AS always happens in such cases it was several minutes after the crash
before anyone with an ounce of reason in his head appeared on the scene.
Then a fellow—he was in the dog line, “and knew a thing or two”—dropped
in and took a rapid and comprehensive view of affairs, and by the help
of infinite blasphemy did what was best under the circumstances.
Strange was only stunned. After a time he sat up, and looked about him.
A howl from Bell struck on his ears. He turned and saw the horses
shivering among the broken mass of carriage, and the dog-man rubbing
their noses to a soft gurgling accompaniment.
“Where, where?” he asked faintly, and in reply to a pointed finger,
lifted himself up with both hands, and groped half-blindly to a
huddled-up lump of muslin and lace.
He just knew she was lying there, cold, and white, and moveless. He
touched her forehead; it was like marble. He laid his hand on her heart;
it was still.
A sudden wonder seized him as to who had undressed and covered her with
such lovely decency, and he looked with half vague inquiry at the two
women hovering near.
As a matter of fact it was the dog-man who had done it, with his eyes
turned on the two women whom he cursed foully the whole time.
“Have you sent for a doctor?” demanded Strange, forcing the dizziness
out of his brain.
“Yes, yes,” was yelled from twenty throats, “and here he is.”
He was a sufficiently foolish young man, and seemed floored.
“Live far from here?” he asked.
“In Ebury Square,” said Strange, “is there any danger in taking her so
far?”
“None, if conveyed on boards in a four-wheeler.”
Strange saw at once that the dog-man was the only one who had his senses
about him; Bell, though absolutely unhurt, was altogether useless, and
the other man had been left at the inn.
“You know the horses and cabs here about?” said Strange. “Get the
smoothest cab and some boards, and here, you’ll want help, don’t spare
tips.”
The man went, and was back before the doctor had made up his mind what
to say to cover his ignorance.
A fat woman, who had lent the mattress to cover the boards, and who had
been hovering over his wife for some time, here called Strange aside.
“You had better have your own doctor at once,” she said, “that there
young man is soft. She wants skill, and, sir,” she added, with a soft
twiddle of her thumb, “I have my suspicions.”
Strange looked enquiringly at her, and a cold shiver ran down to his
toes.
For hours after she was brought home Gwen lay insensible. The doctor did
nothing.
“Her physique alone will help her,” he said, when Strange seemed to
demand action of some sort.
“She will regain her consciousness all right,” he said. “There is
another complication, I believe,” he added, looking keenly at Strange,
“but the treatment of that must come later.”
Again the horrid coldness paralyzed Humphrey’s very marrow.
“In view of this,” the doctor went on, “what about her mother being
summoned?”
Strange thought for a moment. Her mother was, of course, quite out of
the question, and he remembered that Mrs. Fellowes was ill.
“Is this necessary at once?” he asked.
“No, I will tell you when the need arises—that is, if any should. Her
physique would tide over almost anything.”
As the clock began to strike midnight, Strange saw the doctor stoop
suddenly, and lay his head on Gwen’s heart, then open her eyes and touch
her eyeballs.
When he raised himself his face had altered.
“Now we shall soon see a change,” he said, “perhaps you had better stand
back, even the shock of joy might hurt her.”
Strange gave a ghastly grin in the shadow of the curtain.
By a superhuman effort in all those hours of anguished waiting, even
when the doctor and the nurse, in their consideration, had left him
alone for the purpose, Strange had never once kissed or caressed his
wife, or even so much as touched her except in matters of service.
Gwen stirred almost imperceptibly, the doctor looked round the curtain
at Strange.
“Touch her, and speak to her very gently,” he said.
He bent gently over her.
“Gwen, wake up, dear, wake up, sweetheart!”
He wondered the next second “why the devil” he said it.
Perhaps the absurdity of the words struck Gwen’s grim sense of humour,
she certainly stirred uneasily and made a feeble pathetic little try to
throw up the limp hand that lay on the quilt.
Strange moved back under cover of his curtain.
“Good!” said the doctor, “try again.” He was watching Strange’s face
with some interest.
“He has aged ten years in eight hours, poor devil!” he thought, then he
took a long survey of his patient, “I wonder if she is worth it all, she
is a trifle too superb for me! She looks like one of those women who
keep their flesh too much under.”
Gradually Gwen’s stirrings grew stronger and more frequent, and at last
she opened her eyes slowly and looked out with vague questioning.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“You have been ill, dear.”
“Ill?” she murmured perplexedly. “I want light.”
The doctor moved the screens from before the candles, Gwen raised her
head feebly.
“What is it?” she asked again.
The doctor lifted her and gave her a draught he had ready, she was too
weak to resist him, and presently she fell off into a drowsy
half-slumber.
After what seemed to Strange a lifetime, she again moved, woke, and
repeated the old question, this time audibly and with a tinge of
imperiousness.
“Ah, she’ll do now,” said the doctor to himself, grinning a saturnine
grin, “when a woman shows her pet weakness she’s out of danger.”
He put back the screen. “I am thankful to say,” he said to her, “you are
the sole sufferer, and you’ll soon be all right again.”
Humphrey was well then. She shut her dazed eyes and tried to think, but
she could only hover off into drowsiness.
After a time she opened her eyes again and said,
“I would like my maid, perhaps you would tell Sir Humphrey that I am
better.”
“Your husband hardly requires the information,” said the doctor drily.
“I shall leave Lady Strange in your hands, Sir Humphrey, and I shall
remain on the premises in case you want me.”
His wife turned her eyes away and began searching for her handkerchief,
he stooped and gave it to her.
The sweat still clung to his ghastly forehead and hung on his hair.
“He said you were not hurt,” she said, “you look as if you were.”
“It’s been rather a disturbing day,” he said, with sudden bitterness.
“Never mind me, I’ll be as jolly as a sandboy after a bath.”
She turned herself uneasily on the pillow and shut her eyes. It was
horrible to have him there above her.
“Poor little child, poor little unfinished thing!” he thought pitifully.
“Shall I send your maid, dear?”
“Yes, please, and won’t—oh, won’t you rest?”
“Yes, I’m off,” he said, in his old cheery voice, and he went outside
the door and watched there till morning.
She was very white the next morning, and kept falling off into drowsy
little sleeps, but she declared she was all right and meant to get up;
the necessity of staying in bed was a new one and she loathed it.
She felt more in her husband’s power, lying there ill; she grew
suspicious too, for the first time in her life, and set herself to
search for meanings in looks.
“I am demoralized,” she kept repeating. Then she turned her face from
the light, and neither spoke nor looked except when she absolutely had
to.
Strange could make nothing at all of her, and he soon left her for sheer
mercy’s sake.
When he had gone she raised herself up and rang the bell.
“Give me what I am to take and then leave me for two hours, I will sleep
if I can.”
The girl brought her a bowl of beef-tea, and she plunged heroically into
it.
“I am doing my duty,” she said to herself, with a sneer, “but oh, will
this liquid never get less? on the contrary, it seems to increase. You
won’t let me be disturbed, will you, Gill?” she said.
As soon as the girl had gone she got up and locked the door, then she
rolled up her hair, put on a dressing-gown, and sat down on the floor.
“I have two hours in which to have it out with myself—this horror made
manifest,” she said. “How was it that this most natural of all
complications never entered my head? I wasn’t even warned by those new
and altogether abominable feelings of weakness.”
She leaned her head against the ottoman and shivered, then she reached
over for a shawl that lay on it, and wrapped herself up in it, but still
she shivered.
She stood up and was about to go back to her bed, but she turned sharply
round with another shudder, “Bah! I can’t,” she said and throwing a fur
rug on to a couch she lay down there and soon grew warm enough to
continue her dreary meditations.
“And so I, I, Gwen Strange, will soon be the mother of a child—and
Humphrey its father!”
She hid her face in the soft fur. “It is ghastly!” she cried, “it is
degradation, feeling towards him as I do, and as I’ve always done! I am
debased to think that any man should have the least part of a woman so
terribly in his power, when she can’t, can’t, can’t,” she almost
shrieked, “give him the best. What do girls know of the things they make
lawful for themselves? If they did, if they were shown the nature of
their sacrifice, then marriage would cease till it carried love,
absolute love in its train. Was I mad, my God! was I mad, with all my
boasts of sanity?—Nothing, nothing,” she moaned, “but perfect love makes
marriage sacred, nothing, neither God’s law nor man’s, and now the
climax has come here in the outward and visible sign of my shame—I have
sinned, not only in the present and the past but in the future, I have
hurt an innocent unborn creature, I have set a barrier between it and
its mother.
“And Humphrey! Now I must sit under those deep all-pervading eyes of his
and feel myself ten thousand times his chattel. Now we have a common
hope, a common interest, almost a common existence, now every touch of
his, every look of his, will burn me and remind me of my shame. Talk of
the shame of women who have children out of the pale of marriage, it’s
nothing to the shame of those who have children and don’t love. Those
others, they have the excuse of love, that’s natural, that purifies
their shame; this, our life—the portion of quite half the well-to-do
world—this is unnatural, no sin can beat it for cruel baseness!”
She huddled into her rug and lay silent, wild mad thoughts whirling
through her brain. Gradually she grew calmer and more reasonable.
“At least I can do one thing,” she whispered.
“I will do all I can to make up to my child for the harm I have done it
ignorantly, I will take care of myself, I will do everything I can to
bring a natural creature into the world, I will try to protect it from
its heredity. I am glad I know, I will do all I can to right your wrong,
poor child!”
She waved her hands to and fro in a sort of dumb agony.
“And I could not even kiss your father, I couldn’t even kiss him when we
both thought we were facing death!”
She suddenly laughed aloud, a low curious mocking laugh, and put her
hands up to her head.
“I must rest!” she cried, “I must not think any more. I will have some
more of that draught, it makes thinking a pulpy sweet sort of muddle, it
takes all the keen edges off truth. If I did right,” she went on
throwing her arms back, “I would go out on a crusade to girls and tell
them all the truth, then, let them sin in knowledge not in ignorance,
let them know that love, perfect love, is the only sanctification of
marriage! Churches and rings are a mere farce.”
She had come to the last shred of her strength; she crept into bed, and
rang for her draught.