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Page 72
They told him the truth because he would have nothing else, although
they shrank from doing it until the last moment of their stay. They knew
it would be like giving him his death-blow. Mary, standing in the door,
saw the look of unspeakable horror that stole slowly over his face, then
his helpless sinking back among the pillows, and the twitching of his
hands as he clenched them convulsively. Not a word or a groan escaped
him, but the wild despair of his set face and staring eyes was more
than she could endure. She rushed out of the room and out of the house
to the little loft above the woodshed, where no one could hear her
frantic sobbing. It was hours before she ventured back into the house.
It would only add to his misery to see her distress, she knew, so she
left him to the little mother's ministrations.
Anticipating such a result, the surgeons had brought several appliances
to make his confinement less irksome. There was a hammock arrangement
with pulleys, by which he might be swung into different positions, and
out into a wheeled chair. They fastened the screws into walls and
ceiling, put the apparatus in place and carefully tested it before
leaving. Then they were at the end of their skill. They could do nothing
more. There was nothing that could be done.
Several times in the days that followed, the nurse spoke of the brave
way in which Jack seemed to be meeting his fate. But Mrs. Ware shook her
head sadly. She knew why no complaint escaped him. She had seen him act
the Spartan before to spare her. Mary, too, knew what his persistent
silence meant. He was not always so careful to veil the suffering which
showed through his eyes when he was alone with her. She knew that half
the time when he appeared to be listening to what she was reading, he
was so absorbed in his bitter thoughts that he did not hear a word. "_An
eagle, broken-winged and drooping in a cage, he gloomed upon his lot and
cursed the vital force within that would not let him die._"
One morning, when he had been settled in his wheeled chair, she brought
out the story of the Jester's Sword, saying, tremulously, "Will you do
something for me? Jack? Read this little book yourself. I know you don't
halfway listen to what I read any more, and I don't blame you, but this
seems to have been written just on purpose for you."
He took the book from her listlessly, and opened it because she wished
it. Watching him from the doorway, she waited until she saw him glance
up from the opening paragraph to the watch-fob lying on the stand at his
elbow. Then he looked back at the page, with a slight show of interest,
and she knew that the reference to Mars' month and the bloodstone had
caught his attention as it had hers. Then she left him alone with it,
hoping fervently it would arouse in him at least a tithe of the interest
it had awakened in her.
When she came back after awhile he merely handed her the book, saying
in an indifferent way, "A very pretty little tale, Mary," and leaned
back in his chair with closed eyes, as if dismissing it from his
thoughts. She was disappointed, but later she saw him sitting with it in
his hand again, closed over one finger as if to keep the place, while he
looked out of the window with a faraway expression in his eyes. Later
the nurse asked her what book it was he kept under his pillow. He drew
it out occasionally, she said, and glanced at one of the pages as if he
were trying to memorize it.
That he had at last read it as she read it, putting himself in the place
of Aldebaran, Mary knew one day from an unconscious reference he made to
it. A sudden wind had blown up, scattering papers and magazines across
the room, and fluttering his curtains like flags. She ran in to pick up
the wind-blown articles and close the shutters. When everything was in
order, as she thought, she turned to go out, but he stopped her, saying
almost fretfully, "You haven't picked up that picture that blew down."
When she glanced all around the room, unable to discover it, he pointed
to the hearth. A photograph had fallen from the mantel, face downward.
"There! _Vesta's_ picture!"
Mary picked it up and turned it over, exclaiming, "Why, no, it is
Betty's!"
"That's what I said," he answered, wholly unconscious of his slip of the
tongue that had betrayed his secret. Her back was turned towards him, so
that he could not see the tears which sprang to her eyes. If already it
had come to this, that Betty was the Vesta of his dreams, then his
renunciation must be an hundredfold harder than she had imagined.
With a pity so deep that she could not trust herself to speak, she
busied herself in blowing some specks of dust from the mantel, as an
excuse to keep her back turned. She was relieved when the nurse came in
with a glass of lemonade and she could slip out without his seeing her
face. She sat down on the back steps, her arms around her knees to think
about the discovery she had just made. It made her heart-sick because it
added so immeasurably to the weight of Jack's misfortune.
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