UNDER SENTENCE.
"I wish I could give you better hope, Mr. Lester."
"Is there any loophole?"
John Lester's face was white and drawn as he leaned against the fence,
staring at Dr. Brereton. There were streaks of grey in his hair that
had not been there before the night of Dick's agony.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
"There is always a loophole where the patient has youth and strength on
his side. But I would not be justified in telling you to hope. I have
known no case of the kind that recovered more than a measure of power.
These spinal cases are terribly difficult; I suppose in the future we
may find out more about them."
"But the operation was successful?" Mr. Warner put in.
"The operation was entirely successful--so far as it could go. If it
had not been the boy could only have lived a few hours--I was only just
in time. Indeed, how he lived through what he must have borne is
rather a mystery."
"And now--tell me again what the sentence is. I want to get it
clearly," said the father.
"He may outlive you both--though these cases sometimes don't last more
than a few years. Your boy is so strong that I should not anticipate
any change for the worse, however. He should have a fair measure of
health and strength--given every possible chance, as he will be, with
skilled nursing. But--it would only be false kindness to mince
matters, Mr. Lester--he will never walk again."
The world was going black about John Lester. Mr. Warner caught at his
arm.
"You can do a great deal for him," the doctor's steady voice went on.
"Fill his life with all the interests you can; get hold of nurses who
know how much incurable cases can be trained to do. Keep an atmosphere
of happiness about him--remember, always, how strongly the mind acts
upon the body. He has more pluck than anyone I ever saw, and he will
respond." The deep voice was wrung with pity. "I'm sorry for you,
Lester, from my heart--I've sons myself."
"I had only one," said John Lester, with dry lips, "and I was too proud
of him, I suppose. I was proud of every inch of him, mind and
body--his pluck, his strength, his manliness and his clean, straight
mind. Even as a baby he was always such a plucky kid. I used to say
he was ordinary enough, even to his mother, but in my heart I thought
no one ever had a son like him. And now--well, I suppose I've got my
punishment for being too proud."
"You have his pluck still," the doctor said. "He'll need it, as he
never needed it before; and your pride in him, too. You can't let
yourself get down, mind; Dick will need every ounce of help you can
give him. Don't let him ever feel he is less your son because he can't
be the son you've hoped for. You've got to put every personal feeling
aside for him and his mother."
"His mother! Oh, my God!" said John Lester desperately. He turned
from them and went across the paddock with his head down.
"No--don't go after him. He's got to work it out alone, poor chap!"
said the surgeon, pityingly.
"You haven't told the mother yet?"
"No. He wants to tell her himself. But she won't feel it as much."
"She! Why, she adores the boy!"
"Yes, but women are different, which is something to be thankful for,"
said the doctor. "She has the boy still, and the relief of his being
alive is so intense that the other part will be secondary. He'll be
her baby again; she'll be able to attend him ceaselessly; to spend her
whole life on him. That's always going to help a mother. Lester won't
have as much comfort that way, and he has all a father's broken pride
and thwarted ambitions. It's a hard sentence for a man with an only
son."
From the shadow of a great clump of desert pea a little figure
crept--Merle, her lank black hair hanging about her tear-stained face.
She caught at her father's coat with shaking fingers.
"Daddy! It isn't true--Dick won't be a cripple! Say it, daddy!"
Robert Warner looked down at her gloomily.
"I wish to God I could," he said. "And I wish I'd never asked them on
this unlucky visit." His face hardened as he looked at his daughter.
"You'd better go inside, Merle--and remember you're not to talk about
it."
She went obediently, not crying, but with her childish face set in a
look of horror that was not good to see. The doctor looked after her.
"Poor child!" he said. "She came to me last night, and knelt down in
front of me and begged me to make Dick well. Someone has told her it's
all her fault."
"And so it is," Robert Warner said heavily.
"No good telling a baby that--and she's little more." The doctor lit a
cigarette. "And it was only a bit of childish disobedience."
"Well, its consequences will darken my house as long as I live," Mr.
Warner said.
Out in the paddocks Dick Lester's father tramped up and down, trying to
realise the thing that had befallen them, and praying for courage to
tell his wife. How could he tell her? How to find words to shatter
the hopes and the joy that thirteen years had built up so happily? She
had always known his love of physical perfection, and from the very
first days of Dick's dimpled babyhood she had seconded his efforts to
make the boy's body splendidly fit. Together they had trained him,
proud of every fresh step of physical achievement and muscular
development. And now--the body they had gloried in lay a helpless log
for ever. Never to walk, never to ride through the bush and the
paddocks that he loved; never to spring to meet them with all his happy
soul in his eyes. He groaned aloud in his misery.
"I won't tell her to-day," he said. "To-morrow will do."
Then he saw her coming towards him across the grass, fresh and dainty
in her white gown. He went to meet her.
"Mrs. Warner saw you going over here," she said, slipping her hand into
his arm. "Dick's asleep, and the nurse bullied me into coming out for
some fresh air. He's so well this afternoon, the darling! No pain to
speak of, and he's quite merry. The nurse says he's doing splendidly."
"That's something to be thankful for," her husband said. "Are you
rested, dear?"
"I? Oh, it's rest just to see Dick out of pain, and to know that he'll
be all right soon," she said happily.
He tried to answer, and could not. Suddenly she turned, looking keenly
at his face.
"John, there is something wrong!" She went white. "Is it Dick? Tell
me quickly!"
"Dick is doing well," he said hastily. For she trembled so that he was
afraid she would faint. "But there is something. Sit down on this
log." He put her down gently, and stood looking at her, and then in
broken words he told her of the doctor's sentence.
She heard him almost in silence, uttering now and then a quick
question. The colour died even from her lips, but she took the blow
without flinching.
"Are we to tell him?"
"No--not until we must."
"He was asking the nurse this afternoon when he could get up," she said
with a pitiful little smile. "I--I do not know how one could ever tell
him. Dick--my Dick--a cripple! It doesn't seem the sort of thing that
could possibly happen."
Suddenly she stood erect, facing him.
"I don't believe it," she said fiercely. "It may seem so now, and I
suppose Dr. Brereton knows as much as most men; but, beloved, we'll
never give up hope. He's so young, so strong, so perfect! I don't
believe that science won't find the way to cure him. We'll make him as
well and strong as we can, and take him to Melbourne--to England, to
America, to Germany, if necessary. Thank God, there's money enough!
You mustn't believe it, either. We've got to keep happy thoughts all
round him; to be certain in our own minds that he'll get well. If we
let ourselves despair we make ourselves less able to help him."
"You haven't talked to Brereton," he said sadly.
"No, and, if necessary, I won't talk to him!" she flashed back. "I
won't do anything to lessen my faith that Dick will get well. Doctors
have made mistakes before; and you know he said himself that they don't
understand spinal trouble yet, John!"--she caught at him
fiercely--"don't believe it! God never meant our boy to be a cripple
all his life!"
"I haven't your pluck," he said. "Warner tells me Brereton's about the
best man in Perth; he should know. But there's nothing to be gained,
at any rate, by giving way to despair. We'll do all we can to fight
the verdict. Brereton did say there was always a loophole where there
was youth and strength."
He took her hands, looking at her.
"Well, thank God for you, anyhow," he said. "I wonder if there are any
depths you wouldn't draw a man from. I came out wondering how I could
ever tell you; picturing your despair as black as my own; and instead,
you've given me--well, if not hope, at least something to fight for.
And that is always something. Come home, and we'll see if Dick's
awake."
He wondered often, in the long, hard days that followed, if there were
secret moments when her splendid faith and courage did indeed waver.
If there were, she did not show them. To Dr. Brereton she listened
calmly, taking in all he said, trying in vain to gather from him a
shred of encouragement. At the end she thanked him for saving the
boy's life.
"I wish I could have given him health as well as life," the doctor said
pityingly.
"That will come--some day," she told him. "Please don't try to make me
believe anything else."
He shook his head.
"It would not be fair to let you hope."
"It would not be fair to take hope from me," she said. "That's not
going to help Dick. Perhaps, in ten years, if everything fails, I
might believe you. But we're never going to cease believing and
trying."
"You are a brave woman," he said.
"Brave! Why, I am not brave enough to do without hope," she answered.
"If I once believed that Dick would never walk again, I would not know
how to face life. But he will walk--I know it!"
The doctor went back to Perth when it was safe to leave Dick to the
care of the two nurses--experienced, matter-of-fact women, who settled
down to the care of an incurable case with a calm professional
certainty as to the future that often goaded their patient's mother to
the limit of endurance; a fact which they never suspected. Dick
himself gave little trouble. He was very weak; so tired that it was
happiness to lie still, now that there was no longer pain to dread.
"I'm jolly lazy," he said--"but if I move I know the pain will come
back, so I don't try." He did not dream that movement was impossible.
Gradually his clean youth triumphed over the minor injuries, and his
wounds healed quickly. The Westown doctor, who came out twice weekly,
professed himself delighted with him; the nurses allowed themselves a
touch of pride over his fast-disappearing scars. A faint tinge of
colour crept back into his white face. He had no inclination but to
lie still; but interest in the outer world awoke once more, and he
liked to hear the station talk; the daily stories of work among the
cattle--to hear what horses were in use, and how the young ones were
shaping in their work. His room, as he grew stronger, became a kind of
centre for the household, and everybody drifted there throughout the
day--Bobby and the twinses, with queer offerings of flowers and such
curiosities as stick insects and blue-tongued lizards; Mr. Warner
solemnly asking advice on station matters; Macleay, the storekeeper,
with dry Scots stories. Each evening the three jackeroos came to him
with the history of the day; tip-toeing at first, with exaggerated
caution, and gradually forgetting it, at Dick's quick questions, so
that the sickroom would become a Babel of cheery voices, until the
nurse on duty would plead over-excitement for her patient, and turn
them all out. Dick hated to see them go, although he would be too
tired to want them to stay. "Makes you nearly forget you're lying on
your back," he would say.
But there were long hours when he did not seem to want to talk; lying
quietly, his eyes always on the patch of sky outside his window, where
the gum leaves made a wavering pattern against the blue. Hours when he
wanted nothing, he said; neither reading nor stories, nor any of the
hundred devices with which they sought to make his day less long. What
did he think of? his mother wondered wretchedly, watching the still
face against the white pillows. Were there fears in his brave heart?
Unknown terrors of the future, that he would not tell even to her? She
would ask him if he were in pain, and he would shake his head with a
little smile--the smile that never failed for her. But if there were
times when Mrs. Lester's own courage wavered, it was in those quiet
hours when something beyond her knowledge seemed to be drawing Dick
away from her into a silence where she might not enter.
One shadow haunted the verandah outside the room--Merle, white-faced
and wretched, haunted by self-reproach too agonising for a child's
mind. Whatever bitterness might have been in Dick's mother vanished at
the dumb misery in her eyes. She put her arm about the little girl,
holding her tightly, while Merle clung to her, shaken with dry sobs.
"I wish I was dead!" she had gasped.
"You mustn't say that," Mrs. Lester said. "Dick would hate to hear
you. And you must help us to get him well!"
"But they say he'll never be well!"
"Hush!" The mother's hand was across her mouth. "I don't believe
that. You must come to see him when he is stronger, and help to cheer
him up."
Curiously, it became apparent after a time that Dick liked to have
Merle in the room. She never talked much, and it did not seem that she
knew how to smile; but a queer sympathy sprang up between them, for
which words were not necessary. She developed an instinct, almost
uncanny, for knowing what he wanted. At all times he was slow to voice
any need--his sturdy independence was one of the hardest sacrifices he
had to make on the altar of his helplessness, and it died hard. Merle
divined needs almost before they shaped themselves in his mind. He
would find a book, a fresh handkerchief, a piece of fruit, within reach
of his hand, put there with a silence that wished to avoid thanks. She
saw him feeling awkwardly for his watch, and presently a little clock
from her own room was placed at an angle where he could always see it.
If the blind flapped, or the door creaked, or the light fell too
strongly on his eyes, it was Merle who saw it first, and went quietly
to mend matters. "I think she sits there just trying to imagine what
Dick may want, so that she may do it for him," Mrs. Lester said to her
husband.
"That child's a born nurse, if only she had a decent bedside manner,"
said one nurse to the other.
But Dick liked her manner. It was "not fussy," he said. She did
things quietly, and he soon learned that she hated to be thanked by
anything but a glance and a nod. A silent comprehension drew them
together, until, after his mother and father, he preferred Merle to any
other attendant.
So the weeks went by; and at last one day the Westown doctor declared
his part of the work done.
"I can't do any more for him," he said to Mr. Lester. "He has a clean
bill of health now, except for the one big thing."
"And that is no better?"
The other man shook his head.
"It can't be any better, Mr. Lester. I wish I could think otherwise."
"What about moving him?" the father asked. "We can't quarter ourselves
at Narrung for ever--even if we wished. And I want to get the boy to
Melbourne."
"It's a brute of a journey," the doctor said. "Still, it must be faced
some time, and the hot weather will make it worse, the longer you
wait." He thought deeply. "The train is vile; and the drive to it,
even in the Warners' big car, would be a strain."
"My own idea," John Lester said, "was to get a motor ambulance from
Perth, and do the whole journey by road. Do you think it's workable?"
"It's your best plan, I believe," the doctor said, with relief.
"Brereton would fix it up for you."
"We can make the stages what we choose, according to Dick's strength,"
said Mr. Lester. "I should take tents, and, if necessary, we could
camp on the road. Dick would be better off in the ambulance than in
some of the wayside hotels. If it took us a fortnight or more it would
be easier for him than that jolting, grinding train."
"There's no risk to the boy," the doctor said. "Only weariness, and
you want to spare him as much of that as you can."
A week later Mrs. Lester sat on the verandah outside Dick's room. Her
husband had been reading to Dick; the boy had fallen asleep under the
spell of the low, deep voice, and now the father sat watching him. She
looked wearily across the garden to the wide paddocks beyond. Two
months ago they had driven over them for the first time, radiant in the
happiness, still a new thing, of being all together; to-night she
looked at them for the last time, and there was bitterness in her soul.
They were to take Dick away in the morning, the wreck of what he had
been; that had been Fate's gift to them at Narrung, the sorry end of
the visit that had promised such brightness. Before them lay new
happiness or despair--which?
A soft step roused her. Merle stood there, with a kind of trembling
determination in her face.
"Mrs. Lester," she said, "will you take me with you?"
"Take you, Merle? My dear child, how could we?"
Merle suddenly slipped to the floor beside her, catching at her skirt.
"I'll slave for you," she said wildly. "I'll do any mortal thing I
can. If you leave me here I'll go mad. I 'spect you must hate me, but
Dick doesn't, though I don't know why he doesn't. Nobody can hate me
like I do myself."
"Nobody hates you at all, Merle."
"People must. D'you think I don't know what I've done?" the child
stammered. "Wouldn't you let me come, just for a bit, to work for
you--to help you to look after Dick? I'd never be any trouble. I can
do my own hair and everything. I'd just be legs for Dick!"
"Legs?" queried Mrs. Lester, puzzled.
"Yes. It's all my fault he can't use his. If I came I could just be
there to hand him things and run his errands. He doesn't mind telling
me to do things, but he won't ask you, 'cause he hates you to get
tired. Oh, couldn't I come, just as Dick's legs?"
Mr. Lester appeared in the doorway.
"Take care--Dick is awake."
They heard Dick's voice, "Mother."
"Yes, sonnie." Mrs. Lester put Merle aside and went in.
"Don't let that poor kiddie cry," he said. "I say, couldn't we take
her?"
"You want her, Dick?" said his mother, amazed.
"Oh, she's not a bad kid," Dick said. "I give you an awful lot of work
now, and she'd save you a bit. And she wants to come ever so. Might
as well let her, don't you think?"
Mrs. Lester looked at her husband uncertainly.
"If you want her I expect you can have her, old son," he said. "I'll
see what her father and mother say."
He went out, leaving Dick and his wife alone. A small, sobbing figure
crept after him.
Dick looked at his mother steadily.
"I say, mother--am I getting better?"
"Why, of course you are, old man," she said brightly.
"When am I going to sit up?" It was the question she had long dreaded,
and she was ready for it.
"When your back strengthens sufficiently. You must give it time,
beloved."
"It's not the spear wound? Nurse says that's all right."
"Oh, the spear wound was nothing--beyond being painful at first. You
see, when Conqueror threw you, you fell on an outcrop of ironstone, and
that is what has given you the real trouble." She forced a smile.
"You know, you can't bounce about on ledges of rock as if you were
india-rubber!"
He was silent a moment, and then spoke suddenly; and there was terror
in his eyes.
"Mother--my back isn't broken?"
"No!" she said quickly.
"You'd tell me--straight?"
"On my honour, Dick."
He heaved a big sigh.
"I've been wondering ... lying here," he said, "I'd heard about fellows
with broken backs, and I do feel so queer and helpless. Of course I
knew I couldn't get well all in a hurry; but I thought it was about
time I could move my legs."
He looked at her with the absolute trust that all his life she had seen
in his eyes. Twice she tried to speak before words would come.
"Will you just go on being patient, Dick?" she said at last. "I know
it is hard--and you have been wonderfully good. Try not to get
impatient yet."
"I can stick it all right if I know I'm going to get better," Dick
said. "And you say I am, mother."
She met his eyes.
"I believe you are, Dick--with God's help."
"Well, that's all right--mother-est," he said; and he took her hand and
carried it to his cheek. So they stayed together while darkness crept
into the room. She would have stirred once to switch on the light, but
he said, "Ah, don't go away," and she drew closer to him. Through the
open windows the kind stars looked down in pity as her lips moved,
praying.