In spite of the thirty-odd guests,people of very moderate incomes who knew the place and had come here year after year,I was as much alone as if I had been the only sojourner.The place was so remote,so peaceful in contrast to the city I had left,which had become intolerable.And at night,during hours of wakefulness,the music of the waters falling over the dam was soothing.I used to walk down there and sit on the stones of the ruined mill;or climb to the crests on the far side of the pond to gaze for hours westward where the green billows of the Alleghenies lost themselves in the haze.I had discovered a new country;here,when our trials should be over,I would bring Nancy,and I found distraction in choosing sites for a bungalow.In my soul hope flowered with little watering.Uncertain news was good news.After two days of an impatience all but intolerable,her first letter arrived,I learned that the specialists had not been able to make a diagnosis,and I began to take heart again.At times,she said,Ham was delirious and difficult to manage;at other times he sank into a condition of coma;and again he seemed to know her and Ralph,who had come up from Southampton,where he had been spending the summer.One doctor thought that Ham's remarkable vitality would pull him through,in spite of what his life had been.The shock--as might have been surmised--had affected the brain....The letters that followed contained no additional news;she did not dwell on the depressing reactions inevitable from the situation in which she found herself--one so much worse than mine;she expressed a continual longing for me;and yet I had trouble to convince myself that they did not lack the note of reassurance for which I strained as I eagerly scanned them--of reassurance that she had no intention of permitting her husband's condition to interfere with that ultimate happiness on which it seemed my existence depended.I tried to account for the absence of this note by reflecting that the letters were of necessity brief,hurriedly scratched off at odd moments;and a natural delicacy would prevent her from referring to our future at such a time.They recorded no change in Ham's condition save that the periods of coma had ceased.The doctors were silent,awaiting the arrival in this country of a certain New York specialist who was abroad.She spent most of her days at the hospital,returning to the hotel at night exhausted:the people she knew in the various resorts around Boston had been most kind,sending her flowers,and calling when in town to inquire.At length came the news that the New York doctor was home again;and coming to Boston.In that letter was a sentence which rang like a cry in my ears:"Oh,Hugh,I think these doctors know now what the trouble is,I think I know.They are only waiting for Dr.Jameson to confirm it."It was always an effort for me to control my impatience after the first rattling was heard in the morning of the stage that brought the mail,and I avoided the waiting group in front of the honeycombed partition of boxes beside the "office."On the particular morning of which I am now writing the proprietor himself handed me a letter of ominous thickness which I took with me down to the borders of the lake before tearing open the flap.In spite of the calmness and restraint of the first lines,because of them,I felt creeping over me an unnerving sensation I knew for dread....
"Hugh,the New York doctor has been here.It is as I have feared for some weeks,but I couldn't tell you until I was sure.Ham is not exactly insane,but he is childish.Sometimes I think that is even worse.Ihave had a talk with Dr.Jameson,who has simply confirmed the opinion which the other physicians have gradually been forming.The accident has precipitated a kind of mental degeneration,but his health,otherwise,will not be greatly affected.
"Jameson was kind,but very frank,for which I was grateful.He did not hesitate to say that it would have been better if the accident had been fatal.Ham won't be helpless,physically.Of course he won't be able to play polo,or take much active exercise.If he were to be helpless,Icould feel that I might be of some use,at least of more use.He knows his friends.Some of them have been here to see him,and he talks quite rationally with them,with Ralph,with me,only once in a while he says something silly.It seems odd to write that he is not responsible,since he never has been,--his condition is so queer that I am at a loss to describe it.The other morning,before I arrived from the hotel and when the nurse was downstairs,he left the hospital,and we found him several blocks along Commonwealth Avenue,seated on a bench,without a hat--he was annoyed that he had forgotten it,and quite sensible otherwise.We began by taking him out every morning in an automobile.To-day he had a walk with Ralph,and insisted on going into a club here,to which they both belong.Two or three men were there whom they knew,and he talked to them about his fall from the pony and told them just how it happened.
At such times only a close observer can tell from his manner that everything is not right.
"Ralph,who always could manage him,prevented his taking anything to drink.He depends upon Ralph,and it will be harder for me when he is not with us.His attitude towards me is just about what it has always been.I try to amuse him by reading the newspapers and with games;we have a chess-board.At times he seems grateful,and then he will suddenly grow tired and hard to control.Once or twice I have had to call in Dr.Magruder,who owns the hospital.
