“Laura Lou! Darling! What’s the matter?”
“Carry me back to bed, Vanny. I’ll be all right.” She spoke so quietly that he was half reassured.
Her head fell back on his shoulder as he lifted her to his breast. In the darkness he stumbled across the room, groped his way to the bed, and laid her down on it. Then he found a match and lit the lamp. His hands were shaking so that he could hardly carry it. He held the light over the bed and saw, on the floor beside it, a basin half full of blood, and a crumpled pile of rags, such as he had seen her push into the kitchen range.
“Laura Lou—you’ve had a hemorrhage?”
Her lids fluttered open again. “Ever since that day I caught cold—”
“It’s not the first?”
Her lips shaped an inaudible: “Never mind.”
“But, child, child—how could you hide it from me? In God’s name, why didn’t you get the doctor?”
The old terror returned to her eyes as she clutched his sleeve with her weak fingers. “No, no, no …” She lifted herself up haggardly, her eyes wide with fear, like a dead body raising itself out of its grave. “Never, Vanny, never! You’ve got to promise me. … They’d take me away from you to some strange place, with nurses and people, where I’d never see you. … I won’t go, I won’t … but if the doctor comes he’ll make me … and I’d rather die here. … You promise me. …”
“Of course I promise. But you won’t die—you won’t, I tell you!” He held her tight, burning with her fever, straining to pour his warmth and strength into her poor shuddering body; and after a while her head drooped back on the pillow, and her lids fell over her quieted eyes.
XLV
The doctor said he was going to let Laura Lou stay just where she was. Evidently, then, Vance concluded, he didn’t think it was so serious. What she wanted was feeding up, warmth, nursing. Vance could get a woman in to help? Oh, yes. … And sterilized ice? And fresh milk? …
Laura Lou lay back smiling, blissful, a little pink in the hollow of her cheekbones. She had emptied the glass of milk Vance had brought her, and the mild sun streamed in onto her bed. It was a day like April, the ground reeking with a sudden thaw.
Vance followed the doctor out onto the porch, and the two men stood there in silence. On the way Vance had handed to the doctor the sum that was owing him; and the doctor, who was a good fellow, and no doubt saw how things were, had said: “Oh, see here—there’s no sort of hurry. …” After that they stood and looked for a while at his mud-spattered Ford, which had dug its way down the lane through the morass of the thaw.
“You’ll be back soon?” Vance asked, wondering how to let the doctor know that there would be no trouble now about paying for his visits.
“Oh, sure—” said the doctor, who was young and not very articulate. He stamped his feet on the wooden step, and added: “Not that there’s much else to do.”
“You mean she’ll pull round soon, with this tonic?” Vance held the prescription in his hand.
The doctor looked at his Ford, and then at Vance. He had a poor sort of face, not made for emotional emergencies, and seemed to know it. He laid his hand awkwardly on Vance’s shoulder. “If I was sure she’d pull round, I’d have to take her away from here today. I’m not sure—that’s why I’m going to let you keep her.” He turned and went down the steps. From his seat in the car he called out to Vance, who had not moved: “Anyway, I’ll look in tomorrow.”
After the doctor had driven away Vance continued to stand in the same place in the porch. He was trying to piece together the meaning of the words: “That’s why I’m letting you keep her.” Laura Lou had doubtless known that if the doctor had been sent for sooner she would have been packed off to a sanitarium. Now it didn’t matter—and that meant that she was dying, or at least that the doctor thought so. Vance tried to grasp the reality underlying the words, but it slipped out of his hold. He knew very little of the character of tuberculosis, except for its more melodramatic features: fever, hemorrhages and night sweats—the sort of consumption people had in sentimental novels. Of the real disease he had no experience. But he saw that Laura Lou was less ignorant; he had guessed instantly that in her terror of being taken from him she had concealed her condition as long as possible; and he wondered dully if she had understood that the doctor’s permission to her to remain at the bungalow was her death warrant. But even that dark word conveyed little meaning. The doctor’s phrase had acted like some strange corrosive, decomposing Vance’s visible world. He stood in the porch repeating to himself: “Laura Lou, Laura Lou,” as if the name were a magic formula against destruction. He tasted something salt on his lips, and found that the tears were running down his face. …
Well, after all, the doctor had to admit the next day that his patient was a good deal better than he had expected. A wonderful rally, he said. … Vance, at the foot of the bed, caught a quick flit of fear in Laura Lou’s eyes. The doctor must have caught it too, for he added with his clumsy laugh: “Anyway, I guess this air’s as good as the Adirondacks …” and Laura Lou’s head fell back contentedly. …
