Part 23 (1/2)

”Jack,” she said in a low voice, ”what is the matter?”

His eyes were burning out from under his shock of hair with a fierceness that belied his feeling of simple surprise. ”Nothing is the matter,” he answered. ”Why do you ask?”

She seemed immensely concerned, but she was visibly endeavouring to hide her concern as well as to abate it.

”I--I thought you acted queerly.”

He answered: ”Why no. I'm not acting queerly. On the contrary,” he added smiling, ”I'm in one of my most rational moods.”

Her look of alarm did not subside. She continued to regard him with the same stare. She was silent for a time and did not move. His own thoughts had quite returned to a contemplation of a poisoned lover, and he did not note the manner of his wife. Suddenly she came to him, and laying a hand on his arm said, ”Jack, you are ill?”

”Why no, dear,” he said with a first impatience, ”I'm not ill at all. I never felt better in my life.” And his mind beleaguered by this pointless talk strove to break through to its old contemplation of the poisoned lover. ”Hear what I have written.” Then he read--

”The garlands of her hair are snakes, Black and bitter are her hating eyes, A cry the windy death-hall makes, O, love, deliver us.

The flung cup rolls to her sandal's tip, His arm--”

Linton said: ”I can't seem to get the lines to describe the man who is dying of the poison on the floor before her. Really I'm having a time with it. What a bore. Sometimes I can write like mad and other times I don't seem to have an intelligent idea in my head.”

He felt his wife's hand tighten on his arm and he looked into her face.

It was so alight with horror that it brought him sharply out of his dreams. ”Jack,” she repeated tremulously, ”you are ill.”

He opened his eyes in wonder. ”Ill! ill? No; not in the least!”

”Yes, you are ill. I can see it in your eyes. You--act so strangely.”

”Act strangely? Why, my dear, what have I done? I feel quite well.

Indeed, I was never more fit in my life.”

As he spoke he threw himself into a large wing chair and looked up at his wife, who stood gazing at him from the other side of the black oak table upon which Linton wrote his verses.

”Jack, dear,” she almost whispered, ”I have noticed it for days,” and she leaned across the table to look more intently into his face. ”Yes, your eyes grow more fixed every day--you--you--your head, does it ache, dear?”

Linton arose from his chair and came around the big table toward his wife. As he approached her, an expression akin to terror crossed her face and she drew back as in fear, holding out both hands to ward him off.

He had been smiling in the manner of a man rea.s.suring a frightened child, but at her shrinking from his outstretched hand he stopped in amazement. ”Why, Grace, what is it? tell me.”

She was glaring at him, her eyes wide with misery. Linton moved his left hand across his face, unconsciously trying to brush from it that which alarmed her.

”Oh, Jack, you must see some one; I am wretched about you. You are ill!”

”Why, my dear wife,” he said, ”I am quite, quite well; I am anxious to finish these verses but words won't come somehow, the man dying--”

”Yes, that is it, you cannot remember, you see that you cannot remember.

You must see a doctor. We will go up to town at once,” she answered quickly.

”'Tis true,” he thought, ”that my memory is not as good as it used to be. I cannot remember dates, and words won't fit in somehow. Perhaps I don't take enough exercise, dear; is that what worries you?” he asked.

”Yes, yes, dear, you do not go out enough,” said his wife. ”You cling to this room as the ivy clings to the walls--but we must go to London, you _must_ see some one; promise me that you will go, that you will go immediately.”