MEDWAY
Five days later, Medway, one morning, recognized the Colonel. "Why,
my dear father, what are you doing here?... What's it all about?" His
feeble voice died away; without waiting for an answer, he lapsed into
a kind of semi-consciousness. Out of this, day by day, though, he
came more strongly. Directly he appeared to accept, without further
curiosity, his father's occasional presence in the room. Another
interval, and he began to question the physician and nurses. "Back,
eh?--and leg, and this thing on my head. I don't remember.--A kind of
crash.... What happened?"
Evasive answers did for a while, but it was evident that they would not
do for ever. In the end it was Thomson who told him.
"You did, did you!" exclaimed the doctor in the outer room. "Well, I
don't know but what it's just as well!"
"I couldn't help it, sir. He pinned me down."
The Colonel spoke. "Just what and how much did you tell him?"
"I told him, sir, about the wreck, and how he got beaten about, and how
I fastened him, when he was senseless and we were sinking, to a bit
of spar, and how we were picked up with some of the crew about dawn.
And about his being brought here, and being very well cared for, and
your coming from New York, you and Miss Ashendyne, and that he'd been
wonderful close to dying, but was all right now, and what the date was,
and things like that, sir."
"Did he ask for his wife?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you told him?"
"Yes, sir."
The doctor rose. "Well, I'm glad it's done. I'll go see--" and
disappeared into the sick-room.
"I think you did well, Thomson," said the Colonel. "When you've got to
take a thing, you'd better stand up and take it, and the quicker the
better."
"Yes, sir," said Thomson; and adjusted the jalousies, it being now very
warm and the glare at times insupportable.
The Colonel, under the guidance of a dragoman of the best, had been
shopping, and was in white duck. Hagar, too, had secured from a French
shop muslin and nainsook.
Thomson had been concerned for her lack of any maid or female
companionship. He had gently broached the subject a week or two before.
"Mrs. Ashendyne had an excellent maid, Miss, who was with us on the
yacht that night and was saved. But she's of a high-wrought nature,
and the shock and cold and everything rather laid her up. She has a
brother who is a photographer in Cairo, having married a native woman,
and she's gone to stay with him awhile, before she goes back into
service. If that hadn't been the case, Miss, you might, if you wished,
have taken her on. I think she would have given satisfaction. As it is,
Miss, I know some English people with a shop here, and I think through
them I could find you some one. She would not be a superior lady's maid
like Cécile, but--"
Hagar had declined the offer. "I never had a maid, thank you, Thomson.
I can do for myself very well."
She liked Thomson, and Thomson agreed with the nurse that she was a
considerate young lady. Now, having adjusted the blinds, Thomson left
the room.
The Colonel paced up and down, his hands behind him. The white duck
was becoming; he did not look sixty. Hair, mustache, and imperial were
quite grey; except for that he had never aged to Hagar's eyes. His body
had the same height and swing, the same fine spareness; his voice kept
the same rich inflections, all the way from mellow and golden to the
most corroding acid; he dominated, just as she remembered him in her
childhood. Not all of his two weeks in Egypt had been spent by Medway's
bedside; he had been fairly over Alexandria, and to Meks and Ramleh,
and even afield to Abûkir and Rosetta. He had offered to take her with
him upon these later excursions, but she had refused. The brother of
her father's wife was going with him, and she correctly thought that
they would be freer without her. The Colonel acquiesced. "I dare say
you'll have chances enough to see things, Gipsy." It was her first
intimation that any one had in mind her staying....
Now the Colonel, after pacing awhile, spoke reflectively. "At this rate
it won't be long before he's really well enough to talk. I'll have to
have several talks with him. Did you gather, Gipsy, that Thomson had
told him that he would remain crippled?"
"I do not think he told him that, grandfather."
"That's going to be the shock," said the Colonel. "Well, he'll have
to be told! I think Thomson--or the doctor--had better do it. And
then he'll have to learn about that will. Altogether, it may delay his
convalescence a little. Of course, I'll stay until he's practically
recovered--as far as he can recover."
"Do you think that ... perhaps ... he might like to go home--to go home
to Gilead Balm?"
"Not," answered the Colonel, "if I know Medway, and I think I do!
To come back, crippled, after all these primrose years--to sleep in
his old room, and Maria's--to sit on the porch and listen to Bob and
Serena--No!"
That night in her own room Hagar placed two candles on the table, took
a sheet of paper and a pencil, and sitting down, made a calculation.
The night was warm to oppression; through the windows came the
indefinite, hot, thick murmur of the evening city. Hagar sat with
bare arms and throat and loosened hair. She wrote her name, _Hagar
Ashendyne_, and her age, and then, an inch below, a little table,--
The Prize Story $200.00
(_Clothes, books, Thomasine. All spent._)
The Story in ----'s Magazine $50.00
(_Clothes, books. All spent._)
"The Lame Duck" $100.00
(_I have most of it yet._)
"The Mortal" $125.00
-------
Total $475.00
After a pause the pencil moved on. "Many stories in mind, one partly
written. The monthly says I can write and will make a name." It paused,
then moved again. "To earn a living. To live where life is simple and
doesn't cost much. If I go on, and I will go on, I could live at Gilead
Balm on what I make, and help keep up the place. If ever I had to live
by myself, I could get two or three rooms in a city and live there. Or
maybe a small house, and have Thomasine with me. In another year or two
years, I can keep myself. I do not want to stay here when grandfather
goes. Where there is no love and honour, what is the use? It isn't as
though he needed me--he doesn't--or wanted me--"
She laid the pencil down and leaned back in the deep chair. Her eyes
grew less troubled; a vague relief and calm came into her face, and she
smiled fleetingly. "If he doesn't think he needs me or wants me,--and
I don't believe he'll think so,--then there isn't anything surer than
that I won't stay." She rose and paced the room. "I shouldn't worry,
Hagar!"
Some days after this, she offered one afternoon to relieve the nurse.
She had done this before and frequently. Heretofore the service had
consisted, since the patient almost always slept through the afternoon,
in sitting quietly in the darkened chamber and dreaming her own dreams
for an hour or two, when the grateful nurse came back refreshed. To-day
she was presently aware that he was awake; that he was lying there with
his eyes open, regarding the slow play of light and shadow upon the
ceiling. She had found out, on those earlier occasions, that he did not
discriminate between her and the usual nurse; when he roused himself to
demand water he had looked no farther than the glass held by her hand
to his lips. Now, as she felt at once as with a faint electric shock,
it was going to be different. He spoke presently. His voice, though
halting and much weakened, resembled the Colonel's golden, energetic
drawl.
"What time is it?"
"Five o'clock."
"What day of the month?"
She told him. "Alexandria in April!" he said. "What impossible things
happen!"
She did not answer, and he fell silent, lying there staring at the
ceiling. In a few minutes he asked for water. The glass at his lips,
she felt that he looked with curiosity first at the hand which held it,
and then at her face. "Water tastes good," he said, "doesn't it?"
"Yes, it does." She put down the glass and returned to her seat.
"You aren't," he said, "the nurse I've had."
"No; she will be back presently."
There followed another pregnant silence; then: "A beautiful string of
impossibilities. I know the Colonel's here--been here a long time. Now,
did I dream it or did Thomson tell me that he'd brought my daughter
with him?"
"Thomson told you."
Medway lay quite quiet and relaxed. The cut over the head was nearly
healed; there was now but a slight fillet-like white bandage about it.
Thomson had trimmed mustache and short pointed beard; the features
above were bloodless yet, but no longer sunken and ghastly; the eyes
were gathering keenness and intelligence. Ashendynes and Coltsworths
were alike good-looking people, and Medway had taken his share.
He knew it, prized it, and bestowed upon it a proper care. Hagar
wondered--wondered.
He spoke again. "Life's a variorum! I shouldn't wonder ... Hagar!"
"Yes, father?"
"Suppose you come over here, nearer. I want to see how you've 'done
growed up.'"
She moved her chair until it rested full in a slant ray of sunlight,
coming through the lowered blinds, then sat within the ray, as still
almost as if she had been sculptured there.
Five minutes passed. "Haven't you any other name than Hagar?" said
Medway. "Are they always going to call you that?"
"Grandfather calls me Gipsy--except when he doesn't like what I do."
"Does that happen often? Are you wilful?"
"I do not know," said Hagar. "I am like my mother."
When she had spoken, she repented it with a pang of fear. He was in no
condition, of course, to have waked old, disturbing thoughts.
But Medway had depth on depth of _sang-froid_. "You look like her and
you don't look like her," he murmured. "You may be like her within, but
you can't be all like her. Blessings and cursings are all mixed in this
life. You must be a little bit like me--Gipsy!"
"It is time," said Hagar, "for an egg beaten up in wine."
She gave it to him, standing, grave-eyed, beside the bed. "I do not
think you should talk. Shut your eyes and go to sleep."
"Can you read aloud?"
"Yes, but--"
"Can you sing?"
"Not to amount to anything. But I can sing to you very low until you go
to sleep, if that's what you mean--"
"All right. Sing!"
She moved from the shaft of light, and began to croon rather than
to sing, softly and dreamily, bits of old songs and ballads. In ten
minutes he was asleep, and in ten more the nurse returned.
The next afternoon Thomson brought her a message. "Mr. Ashendyne would
like you to sit with him awhile, Miss."
She went, and took her chair by the window, the nurse leaving the room.
Medway lay dozing, his eyes half-closed. After a while he woke fully
and asked who was there.
"It is Hagar, father."
"Sit where you were yesterday."
She obeyed, taking again her place in the slant light. It made a gold
crown for her dusky hair, slid to the hollow of her firm young throat,
brought forward her slender shoulders, draped in white, and bathed her
long hands, folded in her lap.
Medway lay and looked at her, coolly, as long as he pleased. "You are
not at all what is called beautiful. We'll dismiss that from mind.
But the people who give us our terms are mostly idiots anyhow! Beauty
in the eye of the beholder--but what bats are the beholders! No, you
haven't beauty, as they say, but there's something left.... I like the
way you sit there, Gipsy."
"I am glad that you are pleased, father."
"I couldn't deduce you from your letters."
Her eyes met his. "I did not choose that you should."
Again she felt a quiver of pain for what she had said. She was torn
between a veritable anger which now and again rose perilously near the
surface and a profound pity for his broken body, and for what he would
feel when he knew. Her dream of the early winter haunted her. She saw
him leaving that white steamer, coming lightly and jauntily down from
it to the shore, robust, with a colour in his cheeks and his white hat
like a helmet. She heard again Roger Michael speaking. "We met him at
Carcassonne, and afterwards at Aigues-Mortes. He was sketching most
wonderfully." She saw him, moving lightly, from stone to stone in old
half-ruined cities. The dandelion day and the blossoming orchard came
back to her; she felt again beneath her his half-dancing motion as he
carried her under the boughs where the bees were humming. Her pity, her
comprehension, put the anger down.
Medway was watching her curiously. "You have a most expressive face,"
he said. "I do not remember you well as a child. How old were you the
last time we met?"
"Five or six, I think. The clearest thing I can remember, father, is
one day when you were lying under the cedars and I had been gathering
dandelions and came to look at a book you had. You played with me, and
I accidentally burned my finger on your cigar. Then you were very kind
and lovely; you took me to grandmother to have it tied up, and then you
carried me on your shoulder through the orchard, and told me 'Jack and
the Beanstalk.'"
"By Jove!" said Medway. "Why, I remember that, too!... First the smell
of the cedar and then the apple blossoms.... You were a queer little
elf--and you entered into the morals of 'Jack and the Beanstalk' most
seriously.... Good lack! Whoever forgets anything! That to come back as
soft and vivid!... Well, I thought I had forgotten you clean, Gipsy,
but it seems I hadn't."
"You mustn't talk too much. Shall I sing you to sleep?"
"Yes, sing!"
Just before he dozed off, he spoke again, drowsily. "Have you heard
them say how many days it will be before I am on my feet again?"
"No."
"I will want to show you and the Colonel--" But she had begun to croon
"Swanee River," and he went to sleep with his sentence unfinished.
The next day he spoke of his drowned wife. It came as a casual remark,
but with propriety. "Anna was a good woman. There could hardly have
been a more amiable one. She had experience and tact; she was utterly
unexacting. She had her interests and I had mine; we lived and let
live.... I cannot yet understand how she happened to have been the
one--"
"She sent me her picture," said Hagar. "I thought it very handsome, and
a good face, too. And the two or three letters I had from her--I have
kept them."
"She was a good woman," repeated Medway. "You rarely see a tolerant
woman--she was one. Her brother has told me about her will. It is
true that I expected, perhaps, a fuller confidence. But it was her
money--she had a right to do as she pleased. I knew that she had some
unfortunate idea or other as to the origin of her wealth--but I did
not conceive that her mind made so much of it.... However, I refuse
to be troubled on that score. Her disposition of matters leaves me
comfortable enough. I am not worrying over it. I never worry, Gipsy!"
After lying for three minutes he spoke with his inimitable liquid
drawl. "When I think of all the years out of which I have squeezed
enjoyment on the pettiest income--going here and going there--every
nook of Europe, much of Asia and Africa--just managing to keep Thomson
and myself--knowing every in and out, every rank and grade and caste,
palace and hovel, château and garret, camp and atelier, knowing
pictures, music, scenery, strange people and strange adventures,
knowing my own kind and welcome among them--now basking like a lizard,
now in action as though a tarantula had bit me--everywhere, desert and
sea and city--and all on next to nothing!--making drawings when I had
to (I did that one year in southern France; Carcassonne, Aigues-Mortes,
Nîmes, and so forth), but usually fortunate in friends ... it seems
that I might be able to manage on fifty thousand a year ... resume at
the old house."
It was another week before he was told. He was growing impatient and
suspicious.... The doctor did it, Thomson flunking for the first time
in his existence. The doctor, having done it, came out of the room,
drew a long breath, and accepted coffee from Mahomet with rather a
shaking hand.
"Well?" demanded the Colonel. "Well?"
"He's perfectly game," said the doctor, "but I should say he's hard
hit. However,"--he drank the coffee,--"there's one thing that a
considerable experience with human nature has taught me, and that is,
Colonel, that your born hedonist--and it's no disparagement to Mr.
Ashendyne to call him that; quite the reverse--your born hedonist will
remain hedonist still, though the heavens fall. He'll twist back to the
pleasant. He's going through pretty bitter waters at the moment, but
he'll get life somehow on the pleasurable plane again. All the same,"
mused the doctor, "he's undoubtedly suffering at present."
"I won't go in," said the Colonel. "Better fight such things out alone!"
The other nodded. "Yes, I suppose so."
But a little later Hagar went in. She waited an hour or two in her
own room, sitting before a window, gazing with unseeing eyes. The
heat swam and dazzled above countless flat, pale, parapetted roofs of
countless houses. Palm and pepper and acacia and eucalyptus drooped in
the airless day; there sounded a drone of voices; a great bird sailed
slowly on stretched wings far overhead in a sky like brass. She turned
and went to her father's room.
Outside she met Thomson. "Are you going in, Miss? I'm glad of that. Mr.
Ashendyne isn't one of these people whom their own company suffices--"
Hagar raised sombre eyes. "I thought that my father had always been
sufficient to himself--"
"Not in trouble, Miss."
He knocked at the door for her. Medway's voice answered, strangely
jerky, quick, and harsh. "What is it? Come in!"
Thomson opened the door. "It's Miss Hagar, sir," then closed it upon
her and glided away down the corridor.
Medway was lying well up upon his pillows, staring at the light upon
the wall. He had sent away the nurse. He did not speak, and Hagar,
moving quietly, went here and there in the large room, that was as
large as an audience chamber. At the windows she drew the jalousies
yet closer, making a rich twilight in the room. There were flowers
on a table, and she brought fresh water and filled the bowl in which
they lived. There were books in a small case, and, kneeling before it,
she read over their titles, and taking one from the shelf went softly
through it, looking at the pictures.
At last, with it still in her hand, she came to her accustomed seat
near the bed. "It's a bad day for you," she said simply. "I am very
sorry."
"Do you object to my swearing?"
"Not especially, if it helps you."
"It won't--I'll put it off.... Oh--h...." He turned his head and
shoulders as best he could, until his face was buried in the pillows.
The bed shook with his heavy, gasping sobs....
It did not last. Ashendynes were not apt long to indulge in that kind
of thing. Medway pulled a good oar out of it. The room very soon
became perfectly still again. When the silence was broken, he asked
her what she was reading, and then if she had seen anything of the
city. Presently he told her to sing. He thought he might sleep; he
hadn't slept much last night. "I must have had a presentiment of this
damned thing--Go on and sing!" She crooned "Dixie" and "Swanee River"
and "Annie Laurie," but it was of no use. He could not sleep. "Of all
things to come to me, this--!... Why, I should like to be out in the
desert this minute, with a caravan.... O God!"
She brought him cool water. "I'm sorry--I'm sorry!" she said.
As she put down the glass, he held her by the sleeve. A twisted smile,
half-wretched, half with a glint of cheer, crossed his face. "Do you
know, Gipsy, I could grow right fond of you."