"Thanks, I'll take half a dozen cigars," he said, rattling a box.

"d.a.m.ned if you aren't a queer guy. From the East, I guess."

"Yes--but please do me the favour to keep still."

"I'm not trying to b.u.t.t in on n.o.body," he muttered, aggrieved again.

"And I'm good enough to talk to any stuck-up Eastern guy that comes along."

As I disappointed him by ignoring this last remark, he took refuge in polishing gla.s.ses. I was conscious of a distant rumbling inside him from time to time. But I did not dare go back to Helen until I had got control of myself again. Furthermore, I must make up my mind about what I was to tell her. There seemed no way in which I could force my thoughts into an orderly arrangement. Little glimpses of our life together--of all we had done and planned in the last four years--kept interposing themselves between me and the present. "Helen--Helen--my Helen--my wife," was ceaselessly echoing inside my head. Finally a resolve came to me. "I can't tell her," I said to myself--"right or wrong, I can't."

I went to the telegraph office and sent a message to Mr. Claybourne.

Then I took the long journey back to our bungalow. Helen was sitting on the verandah when I got there, the baby riding a hobby-horse near her, and Miss Brock reading aloud. Helen's face was thin now, but she had lost none of her delicate beauty. I went up to her and kissed her.

"What did the doctor say, Ted dear? How long you have been."

"He says it is all right, sweetheart. I am bringing good news." I wondered that the lie did not choke me.

"Honour bright, Ted?" she exclaimed, her eyes lighting up. It was our one oath of truthfulness that she demanded of me. Never before had I violated it.

"Honour bright, Helen precious."

"Ted, isn't it glorious! I feel better already. Will it be in June?"

I kneeled in front of her chair and hid my face in her lap.

"Why, Ted! I believe you are crying!"

I clung to her hand.

"Dear old boy, Ted. I love you," she leaned over me and whispered.

The local pract.i.tioner confirmed the opinion of Dr. Krehstadt, the specialist. He and I, with Miss Brock, held a council-of-war while Helen was taking her afternoon nap next day.

"Why in the name of heaven did the doctors in London and New York talk so optimistically to us?" I asked him, for he was a pleasant-spoken young man with friendly blue eyes. He shrugged.

"Perhaps," he hazarded, "they thought it important to keep your courage up. Or it is possible"--and he hesitated--"I hate to say this of my colleagues--yet it may be they wished to pa.s.s you along. I don't say it was the reason in your case, Mr. Jevons, but I have known it to have been done with other tubercular cases sent out here."

"What have you thought, Miss Brock?" I turned to the trained nurse. She was a level-headed, taciturn person, with a quiet way of always doing her work exactly as expected of her. It suddenly occurred to me I had not asked her opinion before.

"I have had a good deal of experience with tuberculosis patients, Mr.

Jevons. I confess I have been worried about Mrs. Jevons since I first came into the case."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Well, Mr. Jevons--I'm not a doctor. It's not my business to offer opinions or to make a diagnosis. Besides, Mr. Jevons--seeing you with Mrs. Jevons every day, who could tell you? I've seen a lot of death and suffering in my hospital work--I thought I was callous. I guess I'm not."

A grey cloud caught on the summit of one of the mountains and spread along below the topmost ridge. I watched it slowly blotting out the crest of the range.

"Do you object if I smoke?" the doctor inquired.

"No--pray do," I said. I felt tired, old--as if youth had suddenly left me. Miss Brock got up and went into the house.

"Doctor," I pleaded again. "Is there anything we can try--however new or experimental--whatever the risk, as long as it offers just one chance--one?"

He shook his head. "I know of nothing, Mr. Jevons, that will cause new lung tissue to grow."

I knew my question was hopeless; I had read the best medical works on tuberculosis since this had come to Helen, but one struggles for a gleam of hope to the end.

"She has had no pain--or very little; no haemorrhages. That, too, misled us."

"There are many cases like your wife's," the doctor said. "Simply a gradual wasting away and loss of strength."

"I can't reason it out, doctor. It isn't fair."

He shifted in his chair, knocking the ash from his cigar.

"If you were a doctor, Mr. Jevons, you would come across a lot of things you couldn't reason out--that aren't fair. But they happen."

"Yes," I said. "I suppose, like everybody, we think our own case the only important one in the world. But it does not make it any easier to know there are others suffering as we suffer. I am not fond of seeking that kind of sympathy. I say it's a d.a.m.ned unfair thing all round."

"I'm afraid, Mr. Jevons, that Nature cares nothing for the individual."

The doctor threw away his cigar and held out his hand.

"I'll look in every day, Mr. Jevons--but there isn't much I can do."

"How long?" I faltered, as he went toward his horse and buggy.

"It's hard to say--something depends, of course, on her natural vitality." He stood, choosing words. "I don't believe you will lose her until after Christmas."

The word rang in my head, as I watched him drive away.

How many Christmas days had we planned, years ago in Deep Harbor? And now--I could think no longer.

Miss Brock appeared in the door. "Mrs. Jevons is awake. She wants to see you."

"I'm coming." My Helen--my Helen--I could feel the blood beating against my temples on the way to her tent.

November, the beginning of December--I checked the days off. Helen could not stir from her chair now--the dark circles were deepening under the grey eyes--the cheeks that once glowed on horseback in the winter fields of Hertfordshire were white and drawn in the warm California sunshine.

It was pain, agony, to look at her, and yet I laughed and joked with her, between our love-making, as we had always done. For, strangest thing of all, Helen thought she was getting better. The first day she discovered that walking was too great an effort, I was terror-stricken, thinking, "Now she will guess." But no, she attributed it merely to some pa.s.sing phase--to being overtired--and her gentle good humour and faith were as steadfast as ever. She noticed that she coughed more, and that the coughing spells left her exhausted. Nevertheless she attributed even that to the normal progress of the disease toward its cure. Thus each day made it more certain than ever that I could not tell her the truth.

There were many nights that I lay awake in our tent, beside Helen, and fought this question over again and again. To this day I have not found the answer. Would she have more directions to give me about the baby, if she knew, I wondered? and several times this thought nearly forced me to speak. Would it be right to let her leave her baby without a word about her future? Then, when morning came, Helen would talk to me about going home in June, or make plans for doing something to our house in Hertfordshire, and I could not speak.

Christmas day came, after great preparations on our part to observe it as we always had. There was a tree for the baby, and I ransacked Los Angeles for things to please Helen, or other trifles to make her laugh.