A Good Woman (Bromfield)/Part 4/Chapter 3
Philip made no effort to paint. The box containing his things lay forgotten in a dark corner of the hut, and for three days he went out to spend hours wandering alone along the shores of the tepid lake. Mary only waited, fighting a queer unnatural jealousy of the ghost that walked with him. And on the fourth night she was awakened by his voice saying, "Mary, I feel ill. I'm afraid I've caught the fever again." It was a voice peaceful and full of apology.
By noon the fever had taken possession of his thin body, and by evening he lay still and unconscious. For three days and three nights Mary sat beside him, while Swanson fumbled with his medicines, and kept saying in his kind, clumsy way, "He'll be all right now. You mustn't fret. Why, he's strong as an ox. I've seen him like this before." She sat by the bed, bathing Philip's thin face, touching his head gently with her hand. In her weariness she deceived herself, thinking at times, "He's cooler now. It will pass," but in the end she always knew the bitter truth—that the fever hadn't passed. It was always there, burning, burning, burning the little life that remained.
Sometimes in his delirium he talked of Lady Millicent and Swanson, but nearly always of Naomi. She was always there, as if she, too, stayed by the side of the crude bed . . . watching.
In the middle of the fourth night, when Swanson had come in to look at him, Philip stirred slowly, and opened his eyes. For a moment he looked about him with a bewildered look in the burning blue eyes, and then he reached out weakly, and took her hand. "Mary," he said, "my Mary . . . always mine since the beginning."
He asked her to get a pencil and a block of paper out of his box, and then he said, "I want you to write something for me. I'll tell you what it is. . . ." When she returned, he lay silent for a time, and then he said, "It's this, Mary. Listen. . . . Write. . . . I think it ought to go like this. . . . 'Whatever happens, after my death, I mean that my children, Philip and Naomi . . . whom I had by my first wife, Naomi Potts, are never to be left in the care of my mother, Emma Downes.'" He hesitated for a moment, and then weakly murmured, "'The same is my wish with regard to any child who may be born after my death . . . of my second wife, Mary Conyngham.'" Again he paused. "'This is my express wish.'" He beckoned with his eyes to Swanson. "Raise me up," he said. "Here, Mary, give me the pencil and the paper." She held the drawing-block for him while the thin, brown hand wrote painfully the words "Philip Downes."
The pencil dropped to the floor. "Now, Swanson . . . you must sign it as witness. . . ." Swanson laid him back gently and then wrote his own name and went quietly out.
As his grotesque figure shut out from the doorway the blue of the African night, she knelt beside him, and, pressing the dry, hot hands against her cheek, she cried out, "But you're not going to die, Philip. . . . You're not going to die! I won't let you!" She would hold him by her own will. Anything was possible in this strange, terrifying world by the lake.
"No . . . Mary . . . I'm not going to die. I only wanted to make certain."
The room grew still, and all at once she found herself praying. Her lips did not move, but she was praying. She was ashamed to have Philip hear her, and she was ashamed, too, before God that she should turn to Him only when she had desperate need. But none of these things made any difference. In her terror and anguish she prayed. God would hear her. He would know and understand if he were a good God.
Then suddenly she felt his hand relax ever so little, gently, and she said softly, "Philip! Philip!"
After a long silence, he said, "Yes . . . Mary," and pressed her hand feebly. "I'm here."
"Philip . . . I think there is to be a child. . . . You must live on his account."
"I'm glad, Mary . . . I mean to live. I mean to live."
She fell to praying again, and again she felt the thin hand relax. This time it slipped slowly from her cheek.
"Philip! Philip!"
He did not answer, and again she called, "Philip! Philip"
His eyes were closed, but he still breathed. She began to pray once more, pressing her body close to his. She never knew how long she knelt there, but presently she knew that the thin, brown hands were no longer hot. The fever had gone out of them, and she thought suddenly, "The thing has passed, and he is safe." But the coolness turned slowly to a strange dead chill. She raised her head and looked at him. He seemed asleep, but he was so still. She touched his face, and the head fell a little to one side. The mouth opened. And then she knew. . . .
Without a sound, she slipped to the dusty earth beside the cot. She tasted the earth with her lips, but she did not even raise her head.
When she came out of the hut to find Swanson, it was still dark, although a faint rim of light had begun to show above the surface of the lake. Near the opening in the barricade, the night fire had burned to a glowing pile of embers. For a long time she stood there beneath the stars, listening to the mysterious sounds of the African night, on the very spot where Philip had once stood, half-naked, listening to the sound of the drums, lost in a strange, savage delight at the discovery of being alive and young and a man. And at last there came to her the feeling that she was not alone, but surrounded by the creatures who filled all the night with their sense of life. She was not alone, for Naomi was there, too. This strange world belonged to Naomi. She herself was only an intruder.
A sound of birds churring in the darkness roused her, and she went off to find Swanson. He was asleep in his hut and he wakened slowly, clumsily. For once, understanding without being told, he rose and followed her.
As the gray turned to rose above the lake, and the sounds of the waking forest grew more distinct, she knelt by the side of the cot while Swanson prayed, and slowly she came to understand that in his simplicity he was a good man, akin in his selfless simplicity, to the wild things in the gloomy forest that surrounded them. She understood, too, that Philip had meant to die thus, that he had come here to the spot where death was certain. But she saw, too, that he had really died long ago, on the night that had followed their happiness in the room above the stable. She didn't hate Naomi: she had never hated her.
The morning light began to filter in through the doorway, and the spaces below the thatching. She stirred and took up the drawing-block on which Philip had written his name. No, it was not Naomi that she hated. . . .
Two days later they buried him beneath the acacia not far from the fresh grave of the battered old Lady Millicent, on the spot where once, for the first time, he had known a blinding intimation of what life might be. He had known it again afterward—once as he stood in the moonlight listening to the drums, and again, on the day the wicked Lily Shane came to the stable; and then at last on the night he returned to find Mary waiting in the darkness.
It was the simple Swanson who read the service, because Mary wished it; for the Reverend Mr. Murchison made her think of Christians like Emma Downes and her brother, Elmer Niman. . . . It was the Reverend Mr. Murchison who would be the first Bishop of East Africa.