Part 1 (1/2)

AVERY

by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

PART I

”Oh, Pink! Mother can't lift you I would if I could Yes, I know I used to-- ”Molly, take the baby Couldn't you amuse him, somehow? Perhaps, if you tried hard, you could keep him still When he screams so, it seems to hit me--here It ht And if you could contrive to keep Pink, too-- ”What is it, Kate? You'll have tofor luncheon--I don't care I couldn't eat You can warm over that mutton for yourselves We e last rouse for Mr Avery He says he will dine at hoht-- ”There 's the telephone! Soet down, myself Is it Mr Avery?Wants me?I don't see how I can Yes Hold the wire I 'll try-- ”Did you speak to etting up the stairs, andso that tired me a little I don't want Dr Thorne I can't call the doctor so often I 'm no worse thanI sometimesam It's only that I cannot breathe Molly! Molly! Quick, Molly! The ! Air!”

As Molly dashed theup, Mrs Avery's head fell back upon the pillows of the lounge They were blue pillows, and her blanching cheek took a little reflection frohastly; she never was At the lowest lie death with an indomitable vitality

There was a certain surprise in the discovery that so blond a being could have so much of it She was very fair--blue of eye, yellow of hair, pearly of skin; but all her coloring arm and rich; when she ell, it was an occupation to admire her ear, her cheek, her throat; and when she was ill her eye conquered Every delicate trait and feature of her defied her fate, except her un to take on a pitiful expression The doctor's blazing eye flashed on it when he was summoned hastily It had become a symptom to him, and was usually the first one of which he took note

Dr Esmerald Thorne had the preoccupations of his eminence, and his patients waited their turns with that undiscouraged endurance which is the jest and the despair of less-distinguished physicians Women took their crochet work to his office, and nawed azines upon his table Indifferent ailments received his belated attention, and to certain patients he caot ready Mrs Avery's was not one of these cases

When Molly's tumultuous telephone call reached hi up an accident He drew the thread through the stitch, handed the needle to the house surgeon, as standing by, and ran downstairs The hospital o miles from Marshall Avery's house Dr Thorne's horse took the distance on a gallop, and Dr Thorne took Avery's stairs two at a time

He came into her room, however, with the theatrical calm and the preposterous smile which men of his profession and his kind assuer that unconsciousness has not blotted froh thethe late October air bit in She was lying full in the surly breeze on the lounge pillow, as Molly had left her Her blue oas clutched and torn open at the throat No one had thought to cover her Her hands were as purple as her lips She was not gasping now: she had no longer the strength to fight for her breath

Dr Thorne's professional smile went out like a Christan to swear

The corners of her lips twitched when she heard hiether conscious, which was rather the worst of it, as she soht, if one could call it laughing

She tried to say, ”I should know that was you if I were in rave,” but found the words tooat all, nor even seemed to listen while he rated Molly, and conderily and swiftly The very blankets and hot-water bags sees--as people did; and the tablet in his fingers quivered as if it were afraid of hiain, she said, ”I 've reat deal of trouble! How is Helen's cold, doctor?”

”I shall tell rel between anger and adently questioned him of his irritation For she and the doctor's ere schoolmates and old friends She had been quite troubled about Helen's cold

”Oh, never mind,” said Dr Thorne; ”only it is n't natural, that's all--when patients come out of attacks like yours Their minds are not concentrated on other people's colds Helen is quite well, thank you Now, Mrs Avery, I want to ask you”-- ”Don't,” interrupted Jean Avery

”But I find it necessary,” growled Dr Thorne

She shook her head, and turned her face, which shrank against the blue pillow Pink and the baby began to quarrel in the nursery, and then both cried belligerently

”The baby kept ested Mrs Avery

”It is an excellent explanation,--but you've just thought of it,” observed Dr Thorne He spoke in a much louder tone than was necessary; his voice rose with the kind of instinctive, elee under which he fled to covert with a sympathy that he found troubleso--is, what caused this attack? It is so which happened since breakfast I demand the nature of it--physical? mental? emotional?”

”You may call it electric,” answered Jean Avery, with her own lovable smile--half mischief, half pathos

”I see The telephone” Dr Thorne leaned back in his chair and scrutinized the patient Quite incidentally he took her pulse It was sinking again, and the teularity

”Helen shall coentleness ”I 'll send her this afternoon You will keep perfectly still till then Mr Avery is in town?” carelessly ”Coone to court”

”To dinner, then?”

”It depends on the verdict If he wins the case”-- ”Oh, I see And if he loses?”

”Hequite steadily ”Hewith Mr Romer He is very tired He takes it hard when he does not win things--cases, I ht--you see”-- She faltered into a pathetic silence

”I will send Helen at once,” replied the physician He felt that he had offered his subtlest and most artistic prescription More than most wives are valued, Dr Thorne loved his

But as he went downstairs a black frown caught hied to dispatch a er to the court-house Sixty patients cla in his buggy, before he sent the third copy:-- DEAR AVERY,--Your wife has suffered one of the attacks whose nature I explained to you so a marked weakness of the heart I consider that she had a narrow escape You would not forgive overn your ly

Yours as ever, ESMERALD THORNE

Jean Avery lay with closed eyes, quite still, and s tranquilly Only the invalid mistress of a home kno to value the presence of another lady in a household where children and servants fill the foreground, and where, as Dr Thorne once put it, ”every care as fast as it arises is taken to the bedside of the patient” The ever-womanly arrived with Mrs Thorne In the repose which ca, the sick woman lay sheltered for the remainder of the day Her face, her voice, her ratitude of one who has long since learned not to look beyond the bounty of te

The telephone called towards noon, ringing rapidly and impatiently--operators, like horses, were always nervous under Marshall Avery's driving; and when an anxious e from the court-house reached the wife, she said, ”Dear Helen!” as if it had been Helen's doing And when they told her that Mr Avery asked how she was, and would get home by mid-afternoon, and at any ain that day, and that he sent his love to her and begged her to be careful for his sake, her breath fell so short with pleasure that they took fright for her

”My husband is so kind to me!” she panted Then her color ca, fell into step and began to ly

”But this is a miracle!” cried the doctor's wife

”Love is always a miracle,” Jean Avery said Then she asked to have her hair arranged, and wanted an afternoon dress, and lace, and would have a bracelet that her husband gave her, and the turquoise pin he liked, and begged to be told that she looked quite well again, for ”Marshall hates to see me ill!”

And the children--see that the children are dressed; and his slippers--they must be put beside the library table in that place he likes; not anywhere else, please, but just where he is used to finding them And Kate will have dinner early; and about the soup--and the salad--and not to overdo the grouse; and to light the library fire--and were they sure she could n't go down herself to see to things, and get as far as the library sofa?

”Mr Avery does n't like ed, in the plaintive staccato that her short breath cut, till Helen's eyes blazed and then brione, and the children; and Jean lay quite still and alone, s-distance wires, as the thoughts of the sick are, and they covered the spaces of ether and of earth that afternoon--the unexplored wastes into which the soul invites no fellow-traveler Her heart fled to the rose-red star of their early drea and the well, the brave and the bright, may love; passionately, as the brown and the blond do; and reasonably, as the well-e, the same class, the saratulated them in the same words; they had inherited the same ideals of life, and went buoyantly into it Not so much as a fad had inserted itself between their tastes, and in their convictions they were mercifully not divided At first their only hardshi+p had been the strenuous denial of the professional life; but she never wished him to make money--she was quite happy to put up muslin curtains at twelve and a half cents a yard, while her friends hung lace at twenty dollars a --and had flung herself into the political econoenious enthusiasly as she did the blond colors, the blue, the lavender, the rose, the corn, over which she strained her honest eyes and bent her straight shoulders to save dressmakers' bills Since she had been ill she had tried--how hard no row careless about her dress ”The daintiest invalid I ever knew,” Dr Thorne used to say

Marshall cared a good deal about such matters, was fastidious over a wrinkle, was sure to observe a spot or a bleht pass unnoticed for weeks; disliked old dresses; when she had a new one on he admired her as if she were a neife, for a day or two She was full of pretty little wo her husband's devotion When had it begun to flag? She had made a science of wifehood, and applied it with a delicate art Why had it failed?No, no, no! Not that! Not that word, yet! Say rather, why had it faltered? With a tremulous modesty characteristic of her sweet nature, she scored herself for the disillusions of her married life, as if somehow the fault were hers

How had it all come about? Was she fretful with the first baby? It seeht very hard about it) with the first baby She knew she had faded a little then Pink was a crying baby ”I lost so much sleep! And it makes one look so, about the eyes And then, as Marshall says, hts came down fro in fog and swaht, thein mid-space--heaven above her, earth below, and no place for her in either She could not fly She would not fall ”And I ' on, like this One oand not mean to”

And yet she had held on pretty well, till the second baby came She had never felt this ht be called life-vertigo, that made it see For after the boy was born she was not well She had never been strong since And Marshall hated sickness He was such a big, strong, splendid fellow! It had been very hard on Marshall

He hated it so, that she hated it too She had scorned the scouts of her true condition, and when the trouble at the heart set in, and he called it ”only nervous,” she said, ”No doubt you are quite right, dear,” and bla so time, after that But when, one easterly afternoon, the air being as heavy as the clods of the grave, she lay gasping for life for three hours alone, not able to reach a bell or call for help, she sent for Dr Thorne

And he told her, for she insisted--and he knew his patient; not a woman to be wheedled by a professional lie--he told her the truth

”Poor Marshall!” said Jean Avery ”It will be so hard on my husband!Don't tell him, doctor I forbid you, doctor I think he 'd take it easier if I told him myself, poor fellow!”

She did not tell him that day, for he did not come home; nor the next, for he had a headache; nor the third, for he was in excellent spirits, and she could not bear to In fact, she waited a week before she gathered her courage to speak One Saturday evening he did not go to the club, but was at ho, and in fact he noticed her appearance, and asked her as the matter, and why she breathed so short

Then she drew his hand over her eyes, so that she ht not see hoould look, and the beautiful curve of her lip broke a little, for she felt so sorry for her husband; but her fire (Jean never had the invalid's whine), and she told him what the doctor said

Marshall Avery listened in a silence which ht have meant the utmost of distress or the innermost of skepticis out into the lighted street Perhaps he had a blundering,for her She would be the first to believe that

”I 'll see Thorne about this,” he said presently ”I can't have hirown very nervous lately