



Produced by Al Haines










[Frontispiece: "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_ under
the title of _His Wife_.




AVERY



PART I

"Oh, Pink!  Mother _can't_ lift you....  I would if I could....  Yes, I
know I used to--

"Molly, take the baby.  Couldn't you amuse him, somehow?  Perhaps, if
you tried hard, you could keep him still.  When he screams so, it seems
to hit me--here.  It makes it harder to breathe.  He cried'most all
night.  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 can
warm over that mutton for yourselves.  We must keep the bills down.
They were too large last month.  Order a grouse for Mr. Avery.  He says
he 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 I
can....  Yes.  Hold the wire.  I 'll try--

"Did you speak to me, Molly?... No, I'm not feeling any worse.  It's
only 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 no
worse 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 the
pillows of the lounge.  They were blue pillows, and her blanching cheek
took a little reflection from the color.  But she was not ghastly; she
never was.  At the lowest limit of her strength she seemed to challenge
death with an indomitable vitality.

There was a certain surprise in the discovery that so blond a being
could have so much of it.  She was very fair--blue of eye, yellow of
hair, pearly of skin; but all her coloring was warm and rich; when she
was well, it was an occupation to admire her ear, her cheek, her
throat; and when she was ill her eye conquered.  Every delicate trait
and feature of her defied her fate, except her mouth; this had begun to
take on a pitiful expression.  The doctor's blazing eye flashed on it
when he was summoned hastily.  It had become a symptom to him, and was
usually the first one of which he took note.

Dr. Esmerald Thorne had the preoccupations of his eminence, and his
patients waited their turns with that undiscouraged endurance which is
the jest and the despair of less-distinguished physicians.  Women took
their crochet work to his office, and men bided their time with gnawed
mustache and an unnatural interest in the back-number magazines upon
his table.  Indifferent ailments received his belated attention, and to
certain patients he came when he got ready.  Mrs. Avery's was not one
of these cases.

When Molly's tumultuous telephone call reached him that dav, it found
him at the hospital, sewing up an accident.  He drew the thread through
the stitch, handed the needle to the house surgeon, who was standing
by, and ran downstairs.  The hospital was two miles from Marshall
Avery's house.  Dr. Thorne's horse took the distance on a gallop, and
Dr. Thorne took Avery's stairs two at a time.

He came into her room, however, with the theatrical calm and the
preposterous smile which men of his profession and his kind assume in
the presence of danger that unconsciousness has not blotted from the
patient's intelligence.  Through the wide window the late October air
bit in.  She was lying full in the surly breeze on the lounge pillow,
as Molly had left her.  Her blue morning gown was clutched and torn
open at the throat.  No one had thought to cover her.  Her hands were
as purple as her lips.  She was not gasping now: she had no longer the
strength to fight for her breath.

Dr. Thorne's professional smile went out like a Christmas candle in a
hurricane.  He opened his mouth and began to swear.

The corners of her lips twitched when she heard him--for she was
altogether conscious, which was rather the worst of it, as she
sometimes said; and, in point of fact, she laughed outright, if one
could call it laughing.

She tried to say, "I should know that was you if I were in my grave,"
but found the words too many for her, and so said nothing at all, nor
even seemed to listen while he rated Molly, and condemned Kate, and
commanded both, and poured stimulants angrily and swiftly.  The very
blankets and hot-water bags seemed to obey him, like sentient
things--as people did; and the tablet in his fingers quivered as if it
were afraid of him.

As soon as she began to breathe naturally again, she said, "I've made
you a great deal of trouble!  How is Helen's cold, doctor?"

"I shall tell my wife that," replied the doctor, in a tone that was a
mongrel between anger and admiration.  This puzzled her, and her fine
eyes gently questioned him of his irritation.  For she and the doctor's
wife were schoolmates and old friends.  She had been quite troubled
about Helen's cold.

"Oh, never mind," said Dr. Thorne; "only it isn't natural, that's
all--when patients come out of attacks like yours.  Their minds are not
concentrated on other people's colds.  Helen is quite well, thank you.
Now, Mrs. Avery, I want to ask you"--

"Don't," interrupted Jean Avery.

"But I find it necessary," growled Dr. Thorne.

She shook her head, and turned her face, which shrank against the blue
pillow.  Pink and the baby began to quarrel in the nursery, and then
both cried belligerently.

"The baby kept me awake," faintly suggested Mrs. Avery.

"It is an excellent explanation,--but you've just thought of it,"
observed Dr. Thorne.  He spoke in a much louder tone than was
necessary; his voice rose with the kind of instinctive, elemental rage
under which he fled to covert with a sympathy that he found
troublesome.  "What I wish to know--what I insist on knowing--is, what
caused this attack?  It is something which happened since breakfast.  I
demand the nature of it--physical? mental? emotional?"

"You may call it electric," answered Jean Avery, with her own lovable
smile--half mischief, half pathos.

"I see.  The telephone."  Dr.