That evening the doctor came again. He left a little before nine
o’clock, the hour when Nurse Eden would begin her night watch. He
refused to hold out any hope. She was sinking fast.
As Hollyer turned from the front-door he met Nurse Eden coming
downstairs. She signed to him to follow her into the drawing-room,
moving before him without a sound. She shut the door.
[Illustration]
He was afraid of Nurse Eden; there was something—he didn’t know what it
was, but—there was something unbearable in her small, pure face; in the
thrust of her chin tilted by the stiff cap-strings; in her brave,
slender mouth, straightening itself against the droop of its compassion;
and in the stillness of her dense, grey eyes. Her eyes made him feel
uneasy, somehow, and unsafe. He was going to sit up with her to-night;
but he would rather have shared his night-watch with old Martha.
“Well?” she said.
“He says this is the end.”
“It may be,” said Nurse Eden. “But it needn’t.”
“You’ve seen her.”
“Yes.”
“_Well—?_”
“She hasn’t gone yet, Mr. Hollyer— She’s on the edge. She’s in that
state when a breath would tip her one way or the other.”
“A breath?”
“Yes, Mr. Hollyer. Or a thought.”
“A thought?”
“A thought. If I had Mrs. Hollyer to myself, I believe I could bring her
round even now.”
“Oh, Nurse—”
“I _have_ brought her round. Night after night I’ve brought her.”
“What do you do?”
“I don’t know what I do. But it works. Haven’t you noticed she gets
better in the night when I’ve had her; and that she slips back in the
day?”
“Yes, I have.”
“You see, Mr. Hollyer, Dr. Ransome’s made up his mind. And when the
doctor makes up his mind that the patient’s going to die, ten to one the
patient does die. It lowers their resistance. It isn’t every one that
would feel it; but your mother would.”
“If,” she went on, “I had her day _and_ night, I might save her.”
“You really think that?”
“I think there’s a chance.”
He didn’t know whether he believed her or not. Dr. Ransome shrugged his
shoulders and said Nurse Eden could try it if she liked. She had a
wonderful way with her; but he wouldn’t advise Hollyer to count on it.
Nothing but a miracle, he said, could save his mother.
Hollyer didn’t count on Nurse Eden’s way. But he thought—something
stronger than himself compelled him to think—that his mother would not
die.
And each hour showed her slowly coming back. Under his eyes the miracle
was being accomplished. At midnight her breathing and temperature and
pulse were normal; and by noon of the next day even Ransome was
convinced. He wouldn’t swear to the miracle, but whatever Nurse Eden had
or had not done, he believed Mrs. Hollyer would recover.
Hollyer not only believed it, but he was certain, as Nurse Eden was
certain. She came to him, radiant with certainty, and told him that his
mind could be at rest now.
But his mind was not at rest. It had only rested while he doubted, as if
doubt absolved him from knowledge of some secret that he could not face.
With the first moment of certainty he was aware of it. It was given to
him in physical sensations, a weight and pain about his heart that did
not lie. In a flash he saw himself back in his old life of dependence
and frustration. There would be no Effie sitting with him in the house,
no Effie running up and down the stairs. He would not sleep with Effie
in the big, white bed. They would grow old, wanting each other.
He tried to jerk his mouth into a smile, but it had stiffened. It
opened, gasping, as his muffled heart-beats choked him.
He went upstairs to his mother’s room. She was sitting up in bed,
clear-eyed, almost alert, and she turned her face to him as he entered.
“I don’t know how it is,” she said. “I thought I was going, but there’s
something that won’t let me go. It keeps on pulling me back and back.”
(Nurse Eden looked at him.) “Is it you, Wilfrid?”
He knelt down and buried his face in the bedclothes by her side. His
sobs shook the mattress. The nurse took him by the arm; he got up and
stared at her as if dazed and drunk with grief. She led him from the
room.
“You’re upsetting her,” she said. “Don’t come back till you’ve pulled
yourself together.”
When he went back his mother was sleeping calmly. Hollyer and the nurse
withdrew from the bedside to the window and talked there in low voices.
“Did you hear what she said. Nurse?”
“Yes. We can get her through, between us, if we make up our minds she’s
to live. Think of what she was yesterday.”
“But do you think we ought to? I don’t want her brought back to suffer.”
“She isn’t going to suffer. There’s no reason why she shouldn’t be as
well as ever. If you want her to live.”
“Want her? Of course I want her to live.”
“I know you do. But you must get rid of your fear.”
“My fear?”
“Your fear of her dying.”
“Do you think my fear could—could make her?”
“I know it could. Make up your mind with me that she’s going to get
well.”
“Supposing she wants to go? Supposing she’s fighting against us all the
time?”
“She isn’t fighting. She hasn’t any fight in her— Now, while she’s
sleeping, is the time. You’ve only got to say to yourself ‘She shall
live. She’s going to live.’ There—you sit in that chair, make yourself
quite comfortable, shut your eyes, and keep on saying it. Don’t think of
anything else.”
He sat down. He said it over and over again: “She shall live. She’s
going to live. She shall live—” He tried to think of nothing else; but
all the time he was aware of the dragging of his heart. He shut his
eyes, but he couldn’t get rid of the vision of Effie. Effie sitting in
his mother’s place. Effie sleeping beside him in the big bed.
“She _shall_ live. She’s going to live.” The words meant nothing. Only
the dragging weight at his heart had meaning. And it didn’t lie.
He thought: If that’s how I feel about it, I’d better keep my mind off
her.
Then he was aware that he was tired, dead beat, too tired to think. And
presently, sitting upright in the chair, he fell asleep.
He was waked by Nurse Eden’s voice calling to him from the bed: “Mr.
Hollyer! She’s going!”
His mother lay in the nurse’s arms, her head had fallen forward on her
chest, her mouth was open; and through it there came a groaning, grating
cry. Once, twice, three times; and she was gone.
After the funeral Hollyer went up into his mother’s room. Nurse Eden was
there, removing the signs of death. She had covered the bed with a white
counterpane. She had opened the door and window wide, and a flood of
clean cold air streamed through the room.
“Nurse,” he said, “come here a minute.”
She followed him into his bed-sitting room on the other side of the
landing. Hollyer shut the door.
“You remember that night when my mother got better?”
“Indeed I do.”
“Do you still think you brought her back?”
“I do think it.”
“Do you really believe that a thought—_a thought_ could do that?”
“Yes.”
“But it doesn’t always work. It breaks down.”
“Sometimes. That night she died I felt it wasn’t working. I was up
against a wall. I couldn’t get through. But remember, before that, she
was going when I brought her back.”
“Could a thought—another thought—kill?”
“It depends. Perhaps, if it was a very strong thought. A wish.”
Her queer eyes looked through him and beyond him, not seeing him, seeing
some reality that was not he. He had gone to her for her truth and she
had given it him. A wish, even a hidden wish, could kill. In the dark,
secret places of the mind your thoughts ran loose beyond your knowing;
they burrowed under the walls that shut off one self from another; they
got through. It was as if his secret self had broken loose, and got
through to his mother, and had killed her secretly, in the dark. His
wish was a part of himself, but stronger than himself. The force behind
it was indestructible, for it was a form of his desire for Effie; so
that while he lived he could not kill it.
It had been there all the time, cunningly disguised. It was there in his
fear of Nurse Eden; it was there in that obstinate belief of his that
his mother would live. His beliefs were always the expression of his
fears. He had been afraid that his mother would not die. That was his
fear. He saw it all clearly in the moment while Nurse Eden’s voice went
on.
“But it wasn’t _that_, Mr. Hollyer,” she was saying. “We were all
wishing her to live— No. I think she was too far gone. She had got
beyond us.”
It was too late for Nurse Eden to go back on it. He knew. He was
certain.