«But I’ve got to go away,» she insisted wildly. «Out of this house of death and failure!»
«You haven’t failed yet. You’ve only begun.» She stood up.
«Let me pass.»
«No.»
Abruptly she gave way, as she always did when he talked to her. She covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.
«Go back into that room and tell the nurse you’ll take your husband for a drive,» he suggested.
«I can’t.»
«Oh, yes.»
Once more Luella looked at him, and knew that she would obey. With the conviction that her spirit was broken at last, she took up her suitcase and walked back through the hall.
V
The nature of the curious influence that Doctor Moon exerted upon her, Luella could not guess. But as the days passed, she found herself doing many things that had been repugnant to her before. She stayed at home with Charles; and when he grew better, she went out with him sometimes to dinner, or the theatre, but only when he expressed a wish. She visited the kitchen every day, and kept an unwilling eye on the house, at first with a horror that it would go wrong again, then from habit. And she felt that it was all somehow mixed up with Doctor Moon—it was something he kept telling her about life, or almost telling her, and yet concealing from her, as though he were afraid to have her know.
With the resumption of their normal life, she found that Charles was less nervous. His habit of rubbing his face had left him, and if the world seemed less gay and happy to her than it had before, she experienced a certain peace, sometimes, that she had never known.
Then, one afternoon, Doctor Moon told her suddenly that he was going away.
«Do you mean for good?» she demanded with a touch of panic.
«For good.»
For a strange moment she wasn’t sure whether she was glad or sorry.
«You don’t need me any more,» he said quietly. «You don’t realize it, but you’ve grown up.»
He came over and, sitting on the couch beside her, took her hand.
Luella sat silent and tense—listening.
«We make an agreement with children that they can sit in the audience without helping to make the play,» he said, «but if they still sit in the audience after they’re grown, somebody’s got to work double time for them, so that they can enjoy the light and glitter of the world.»
«But I want the light and glitter,» she protested. «That’s all there is in life. There can’t be anything wrong in wanting to have things warm.»
«Things will still be warm.»
«How?»
«Things will warm themselves from you.»
Luella looked at him, startled.
«It’s your turn to be the centre, to give others what was given to you for so long. You’ve got to give security to young people and peace to your husband, and a sort of charity to the old. You’ve got to let the people who work for you depend on you. You’ve got to cover up a few more troubles than you show, and be a little more patient than the average person, and do a little more instead of a little less than your share. The light and glitter of the world is in your hands.»
He broke off suddenly.
«Get up,» he said, «and go to that mirror and tell me what you see.»
Obediently Luella got up and went close to a purchase of her honeymoon, a Venetian pier-glass on the wall.
«I see new lines in my face here,» she said, raising her finger and placing it between her eyes, «and a few shadows at the sides that might be—that are little wrinkles.»
«Do you care?»
She turned quickly. «No,» she said.
«Do you realize that Chuck is gone? That you’ll never see him any more?»
«Yes.» She passed her hands slowly over her eyes. «But that all seems so vague and far away.»
«Vague and far away,» he repeated; and then: «And are you afraid of me now?»
«Not any longer,» she said, and she added frankly, «now that you’re going away.»
He moved toward the door. He seemed particularly weary to-night, as though he could hardly move about at all.
«The household here is in your keeping,» he said in a tired whisper. «If there is any light and warmth in it, it will be your light and warmth; if it is happy, it will be because you’ve made it so. Happy things may come to you in life, but you must never go seeking them any more. It is your turn to make the fire.»
«Won’t you sit down a moment longer?» Luella ventured.
«There isn’t time.» His voice was so low now that she could scarcely hear the words. «But remember that whatever suffering comes to you, I can always help you—if it is something that can be helped. I promise nothing.»
He opened the door. She must find out now what she most wanted to know, before it was too late.
«What have you done to me?» she cried. «Why have I no sorrow left for Chuck—for anything at all? Tell me; I almost see, yet I can’t see. Before you go—tell me who you are!»
«Who am I?—» His worn suit paused in the doorway. His round, pale face seemed to dissolve into two faces, a dozen faces, a score, each one different yet the same—sad, happy, tragic, indifferent, resigned—until threescore Doctor Moons were ranged like an infinite series of reflections, like months stretching into the vista of the past.
«Who am I?» he repeated; «I am five years.» The door closed.
At six o’clock Charles Hemple came home, and as usual Luella met him in the hall. Except that now his hair was dead white, his long illness of two years had left no mark upon him. Luella herself was more noticeably changed—she was a little stouter, and there were those lines around her eyes that had come when Chuck died one evening back in 1921. But she was still lovely, and there was a mature kindness about her face at twenty-eight, as if suffering had touched her only reluctantly and then hurried away.
«Ede and her husband are coming to dinner,» she said. «I’ve got theatre tickets, but if you’re tired, I don’t care whether we go or not.»
«I’d like to go.»
She looked at him.
«You wouldn’t.»
«I really would.»
«We’ll see how you feel after dinner.»
He put his arm around her waist. Together they walked into the nursery where the two children were waiting up to say good night.
