The Potter and the Clay: A Romance of Today
Page 20
*IX.*
Outside the hurrying and the tramping and the neighing of the horsesincreased and intensified the silence inside where Stewart layunconscious, Mackenzie and Vaughan and Trevelyan working over him.
Later in the morning the fighting squad departed, and over the Stationfell a stillness as great as that which brooded over the hospital.
After a desperate struggle they brought Stewart to, and then Mackenzie,happening to glance at Trevelyan, saw that the dressing had slipped fromhis shoulder and that his shirt was stained.
He got him into an adjoining room and redressed the shoulder andinsisted on his lying down, in spite of Trevelyan’s entreaties to getback to Stewart.
"Everything in the world is being done for him. Keep quiet."
"Keep quiet, while his life’s slipping away!" cried Trevelyan, fiercely,"Not while there’s a breath left in my own body. I’ll pull him throughor I’ll die!"
"You’ll lie still, just where you are," ordered Mackenzie. "He’sholding his own just now. He’ll need all the strength he’s got, andyours, and all he can get—later. I’ll call you."
Trevelyan slept for two hours—heavily, exhaustively; then Mackenzie wokehim.
"Come," he said, briefly, "Stewart’s worse."
Trevelyan sat up on the lounge and flung back his head; through hisbeing thrilled the old lost defiance; the old lost strength. He wentinto Stewart’s room and sat down by the bed.
The long hours crept away and the still shadows of night gathered, andthrough the hours and the shadows Mackenzie and Trevelyan watched.Stewart continued to sink.
At midnight, Mackenzie went over to the window, turning his back on thebed and Trevelyan.
There was no hope—but Trevelyan wouldn’t believe it! Stewart was dying,and Trevelyan obstinately refused to relinquish the fight. Trevelyandidn’t know when he was beaten. And Mackenzie, grown prematurely gray inthe service of life against death, wondered all over again why humanstrength is so weak when waged against the great, mute Force of theworld.
Trevelyan sat rigid; and he gathered all the strength of his life andhis love; and that imperishable part that had been crushed by his crime,but not destroyed, and turned them to the conquering of this hour, andthat grim Presence that was drawing nearer.
He had ceased to think of himself and the future for the first timesince he had fallen. If it ever once occurred to him, he regarded itvaguely and indifferently. To-morrow, he would wake up to the livingdeath that lay before him, but for the present, he had no thought beyondthe still, motionless form stretched on the bed. He concentrated allhis passion, all his will strength, and massed them together, as abreastwork, around Stewart’s ebbing life.
The grasp of the hand that was clasping his grew weaker.
Trevelyan did not think to call Mackenzie. He had forgotten he was overthere by the window; that they three, Stewart and Death and he,Trevelyan, were not alone together. He forced stimulant betweenStewart’s blue lips. And then he went in search of Stewart’s ebbinglife, as a swimmer goes down into the depths to bring forth a livingman, drowning.
Once the chill of the Shadowy Presence touched him, through the growingchill of Stewart’s fingers; and he rubbed them, beating back into theicy veins the heat of his nature, and by and by the Shadowy Presencesullenly drew back, and back, and _back_.
After a time, Mackenzie, aroused by the oppressive stillness, turned.
He hesitated, and then came to the bed and leaned over Stewart’s relaxedform. Stewart’s face was turned up to his, drawn and thin and pinched,in the light of the failing lamp, but he was breathing regularly.Mackenzie touched one of his hands. It was moist and warm. And then,dumbly, he turned to Trevelyan.
Trevelyan still sat by the bed, rigid; and his eyes looked back atMackenzie—dull and spiritless, and his fingers were cold, with the chillof the depths.
Mackenzie touched him on the arm.
Trevelyan struggled to his feet.
"If you could give me a bracer. I’m a bit gone off—"