ALEXANDRIA
"My master," said the valet, "is fond of Cairo and detests Alexandria.
As soon as he is able to be moved, if not sooner, he will wish to be
moved."
"He is not able now," said Hagar.
"No, Miss. He is still delirious."
"The doctor says that he is very ill."
"Yes, Miss. But if I may make so bold, I think Mr. Ashendyne will
recover. I have lived with him a long time, Miss."
"What is your name?"
"Thomson, Miss."
The Colonel entered. "He didn't know me. Nor would I have known him.
He is pretty badly knocked to pieces.--What have you got there? Tea? I
want coffee." Thomson moved to the bell, and gave the order to the Arab
who appeared with the swiftness of a genie. "Is there anything else,
sir?"
"No, not now."
"The English papers are upon the small table, sir." And Thomson glided
from the room.
The Colonel looked about him. "Humph! Millionaires fix themselves
luxuriously."
"I keep seeing her," said Hagar. "Her body lying drowned there."
The Colonel glanced at her. "Pull yourself together, Gipsy! Whatever
you do, don't get morbid."
"I won't," Hagar answered. "I'm like you there, grandfather. I hate it.
But it isn't morbidness to think a little of her."
The Arab brought the coffee. "Turkish coffee!" said the Colonel, not
without relish in his voice. "I always wanted to taste--" He did so,
appreciatively. "Ah, it's good--" He leaned back in the deep wicker
chair and gazed upon the latest attendant. "And what may be your name?"
The figure spread its hands and said something unintelligible. "Humph!
Comment vous nommez-vous?"
"Mahomet, Monsieur."
"We've come, Gipsy," said the Colonel, "far from old Virginia. Well,
I always wanted to travel, but I never could. I had a sense of
responsibility."
It struck Hagar with the force of novelty that what he said was true.
He had such a sense. There had always been times when she did not
like her grandfather, and times when she did. But during the last two
weeks, filled with a certain loneliness and strangeness for them both,
she had felt nearer to him than ever before. There had chanced to be
on the boat few people whom he found congenial. He had been forced
to fall back upon his granddaughter's companionship, and in doing so
he had made the discovery that the child had a mind. He liked mind.
Of old, when he was most sarcastically harsh toward Maria, he had
yet grudgingly admitted that she had mind--only, which was the deep
damnation, she used it so wrongheadedly! But Gipsy--Gipsy wouldn't
have those notions! The Laydon matter had been just a foolish girl's
affair. She had been obstinate, but she had seen her mistake. As for
Ralph--Ralph would get her yet. The Colonel had been careful, in their
intercourse during the voyage, to bring forward none of her mother's
notions. He found that she knew really an amazing amount of geography
and history, that to a certain extent she followed public events, that
she knew Byron and could quote Milton, and that though she had no Greek
(he had forgotten most of his), she was familiar with translations
and could not only give a connected account of the Olympian family,
but could follow in their windings the minor myths. The long voyage,
the hours when they reclined side by side in their steamer chairs,
or with the country need for exercise paced from prow to stern, and
from stern to prow, taught him more about his granddaughter than had
done the years at Gilead Balm. She told him of the acceptance of "The
Lame Duck" and the sending of "The Mortal," and he was indulgent
toward her prospects. "There have been women who have done very good
work of a certain type. It's limited, but it's good of its kind. As
letter-writers they have always excelled. Of course, it isn't necessary
for you to write, and in the Old South, at least, we've always rather
deprecated that kind of thing for a woman."
The Colonel drank his thick coffee from its little metal cup with
undeniable and undenied pleasure. He was not hypocritical, and he never
canted. His only son lay in a large bedroom of this luxurious suite,
maimed and hardly conscious, and whether he would live or die no one
knew. But the Colonel had never wept over Medway in the past and he
was not going to weep now. He drank his coffee leisurely, and when it
was done Mahomet took salver and cup away. Rising, the Colonel walked
to one of the windows and stood looking out at a bougainvillæa-covered
wall, a shaggy eucalyptus tree, and a seated beggar, fearful to the
eye. It was afternoon, and they had been in Alexandria since eight
o'clock. "I sent a cable to your grandmother. The doctors think he's
holding his own, but I don't know. It looks pretty bad. They've got a
nurse from a hospital here,--two, in fact,--and that man Thomson is
invaluable.... I've seen, too, this morning, before they let me into
the room, his wife's brother. It seems that he was in London at the
time, and came on and has very properly waited here for our arrival.
We walked through the Place Mahomet Ali, and he took me to a very
good club, where we sat and talked.... Her will--it's rather curious.
I suppose Medway, if he lives, will be disappointed. And yet, with
care, he'll have enough." The Colonel laughed, rather grimly. "We'd
think in Virginia, that a million was a good livelihood, but standards
are changing, and doubtless he's been feeling many times that amount
between his fingers. It occurred to me that they must have quarrelled.
It's like a woman to fling off and do a thing like that hastily.
Her brother says, however, that he believes they were really happy
together. He fancies that she had some feminine scruple or other as
to the way her first husband obtained his wealth,--as the world goes,
entirely honourable transactions, I believe,--and that she had an idea
of 'restoring' it. She made this last will in London, just before they
started on this long trip that's ended so. It's been read. There's a
string of bequests to servants and so on. She leaves just one million,
well invested, to Medway. The rest, and it's an enormous rest, goes
into a fund, for erecting model lodging-houses and workmen's dwellings.
Philanthropy mad!" said the Colonel. "Her brother's got, I understand,
some millions of his own, and he could afford to smile. Also, he's been
supposing for a year that it would all go to Medway. Well, that's where
Medway is--if he lives. Fifty thousand or so a year," said the Colonel,
regarding the beggar, "is not an income to be despised. I should be
happy if I saw, each year, in clear money, an eighth as much."
There came a knock at the door and the physician entered. He was an
American, a young, fresh-coloured man with an air of strength and
capability. He had lunched with the two Ashendynes, and now came in as
one at home. He looked graver now than then; there was a plain cloud
upon his brow. "I don't believe he can hold out," he said abruptly.
"He has a magnificent constitution, and his body is making a splendid
fight, but--It may come at any minute with a quick collapse. Of course,
I'm not saying that it will be so. But if Miss Ashendyne wishes to see
him, or to be with him if it should happen to be the end--"
Hagar turned deadly pale. The Colonel, not usually considerate of
her or given to thinking that she needed consideration, was somehow
different to-day. "If you'd rather not, Gipsy--? Indeed, I think that
you had better not. It isn't as though you had been always with him."
He turned to the physician. "She has seen very little of her father
since baby-hood."
But Hagar had steadied herself and risen from her chair. "Thank you,
grandfather, but I would rather go with you." It was almost sunset,
and the splendid western light flooded the chamber where the sick man
lay. He lay low upon the pillows, with only a light covering. There
had been, beside injuries to spine and limb, and some internal hurt,
a bad blow over the head. This was bandaged; fold after fold of gauze
wrapped around forehead and crown. "Oh," thought Hagar, "it is like the
white helmet in that dream!" But the features below were not flushed
with health; they were grey and drawn. The second physician, standing
at the bed-head, lifted his hand from the pulse and moved to the side
of the first. "A little stronger." The nurse placed a chair for Hagar.
Thomson, at the windows, raised the jalousies higher, and the light
evening breeze blew through the room. "It may or it may not be," said
the first doctor in a low voice to the Colonel. "If he pulls through
to-night, I'll say he wins."
The amber, almost red, light of the sun bathed the bed. When the sun
sank, a violet light covered it. When the short twilight was gone, and
the large, mild stars shone out, they brought shaded lamps, and the bed
lay half in that light and half in the shadow. In the room, through
the slow passing hours, hushed, infrequent movements took place, the
doctors relieving each other in the watch by the bed, the night nurse
arriving, the giving of stimulants, whispered consultations by the
window. The adjoining room was prepared for rest and relaxation; there
was a table with bread and cold meat and wine. The Colonel came and
went, noiseless as a shadow, but a restless shadow. Once or twice
during the night his touch upon her shoulder or his hand beckoning from
the doorway drew Hagar forth. "You'd better rest, child. Here, drink
this wine!" Each time she stayed half an hour or so, either in the
room or out upon the balcony which gave upon a garden, but then she
stole back into the bedroom.
She sat in a big chair which she had drawn aside and out of the way.
She could, however, see the bed and the figure upon it; not clearly,
because the lights were low, but dimly. She rather felt than saw it;
it was as though a sixth sense were busy. She sat very still. Her
father.... Through her mind, automatically, without any conscious
willing, drifted words and images that spoke of father and child. It
might be a Bible verse, it might be a line from a younger poet, it
might be an image from some story or history. Father and child--father
and daughter--father and daughter.... To sit and see her father
die, and to feel no deep sorrow, no rending sense of companionship
departing, no abject, suffocating pulsing of a stricken heart, no
lifted hope and faith or terror for him, no transcending sense of
self-relinquishment, while the loved one flew farther and swifter and
higher out of her sight, away from this life's low level.... She could
not feel any of that. As little as the Colonel did she believe in or
practise cant. She knew that she could not feel it thus, and knew why.
But there was a great forlornness in sitting there and watching this
stranger die.
She tried to strengthen the faint memories that the past held. Was she
five or six years old the last time she had seen him? The distinctest
image was of underneath the cedars at Gilead Balm. There was a shawl
spread upon the grass. Her father was lying on it, his hat tilted
over his eyes. There was a book beside him. She had been gathering
dandelions, and she came and sat down on the edge of the shawl and
opened the book. She thought every book had pictures, but there were
none in that one. Then he had waked up and laughed at her, and said,
"Come here!"--It flashed into her consciousness, from where it had lain
unrecalled all these years, just what he had said. He had said, "Come
here, Miss Ugly, Ill-omened Name!" She had gone, and in playing with
her he had accidentally burned her finger with his lighted cigar. And
then--it came to her with an effect of warmth and sunshine, and with
a feeling of wanting to laugh, with tears in her eyes--he had been
beautifully, charmingly shocked and apologetic. He had taken her away
and made Old Miss bandage the finger, and then he had shouldered her
and carried her into the orchard and broken boughs of apple blossoms
for her and told her "Jack and the Beanstalk." ... That was almost all
she could remember; or if there were one or two less agreeable things,
she would not remember those now. She tried to keep the warmth about
her heart; on the whole, aided by human pity for the broken form upon
the bed, she succeeded better than she could have dreamed.
The man upon the bed!--Outside the fatherhood, outside the physical
relation between them--there he was, a human being with death hovering
above. It was easier to think of him just as a fellow-being; she laid
hold of that thought and kept it. A fellow-mortal--a fellow-mortal.
With a strange sense of relief, she let the images and words and the
painful straining for some filial feeling pass from her soul. She did
not know why she should feel toward him filially; he had not, like
her mother, suffered to give her life; he had probably never thought
of her; she had not been to him the concern in the matter. Nor hardly
since had he acted parentally toward her. With a wry humour she had
to concede the winter in New York, the summer at the New Springs, but
it hardly seemed that the sacrifice could have been great, or that the
need for gratitude was extreme. Her soul rose against any hypocrisy.
She could not and she would not try to say, "Dear father--dear father!"
The vision of her mother rose beside her.... But just to think of him
as a human being--she could do that; a man lying there on the knife
edge of the present, with the vast, unplumbed gulf before him.... That
dream of the blue sea and the palm trees and the low pale-coloured
houses returned to mind, but she put it from her somewhat shudderingly.
He had looked so abounding in life, so vivid and vital, with the white
hat like a helmet!... A fellow-mortal, lying there, helpless and
suffering....
At three in the morning the physician in charge, who had been sitting
for some time beside the bed, rose and moved away. He nodded his head
to his fellow. Hagar caught the satisfaction in the gesture even
before, in passing her chair, he paused to say just audibly, "I think
your father will recover." A short time passed, and then the Colonel
touched her arm. "They think it safe for us to go. He is stronger.
Come! They'll call if there is any need, but they don't think there
will be."
Going, she stopped for a moment close beside the bed. She had not been
this near before. Medway lay there, with his head swathed in bandages,
with his lips and chin unshorn, with no colour now in his cheeks, with
his eyes closed. Hagar felt the sudden smart of tears between her own
lids. The gold thread of the dandelion day tied itself to the natural
human pity and awe. Her lips trembled. "Father!" she said, in the
lowest of whispers. Her hand moved falteringly until, for the lightest
moment, it rested upon his.
In the outer room the physician joined them. "He'll still have to fight
for it, and there may be setbacks. It's going to be a weary, long,
painful siege for him, but I don't believe he's going to die. Indeed,
I think that, except in the one respect, we'll get him back to being a
well man with a long life before him."
"And that respect?"
"I'm afraid, Colonel Ashendyne, that he'll never walk again. If he
does, it will be with crutches and with great difficulty."
When, half an hour later, Hagar opened the door of her own room,
the dawn was coming. It was a comfortable bedroom, large, cool, and
high-pitched, and it, too, had a balcony. The bed invited; she was
deadly tired; and yet she doubted if she could sleep. She stood in
the middle of the room, her hands over her eyes, then, a little
stumblingly, she went out upon the balcony. It was a small place,
commanding the east. There was a chair and a little table on which you
could rest your arms, and your head upon them, sideways so that you
could see the sky. It was just grey light; there were three palm trees
rustling, rustling. After a while purple came into the sky, and then
pale, pale gold. The wind fell, the palms stood still, the gold widened
until all the east was gold. She saw distant, strange, flat roofs, a
distant dome and slender towers, all against the pale, pale gold. The
air was cool and unearthly still. Her head upon her arm, her face very
quiet, her eyes open upon the deepening light, she stayed until the
gardeners came into the garden below.