They seem never to rest,never to weary.Day and night,through that little stricken world,they come and go,bearing healing and peace,till at last the plague,like some gorged beast of prey,slinks slowly back towards its lair,and men raise their heads and breathe.
One afternoon,returning from a somewhat longer round than usual,John feels a weariness creeping into his limbs,and quickens his step,eager to reach home and rest.Anne,who has been up all the previous night,is asleep,and not wishing to disturb her,he goes into the dining-room and sits down in the easy chair before the fire.
The room strikes cold.He stirs the logs,but they give out no greater heat.He draws his chair right in front of them,and sits leaning over them with his feet on the hearth and his hands outstretched towards the blaze;yet he still shivers.
Twilight fills the room and deepens into dusk.He wonders listlessly how it is that Time seems to be moving with such swift strides.
After a while he hears a voice close to him,speaking in a slow,monotonous tone--a voice curiously familiar to him,though he cannot tell to whom it belongs.He does not turn his head,but sits listening to it drowsily.It is talking about tallow:one hundred and ninety-four casks of tallow,and they must all stand one inside the other.It cannot be done,the voice complains pathetically.
They will not go inside each other.It is no good pushing them.
See!they only roll out again.
The voice grows wearily fretful.Oh!why do they persist when they see it is impossible?What fools they all are!
Suddenly he recollects the voice,and starts up and stares wildly about him,trying to remember where he is.With a fierce straining of his will he grips the brain that is slipping away from him,and holds it.As soon as he feels sure of himself he steals out of the room and down the stairs.
In the hall he stands listening;the house is very silent.He goes to the head of the stairs leading to the kitchen and calls softly to the old housekeeper,and she comes up to him,panting and grunting as she climbs each step.Keeping some distance from her,he asks in a whisper where Anne is.The woman answers that she is in the hospital.
"Tell her I have been called away suddenly on business,"he says,speaking in quick,low tones:"I shall be away for some days.Tell her to leave here and return home immediately.They can do without her here now.Tell her to go back home at once.I will join her there."He moves toward the door but stops and faces round again.
"Tell her I beg and entreat her not to stop in this place an hour longer.There is nothing to keep her now.It is all over:there is nothing that cannot be done by any one.Tell her she must go home--this very night.Tell her if she loves me to leave this place at once."The woman,a little bewildered by his vehemence,promises,and disappears down the stairs.He takes his hat and cloak from the chair on which he had thrown them,and turns once more to cross the hall.As he does so,the door opens and Anne enters.
He darts back into the shadow,squeezing himself against the wall.
Anne calls to him laughingly,then,as he does not answer,with a frightened accent:
"John,--John,dear.Was not that you?Are not you there?"He holds his breath,and crouches still closer into the dark corner;and Anne,thinking she must have been mistaken in the dim light,passes him and goes upstairs.
Then he creeps stealthily to the door,lets himself out and closes it softly behind him.
