"Do you know what marriage is?" he asked abruptly.
"Oh, yes," she said, but her face clouded perceptibly.
Then he took her in his arms and told her plainly, brutally, clumsily,
without preface, without comment: "Honey, you are going to have a
child."
For a second her mind wavered before him. He could actually see the
totter in her eyes, and braced himself for the final hopeless crash, but
suddenly all her being focused to the realization of his words, and she
pushed at him with her hands and cried: "No--No--Oh, my God--_n-o_!" and
fainted in his arms.
When she woke up again the little-girl look was all gone from her face,
and though the Young Doctor smiled and smiled and smiled, he could not
smile it back again. She just lay and watched him questioningly.
"Sweetheart," he whispered at last, "do you remember what I told you?"
"Yes," she answered gravely, "I remember that, but I don't remember what
it means. Is it all right? Is it all right to _you_?"
"Yes," said the Young Doctor, "it's--all--right to--me."
Then the Sick-A-Bed Lady turned her little face wearily away on her
pillow and went back to those dreams of hers which no one could fathom.
For all the dragging weeks and months that followed she lay in her bed
or groped her way round her room in a sort of timid stupor. Whenever the
Young Doctor was there she clung to him desperately and seemed to find
her only comfort in his presence, but when she talked to him it was
babbling talk of things and places he could not understand. All the
village feared for the imminent tragedy in the great white house, and
mourned the pathetic absence of the young husband, and the Young Doctor
went his sorrowful way cursing that other "boy" who had wrought this
final disaster on a girl's life.
But when the Sick-A-Bed Lady's hour of trial came and some one held the
merciful cone of ether to her face, the Sick-A-Bed Lady took one deep,
heedless breath, then gave suddenly a great gasp, snatched the cone from
her face, struggled up and stretched out her arms and cried, "Boy--Boy!"
The Young Doctor came running to her and saw that her eyes were big and
startled and sharp with terror:
"Oh, Boy--_Boy_," she cried, "the Ether!--I remember _everything_
now--I--was his wife--the Old Doctor's Wife!"
The Young Doctor tried to replace the cone, but she beat at him
furiously with her hands, crying:
"No, No, No!--If you give me Ether I shall die thinking of him!--Oh,
no!--_n-o_!"
The Young Doctor's face was like chalk. His knees shook under him.
"My God!" he said, "what _can_ I give you!"
The Sick-A-Bed Lady looked up at him and smiled a tortured, gallant
smile. "Give me something to keep me here," she gasped! "Give me a token
of you! Give me your little briarwood pipe to smell--and give it to
me--quickly!"