A Man and a Woman by Stanley Waterloo (the snowy day read aloud .txt) 📖

laughing. "I don't know," he answered. "I only know I haven't been well since last night, and that there is a queer feeling about my throat and chest. I ought to be up, of course, but I'm listless and careless, somehow. By the way, what were the totals?"

I gave him the figures, and he smiled, and then with an "Excuse me, old man," turned his face to the wall. A moment later, as I sat watching him, alarmed, he roused himself and turned toward me again. "Won't you send Jean to me?" he asked.

I saw Jean, and she went upstairs, and when she came down her face was white. The Ape, rugged young man as he was, had tears in his eyes, and his brothers and sisters were crying quietly. I left the house, and an hour later a physician, one of the most famous on the continent, was by Grant Harlson's bedside. He was a personal friend of both of us. When he came down his face was grave.

"What is it, Doctor?"

"It's pneumonia, and a bad case."

"What can we do?"

"Nothing, but to care for him and aid him with all hopefulness and strength. He has vitality beyond one man in a thousand. He may throw off all the incubus of it. But it has come suddenly and is growing." Then he got mad in all his friendship, and blurted out: "Why didn't the great blundering brute send for me when first he felt something he couldn't meet nor understand?" And there were almost tears in his eyes.

The doctors have much to say about pneumonia. Doubtless they know of what they talk, but pneumonia comes nevertheless, and defeats the strong man and the doctors. The strong man it strangles. The doctors it laughs at.

All that medical science could command was brought to the bedside of Grant Harlson. The doctor, his friend, called in the wisest of associates in consultation, and as for care--there was Jean! He was cared for as the angels might care for a wandering soul. But the big man in the bed tossed and muttered, and looked at Jean appealingly, and grew worse. The strength seemed going from him at last--from him, the bulwark of us all.

All that science could do was done. All that care could do was done, but our giant weakened. The doctors talk of the croupous form of pneumonia, and of some other form--I do not know the difference--but I do know that this man had a great pain in his chest, and that his head ached, and that he had alternate arctic chills and flames of fever. His pulse was rapid, and he gasped as he breathed. Sometimes he would become delirious, then weaker in the sane intervals. He would send us from the room then, and call for Jean alone, and, when she emerged--well--God help me!--I never want to see that awful look of suspense and agony upon a human face again. It will stay with me until I follow the roadway leading to my friends.

The doctor gave the sick man opiates or stimulants, as the case might at any moment seem to need, and they had some slight effect; but there came a shallower breathing, and the quilts tossed under the heaving of the broad chest, fitfully. It reminded me in some strange way of the imitation sea scenes at the theater, where a great cloth of some sort is rocked and lifted to represent the waves. Only one lung was congested in the beginning, but, later, the thing extended to each, and the air-cells began filling, and the man suffered more and more. He fought against it fiercely.

"Grant," said the doctor, after the administration of some strong stimulant, "help us all you can. Cough! Force the air through those huge lungs of yours, and see if you can't tear away that tissue which is forming to throttle you!"

And Grant would summon all his strength, by no means yet exhausted, and exert his will, and cough, despite the fearful pain of it; but the human form held not the machinery to dislodge that growing web which was filling the lung-chambers and cutting off, hour by hour, the oxygen which makes pure blood and makes the being.

And the man who laughed at things grew weaker and weaker, and, though he laughed still and was his old self and made us happy for a brief interval, when he had not the fever and was clear-headed, and said that it was nothing and that he would throw it off, we knew that there was deadly peril. And one evening, when Grant was again delirious, the doctor came to me and said there was very little hope.


CHAPTER XXXIII.

WHITEST ASHES.

What is the mood of fate? Must strong men die illogically? What does it all mean, anyhow? About this I am but blind and reasonless. I wish I knew! The world is more than hollow to me, yet I have a hope, I'll say that. There was some one very like Jean, one whom I loved and who loved me, thirty years ago. Will she and I meet some day, I wonder? And what will she be to me then? I suppose I have the philosophy and endurance of the average man; but this is, with any doubt, a black world at times, and one in which there is no good. The breaking of heart-strings mars all music. I am alone and dull and wondering, and in a blind revolt. Why should all things change so, and what is this death which comes? There must be some future world. If there be not, what a failure is all the brutal material scheme.

One day Grant was clear of head, but weaker, and talked with me long of his affairs.

"I'm afraid I can't fight it out after all," he said, "though you mustn't let Jean and the children know that yet."

We talked more of what I should do if the worst came, and then he sent for the children. He addressed himself to the Ape first, the brave boy's eyes full of tears and his whole body trembling as he listened:

"My boy, you are hardly a man yet, but I know your manliness. If I cannot stay with you, you will become the practical head of the family. Make them all proud of you. And care for your mother always as you would for your own life or whatever is greatest." Then he called the others to him:

"You heard what I just said. I spoke to the Ape only because he is oldest. Remember that I have said this thing to all of you. I needn't say it, I know--my blessed boys and girls--you understand. But live for your little mother always."

I cannot describe what those young people said or did. It was most pitiful. It was brave and sweet, too. But they would not let their father die. He must not! They could not face the fact.

Jean came then, and we three were left alone for a time. She sat beside the bed, for he wanted his hand in hers when possible, and he spoke slowly:

"Jean, I don't know. There must be another world, as we have trusted. The great Power that fitted us to each other so will surely bring us together again. Let us look at it that way. We'll imagine that I'm only going to the country, and that you are to join me. That is all. I know it. God knows. He will adjust it somehow."

Jean did not answer. She but clasped his hand and looked into his face. I feared she would die of a bursting heart. From that time till the end she never left his bedside.

Murderous Death has certain kindnesses in his killings. Just before the end is peace. The struggles of this strong man became something fearful as the lungs congested, and the most powerful of anti-pyretics ceased to have effect, and then came the peace which follows nature's virtual surrender, the armistice of the moment. What trick of reversion to first impressions comes, and what causes it, none have yet explained, but long before the time of Falstaff men, dying, had babbled o' green fields. Grant Harlson, now, was surely dying. The physicians had warned us all, and we were all about his bedside. As for me, thank God, the tears could come as they did to the children. But there were none upon the cheeks of Jean. Her sweet face was as if of stone; whiter than that of the man in the bed.

The convulsions had ceased, but his mind was wandering and his speech was rambling. It was easy to tell of what he was thinking. He was a little boy in the woodland home with his mother again, and was telling her delightedly of what he had seen and found, and of the yellow mandrake apples he had stored in a hollow log. She should help him eat them. And then the scene would shift, and he was older, and we were together in the fields. He called to me excitedly to take the dog to the other side of the brush-heap, for the woodchuck was slipping through that way! There was the old merry ring in his voice, and I knew where he was and how there came to him, in fancy, the sweet perfumes of the fields, and how his eyes, which were opened wide but saw us not, were blessed with all the greenness and the glory of the summer of long ago. Then his manner changed, and the word "Jean" came softly to his lips, and again I knew they were camping out together, and he was teaching to his wife the pleasant mysteries of the forest, and all woodcraft. There was love in his tones and in his features. The breast of the woman holding his hand heaved, and the pallor on her face grew more.

There was another struggle for breath, then a desperate one, and with its end came consciousness. Grant smiled and spoke faintly:

"It must he pretty near the end. I am very tired. Jean, darling, get closer to me. Kiss me."

She leaned over and kissed him passionately. He smiled again, then feebly took one of her little hands in each of his and lifted them to his face and kissed them; then held them down upon his eyes. There was a single heave of his great chest, and he was dead.

And the woman who fell to the floor was, apparently, as lifeless as the silent figure on the bed.

She was not dead. We carried her to her own room--hers and his, with the dressing-rooms attached--and she woke at last to a consciousness of her world bereft of one human being who had been to her nearly all there was. She was not as we had imagined she would be when she recovered. She was not hysterical, nor did she weep. She was singularly quiet. But that set, thoughtful look had never left her face. She