"YOU ARE SO GENEROUS TO ME" (page 24)
AVERY
By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1902
COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY HARPER & BROS.
COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published October, 1902
Avery originally appeared as a serial in Harper's Magazine underthe title of His Wife.
AVERY
PART I
"Oh, Pink! Mother can't lift you.... I would if I could.... Yes, Iknow I used to—
"Molly, take the baby. Couldn't you amuse him, somehow? Perhaps, ifyou tried hard, you could keep him still. When he screams so, it seemsto hit me—here. It makes it harder to breathe. He cried 'most allnight. And if you could contrive to keep Pink, too—
"What is it, Kate? You'll have to manage without me this morning.Pick up anything for luncheon—I don't care. I couldn't eat. You canwarm over that mutton for yourselves. We must keep the bills down.They were too large last month. Order a grouse for Mr. Avery. He sayshe will dine at home to-night—
"There 's the telephone! Somebody answer it. I can't get down,myself.... Is it Mr. Avery? ... Wants me? ... I don't see how Ican.... Yes. Hold the wire. I 'll try—
"Did you speak to me, Molly? ... No, I 'm not feeling any worse. It'sonly getting up the stairs, and ... something that tired me a little.I don't want Dr. Thorne. I can't call the doctor so often. I 'm noworse than ... I sometimes ... am. It's only that I cannot breathe....Molly! Molly! Quick, Molly! The window! Air!"
As Molly dashed the window up, Mrs. Avery's head fell back upon thepillows of the lounge. They were blue pillows, and her blanching cheektook a little reflection from the color. But she was not ghastly; shenever was. At the lowest limit of her strength she seemed to challengedeath with an indomitable vitality.
There was a certain surprise in the discovery that so blond a beingcould have so much of it. She was very fair—blue of eye, yellow ofhair, pearly of skin; but all her coloring was warm and rich; when shewas well, it was an occupation to admire her ear, her cheek, herthroat; and when she was ill her eye conquered. Every delicate traitand feature of her defied her fate, except her mouth; this had begun totake on a pitiful expression. The doctor's blazing eye flashed on itwhen he was summoned hastily. It had become a symptom to him, and wasusually the first one of which he took note.
Dr. Esmerald Thorne had the preoccupations of his eminence, and hispatients waited their turns with that undiscouraged endurance which isthe jest and the despair of less-