“I have no objection to my wife’s profiting by your generous care, provided always that Sir John Pelham approves your treatment,” answered Chicot, in a calmer tone than George Gerard expected from a man who had just come home after a week’s absence to find his wife in peril of death. “Do you think she will recover?”
This question was asked deliberately, with intense earnestness. Gerard saw that the eyes which looked at him were watching for the answering look in his own eyes, waiting as for the sentence of doom.
That look set the surgeon wondering as to the relations between husband and wife. A minute ago he had wondered at Chicot’s coldness—a tranquility that seemed almost indifference. Now the man was all intensity. What did the change mean?
“Am I to tell you the truth?” asked Gerard.
“By all means.”
“Remember I can give you only my opinion. It is an obscure case. The injury to the brain is not easily to be estimated.”
“I will take your opinion for what it is worth. For God’s sake be candid.”
“Then in my opinion the chances are against her recovery.”
Jack Chicot drew a long breath, a strange shivering sigh, which the surgeon, clever as he was, knew not how to interpret.
“Poor thing!” said the husband, after a brief silence, looking down at the dull, blank face, “and three years ago she and I came out of the Maine very happy, and loving each either dearly! C’est dommage que cela passe si vite.”
These last words were spoken too low for Gerard to hear. They were a brief lament over a love that was dead.
“Tell me about the accident,” said Jack Chicot sitting down in the chair Gerard had vacated, “You were in the theatre, you say. You saw it all.”
“I did, and it was I who picked your wife up. I was behind the scenes soon enough for that. The panic-stricken wretches about were afraid to touch her.”
Gerard told everything faithfully. Jack Chicot listened with an unchanging face. He knew the worst that could be told him. The details could make little difference.
“I said just now that in my opinion the chances were against your wife’s recovery,” said Gerard, full of earnestness, “but I did not say the case was hopeless. If I thought it were I should not be so anxious to undertake the care of your wife. I ask you to let me watch her because I entertain the hope—a faint hope at present, I grant—of curing her.”
Jack Chicot gave a little start, and looked curiously at the speaker.
“You must be tremendously in love with your profession, to be so anxious about another man’s wife?” he said.
“I am in love with my profession. I have no other mistress. I desire no other!”
“Well, you may do all you can to snatch her from the jaws of death,” said Chicot. “Let her have her chance, poor soul. That is only fair. Poor butterfly! Last night the star of a crowded theatre, the focus of every eye; to night to lie thus, a mere log, living and yet dead. It is hard.”
He walked softly up and down the room, deep in thought.
“Do you know I implored her to refuse that ascent,” he said. “I had a foreboding that harm would come of it.”
“You should have forbidden it,” said the surgeon, with his fingers on the patient’s wrist.
“Forbidden! You don’t know my wife.”
“If I had a wife she should obey me.”
“Ah! that’s a common delusion of bachelors. Wait till you have a wife, and you will tell a different story.”
“She will do for tonight,” said Gerard, taking up his hat, yet lingering for one long scrutiny of the white expressionless face on the pillow. “Mrs. Mason knows all she has to do; I will be here at six tomorrow morning.”
“At six! You are an early riser.”
“I am a hard worker. One is impossible without the other. Good night, Mr. Chicot; I congratulate you upon your power to take a great trouble quietly. There is no better proof of strong nerve.”
Jack fancied there was a hidden sneer in this parting compliment, but it made very little impression upon him. The perplexity of his life was big enough to exclude every other thought. “You had better go to bed, Mrs. Mason,” he said to the nurse. “I shall sit up with my wife.”
“I beg your pardon, sir, I could not feel that I was doing my duty if I indulged myself with a night’s rest while the case is so critical; by-and-bye I shall be thankful to get an hour’s sleep.”
“Do you think Madame Chicot will ever be better?”
The nurse looked down at her white apron, sighed gently, and as gently shook her head.
“We always like to look at the bright side of things, sir,” she answered,
“But is there any bright side to this case?”
“That rests with Providence, sir. It is a very bad case.”
“Well,” said Jack Chicot, “we must be patient.”
He seated himself in the chair by the bedside and remained there all night, never sleeping, hardly changing his attitude, sunk to the bottom of some deep gulf of thought.
Day came at last, and soon after daybreak came George Gerard, who found no change either for better or worse in his patient, and ordered no change in the treatment.
“Sir John Pelham is to be here at eleven,” he said. “I shall come at eleven to meet him.”
The great surgeon came, made his inspection, and said that all was going on well.
“We shall make her leg sound again,” he said, “I have no fear about that; I wish we were as certain about the brain.”
“Do you think the brain is seriously hurt?” asked Chicot.
“We can hardly tell. The iron struck her head as she fell. There is no
