His hesitation, his silence, his effort to arrange his thought, roused a suspicion in the mind of the woman on the low bed. She raised herself to a sitting position, trying to hold together the ragged gown which half covered her. Of his importance, his wealth, his intellect, she had no conception and for none of them would she have had any regard.
Stephen still cradled his hand. He looked curiously at the wretched creature, now lying prone and exhausted. He frowned in the effort to concentrate his mind upon a new and very simple problem. He believed that his hand was seriously infected and that it should be treated at once, that haste was imperative. He believed also that the woman left alone might die. A cold sweat broke out upon him. He had been acutely impatient with his father because he had not weighed his valuable life against two worthless lives and had suffered himself to be murdered. His father, however, had merely taken a chance, there had been a possibility of escape, but for him there was no escape. The mischief was done; unless he had speedy aid he might die in agony.
He felt his heart contract and laid his hand upon it. To die! He was not old. Life which he had recently so bitterly complained of--what inestimable happiness it offered! What delight for the eye! What intense pleasure for the mind! And Ellen--what of Ellen, with whom he had expected to be in a few hours? He had anticipated rapture in the assurance of her love. He might now never see her. It was curious that it was easier to risk his life than to forget his passion!
The moments passed; there was no sound within or without the little house; the woman still lay motionless. It might be that she slept; he realized basely that a step would carry him away.
Then, quite suddenly and simply, he knew that for him there was no choice. He had lived, for all his suffering, selfishly, his heart hardened and not softened by the single affliction of his life. He had done many kindnesses, but he had never made a sacrifice. He had helped the poor, but it had cost him nothing; he had performed almost miraculous cures, but they had been performed in a sense easily.
Yet he was not at heart selfish, and now, rising from depths almost unstirred since his youth, a single powerful impulse moved him. He had come unknowing and unsuspecting to his Dark Tower, which, well for him! was set in a familiar landscape, presided over by the guiding spirit of his youth. There was a verse which said, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it." He had been trained by precept and example; was his father's last hour made easy by confidence in his ultimate return? Did his pleading gaze ask only that the period of departure might not be long? As tenderly as though he had been his father, he bent over the poor bed, forgetting life and all its joys and Ellen.