CHAPTER XXXV
THE ULTIMATE CHOICE
We carried her home next day in George's motor car, ploughing withdifficulty over the heavy roads, which in a month's time would havebecome impassable. A golden morning had followed the rain; the sun shoneclear, the wind sang in the bronzed tree-tops, and on the low hills tothe right of us, the harvested corn ricks stood out illuminated againsta deep blue sky. When the brown-winged birds flew, as they sometimesdid, across the road, her eyes measured their flight with a look inwhich there was none of the radiant impulse I had seen on that afternoonwhen she gazed after the flying swallows. She spoke but seldom, and thenit was merely to thank me when I wrapped the fur rug about her, or toreply to a question of George's with a smile that had in it a touchinghelplessness, a pathetic courage. And this helplessness, this courage,brought to my memory the sound of her voice when she had called George'sname aloud in her terror. Even after we had reached home, and when sheand I stood alone, for a minute, before the fire in her room, I feltstill that something within her--something immaterial and flamelike thatwas her soul--turned from me, seeking always a clearer and a divinerair.
"Are you in pain now, Sally? What can I do for you?" I asked.
"No, I am better. Don't worry," she answered.
Then, because there seemed nothing further to say, I stood in silence,while she moved from me, as if the burden of her weight was too much forher, and sank down on the couch, hiding her face in the pillows.
Two days later there came down a great specialist from New York for aconsultation; and while he was upstairs in her closed bedroom, I walkedup and down the floor of the library, over the Turkish rugs, between theblack oak bookcases, as I had walked in that other house on the night ofmy failure. How small a thing that seemed to me now compared with this!What I remembered best from that night was the look in her face when shehad turned and run back to me with her arms outstretched, and the warm,flattened braid of her hair that had brushed my cheek. I understood atlast, as I walked restlessly back and forth, waiting for the verdictfrom the closed room, that I had been happy then--if I had only knownit! The warmth stifled me, and going to the window, I flung it open, andleaned out into the mild November weather. In the street below leaveswere burning, and while the odour floated up to me I saw again her redshoes dancing over the sunken graves in the churchyard.
The door opened above, there was the sound of a slow heavy tread on thestaircase, and I went forward to meet the great specialist as he cameinto the room.
For a minute he looked at me enquiringly over a pair of black-rimmedglasses, while I stood there neither thinking nor feeling, but waiting.Something in my brain, which until then had seemed to tick the slowmovement of time, came suddenly to a stop like a clock that has rundown.
"In my opinion an operation is unnecessary, Mr. Starr," he said, drawingout his watch as he spoke, "and in your wife's present condition Iseriously advise against it. The injury to the spine may not bepermanent, but there is only one cure for it--time--time and rest. Tomake recovery possible she should have absolute quiet, absolute freedomfrom care. She must be taken to a milder climate,--I would suggestsouthern California,--and she must be kept free from mental disturbancefor a number of years."
"In that case there is hope of recovery?"
For an instant he stared at me blankly, his gaze wandering from hiswatch to the clock on the mantel, as if there were a discrepancy in thetime, which he would like to correct.
"Ah, yes, hope," he replied suddenly, in a cheerful voice, "there isalways hope." Then having uttered his confession of faith, he appearedto grow nervous. "Have you a time-table on your desk?" he enquired. "I'dlike to look up an earlier train than the Florida special."
Having looked up his train, he turned to shake hands with me, while theabstracted and preoccupied expression in his face grew a trifle morehuman, as if he had found what he wanted.
"What your wife needs, my dear sir," he remarked, as he went out, "isnot medical treatment, but daily and hourly care."
A minute later, when the front door had closed after him, and the motorcar had borne him on his way to the station, I stood alone in the room,repeating his words with a kind of joy, as if they contained the secretof happiness for which I had sought. "Daily and hourly care, daily andhourly care." I tried to think clearly of what it meant--of the love,the sacrifice, the service that would go into it. I tried, too, to thinkof her as she was lying now, still and pale in the room upstairs, withthe expression of touching helplessness, of pathetic courage, about hermouth; but even as I made the effort, the scent of burning leavesfloated again through the window and I could see her only in her redshoes dancing over the sunken graves. "Daily and hourly care," Irepeated aloud.
The words were still on my lips when old Esdras, stepping softly, camein and put a telegram into my hands, and as I tore it open, I said overslowly, like one who impresses a fact on the memory, "What your wifeneeds is daily and hourly care." Ah, she should have it. How she shouldhave it! Then my eyes fell on the paper, and before I read the words, Iknew that it was the offer of the presidency of the Great South Midlandand Atlantic Railroad. The end of my ambition, the great adventure of myboyhood, lay in my grasp.
With the telegram still in my hand, I went up the staircase, and enteredthe bedroom where Sally was lying, with wide, bright eyes, in thedimness.
"It's good news," I said, as I bent over her, "there's only good newsto-day."
She looked up at me with that searching brightness I had seen when shegazed straight beyond me for the help that I could not give.
"It means going away from everything I have ever known," she saidslowly; "it means leaving you, Ben."
"It means never leaving me again in your life," I replied; "not for aday--not for an hour."
"You will go, too?" she asked, and the faint wonder in her face piercedto my heart.
"Do you think I'd be left?" I demanded.
Her eyes filled and as she turned from me, a tear fell on my hand.
"But your work, your career--oh, no, no, Ben, no."
"You are my career, darling, I have never in my heart had any career butyou. What I am, I am yours, Sally, but there are things that I cannotgive you because they are not mine, because they are not in me. Theseare the things that were George's."
Lifting my hand she kissed it gently and let it fall with a gesture thatexpressed an acquiescence in life rather than a surrender to love.
"I've sometimes thought that if I hadn't loved you first, Ben--if Icould ever have changed, I should have loved George," she said, andadded very softly, like one who seeks to draw strength from a radiantmemory, "but I had already loved you once for all, I suppose, in thebeginning."
"I am yours, such as I am," I returned. "Plain I shall always be--plainand rough sometimes, and forgetful to the end of the little things--butthe big things are there as you know, Sally, as you know."
"As I know," she repeated, a little sadly, yet with the pathetic couragein her voice; "and it is the big things, after all, that I've wantedmost all my life."
Then she shook her head with a smile that brought me to my knees at herside.
"You've forgotten the railroad," she said. "You've forgotten thepresidency of the South Midland--that's what _you_ wanted most."
My laugh answered her. "Hang the presidency of the South Midland!" Iresponded gaily.
Her brows went up, and she looked at me with the shadow of her oldcharming archness. By this look I knew that the spirit of the Blandswould fight on, though always with that faint wonder. Then her eyes fellon the crumpled telegram I still held in my hand, and she reached totake it.
"What is that, dear?" she asked.
Breaking away from her, I walked to the fireplace and tossed the offerof the presidency of the South Midland and Atlantic Railroad into thegrate. It caught slowly, and I stood there while it flamed up, and thencrumbled with curled fiery ends among the ashes. When it was quite gone,I turned and came back to her.
"Only
a bit of waste paper," I answered.