He remembered now that there was a spring a few yards away. He had been sent there by his father and he had dipped the clear water from an open space beside a bed of water-cress. Making his way thither in the starlight, he filled a pail. He found a box half filled with kindling and built a fire and set the water on it, and fetched his traveling bag. He opened the sore wound on his hand and poured into it half the contents of his bottle of peroxide and bound it up. He found in a dirty cupboard a supply of mustard, provided possibly for this emergency and forgotten. He thought with a faint smile of Miss Knowlton--if her professional eye could see him! He remembered that he had sat for a long time on the weedy bank across the road when he and his father had been here--his car stood beside the exact spot. He seemed to hear now distinctly his father's voice--would it be necessary for him to console the dying? He could not offer a formula upon which he had not thought for years!
He heard a moan in the inner room and returned quickly. The woman had turned once more on her back and had seized her thin chest. Lip and brow were beaded. He worked quickly, the perspiration standing on his own brow. When he had done all he could, he knelt down on the floor and took the clutching hands in his. He spoke, scarcely aware that he was speaking, offering all the comfort that he could give. He had never spoken to Hilda in this fashion; not even quite in this fashion had he dreamed of speaking to Ellen.
"I'll stay with you. I'm sorry for you. It will be better soon. I'm sure it will be better."
When the spasm was over he rose to his feet. In the cessation of agony sleep came quickly. He stood motionless for a long time, occupied with strange thoughts. He was intensely, incredibly happy; he understood suddenly that his father had had this happiness often; his own danger became negligible, he quite forgot it. Even when, as he moved about, the pain in his hand quickened, it was still negligible.
Dawn, which came as slowly as the dawns of winter, brought a returning Bill in the car of a physician whom he had found after much forgetful wandering. A lifeless body lay upon the bed.
Stephen looked curiously at the old doctor who descended stiffly from his car.