I
Murray Van Rensselaer had been waiting for an hour and a quarter in the
reception-room of the Blakeley Hospital.
He was not good at waiting. Things usually came at his call, or
sometimes even anticipated his desires. It was incredible that he
should suddenly find himself in such a maddening set of circumstances!
He still wore the great fur-lined overcoat in which he had arrived
after the accident, but he seemed to be unaware of it as he paced
excitedly up and down the stark leather-upholstered room.
Across the marble corridor he could just see the tip of white starched
linen that was the cap of the uniformed person with double-lensed
spectacles who sat at the roll-top desk and presided over this fiendish
place.
Three times he had pranced pompously across the tessellated floor and
demanded to know what had become of the patient he had brought in. She
had only looked him over coldly, impersonally, and reiterated that word
would be sent to him as soon as the examination was completed. Even
his name, which he had condescendingly mentioned, had failed to make
the slightest impression upon her. She had merely filed his immaculate
calling card and remanded him to the reception-room.
The tall clock in the corner, the only live thing in the room, seemed
to tick in eons, not seconds. He regarded it belligerently. Why should
a clock seem to have eyes that searched to your soul? What was a clock
doing there anyway, in a place where they regarded not time, and were
absorbed in their own terrible affairs? The clock seemed to be the only
connecting-link with the outside world.
He strode nearer and read the silver plate of the donor, inscribed in
memory of “Elizabeth,” and turned sharply back to the door again with
a haunting vision of the white-faced girl he had brought in a while
before. Bessie! Little Bessie Chapparelle! She was “Elizabeth” too.
What a cute kid she was when he first knew her! Strange that on this
day of all days he should have come upon her standing at that corner
after all these years, suddenly grown up and stunningly handsome!
And now she lay crumpled, somewhere up in those distant marble halls!
He shuddered in his heavy coat and mopped the cold perspiration
from his brows. If anything should happen to Bessie! And his fault!
Everybody would of course say it was his fault! He knew he was a
reckless driver. He knew he took chances, but he had always got by
before! If she hadn’t been so darned pretty, so surprisingly sweet
and unusual, and like the child she used to be--and that truck coming
around the corner at thirty-five miles an hour!
The air was full of antiseptics. It seemed to him that he had been
breathing it in until his head was swimming, that cold, pungent,
penetrating smell that dwelt within those white marble walls like a
living spirit of the dead!
Gad! What a place! Why did he stay? He could go home and telephone
later. Nobody was compelling him to stay. Bessie was a poor girl with
nobody to take her part. Nobody but her mother!
He halted in his excited walk. _Her mother!_ If anything happened to
Bessie somebody would have to tell her mother!
A door opened far in the upper marble regions, and the echo of a
delirious cry shivered down through the corridors. Rubber wheels
somewhere rolled a heavy object down a space and out of sound; voices
rose in a subdued murmur as if they passed a certain point and drifted
away from the main speech, drifted down the stairs, vague, detached
words. Then all was still again.
Something dragged at his heart. He had thought they were coming, and
now suddenly he was afraid to have them come. What a relief! Just a
little longer respite till he could get hold of himself. He wasn’t
at all fit, or things wouldn’t get hold of him this way. He had been
going the pace pretty hard since he left college. Too many highballs!
Too late at night!--Too many cigarettes! The old man was right! If
he hadn’t been so infernally offensive in the way he put it! But one
couldn’t of course go that pace forever and not feel it.
What was it he had been thinking about when those voices passed that
point above the stairs? Oh! Yes! Her mother! Some one would have to
tell her mother! She was a woman with a kind twinkle in her eyes.
One would find it terrible to quench that twinkle in her eyes! He
remembered how she had tied up his cut finger one day and given him a
cooky. Those were happy days!--Ah! _There!_ There was that sound of
an opening door again!--Voices!--Footsteps! Hark! They were coming!
Yes,--they were coming! Rubber heels on marble treads! And now he was
in a frenzy of fear.
Bessie, little blue-eyed Bessie with the gold hair all about her white
face!--
The steps came on down the hall, and he held his breath in the shelter
of a heavy tan-colored velvet portière. He must get himself in hand
before he faced any one. If he only hadn’t left his flask in the car!
Oh, but of course! The car was smashed up! What was he thinking about?
But there would be other flasks! If only he could get out of this!
The nurse came on down the hall. He could see her reflection in the
plate glass of the front door that was within his vision as he stood
with his back toward the desk. She was going straight to the desk with
a message!
The front door-knob rattled.
He glared impatiently at the blurred interruption to his vision of
the nurse. A sallow man with a bandaged head was fumbling with the
door-knob, and the white uniform of the nurse was no longer plain. He
held his breath and listened:
“Well, is there any change?” asked the voice behind the roll-top desk,
impassively.
“Yes, she’s dead!” answered the nurse.
“Well, you better go down to that man in the reception-room. He’s been
pestering the life out of me. He thinks he’s the only one!--”
“I can’t!” said the nurse sharply. “I’ve got to call up the police
station first. The doctor said--” She lowered her voice inaudibly. The
man with the bandaged head had managed the door-knob at last.
The door swung wide, noiselessly, on its well-oiled hinges, letting in
the bandaged man; and as he limped heavily in, a shadow slipped from
the folds of the heavy curtain and passed behind him into the night.