Sykes worked furiously, at her own initiative now, for Bruce had lapsed into coma. She kept the blood sponged away; she heated bricks and every hot water bottle in the house and packed them about Amber; she laid hot cloths on her forehead. If there was any way she could be saved, Sykes intended to get her hundred pounds.
It was almost an hour before Bruce returned to consciousness and then, with a sudden start, he tried to sit up. “Where is she! You didn’t let them take her!”
“Hush, sir! I think she’s sleeping. She’s still alive and I think, sir, that she’s better.”
He leaned over to look at her. “Oh, thank God, thank God. I swear it, Sykes, if she lives you’ll get your hundred pound. I’ll make it two hundred for you.”
“Oh, thank you, sir! But now, sir—you’d better lie back there and rest yourself—or you might not fare so well, sir.”
“Yes, I will. Wake me if she gets any—” The words trailed off.
At last the pus began to seep up and the wound started to drain off its poison. Amber lay perfectly still again, drowned in coma, but the dark tinge was gone from her skin and though her cheeks had sunk against the bones and there were crape-like circles around her eyes, her pulse had a stronger, surer beat. The sound of tolling bells seemed suddenly to fill the room. Sykes gave a start, then relaxed; they would not toll tonight for her patient.
“I’ve worked hard for my money, sir,” Sykes said to him on the morning of the fourth day. “And I’m sure she’ll live now. Can I have it?”
Bruce smiled. “You have worked hard, Sykes. And I’m more grateful than I can tell you. But you’ll have to wait a while longer.” He would not give her any of the jewellery, partly because it was Amber’s personal property, partly because it might have encouraged her to outright thievery or some other mischief. Sykes had served her purpose, but he knew that it would be foolish to trust her. “There are only a few shillings in the house—and they’ve got to be spent for food. As soon as I can go out I’ll get it for you.”
He was able to sit up now, most of the day, and when it was necessary he could get out of bed, but never stayed more than a few minutes at a time. His persistent weakness seemed both to amuse and infuriate him. “I’ve been shot in the stomach and run through the shoulder,” he said one day to Sykes as he walked slowly back to the bed. “I’ve been bitten by a poisonous snake and I’ve had a tropical fever—but I’ll be damned if I’ve ever felt like this before.”
Most of the time he spent reading, though there were only a few books in the apartment and he had already seen most of them. Some had been there as part of the furnishings and they were a respectable assortment, including the Bible, Hobbes’s “Leviathan,” Bacon’s “Novum Organum,” some of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, Browne’s “Religio Medici.”
Amber’s collection, though small, was more lively. There was an almanac, thumbed and much scribbled in, the lucky and unlucky days starred, as well as those for purging or bloodletting, though so far as he knew she seldom did either. Her familiar scrawl was marked across the fly-leaf of half-a-dozen others: “L’École des Filles,” “The Crafty Whore,” “The Wandering Whore,” “Annotations upon Aretino’s Postures,” “Ars Amatoria,” and—evidently because it was currently fashionable —Butler’s “Hudibras.” All but the last had obviously been well read. He smiled to see them, for though the same volumes would doubtless have been found in the closet of almost any Court lady they were nevertheless amusingly typical of her.
He always sat near the edge of the bed where he could watch her, and she made no movement or slightest sound which he did not notice. She was, very slowly, getting better, though the constant sloughing of the wound worried him, for it continued to open wider and deeper until it had spread over an area with a two-inch diameter. But both he and Sykes were convinced that if the incision had not been made she would have died.
Sometimes, to his horror, she would suddenly put up her hands as though to ward off a blow, and cry out in a piteous voice. “Don’t! No! Please!
It was the seventh day before she saw and recognized him. He had come in from the parlour and found her propped against Sykes’s arm swallowing some beef-broth, languidly and without interest. He had a blanket flung over his shoulders and now he knelt beside the trundle to watch her.
She seemed to sense him there and her head turned slowly. For a long moment she looked at him, and then at last she whispered softly: “Bruce?”
He took her hand in both of his. “Yes, darling. I’m here.”
