FIVE MINUTES
It was not many hours before Doctor Craig himself led Georgiana and
James Stuart together into the room where Jeannette lay. She had asked
to see them together, he said, and they might remain for precisely five
minutes. He immediately left the room again and took the nurse with him.
The five minutes were spent by Stuart with Jeannette's hand in both his
own, as he knelt beside the the bed where she lay, no pillow under her
head, her face very white but her eyes glowing.
Jeannette's look met Georgiana's. "Is it all right?" she said very low.
"Of course it's all right, dear; and I'm perfectly happy over it,"
whispered Georgiana.
Jeannette smiled. "I couldn't be happy till I was sure," she breathed.
"I thought--I might die, even yet--and I wanted it like this--first."
An inarticulate murmur from Stuart answered this, but Georgiana assured
her very gently: "You're going to be happy with Jimps for years and
years, Jean darling."
They were silent then, as they had been bidden, but the silence was
eloquent. Doctor Craig, coming in to put an end to the little interview,
saw the unmistakable tableau. As Stuart, catching sight of him, rose
slowly to his feet, the surgeon's fingers closed upon his patient's
pulse. He nodded.
"As a heart stimulant you have done very well, Mr. Stuart," he said.
"But small doses, frequently repeated, are better than large ones."
Jeannette's hand weakly caught his. "Isn't it queer, Georgiana," she
murmured, "that it should be your Mr. Jefferson who has saved my life?"
In spite of herself, Georgiana could not prevent the rich wave of colour
which swept over her face. She knew, without venturing to look at him,
that Doctor Craig's eyes flashed toward her with a smile in them. She
stooped over Jeannette with a gay reply:
"And he began his acquaintance with you by snowballing you till you
almost had need of his surgery on the spot!"
Then she and Stuart were out in the wide, bare hospital corridor, and
Stuart was saying with a shiver: "Does she look all right to you,
George--sure?"
"Of course she does, Jimps. You never saw her before with her hair down
in braids; and any face looks pale against a white bed."
He shook his head. "I shall not stir out of this town till she looks
like herself to me."
"Of course you won't. I wish I needn't, but I must go back to father
to-night."
They all tried to dissuade her from this course, but she was firm. She
knew well enough that all Jeannette had wanted of her was to assure
herself that she possessed a clear right and title to Stuart's love.
Evidently Jeannette had guessed more at Stuart's past relations with
Georgiana than either of them had imagined, and she would not allow
herself to be happy without the knowledge that she was not making her
cousin miserable.
One brief conversation with Doctor Craig was all that was vouchsafed
Georgiana before she left the city, and that took place in the presence
of others, in Aunt Olivia's apartment. It was clear enough how busy a
man he was in this his own world, for when he came into the room he
explained to Mrs. Crofton that it had been his only chance since they
arrived to make a brief social call upon the family of his patient. It
was but an hour before Georgiana's departure, and when he learned this,
Jefferson Craig came over to her, where she sat upon a divan at one end
of the long private drawing-room of the suite. Seeing this, the others
of the party began conversations of their own, after the manner of the
highly intelligent, and for those five minutes Georgiana lived in a
place apart from the rest of the world.
"Please tell me all about your father," he began, and the tones of his
voice, low as are habitually those of his profession, could hardly have
been heard by one across the room.
Georgiana told him, unconsciously letting him see that the fear of her
probable loss was ever before her, though she could not put it into
words. She knew as she spoke that his eyes did not leave her face. She
had no possible idea how alluring was that face as the light from the
sconces nearby fell upon it. She was conscious, womanlike, that the
small hat she wore was made over from one of Jeannette's, and she did
not think it becoming. Though it was November, she still wore her summer
suit, for the reason that since her return from abroad Jeannette had not
found time to pack and send off the usual "Semi-Annual," and previous
boxes had not included winter suits at at all. Altogether, with
many-times-mended gloves upon her hands, and shoes which to her seemed
disgraceful, though preserved with all the care of which she was
mistress, Georgiana felt somehow more than ordinarily shabby.
Doctor Craig asked her several questions. He spoke of the rug-making,
watching her closely as she answered. He asked how often she went to
walk and how far. He asked what she and her father were reading. He
would have asked other questions, but she interrupted him.
"It's not fair," she said. "Please tell me about the book. Does it get
on?"
"Do you care to know?"
"Very much. I'm wondering if your copyist makes those German references
any clearer for the printer than I did."
"Nobody has copied a word. I have not written a word. The book is at a
complete standstill. I see no hope for it until I can take another
vacation--under the name of E. C. Jefferson."
"And that you will never take," she said positively.
"I never shall--in the same way. There are reasons against it. The book
will have to be written as the others were--on trains, on shipboard, in
my own room late at night."
"Is it right to try to put two lifetimes into one?" she asked, and now
she lifted her eyes to his.
Before, she had managed to avoid a direct meeting by those many and
engaging little makeshifts girls have, of glancing at a man's shoulder,
his ear, his mouth--and off at the floor, the window--anywhere not to
let him see clearly what she may be afraid he will see. And Georgiana
was intensely afraid that if Dr. Jefferson Craig got one straight look
with those keen eyes of his he would recognize that her whole aching,
throbbing heart was betraying itself from between those lifted lashes.
But now, somehow, with her question she ventured to give him this one
look. The interview might end at any moment; she must have one straight
survey of his face, bent so near hers.
He gave it back, and until her glance dropped he did not speak. Then,
very low, but very clearly, he said deliberately:
"When may I come?"
The room whirled. The lights from the sconces danced together and
blurred. The floor lifted and sank away again. And Chester Crofton chose
this moment--as if he were not after all really of that highly
intelligent class which knows when to pursue its own conversations and
when to break into those of others--to call across the room:
"Oh, I beg pardon, Doctor Craig, but when did you say Jean might have
something real to eat? Rosy says it's to-morrow and I say it's not yet
at all."
Doctor Craig turned and answered, and turned back again. He was not of
the composition of those who are balked of answers to their questions by
ill-timed interruptions. But the little diversion gave Georgiana an
instant's chance to make herself ready to answer like a woman and not
like a startled schoolgirl. So that when he repeated, his voice again
dropped:
"When, Georgiana?"
She was able to reply as quietly as she could have wished: "Do you want
to come, Doctor Craig?"
"I want to come. I have never wanted anything so much."
"Then--please do."
"Very soon? As soon as I can get away for a few hours? Perhaps next
week? It is always difficult, but if I plan ahead sometimes I can manage
to make almost the train I hope for."
She nodded. "Any train--anytime."
There was an instant's silence. It seemed to her that she could hear one
or two deep-drawn breaths from him. Then:
"Would you mind looking up just once more? I must go in a minute; I
can't even take you to your train."
But she answered, with an odd little trembling of the lips: "Please
don't ask me to. I'm--afraid!"
A low laugh replied to that. "So am I!" said Jefferson Craig.
He rose, and she rose with him. The others came around and he took leave
of them. His handclasp was all that Georgiana had for farewell, for when
she lifted her eyes she let them rest on his finely moulded chin. But
she knew that in spite of his expressed fear it was not her round little
chin he looked at, but the gleam of her dark eyes through their
sheltering lashes, and that his hand gave hers a pressure which carried
with it much meaning. It told her that which as yet she hardly dared
believe.
Since the journey home was made up of changes of trains, no sleeper was
possible, and Georgiana sat staring out of her car window while those
about her slumbered. There was too much to think of for sleep, if she
had wanted to sleep. She did not want to sleep, she wanted to live over
and over again those five minutes with their incredible revelation. And
as the wheels turned, the rhythm of their turning was set to one simple
phrase, the one which had sent her world whirling upside down and made
the stars leap out of their courses:
"When may I come?"