Oakley Hall - Warlock

The doctor indicated the glass, and Blaisedell said, “Jessie, Doc has got something for you.”

Instantly she swung around. Her face darkened with suspicion. “What’s that?”

“It is some laudanum to let you rest.”

“Rest?” she cried. “Rest! We cannot rest a moment!”

“You had better take it, Jessie,” Blaisedell said, in the gentle voice.

The doctor raised the glass with the whisky-colored liquid in it to her, but she lifted a hand as though she would strike it to the floor. “Jessie!” he said sharply.

Her shoulders slumped. She closed her eyes. She began to sob convulsively. She rubbed her knuckles into her closed eyes and swayed, and Blaisedell put an arm around her. The doctor could see the sobs tearing at her frail body. They tore at him as well; with each one he was wrenched with pity for her, and with anger at Clay Blaisedell and the world that had broken her. His hand shook with the glass.

“Drink it, Jessie.”

Obediently she drank it down, and he went to turn the coverlet back on the bed. Blaisedell helped her to the bed and she lay down with her hands over her face, her fingers working in her tangled ringlets, her head moving ceaselessly from side to side. The doctor pulled the coverlet up over her as Blaisedell stepped back toward the door.

“I will be going now, Doc,” Blaisedell said in his deep voice, and he turned to meet the blue, intense gaze that was almost hidden beneath the swollen lids. Blaisedell said it again, not aloud, but with his lips only, and nodded to him.

“We will do it tomorrow!” Jessie cried suddenly. She raised her head and her eyes swung wildly in search of Blaisedell. “We will lead them to the Medusa tomorrow, Clay. Tomorrow may not be too late!”

“Why, no; tomorrow won’t be too late,” Blaisedell said, and smiled a little; then he went out, gently closing the door behind him.

The doctor sat down on the bed beside Jessie as she laid her head back again. She closed her eyes, as though she would be glad to rest. As he heard Blaisedell’s step upon the stairs he put down the glass and smoothed his hand over her damp, tangled hair.

He glanced up at the mezzotint depicting Cuchulain in his madness, and felt the pain and fury convulse his heart. So Blaisedell would leave, and damned be his soul for ever having come, for having enchanted her, for leaving her forever in the circle of flames and thorns. And the miners and their union? he thought suddenly. There was no choice. He smiled down at her and smoothed his hand over her hair.

“The miners are meeting now, Jessie,” he said. “Tomorrow will be time enough.”

She nodded and smiled a little, but did not open her eyes. “It would be better today,” she said in a small, clear voice. “But he is tired and hurt. I shouldn’t have blamed him so. I shouldn’t have called him a coward. What a strange thing to say of him!”

“He knew you were disturbed.” He looked down at the strong jut of her brows over her sunken, closed eyes, the whitening of her nostrils as she breathed, the determined set to her little chin.

“Oh, I am so glad I thought of it!” she said. “For it will change everything. We will ride, of course, and they will march behind us. We—”

“Tomorrow,” he whispered. “Tomorrow, my dear.”

He saw her face crumple; she began to sob again, but softly. She said in the small voice, “But you see why I must make him do it, don’t you, David? Because what happened here was my fault.”

“No, Jessie,” he said. “Jessie, you had better try to rest now.”

She fell silent, and after a time he thought she must be asleep more from exhaustion than from the effect of the opiate. He left off stroking her hair and gazed at the window, wondering how the miner’s meeting was progressing. He felt detached from it now, but there were a few things he would have liked to say. He would have liked to treat with Willingham for them; he thought he would have enjoyed crossing swords with Willingham.

Jessie said sleepily, “He was hurt and sick at heart, and I was so furious— He wanted to leave here tomorrow, he and I. To go somewhere else, and he said he would change his name. It made me so angry that he should think of changing his name! But I should have understood that he was hurt and sick at heart. Oh, dear God, I thought that monster had destroyed him! But it is silly to give in so easily when—”

“Rest,” he said. “You must rest.”

Again she was silent. He thought of her and Blaisedell leading the miners and wondered if it was any more insane than his trying to lead them himself. He gazed at his world through inward eyes and saw all his ideals and aspirations crumbling gray and ineffectual. He saw himself a fool. Much better, he thought, a torchlight parade than what he would have brought them, if he could have brought them anything; how much finer the flame of the Medusa stope mounting the shafthead frame against the sky, than the gray ashes of reason. He had deluded himself with his ideals of humanity and liberality, but peace came after war, not out of reason. They would have to have fire and blood to make their union. So it had always been, and revolutions were made by men who conquered, or who died, and not by gray thought in gray minds. Peace came with a sword, right with a sword, justice and freedom with swords, and the struggle to them must be led by men with swords rather than by ineffectual men counseling reason and moderation.

He watched the shadows lengthening through the lace curtains. The room was dimmer now, Jessie’s pale face shadowed and more peaceful. It was a quiet meeting the miners were having, he thought. He wondered what kind of a showing Fitzsimmons was making, and smiled at these dregs of jealousy in himself. He knew that Fitzsimmons would do well. It was a sad truth that all the masses of men in their causes would be led by ambitious men, by power-hungry, cunningly self-serving men, rather than by the humanists, the idealists; and better led for it, he thought. Fitzsimmons loved neither the miners nor their cause, he loved only himself and the power he might attain through them. Neither did he, David Wagner, love the miners. He loved an ideal, a generality, and hated another. It was more love, and hate, than Fitzsimmons possessed, and yet it had crippled him in the end, because he could see too well how gray and impalpable was a generality, however fine, set against flesh and blood. There was no choice for him between serving an ideal made of straw and serving a single person in unhappiness and pain, whom he loved.

When Jessie spoke again her voice was so blurred he could hardly understand it. “What did Curley Burne matter to him? I cannot understand why Curley Burne mattered to him so, David. He was not good for anything! He was just another rustler. He—” Her voice died, although her lips still moved.

He watched the increasingly slow movement of her lips, and whispered, “Rest.” All that is over, he thought; but could not tell her so. There was a knock.

“Doc?” It was Fitzsimmons’ voice. He rose quietly, and went to open the door. He put a finger to his lips, and Fitzsimmons glanced past him and nodded. His face was flushed and triumphant. “You and me are to go talk to Willingham!” he whispered excitedly. “We are to work it out somehow. It is up to us!”

“I can’t go, Jimmy.”

“You can’t!” Fitzsimmons avoided his eyes, pouting; but he knew that Fitzsimmons was relieved and pleased.

“My place is here, I’m afraid.”

Fitzsimmons made a show of scowling, biting his lip, rubbing a scarred hand over his stubble of beard. “Well — I guess I can’t go back and tell them. I guess I will try and go it alone.”

“Listen to me. You will have to have something to take back to them. If it looks as though Willingham will give you nothing, tell him they will not go back to work for MacDonald. He will give you that, at least.”