penknife under his pillow," he explained. "I have taken care that he
does not do any more mischief."
He nodded in the direction of the patient, and Sister Marion, glancing
that way, saw that the man lying on his back had his hands tied to the
iron bed-rail above his head. In the reaction from the late attack he
was lying absolutely still, and she saw, to her surprise, that in the
eyes fixed on her face there was recognition.
"He is conscious," she whispered. "Come outside and let me attend to
you."
He followed her to the ward kitchen, the room used by the nurses for
the preparation of the patients' food, but empty now.
The doctor smiled and jested, but the blood flowed, the wound smarted,
he was a little pale.
"He _meant_ to hurt you?" she asked, through her set teeth.
"He meant to murder me, the brute!" the doctor said.
"Never mind," she soothed him; "I am accountable for him now. I will
see to it he never hurts you again."
She felt herself to be a different woman; in some curious way
emancipated. It had needed just the wounding of this man to change her.
She was ashamed no longer to show him what she felt, nor had she any
more a shrinking from doing what she now believed it right to do.
She stood above him as he sat in a new docility before her, and bathed
the cut upon his temple, with lingering, tender touch, pushing back the
hair to get at it. She knelt before him and dressed the cut upon his
hand.
"I managed to do this myself in trying to get the knife away from him,"
the doctor explained.
With his unwounded hand he took an ivory-handled penknife, stained red
with blood, from his pocket, and held it before her eyes. It had been a
gift from her to the man who was now her husband in the early days of
their acquaintance, before the thought of marriage had risen between
them. With all the valuables he had pawned and lost and thrown away,
strange that this worthless gift of the girl whose life he had ruined
should have stuck to him; stranger still that after all those years she
should be able to recognise it beyond possibility of doubt! He held it
towards the basin of water as though to rinse it, but she took it from
him and laid it aside.
"Let it be!" she said. "I shall know what to do with the knife."
The doctor's outside patients might be crying aloud for him; it was
more than noontide, and he should long have been about his work; the
patient in the private ward should have had Sister Marion at his side;
but the pair lingered in the little red-and-white tiled ward kitchen,
bathed in the warm rays of the golden afternoon sun. The dressing of
the wounds was a long business, and to the ministering woman heavenly
sweet.
Over the cut upon his forehead the short, dark hair had to be combed.
By altering the place of parting this was easily done. And Sister
Marion, looking down upon him to see the effect, thrilled to find eyes,
usually cold and preoccupied, fixed in a rapture of adoration upon her
face.
"No woman in the world has such a tender touch as you," he said. "My
mother used to kiss my hurts to make them well. Will you do that too
for me?"
Then the woman with murder in her heart stooped and kissed him tenderly
as a mother upon his brow, knelt for an instant before him, and kissed
his hand.
"Good-bye," she said, "Good-bye;" and without another word left him and
went upon her business to the private ward.
* * * * *
The recognising eyes were upon her as she opened the door. "I did not
have much trouble to find you, this time," the man said. "I didn't even
come here of my own accord. I don't know anything about it, except that
I feel infernally bad. Can't you give me something, Marion?"
"I will give you something presently," she said. "I wish to talk to you
a little first."
"Not until you've untied my hands. What are they tied up for, pray?"
"To keep you from working mischief."
"Have I done anything to that long chap that went out with you? If so
I'll make amends--I'll make any amends in my power."
"You shall make amends. Don't be afraid."
"You speak as if you had not a particle of pity in you; you are as hard
and cold as a stone, as you always were----"
"Not always," she said, grimly--"unluckily for me."
"Any woman who had a grain of pity in her would pity me now. I feel so
frightfully bad, Marion; I believe I am going to die."
"I believe you are."
He called on the name of God at that, and tried ineffectually to rise,
and tugged frantically at the bandages which bound him. She watched
him, standing at the foot of his bed, and could smile as she watched.
"You are afraid to die," she said; "I knew you would be. You were
always a coward."
He cursed her then. His voice was feeble now; it had lost the strength
of delirium. There was something awful in the sound of such words in
such trembling, exhausted tones; yet Marion, listening, smiled on.
"I will not be nursed by you!" he cried. "I won't have you near me,
glaring at me with your Gorgon stare. Send another nurse to me--send
the doctor. Get out of my sight, Gorgon! Don't look at me. Go away!"
The door behind her had been standing a little ajar; she turned round
and shut it. The window was open to the spring air; she closed and
locked it. "Help yourself," she said.
"I'll rouse the place," he threatened, and tried to cry aloud, but his
voice died weakly in his throat. He broke down at that, and began to
whine a little.
"Have some pity," he wept. "I'm a suffering man, and you're a woman,
and I'm in your hands. It's only decent, it's only human, to be sorry
for me--to do something for me. My tongue's like leather; give me
something to drink. A drop of water, even. Why should you begrudge me a
drop of water?"
"There's none in the room," she said; "and I won't leave you to fetch
it. There's only this." She held up to his eyes the quieting mixture
the doctor had ordered. "There is only one dose, unfortunately. If the
bottle had been full, I should have given you the lot, and there would
have been no further trouble. As it is, you can drink what there is.
The time has not come round for it; but time is not going to be of much
matter to you, henceforth; we need not wait for it."
He cursed her in his fainting voice again, and again faintly struggled.
But she held the bottle steadily to his lips, and he drained it to the
last drop.
"That will quiet you," she said, and sat beside him on the bed. From
the pocket of her apron she drew the penknife with which the doctor had
been wounded. "Do you remember this?" she asked him. "There is blood
upon it, but that is going to be wiped out."
He looked at her with eyes from which the consciousness was dying, and
did not struggle any more.
"Do you remember it?" she asked again. "You had cut your name and mine
on a tree in the garden of my home, and you asked for the penknife as a
memento. Is it possible you can have forgotten?"
She spoke to him with great deliberation, holding the penknife before
his eyes, and watching the drooping of the heavy lids.
"Strange, isn't it, that, so much having been flung away, you should
have kept this miserable little keepsake with you till to-day? I
suppose its small blade is its sharp blade still?"
Slowly she opened it, and stood up.
With an effort he opened his eyes upon her. "I am dead with sleep," he
said, in a hollow, far-away voice; "but I can't sleep with my hands
tied. Set me free, Marion! Set me free!"
"It is that I am going to do," she said.
She leant above him then, and, with fingers that never trembled,
unbuttoned the wrists of his flannel shirt and rolled the sleeves back
to his shoulders. How thin the arms were; how plainly the veins showed
up in the white, moist skin. Across one that rose like a fine blue cord
from the bend of the arm she drew the sharp blade of the knife. He gave
but the slightest start, so heavy was he with sleep. She knelt upon his
pillow, leant across him, and in the other arm severed the
corresponding vein.
She had thought that the blood would flow quietly--how it spurted and
spouted and ran! Before she could untie his hands and lay them beneath
the blanket at his sides the white, lean arms were crimson with blood.
At this rate, it would not take him long to die! She rinsed the blood
from the little penknife in a basin of water, and turning down the
blanket, laid it upon his breast.
"You have kept it a good many years," she said, mockingly. "Keep it
still."
Some blood was on her own hands--how could she have been so clumsy!
They were all smeared with blood; they--horrible!--_smelt_ of blood.
She flew towards the basin to rinse them, but before she could reach
it, without a warning sound the door opened, and the matron was in the
room.
With the tell-tale hands behind her back, Sister Marion stood before
her, intervening between her and the bed.
"Your patient is strangely quiet all at once," the matron said.
"He is sleeping," said the nurse.
In spite of herself she had to give way before the matron, who now
stood by the bed.
"It does not seem a healthy sleep," she said. "He has a very exhausted
look. And why is his blanket tucked so tightly round his arms?" She
waited for no explanations, but smoothed the man's ruffled hair and
looked down pityingly upon him. "Even now he has a handsome face," she
said. "Ten years ago he must have been as handsome as a god."
Ten years ago! Who knew how handsome he had been then better than
Sister Marion? In an instant how vivid was the picture of him that rose
before her eyes! The picture of a young man's laughing face--gay,
winning, debonair. A dancing shadow was on his face of the leaves of
the tree by which he stood, and on which he had carved two names--
With an involuntary movement she was beside him, looking down upon the
unconscious face; and wonderful it was to see that all its lines were
smoothing out, and all the marks of years of debauchery. Even the
sallow hue of them seemed to be changing in his cheeks. Extraordinary
that the healthy colour of early manhood should reappear in the cheeks
of a dying man!
In her surprise she called him by his name. Looking up, fearful that
she had betrayed herself to the matron, she found that she was alone
with him again, the door closed. There was absolute silence in the
room, except a soft, drip-dripping from the bed to the floor. No need
to look; she knew what it was. How short a time before the two streams
from the veins, emptying themselves of the life-blood, met beneath the
bed and trickled, trickled to the door! She flung a towel down to sop
up the tiny flood, and saw it swiftly crimson before her eyes. She
turned back to the bed, a great horror upon her now, and saw that the
eyes of the dying man were open and upon her face.
"I loved you," he said. "Once I loved you, Marion!"
The words were like a knife in her heart. She groaned aloud, but could
not speak.
"I have been bad--bad," he went on; "but I will atone. Give me time,
Marion, and I will atone. Save me! Don't send me before my God like
this, without a chance. You are my wife. You swore--swore to stick to
me. Save me!"
In his extremity power had come back to his voice. He struggled
desperately, half raised himself. "Save me!" he shrieked. "Don't send
my soul to perdition!"
She flung the blanket off him, and tried with fingers, that only shook
and helplessly fumbled now, to bind a ligature above the opened vein.
Misunderstanding, he tried to fling her off. "You are tying me again!
Fiend! Fiend!" he cried. He dashed his arms about, fighting for life.
Her enveloping white apron was splashed and soaked with blood. Even on
her face it fell. As it rained, warm and crimson, upon her, she
shrieked aloud.
In an instant the little room was full of surprised and frightened
faces. "She has killed me!" the man screamed. "Killed me! She is tying
me down to see me die!"
"I want to save him--now," Sister Marion strove to say above the
clamour. No one heeded.
"She did this, and this," the man said, showing his wounded arms. "Ask
her! Ask her!"
"It is true," Marion gasped. Oh, the difficulty of getting her tongue
to form words! "But I want to save him--now."
"Too late," the matron said; and hers and all the faces--the room
seemed full of them--looked at her with loathing, shrinking from her,
as she stood before them, spattered with her husband's blood. "The man
is dying fast."
At that instant one of the younger nurses who had been ministering to
the figure upon the bed, lifted up a warning hand. "He is dead!" she
said.
How the faces glared at her! Strange as well as familiar ones--crowds
upon crowds of faces. Faces of the nurses who had been her friends, who
had loved her; faces from out the past--how came they there with their
heart-remembered names!--her mother's face--her mother who was with the
angels of God! All the forces of Heaven and earth testifying against
her who had done the unspeakable deed.
Was there no one on her side--no one who would shield her from the
accusing eyes?
The cry with which she called upon the doctor's name in its frantic
expression of utmost need must have had power to annihilate time and
space, for while the sound of it still thrilled upon the ear the young
doctor was in the room. She turned to him with the joy of one who finds
his saviour.
Standing before her, his hands pressed firmly upon her shoulders, he
bent his head till the strong, kind face almost touched her own.
"Murderer!" he whispered in her ear, and flung her from him.
She lay where he had thrown her; but someone's hands were still pressed
upon her shoulders, a voice was still whispering "Murderer!" in her
ear--or was it--was it "Marion" the voice whispered?
* * * * *
"Marion, how soundly you have slept--and not even undressed! It is
eight o'clock, and time for you to go on night-duty. Doctor is going
his evening rounds."
Only half-awakened, the horror of her dream still holding her, Sister
Marion pushed the nurse away from her, threw herself from her bed, and
flew along the corridor. From the door of the private ward the doctor
was issuing; he stared at her wild, white look, her tumbled, uncovered
hair. She seized him by the arm. "Doctor!" she sobbed. "The man in
there has been cruel to me, but I want to nurse him--I want to save
him! Never, never could I have done him any harm!"
"Why should you have done him any harm?" the doctor asked, soothingly.
"Who would have harmed the poor fellow? Come and see."
He softly opened the door of the private ward, and with his hand upon
her arm, led her in.
The matron and one of the nurses stood on either side of the bed, from
which the scarlet blanket had been removed. The long white sheet which
had replaced it was pulled up over the face of the recumbent form.
"He died an hour ago in his sleep," the matron said. "He did not regain
consciousness after you left him. I have been with him all the time."
Sister Marion, with dazed eyes, looked down upon her hands--slowly,
from one to the other. Clean, clean, thank Heaven! Looked at her
spotless apron, at the sheet showing the sharp outline of the figure on
the bed.
"Was there, upon his breast, a little ivory-handled penknife?" she
asked.
But before they had told her, wonderingly, no, she had fallen on her
knees beside the quiet figure and was sobbing to herself a prayer of
thanksgiving.
"A sensitive, imaginative woman--she has been wakened too suddenly,"
the doctor said.
His gaze dwelt lingering upon her bent, dark head as slowly he turned
away.
DORA OF THE RINGOLETS
"I wish I c'd du my ringolets same as yu kin, mother. When I carl 'em
over my fingers they don't hang o' this here fashion down my back, but
go all of a womble-like; not half s' pretty."
"Tha's 'cause ye twist 'em wrong way, back'ards round yer fingers," the
faint voice from the bed made answer. "Yu ha' got to larn to du 'em,
Dora, don't, yer'll miss me cruel when I'm gone."
The dying woman was propped on a couple of pillows of more or less
soiled appearance; these were raised to the required height by means of
a folded flannel petticoat and dingy woollen frock, worn through all
the twelve years of her married life, but now to be worn no more. On
the man's coat, spread for extra warmth over the thin counterpane, lay
a broken comb and brush. Over her fingers, distorted by hard work, but
pale from sickness and languid with coming death, the mother twisted
the locks, vigorously waving, richly gilded, and dragged them in
shining, curled lengths over the child's shoulders.
Because of the extreme weakness of the hands the process was a
laborious one. A heavier pallor was upon the face, a cold moisture upon
the sunken brow when it was accomplished.
"I'll kape on while I kin--I don' know as I shall ha' the strength much
longer, Dora."
The child twitched her curls from the fingers that lay heavily upon
them and turned on her mother fiercely. "Yu ha' got ter du 'em, then!"
she cried. She glared upon the faint head slipped sideways on the
pillow. "Yu ha'n't got ter put none o' them parts on, du I'll let ye
ter know."
Her eyes were suddenly wide and brilliant with tears; the fading sight
of the mother was dazzled by the yellow shine of them and of the
richly-coloured hair. "My pretty gal!" she breathed; "my pretty Dora! I
ha'n't got no strength, bor."
"I'll let yer ter know!" Dora cried with fury. "I'll hull yer pillars
away, and let yer hid go flop, if ye say yer ha'an't got no strength.
I'll let yer ter know!"
She stopped, because the sobs which had been stormily rising choked
her. She seized in her red little hands the pillow beneath her mother's
head. No word of remonstrance was spoken, the faded eyes gazing wearily
upon the child held no reproof.
"What d'ye look at me, that mander, for? Why don't ye ketch me a lump
o' the hid?" the child cried fiercely; then gave way to the suppressed
sobbing. "Oh, mother, yu ain't a-dyin'? Yu ain't a-dyin' yit?"
She flung her own head on the soiled pillow; all the crisply waving,
long ringlets flew over the mother's sunken chest; one fell across her
parched lips. She moistened them with her tongue, and made a feeble
motion of kissing. A tear slid slowly down her cheek.
"Not yit, my pretty gal," she whispered. "Mother ain't a-goin' ter lave
yer yit."
"Promus! Yer ain't a-tellin' no lies? Yer'll stop along of me till I
kin carl my ringolets myself. I ha' got ter have 'em carled, and there
ain't no one else to du 'em for me."
The mother promised.
"There's Jim and Jack--they don't want ye, mother. Their hairs is
short. They kin play hopstick i' th' midder, alonger th' other boys.
Both on 'em kin put their own collars on. There's on'y me, what have
carls, that'll want yer so. Mother! Mother!"
"Don' I kape on a-tellin' of yer I ain't a-goin'."
There was no time to sob for long on the mother's pillow. Dora was due
at school. She wiped her crimsoned cheeks upon the corner of the sheet,
stood up and put her sunburnt sailor-hat upon the carefully curled
hair. She was neatly dressed in a brown woollen frock nearly covered by
a white, lace-trimmed overall; she wore brown stockings and brown
shoes. The mother watched her to the door with yearning eyes.
"My pretty gal!" she said.
The neighbour who waited on her in moments spared from her own
household labours came in. She held a cup of paste made from cornflour
in her hand, and stirred the mixture invitingly.
"It's time yu had suffin' inside of yer, Mis' Green," she said. "Yu
ha'n't tasted wittels since that mossel o' bread-an'-butter yu fancied
las' night."
She put a spoonful of the food, stirred over a smoky fire, to the
parched lips.
"I'd suner, a sight, have a drink o' water," the sick woman said.
"There ain't nothin' I fare ter crave 'cept water now."
"There ain't no nouragement in water, Mis' Green. Take this here,
instids," the neighbour said firmly.
Two spoonfuls were swallowed with difficulty.
"Come! Tha's as ter should be! That comfort ye, Mis' Green, bor?"
The faint eyes looked solemnly in the healthy, stolid face above her.
"There's nothin' don't comfort me, Mis' Barrett."
"An' why's the raisen?" the neighbour reprovingly demanded. "Because
yu're a-dyin', Mis' Green, and yu don't give yer mind tu it. I ha' been
by other deathbeds--the Lord reward me for it, as 'tis ter be expected
He will--and I ha'n't never seed a Christian woman so sot agin goin' as
yu are."
The reluctant one shut her eyes wearily; the dropped lids trembled for
a minute, then were raised upon the same hard face.
"She don' look like a labourer's gal, Dora don't," she said faintly.
"She ha'n't got th' mander o' them sort o' truck."
"What then, Mis' Green?" the neighbour inquired, stern with the
consciousness of her own large family of "truck." The supposed
superiority of Dora of the ringolets hurt her maternal pride and raised
a storm of righteous anger in her breast.
Mrs Green did not explain; the discoloured lids fell again waveringly
over the dim eyes, the upper lip was drawn back showing the gums above
the teeth.
It was the mere skeleton of a woman who lay there. She had suffered
long and intensely; no one could look upon her now and doubt that the
hour of discharge was very near. The woman standing above her reasoned
that if a word of reproof or advice was to be given there was not much
time to lose. Often, from open door to open door (for the pair
inhabited a double dwelling), often, across the garden fence, she had
called aloud her opinion of her neighbour's goings on; she would seize
the opportunity to give it once again.
"And why ain't yer Dora like a labourer's gal, then?" she demanded,
shrilly accusing. "Oh, Mis' Green! Don't yu, a-layin' there o' your
deathbed, know right well the why and the wherefore? Ha'n't yu borrered
right and left, ha'n't you got inter debt high and low, to put a hape
o' finery on yer mawther's back? Ha'n't yu moiled yerself, an' yu a
dyin' woman, over her hid o' hair? Put her i' my Gladus's clo'es, an'
see what yer Dora 'ud look like. Har, wi' her coloured shues, an' all!"
"They was giv' her," the dying woman faintly protested. "Her Uncle
Willum sent them brown uns along of her brown hat wi' th' welwet bow."
"Now, ain't yu a-lyin', Mis' Green, as yu lay there o' yer deathbed?
Them tales may ha' flung dust i' th' eyes o' yer old man, them i' my
hid is too sharp for no sech a story. Di'n't I see th' name o' 'Bunn o'
Wotton' on th' bag th' hat come out of? An' don't yer brother Willum
live i' London, and ha'n't he got seven of's own to look arter? Ter
think as I sh'd come ter pass ter say sich wards, an' yu a-layin' there
a-dyin'! Ain't yer ashamed o' yerself, Mis' Green. I'm a-askin' of yer
th' question; ain't yer ashamed o' yerself?"
"No, an' ain't," said Mrs Green, feebly whispering.
Beneath the flickering, bruised-looking lids, tears slowly oozed. The
neighbour felt for a pocket-handkerchief under the pillow, and wiped
them away.
"Fact o' th' matter, Mis' Green," she inflexibly pursued her subject,
"yu ha' made a raglar idle o' that gal; yu ha' put a sight o' finery on
'er back, an' stuffed 'er hid wi' notions; an' wha's a-goin ter become
on 'r when you're gone?"
"I was a-wonderin'," the dying woman said, "s'posin' as I was willin'
to speer this here parple gownd o' mine, rolled onder my pillar--I was
a-wonderin', Mis' Barrett, ef so bein' as yu'd ondertake ter carl my
gal's ringolets, now an' agin, for 'er?"
"No," the other said, spiritedly, nobly proof against the magnitude of
the bribe. "That'd go agin my conscience, Mis' Green. I'm sorrer ter be
a denyin' of yer, but yer mawther's hid o' hair I ha'n't niver approved
on; I can't ondertake it, an' so, I say, straight forrerd, at oncet."
The face so "accustomed to refusings" did not change, no flush of
resentment relieved its waxen pallor or lightened its fading eyes.
"'Tis th' last thing I'm a-askin' of yer," the poor woman said, weakly.
"Try as I kin, I can't live much longer. 'Tis on'y nat'ral I should
think o' Dora an' th' child'en."
"Yu think a sight too much on 'em, bor! 'Tis time yu give 'em up. Yu
lay o' yer deathbed, Mis' Green, an' yu a mis'rable sinner; can't you
put up a prayer to ask th' Lord ter have marcy on yer?"
"No," said Mrs Green.
"'No'--an' why not?"
"Cos I don' keer."
"Don' keer, Mis' Green?"
"No, Mis' Barrett, so's He look arter Dora an' th' child'en, I don't
keer what He du ter me."
* * * * *
"Mother!"
No answer, but a quiver of drooping lids.
"Mother!"
At the sharp terror of the voice the lids lifted themselves and fell
again.
"Yu ain't a-dyin', mother?"
"'Course I ain't."
"Yer promussed! Yer said yer warn't a-dyin'!"
"An' I ain't."