MRS. BROWN’S FAILURE.
With her eye still fixed upon her burden, she glanced up at the number
of the door--333. She had been determined all through not to forget
that. Then she turned the latch and crept in. The chamber also was dark
after the gaslight on the stairs, but that was so much the better. She
herself had put out the two candles on the dressing-table before she had
left her husband. As she was closing the door behind her she paused, and
could hear that he was sleeping. She was well aware that she had been
long absent--quite long enough for a man to fall into slumber who was
given that way. She must have been gone, she thought, fully an hour.
There had been no end to that turning over of napkins which she had so
well known to be altogether vain. She paused at the centre-table of the
room, still looking at the mustard, which she now delicately dried from
off her hand. She had had no idea that it would have been so difficult
to carry so light and so small an affair. But there it was, and nothing
had been lost. She took some small instrument from the washing-stand,
and with the handle collected the flowing fragments into the centre.
Then the question occurred to her whether, as her husband was sleeping
so sweetly, it would be well to disturb him. She listened again, and
felt that the slight murmur of a snore with which her ears were regaled
was altogether free from any real malady in the throat. Then it occurred
to her that, after all, fatigue perhaps had only made him cross. She
bethought herself how, during the whole journey, she had failed to
believe in his illness. What meals he had eaten! How thoroughly he had
been able to enjoy his full complement of cigars! And then that glass of
brandy, against which she had raised her voice slightly in feminine
opposition. And now he was sleeping there like an infant, with full,
round, perfected, almost sonorous workings of the throat. Who does not
know that sound, almost of two rusty bits of iron scratching against
each other, which comes from a suffering windpipe? There was no
semblance of that here. Why disturb him when he was so thoroughly
enjoying that rest which, more certainly than anything else, would fit
him for the fatigue of the morrow’s journey?
I think that, after all her labor, she would have left the pungent
cataplasm on the table and have crept gently into bed beside him, had
not a thought suddenly struck her of the great injury he had been doing
her if he were not really ill. To send her down there, in a strange
hotel, wandering among the passages, in the middle of the night, subject
to the contumely of any one who might meet her, on a commission which,
if it were not sanctified by absolute necessity, would be so thoroughly
objectionable! At this moment she hardly did believe that he had ever
really been ill. Let him have the cataplasm; if not as a remedy, then as
a punishment. It could, at any rate, do him no harm. It was with an idea
of avenging rather than of justifying the past labors of the night that
she proceeded at once to quick action.
Leaving the candle on the table, so that she might steady her right hand
with the left, she hurried stealthily to the bedside. Even though he was
behaving badly to her, she would not cause him discomfort by waking him
roughly. She would do a wife’s duty to him as a British matron should.
She would not only put the warm mixture on his neck, but would sit
carefully by him for twenty minutes, so that she might relieve him from
it when the proper period should have come for removing the
counter-irritation from his throat. There would doubtless be some little
difficulty in this--in collecting the mustard after it had served her
purpose. Had she been at home, surrounded by her own comforts, the
application would have been made with some delicate linen bag, through
which the pungency of the spice would have penetrated with strength
sufficient for the purpose. But the circumstance of the occasion had not
admitted this. She had, she felt, done wonders in achieving so much
success as this which she had obtained. If there should be anything
disagreeable in the operation, he must submit to it. He had asked for
mustard for his throat, and mustard he should have.
As these thoughts passed quickly through her mind, leaning over him in
the dark, with her eye fixed on the mixture lest it should slip, she
gently raised his flowing beard with her left hand, and with her other
inverted rapidly, steadily but very softly fixed the handkerchief on his
throat. From the bottom of his chin to the spot at which the
collar-bones meeting together form the orifice of the chest, it covered
the whole noble expanse. There was barely time for a glance, but never
had she been more conscious of the grand proportions of that manly
throat. A sweet feeling of pity came upon her, causing her to determine
to relieve his sufferings in the shorter space of fifteen minutes. He
had been lying on his back, with his lips apart, and as she held back
his beard, that and her hand nearly covered the features of his face.
But he made no violent effort to free himself from the encounter. He did
not even move an arm or a leg. He simply emitted a snore louder than any
that had come before. She was aware that it was not his wont to be so
loud--that there was generally something more delicate and perhaps more
querulous in his nocturnal voice, but then the present circumstances
were exceptional. She dropped the beard very softly--and there on the
pillow before her lay the face of a stranger. She had put the mustard
plaster on the wrong man.
Not Priam wakened in the dead of night, not Dido when first she learned
that Æneas had fled, not Othello when he learned that Desdmona had been
chaste, not Medea when she became conscious of her slaughtered children,
could have been more struck with horror than was this British matron as
she stood for a moment gazing with awe on that stranger’s bed. One vain,
half-completed, snatching grasp she made at the handkerchief, and then
drew back her hand. If she were to touch him, would he not wake at once,
and find her standing there in his bedroom? And then how could she
explain it? By what words could she so quickly make him know the
circumstances of that strange occurrence that he should accept it all
before he had said a word that might offend her? For a moment she stood
all but paralyzed after that faint ineffectual movement of her arm. Then
he stirred his head uneasily on the pillow, opened wider his lips, and
twice in rapid succession snored louder than before. She started back a
couple of paces, and with her body placed between him and the candle,
with her face averted, but with her hand still resting on the foot of
the bed, she endeavored to think what duty required of her.
She had injured the man. Though she had done it most unwittingly, there
could be no doubt but that she had injured him. If for a moment she
could be brave, the injury might in truth be little; but how disastrous
might be the consequences if she were now in her cowardice to leave
him, who could tell? Applied for fifteen or twenty minutes, a mustard
plaster may be the salvation of a throat ill at ease; but if left there
throughout the night, upon the neck of a strong man, ailing nothing,
only too prone in his strength to slumber soundly, how sad, how painful,
for aught she knew how dangerous, might be the effects! And surely it
was an error which any man with a heart in his bosom might pardon!
Judging from what little she had seen of him, she thought that he must
have a heart in his bosom. Was it not her duty to wake him, and then
quietly to extricate him from the embarrassment which she had brought
upon him?
But in doing this what words should she use? How should she wake him?
How should she make him understand her goodness, her beneficence, her
sense of duty, before he should have jumped from the bed and rushed to
the bell, and have summoned all above, and all below, to the rescue?
“Sir, sir, do not move, do not stir, do not scream. I have put a mustard
plaster on your throat, thinking that you were my husband. As yet no
harm has been done. Let me take it off, and then hold your peace
forever.” Where is the man of such native constancy and grace of spirit
that, at the first moment of waking with a shock, he could hear these
words from the mouth of an unknown woman by his bedside, and at once
obey them to the letter? Would he not surely jump from his bed, with
that horrid compound falling about him--from which there could be no
complete relief unless he would keep his present attitude without a
motion. The picture which presented itself to her mind as to his
probable conduct was so terrible that she found herself unable to incur
the risk.
Then an idea presented itself to her mind. We all know how in a moment
quick thoughts will course through the subtle brain. She would find that
porter and send him to explain it all. There should be no concealment
now. She would tell the story and would bid him to find the necessary
aid. Alas! as she told herself that she would do so, she knew well that
she was only running from the danger which it was her duty to encounter.
Once again she put out her hand as though to return along the bed. Then
thrice he snorted louder than before, and moved up his knee uneasily
beneath the clothes as though the sharpness of the mustard were already
working upon his skin. She watched him for a moment longer, and then,
with the candle in her hand, she fled.
Poor human nature! Had he been an old man, even a middle-aged man, she
would not have left him to his unmerited sufferings. As it was, though
she completely recognized her duty, and knew what justice and goodness
demanded of her, she could not do it. But there was still left to her
that plan of sending the night porter to him. It was not till she was
out of the room and had gently closed the door behind her that she began
to bethink herself how she had made the mistake. With a glance of her
eye she looked up, and then saw the number on the door--353. Remarking
to herself, with a Briton’s natural criticism on things French, that
those horrid foreigners do not know how to make their figures, she
scudded rather than ran along the corridor, and then down some stairs
and along another passage--so that she might not be found in the
neighborhood should the poor man in his agony rush rapidly from his bed.
In the confusion of her first escape she hardly ventured to look for her
own passage--nor did she in the least know how she had lost her way
when she came up-stairs with the mustard in her hand. But at the present
moment her chief object was the night porter. She went on descending
till she came again to that vestibule, and looking up at the clock saw
that it was now past one. It was not yet midnight when she left her
husband, but she was not at all astonished at the lapse of time. It
seemed to her as though she had passed a night among these miseries.
And, oh, what a night! But there was yet much to be done. She must find
that porter, and then return to her own suffering husband. Ah! what now
should she say to him? If he should really be ill, how should she
assauge him? And yet how more than ever necessary was it that they
should leave that hotel early in the morning--that they should leave
Paris by the very earliest and quickest train that would take them as
fugitives from their present dangers! The door of the salon was open,
but she had no courage to go in search of a second supply. She would
have lacked strength to carry it up the stairs. Where, now, oh! where
was that man? From the vestibule she made her way into the hall, but
everything seemed to be deserted. Through the glass she could see a
light in the court beyond, but she could not bring herself to endeavor
even to open the hall doors.
And now she was very cold--chilled to her very bones. All this had been
done at Christmas, and during such severity of weather as had never
before been experienced by living Parisians. A feeling of great pity for
herself gradually came upon her. What wrong had she done, that she
should be so grievously punished? Why should she be driven to wander
about in this way till her limbs were failing her? And then so
absolutely important as it was that her strength should support her in
the morning! The man would not die even though he were left there
without aid, to rid himself of the cataplasm as best he might. Was it
absolutely necessary that she should disgrace herself?
But she could not even procure the means of disgracing herself, if that
telling her story to the night porter would have been a disgrace. She
did not find him, and at last resolved to make her way back to her own
room without further quest. She began to think that she had done all
that she could do. No man was ever killed by a mustard plaster on his
throat. His discomfort at the worst would not be worse than hers had
been--or, too probably, than that of her poor husband. So she went back
up the stairs and along the passages, and made her way on this occasion
to the door of her room without any difficulty. The way was so well
known to her that she could not but wonder that she had failed before.
But now her hands had been empty, and her eyes had been at her full
command. She looked up, and there was the number, very manifest on this
occasion--333. She opened the door most gently, thinking that her
husband might be sleeping as soundly as that other man had slept, and
she crept into the room.