After the lapse of a few minutes the old housekeeper plods upstairs and delivers John's message.Anne,finding it altogether incomprehensible,subjects the poor dame to severe examination,but fails to elicit anything further.What is the meaning of it?What "business"can have compelled John,who for ten weeks has never let the word escape his lips,to leave her like this--without a word!
without a kiss!Then suddenly she remembers the incident of a few moments ago,when she had called to him,thinking she saw him,and he did not answer;and the whole truth strikes her full in the heart.
She refastens the bonnet-strings she has been slowly untying,and goes down and out into the wet street.
She makes her way rapidly to the house of the only doctor resident in the neighbourhood--a big,brusque-mannered man,who throughout these terrible two months has been their chief stay and help.He meets her on her entrance with an embarrassed air that tells its own tale,and at once renders futile his clumsy attempts at acting How should he know where John is?Who told her John had the fever--a great,strong,hulking fellow like that?She has been working too hard,and has got fever on the brain.She must go straight back home,or she will be having it herself.She is more likely to take it than John.
Anne,waiting till he has finished jerking out sentences while stamping up and down the room,says gently,taking no notice of his denials,--"If you will not tell me I must find out from some one else--that is all."Then,her quick eyes noting his momentary hesitation,she lays her little hand on his rough paw,and,with the shamelessness of a woman who loves deeply,wheedles everything out of him that he has promised to keep secret.
He stops her,however,as she is leaving the room."Don't go in to him now,"he says;"he will worry about you.Wait till to-morrow."So,while John lies counting endless casks of tallow,Anne sits by his side,tending her last "case."Often in his delirium he calls her name,and she takes his fevered hand in hers and holds it,and he falls asleep.
Each morning the doctor comes and looks at him,asks a few questions and gives a few commonplace directions,but makes no comment.It would be idle his attempting to deceive her.
The days move slowly through the darkened room.Anne watches his thin hands grow thinner,his sunken eyes grow bigger;yet remains strangely calm,almost contented.
Very near the end there comes an hour when John wakes as from a dream,and remembers all things clearly.
He looks at her half gratefully,half reproachfully.
"Anne,why are you here?"he asks,in a low,laboured voice."Did they not give you my message?"For answer she turns her deep eyes upon him.
"Would you have gone away and left me here to die?"she questions him,with a faint smile.
She bends her head down nearer to him,so that her soft hair falls about his face.
"Our lives were one,dear,"she whispers to him."I could not have lived without you;God knew that.We shall be together always."She kisses him,and laying his head upon her breast,softly strokes it as she might a child's;and he puts his weak arms around her.
Later on she feels them growing cold about her,and lays him gently back upon the bed,looks for the last time into his eyes,then draws the lids down over them.
His people ask that they may bury him in the churchyard hard by,so that he may always be among them;and,Anne consenting,they do all things needful with their own hands,wishful that no unloving labour may be mingled with their work.They lay him close to the porch,where,going in and out the church,their feet will pass near to him;and one among them who is cunning with the graver's chisel shapes the stone.
At the head he carves in bas-relief the figure of the good Samaritan tending the brother fallen by the way,and underneath the letters,"In Remembrance of John Ingerfield."He thinks to put a verse of Scripture immediately after;but the gruff doctor says,"Better leave a space,in case you want to add another name."So the stone remains a little while unfinished;till the same hand carves thereon,a few weeks later,"And of Anne,his Wife."
