Braine's carriage stops at the door, and he gets out and runs hurriedly
up the steps. It is three o'clock, and at a quarter past he has an
appointment. He has come home for important papers which he had
forgotten.
As he enters the door, Dobson says with some little excitement in his
tone:
"I'm glad you've come, Mr. Braine. Mrs.--"
"Mrs. Braine?" Edgar suddenly takes the words out of his mouth. He
remembers that he did not see Helen in the morning, and that when he
went to her door, her maid said she was sleeping.
Dobson replies apologetically and with anxiety:
"She would not let us send for you--"
Braine springs up the stairs. He is suddenly seized with a nervous
trembling, and stands for a moment in the hall to recover himself. He
opens Helen's door. She lies on the divan, and Susanne, her maid, is
moving quietly about the room, adjusting things.
At one of the windows a strange woman sits reading unconcernedly. Helen
is apparently asleep; but when he enters, she opens her eyes and makes a
quick attempt to get off the divan.
The two women leave the room, and Helen holds out her hand with a smile,
and says eagerly:
"Well, how are things going?"
She is deathly pale, and even while she speaks, there is anguish in her
face, though she controls her voice perfectly. Even in the supreme
moment she will try to be "interested."
Braine is surprised, relieved. He does not know just what he expected,
but he knows that he experiences an almost terrible relief. Helen! her
usual lovely, eager, smiling self. Suddenly she sways a little, and
Braine throws his arms about her. He says anxiously:
"You are ill. Why did you not send for me, Helen?"
She certainly is ill; so ill that her smile is ghastly, but she is
conscious of having done her duty, and of having appeared "interested."
She sits down upon the divan, and Braine sits beside her with his arms
about her. She replies as carelessly as the situation permits:
"Oh, no, I'm not ill--that is, nothing special is the matter, you know.
There is no need to take you from the Senate."
Braine replies almost sternly:
"If you have even a headache it is sufficient to 'take me from the
Senate.' You have been suffering all day, and have not given me the dear
privilege of being near to help you bear it. It hurts me. It suggests a
lack of--of faith in my sympathy--"
She puts her hand over his mouth. Though her words do not indicate it,
her expression is one of a happy sort of despair. She would not ask for
such an expression of love as this, but it is very dear, very grateful
to her, just now. It was not expected; not that he is ever other than
tender and loving, but she finds herself surprised and grateful for
every expression of his love. She does not know why she no longer
expects it, or why it is a surprise, but it is so. She catches her
breath softly, but does not indicate her emotion in any other way. She
has an idea that he will be impressed with her weakness and his
responsibility if she shows him how much this means to her. She only
says carelessly:
"Yes, I know, but there was nothing the matter, you see. Mrs. Case is
here because Susanne thought she ought to have a few weeks in which to
get accustomed to the house--"
"A few weeks--I don't know, Helen--" He looks anxious and doubtful. She
says quickly:
"Yes, yes, Ed. A--few weeks--_I_ know," decisively and encouragingly.
She has not been honest with him as to the time of her coming peril. She
has had one wild desire to have him away, out of town, anywhere, that he
may not be worried or annoyed by her; that the approach of the crisis
may not interrupt his work.
Her tone reassures him, and he remembers his appointment, and that he
will be late. He says, tenderly:
"I will be home soon, dear. I have an appointment with Grayson now, but
will come home as soon as we are through."
She nods cheerfully, and says:
"All right! don't neglect anything for me, Ed--it is not necessary.
Isn't to-night the affair at Dalget's?"
"Yes, but I'm not going."
She lays her hand on his arm appealingly:
"Go, Ed. Please go. I want you to. I--"
Suddenly she stops. Braine thinks, by the expression of her face that
she is dying, it is so drawn and old, in a moment. She draws a long,
quivering sigh of agony. Her fingers clutch his arm convulsively. She
makes no sound, not the least moan, nothing but that sigh that goes to
his heart.
Braine watches her, holding his breath. She has slipped to her knees,
and is clinging with the grip of a strong man to him. He is panic
stricken, horrified, and cries in an awful voice:
"Helen--Helen!" And she lies limp and white in his arms. He is quivering
in every limb. He covers her moist hand with kisses. There are tears in
his eyes, and he cries aloud with a groan: "Great God!"
Helen hears him and opens her eyes. She smiles dreamily, and makes a
weak little movement to touch his face. She says in a faint, comfortable
voice:
"It's over now, Ed. Go to Grayson."
His face grows harsh, and he says in a sudden fury:
"Damn Grayson!"
She smiles. There is a certain comfort in that ebullition. She lies on
the divan, and Braine wanders around the room, aimlessly. The languor
she feels is possessing him almost. He is oppressed with a sense of
impending disaster and his utter helplessness in face of it.
The situation seems to become actual to him for the first time. He feels
some frantic desire to avert this horrible something that must happen.
He feels suddenly like a weak, helpless child, and is seized with a
desire to throw himself at her feet, and weep and be comforted.
In another moment, he feels like a great, strong man, with a desire to
throw his arms about her, and prove his power to avert every agony of
hers. The next moment he is on his knees beside her, imploring
forgiveness in an incoherent, frenzied way, for this guilt that suddenly
oppresses him! He feels like a criminal, and keeps saying brokenly:
"Oh Helen, forgive me! forgive me!"
She is half asleep, and opens her eyes to smile at him. She says,
dreamily:
"I--I never loved you as I do now. If it had not been for your
wretchedness, I could have exulted in that agony."
Braine covers her hands with kisses. He dares not kiss her face. She
looks like a beautiful white saint. He touches her hands reverently. He
draws the folds of her gown closer about her.
Presently she says:
"Ask Mrs. Case to come here. You go down-stairs now, if you won't go
out. I will call you if I want you."
He protests, but resistance seems to excite her, and he obeys. He does
not go down-stairs, however. He stays in the corridor just outside her
door. For hours he walks tirelessly back and forth. Once in a while he
hears that terrible sigh of suffering, and he leans heavily against the
wall. The sweat springs out on his forehead in great drops. His
suffering seems, for the moment, as terrible as hers. Once he groans
aloud, and at once remembers that she has not made the faintest moan,
and says between his teeth:
"Good God! A man could not endure that."
The nurse comes to the door now and then, sometimes calling him in, and
then he kneels by the still, white woman, who gives his hands little
weak, responsive pressures, and smiles at him. He remains until she
motions him away, imperatively.
Night has settled. The lights are ablaze through the house. Dobson has
spoken to him, and said that dinner was ready, and he has not heard him.
He walks back and forth, back and forth, in the corridor. The heavy
sighs sob more frequently through the half open door. Once Mrs. Case
comes and tells him to send for the physician, and he gives the order,
incoherently saying:
"Dr. Frame, and tell him to bring some more with him."
At this, Mrs. Case smiles quietly. The time passes fitfully. He looks at
his watch once, and it is 8:30, and all is quiet in Helen's room.
In what seems to him but the next moment, he hears her make some moaning
exclamation, and a slight rustling and moving about occurs. The agony
lasts for what he thinks is three quarters of an hour, but when he looks
at his watch again, it is only 8:40.
Helen's dog comes to the foot of the stairs, and looks up, and Braine
leans over the balusters, and looks down at it. Once, he whispers down
to it, as though it were a human being:
"It's terrible, isn't it?" and walks on, back and forth, through the
hall again.
The physician came an hour ago. Braine knows that the nurse has been to
her dinner, and feels a sudden violent disgust and aversion for her that
she can eat.
Dr. Frame did not bring "some more," but after a time he comes into the
dressing-room, where Braine now is, and sends for a colleague. Braine
turns pale, but asks no questions, as he gives the order.
How the time drags! He pauses now and then in his walk, and leans weakly
against something. He suddenly realizes that his brows are drawn, and
his forehead scowled, and his hands clenched, and his teeth set. He is
made conscious of it by hearing himself groan aloud, and then he relaxes
for an instant until he hears a sound in the next room, again, and he
finds himself experiencing so sharp an agony that he throws himself on
the divan with his head in the cushions where she has lain.
He is in her dressing-room now and there is an odor of her presence in
all the atmosphere. Her gown lies on a chair; in front of the dressing
table lies a twisted handkerchief that tells the story of a moment of
agony. He looks about at these things, and says under his breath:
"Oh, my God!"
The other physician has been in the next room for a long time now.
Braine looks at his watch. It is past three. He tries to think how long
this has lasted. He cannot remember whether it was to-day or yesterday
that he came in here.
He stands in a half-daze in the middle of the floor, trying to recollect
when. Suddenly an unearthly shriek comes from the next room. He
stiffens like a wooden man. He puts his hands to his throat, and makes a
peculiar metallic sound.
There is silence in the next room. He stands staring at the closed door.
He thinks nothing. In a moment he hears another scream that causes his
heart to give one wild bound, and then to seem pulseless. The silence in
the room is intense. He stares fixedly at the door. The stillness is
terrible. Gradually he becomes impressed that the woman--Helen, his
wife, is dead.
He does not move. His mind begins to work. He sees a face like the dawn,
a primrose face, with eyes as clear and untroubled as a child's; her
hair a sunny glory in a little dismal room.
He feels the touch of a cool, soft hand, a touch as comfortable and calm
as that of an angel's wing. Then comes to him the memory of a time when
the touch of that hand thrilled him as no other touch on earth or in
heaven could do; of the time when the sweet, loving girl became a
glowing woman, intoxicating him, making him drunk with joy: and he again
experiences that first sensation of proprietorship and possession.
And suddenly there appears to him the figure of a woman with a ghastly,
drawn face, a face that he does not know, with staring eyes that gleam
glassily, and accuse. He feels the touch of a rigid hand, cold and
unresponsive. His eyes seem starting from his head.
The door opens, and one of the physicians stands looking at him in a
startled way. There is something frightful in this man, with clenched
hands, the veins like whip cords on his neck and forehead, and his
ghastly face.
Braine says in a strange voice:
"Helen--"
"Lives; the child is dead."