no hope?—I don’t know why I ask!”
“Hope?” Wyant looked at her. “You mean of what’s called recovery—of deferring death indefinitely?”
She nodded.
“How can Garford tell—or any one? We all know there have been cases where such injury to the cord has not caused death. This may be one of those cases; but the biggest man couldn’t say now.”
Justine hid her eyes. “What a fate!”
“Recovery? Yes. Keeping people alive in such cases is one of the refinements of cruelty that it was left for Christianity to invent.”
“And yet—?”
“And yet—it’s got to be! Science herself says so—not for the patient, of course; but for herself—for unborn generations, rather. Queer, isn’t it? The two creeds are at one.”
Justine murmured through her clasped hands: “I wish she were not so strong–-“
“Yes; it’s wonderful what those frail petted bodies can stand. The fight is going to be a hard one.”
She rose with a shiver. “I must go to Cicely–-” The rector of Saint Anne’s had called again. Justine, in obedience to Mrs. Gaines’s suggestion, had summoned him from Clifton the day after the accident; but, supported by the surgeons and Wyant, she had resisted his admission to the sick-room. Bessy’s religious practices had been purely mechanical: her faith had never been associated with the graver moments of her life, and the apparition of a clerical figure at her bedside would portend not consolation but calamity. Since it was all-important that her nervous strength should be sustained, and the gravity of the situation kept from her, Mrs. Gaines yielded to the medical commands, consoled by the ready acquiescence of the rector. But before she left she extracted a promise that he would call frequently at Lynbrook, and wait his opportunity to say an uplifting word to Mrs. Amherst.
The Reverend Ernest Lynde, who was a young man, with more zeal than experience, deemed it his duty to obey this injunction to the letter; but hitherto he had had to content himself with a talk with the housekeeper, or a brief word on the doorstep from Wyant. Today, however, he had asked somewhat insistently for Miss Brent; and Justine, who was free at the moment, felt that she could not refuse to go down. She had seen him only in the pulpit, when once or twice, in Bessy’s absence, she had taken Cicely to church: he struck her as a grave young man, with a fine voice but halting speech. His sermons were earnest but ineffective.
As he rose to meet her, she felt that she should like him better out of church. His glance was clear and honest, and there was sweetness in his hesitating smile.
“I am sorry to seem persistent—but I heard you had news of Mr. Langhope, and I was anxious to know the particulars,” he explained.
Justine replied that her message had overtaken Mr. Langhope at Wady Haifa, and that he hoped to reach Alexandria in time to catch a steamer to Brindisi at the end of the week.
“Not till then? So it will be almost three weeks—?”
“As nearly as I can calculate, a month.”
The rector hesitated. “And Mr. Amherst?”
“He is coming back too.”
“Ah, you have heard? I’m glad of that. He will be here soon?”
“No. He is in South America—at Buenos Ayres. There will be no steamer for some days, and he may not get here till after Mr. Langhope.”
Mr. Lynde looked at her kindly, with grave eyes that proffered help. “This is terrible for you, Miss Brent.”
“Yes,” Justine answered simply.
“And Mrs. Amherst’s condition–-?”
“It is about the same.”
“The doctors are hopeful?”
“They have not lost hope.”
“She seems to keep her strength wonderfully.”
