THE REGRETTABLE DEMENTIA OF A CONVALESCENT

“You know you please me ­really you do!”

Allan, perfect youth of the hazel eyes and tawny locks, bent upon inquiring Nancy a look of wholly pleasant reassurance, as one wishful to persuade her from doubt.

“I’m not joking a bit.  When I say you please me, I mean it.”

His look became rather more expansive with a smile that seemed meant to sympathise guardedly with her in her necessary rejoicing.

Meekly, for a long second, Nancy drew the black curtains of her eyes, murmuring from out the friendly gloom: 

“It’s very good of you, Allan!”

Then, before he could tell reasons for his pleasing, which she divined he was about to do, the curtains were up and the eyes wide open to him with a question about Bernal.

He turned to the house and pointed up to the two open windows of the study, in and out of which the warm breeze puffed the limp white curtains.

“He’s there, poor chap!  He was able to get that far for the first time yesterday, leaning on me and Clytie.”

“And to think I never knew he was sick until we came from town last night.  I’d surely have left the old school and come before if I’d heard.  I wouldn’t have cared what Aunt Bell said.”

“Eight weeks down, and you know we found he’d been sick long before he found it out himself ­walking typhoid, they called it.  He came home from college with me Easter week, and Dr. Merritt put him to bed the moment he clapped eyes on him.  Said it was walking typhoid, and that he must have been worrying greatly about something, because his nervous system was all run down.”

“And he was very ill?”

“Doctor Merritt says he went as far as a man can go and get back at all.”

“How dreadful ­poor Bernal!  Oh, if he had died!”

“Out of his head for three weeks at a time ­raving fearfully.  And you know, he’s quite like an infant now ­says the simplest things.  He laughs at it himself.  He says he’s not sure if he knows how to read and write.”

“Poor, dear Bernal!”

With some sudden arousing he studied her face swiftly as she spoke, then continued: 

“Yes, Bernal’s really an awfully good chap at bottom.”  He turned again to look up at the study windows.  “You know, I intend to stand by that fellow always ­no matter what he does!  Of course, I shall not let his being my brother blind me to his faults ­doubtless we all have faults; but I tell you, Nancy, a good heart atones for many things in a man’s make-up.”

She seemed to be waiting, slightly puzzled, but he broke off ­“Now I must hurry to mail these letters It’s good to be home for another summer.  You really do please me, Nance!”

She thought, as he moved off, that Allan was handsome ­more than handsome, indeed.  He left an immediate conviction of his superb vitality of body and mind, the incarnation of a spirit created to prevail.  Featured in almost faultless outline, of a character unconsciously, unaffectedly proclaiming its superior gravity among human masses, he was a planet destined to have many satellites and be satellite to none; an ego of genuine lordliness; a presence at once masterly and decorative.

And yet she was conscious of a note ­not positively of discord, but one still exciting a counter-stream of reflection.  She had observed that each time Allan turned his head, ever so little, he had a way of turning his shoulders with it:  the perfect head and shoulders were swung with almost a studied unison.  And this little thing had pricked her admiration with a certain needle-like suspicion ­a suspicion that the young man might be not wholly oblivious of his merits as a spectacle.

Yet this was no matter to permit in one’s mind.  For Nancy of the lengthened skirts and the massed braids was now a person of reserves.  Even in that innocent insolence of first womanhood, with its tentatively malicious, half-conscious flauntings, she was one of réticences toward the world including herself, with petticoats of decorum draping the child’s anarchy of thought ­her luxuriant young emotions “done up” sedately with her hair.  She was now one to be cautious indeed of imputations so blunt as this concerning Allan.  Besides, how nobly he had spoken of Bernal.  Then she wondered why it should seem noble, for Nancy would be always a creature to wonder where another would accept.  She saw it had seemed noble because Bernal must have been up to some deviltry.

This phrase would not be Nancy’s ­only she knew it to be the way her uncle, for example, would translate Allan’s praise of his brother.  She hoped Bernal had not been very bad ­and wondered how bad.

Then she went to him.  Her first little knock brought no answer, nor could she be sure that the second did.  But she knew it was loud enough to be heard if the room were occupied, so she gently opened the door a crack and peeped in.  He lay on the big couch across the room under the open window, a scarlet wool dressing-gown on, and a steamer-rug thrown over the lower part of his body.  He seemed to be looking out and up to the tree that appeared above the window.  She thought he could not have heard her, but he called: 

“Clytie!”

She crossed the room and bent a little over to meet his eyes when he weakly turned his head on the pillow.

“Nancy!”

He began to laugh, sliding a thin hand toward one of hers.  The laugh did not end until there were tears in his eyes.  She laughed with him as a strong-voiced singer would help a weaker, and he tried to put a friendly force into his grip of the firm-fleshed little hand he had found.

“Don’t be flattered, Nance ­it’s only typhoid emotion,” he said at last, in a voice that sounded strangely unused.  “You don’t really overcome me, you know ­the sight of you doesn’t unman me as much as these fond tears might make you suspect.  I shall feel that way when Clytie brings my lunch, too.”  He smiled and drew her hand into both his own as she sat beside him.

“How plump and warm your hand is ­all full of little whispering pulses.  My hands are cold and drowsy and bony, and so uninterested!  Doesn’t fever bring forward a man’s bones in the most shameless way?”

“Oh, Bernal ­but you’ll soon have them decently hidden again ­indeed, you’re looking ­quite ­quite plump.”  She smiled encouragingly.  A sudden new look in his eyes made her own face serious again.

“Why, Nance, you’re rather lovely when you smile!”

She smiled.

“Only then?”

He studied her, while she pretended to be grave.

He became as one apart, giving her a long look of unbiassed appraisal.

“Well ­you know ­now you have some little odds and ends of features ­not bad ­no, not even half bad, for that matter.  I can see thousands of miles into your eyes ­there’s a fire smouldering away back in there ­it’s all smoky and mysterious after you go the first few thousand miles ­but, I don’t know ­I believe the smile is needed, Nance.  Poor child, I tell you this as a friend, for your own good ­it seems to make a fine big perfection out of a lot of little imperfections that are only fairly satisfactory.”

She smiled again, brushing an escaped lock of hair to its home.

“Really, Nance, no one could guess that mouth till it melts.”

“I see ­now I shall be going about with an endless, sickening grin.  It will come to that ­doubtless I shall be murdered for it ­people that do grin that way always make me feel like murder.”

“And they could never guess your eyes until the little smile runs up to light their chandeliers.”

“Dear me! ­Like a janitor!”

“ ­or the chin, until the little smile does curly things all around it ­”

“There, now ­calm yourself ­the doctor will be here presently ­and you know, you’re among friends ­”

“ ­or the face itself until those little pink ripples get to chasing each other up to hide in your hair, as they are now.  You know you’re blushing, Nance, so stop it.  Remember, it’s when you smile; remember, also, that smiles are born, not made.  It’s a long time since I’ve seen you, Nance.”

“Two years ­we didn’t come here last summer, you know.”

“But you’ve aged ­you’re twice the woman you were ­so, on the whole, I’m not in the least disappointed in you.”

“Your sickness seems to have left you ­well ­in a remarkably unprejudiced state of mind.”

He laughed.  “That’s the funny part of it.  Did they tell you this siege had me foolish for weeks?  Honest, now, Nance, here’s a case ­how many are two times two?” He waited expectantly.

“Are you serious?”

“It seems silly to you, doesn’t it ­but answer as if I were a child.”

“Well ­twice two are four ­unless my own mind is at fault.”

“There! ­now I begin to believe it.  I suppose, now, it couldn’t be anything else, could it?  Yesterday morning the doctor said something was as plain as twice two are four.  You know, the thing rankled in me all day.  It seemed to me that twice two ought to be twenty-two.  Then I asked Clytie and she said it was four, but that didn’t satisfy me.  Of course, Clytemnestra is a dear soul, and I truly, love her, but her advantages in an educational way have been meagre.  She could hardly be considered an authority in mathematics, even if she is the ideal cook and friend.  But I have more faith in your learning, Nance.  The doctor’s solution seems plausible, since you’ve sided with him.  I suppose you could have no motive for deceiving me?”

She was regarding him with just a little anxiety, and this he detected.

“It’s nothing to worry about, Nance ­it’s only funny.  I haven’t lost my mind or anything, you know ­spite of my tempered enthusiasm for your face ­but this is it:  first there came a fearful shock ­something terrible, that shattered me ­then it seemed as if that sickness found my brain like a school-boy’s slate with all his little problems worked out on it, and wickedly gave it a swipe each side with a big wet sponge.  And now I seem to have forgotten all I ever learned.  Clytie was in to feed me the inside of a baked potato before you came.  After I’d fought with her to eat the skin of it ­such a beautiful brown potato-skin, with delicious little white particles still sticking to the inside where it hadn’t all been dug out ­and after she had used her strength as no lady should, and got it away from me, it came to me all at once that she was my mother.  Then she assured me that she was not, and that seemed quite reasonable, too.  I told her I loved her enough for a mother, anyway ­and the poor thing giggled.”

“Still, you have your lucid moments.”

“Ah, still thinking about the face?  You mean I’m lucid when you smile, and daffy when you don’t.  But that’s a case of it ­your face ­”

“My face a case of what? You’re getting commercial ­even shoppy.  Really, if this continues, Mr. Linford, I shall be obliged ­”

“A case of it ­of this blankness of mine.  Instead of continuing my early prejudice, which I now recall was preposterously in your favour, I survey you coldly for the first time.  You know I’m afraid to look at print for fear I’ve forgotten how to read.”

“Nonsense!”

“No ­I tell you I feel exactly like one of those chaps from another planet, who are always reaching here in the H.G.  Wells’s stories ­a gentleman of fine attainments in his own planet, mind you ­bland, agreeable, scholarly ­with marked distinction of bearing, and a personal beauty rare even on a planet where the flaunting of one’s secretest bones is held to betoken the only beauty ­you understand that? ­Well, I come here, and everything is different ­ideals of beauty, people absurdly holding for flesh on their bones, for example ­numbers, language, institutions, everything.  Of course, it puzzles me a little, but see the value I ought to be to the world, having a mature mind, yet one as clean of preconceptions and prejudice as a new-born babe’s.”

“Oh, so that is why you could see that I’m not ­”

“Also, why I could see that you are ­that’s it, smile!  Nance, you are a dear, when you smile ­you make a man feel so strong and protecting.  But if you knew all the queer things I’ve thought in the last week about time and people and the world.  This morning I woke up mad because I’d been cheated out of the past.  Where is all the past, Nance?  There’s just as much past somewhere as there is future ­if one’s soul has no end, it had no beginning.  Why not worry about the past as we do about the future?  First thing I’m going to do ­start a Worry-About-the-Past Club, with dues and a president, and by-laws and things!”

“Don’t you think I’d better send Clytie, now?”

“No; please wait a minute.”  He clutched her hand with a new strength, and raised on his elbow to face her, then, speaking lower: 

“Nance, you know I’ve had a feeling it wasn’t the right thing to ask the old gentleman this ­he might think I hadn’t been studying at college ­but you tell me ­what is this about the atoning blood of Jesus Christ?  It was a phrase he used the other day, and it stuck in my mind.”

“Bernal ­you surely know!”

“Truly I don’t ­it seems a bad dream I’ve had some time ­that’s all ­some awful dream about my father.”

“It was the part of the Saviour to purchase our redemption by his death on Calvary.”

“Our redemption from what?”

“From sin, to be sure.”

“What sin?”

“Why, our sin, of course ­the sin of Adam which comes down to us.”

“You say this Jesus purchased our redemption from that sin by dying?”

“Yes.”

“From whom did he purchase it?”

“Oh, dear ­this is like a catechism ­from God, of course.”

“The God that made Adam?”

“Certainly.”

“Oh, yes ­now I seem to remember him ­he was supposed to make people, and then curse them, wasn’t he?  And so he had to have his son killed before he could forgive Adam for our sins?”

“No; before he could forgive us for Adam’s sin, which descended to us.”

“Came down like an entail, eh? ...  Adam couldn’t disinherit us?  Well, how did this God have his son die?”

“Why, Bernal ­you must remember, dear ­you knew so well ­don’t you know he was crucified?”

“To be sure I do ­how stupid!  And was God very cheerful after that?  No more trouble about Adam or anything?”

“You must hush ­I can’t tell you about these things ­wait till your grandfather comes.”

“No, I want to have it from you, Nance ­grandad would think I’d been slighting the classics.”

“Well, God takes to heaven with him those who believe.”

“Believe what?”

“Who believe that Jesus was his only begotten son.”

“What does he do with those who don’t believe it?”

“They ­they ­Oh, I don’t know ­really, Bernal, I must go now.”

“Just a minute, Nance!” He clutched more tightly the hand he had been holding.  “I see now!  I must be remembering something I knew ­something that brought me down sick.  If a man doesn’t believe God was capable of becoming so enraged with Adam that only the bloody death of his own son would appease his anger toward us, he sends that man where ­where the worm doeth something or other ­what is it?  Oh, well! ­of course, it’s of no importance ­only it came to me it was something I ought to remember if grandad should ask me about it.  What a quaint belief it must have been.”

“Oh, I must go! ­let me, now.”

“Don’t you find it interesting, Nance, rummaging among these musty old religions of a dead past ­though I admit that this one is less pleasant to study than most of the others.  This god seems to lack the majesty and beauty of the Greek and the integrity of the Norse gods.  In fact, he was too crude to be funny ­by the way, what is it I seem to recall, about eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the son? ­’unless ye eat the flesh of the son ­’”

She drew her hand from his now and arose in some dismay.  He lay back upon his pillow, smiling.

“Not very agreeable, is it, Nance?  Well, come again, and I’ll tell you about some of the pleasanter old faiths next time ­I remember now that they interested me a lot before I was sick.”

“You’re sure I shouldn’t send Clytie or some one?” She looked down at him anxiously, putting her hand on his forehead.  He put one of his own lightly over hers.

“No, no, thank you!  It’s not near time yet for the next baked potato.  If Clytie doesn’t give up the skin of this one I shall be tempted to forget that she’s a woman.  There, I hear grandad coming, so you won’t be leaving me alone.”

Grandfather Delcher came in cheerily as Nancy left the room.

“Resting, my boy?  That’s good.  You look brighter already ­Nancy must come often.”

He took Nancy’s chair by the couch and began the reading of his morning’s mail.  Bernal lay still with eyes closed during the reading of several letters; but when the old man opened out a newspaper with little rustlings and pats, he turned to him.

“Well, my boy?”

“I’ve been thinking of something funny.  You know, my memory is still freakish, and things come back in splotches.  Just now I was recalling a primitive Brazilian tribe in whose language the word ‘we’ means also ’good.  ‘Others,’ which they express by saying ‘not we,’ means also ‘evil.’  Isn’t that a funny trait of early man ­we ­good; not we ­bad!  I suppose our own tongue is but an elaboration of that simple bit of human nature ­a training of polite vines and flowering shrubs over the crude lines of it.

“And this tribe ­the Bakairi, it is called ­is equally crude in its religion.  It is true, sir, is it not, that the most degraded of the savages tribes resort to human sacrifice in their religious rites?”

“Generally true.  Human sacrifice was practised even by some who were well advanced, like the Aztecs and Peruvians.”

“Well, sir, this Bakairi tribe believed that its god demanded a sacrifice yearly, and their priests taught them that a certain one of their number had been sent by their god for this sacrifice each year; that only by butchering this particular member of the tribe and ­incredible as it sounds ­eating his body and drinking his blood, could they avert drouth and pestilence and secure favours for the year to come.  I remember the historian intimated that it were well not to incur the displeasure of any priest; that one doing this might find it followed by an unpleasant circumstance when the time came for the priests to designate the next yearly sacrifice.”

“Curious, indeed, and most revolting,” assented the old man, laying down his paper.  “You are feeling more cheerful, aren’t you ­and you look so much brighter.  Ah, what a mercy of God’s you were spared to me! ­you know you became my walking-stick when you were a very little boy ­I could hardly go far without you now, my son.”

“Yes, sir ­thank you ­I’ve just been recalling some of the older religions ­Nancy and I had quite a talk about the old Christian faith.”

“I’m glad indeed.  I had sometimes been led to suspect that Nancy was the least bit ­well, frivolous ­but I am an old man, and doubtless the things that seem best to me are those I see afar off, their colour subdued through the years.”

“Nancy wasn’t a bit frivolous this morning ­on the contrary, she seemed for some reason to consider me the frivolous one.  She looked shocked at me more than once.  Now, about the old Christian faith, you know ­their god was content with one sacrifice, instead of one each year, though he insisted on having the body eaten and the blood drunk perpetually.  Yet I suppose, sir, that the Christian god, in this limiting of the human sacrifice to one person, may be said to show a distinct advance over the god of the Bakairi, though he seems to have been equally a tribal god, whose chief function it was to make war upon neighbouring tribes.”

“Yes, my boy ­quite so,” replied the old man most soothingly.  He stepped gently to the door.  Halfway down the hall Allan was about to turn into his room.  He came, beckoned by the old man, who said, in tones too low for Bernal to hear: 

“Go quickly for Dr. Merritt.  He’s out of his head again.”