A Patient for Mrs. Nichols
WHEN the volunteer party started for Camp’s Gulch, Gertrude resolved to
remain at her post all night, or, at any rate, for as much of it as
there was a need for the office to be open.
She replied to Lytton, telling of the accident to the driver, and that
Dr. Russell had volunteered to take the engine up to Camp’s Gulch, with
Sam Peters acting as volunteer stoker. When this was done, and Lytton’s
inquiries were satisfied, she wired to Roseneath, on the chance of
finding the office open, to explain why the engine and freight-wagon had
failed to put in an appearance.
Then, when everything had been done that was possible, she set herself
to face a dreary watch in the depot while the slow hours crept by.
The station-master also remained on duty. At least, he lay on a bench in
the little waiting-room of the depot, and snored with persevering
industry, the sound of his slumber reaching to Gertrude’s office, and
adding a fresh weirdness to the night.
About midnight Mrs. Nichols walked in at the office door, wheezing and
puffing even more than usual. She had been helping Miss Gibson to look
after the scalded engine-driver, and from there had gone to console Mrs.
Peters, who was frightened half out of her senses at the thought of Sam
firing the engine up to Camp’s Gulch and back again. When these
neighbourly duties had all been performed, she came on to the depot to
stay with Gertrude as long as it was necessary for the girl to remain on
duty.
“How different it has all turned out from what we had planned!” sighed
Gertrude, who was pale and worn with the excitement of the evening.
“Life is very often like that,” moralized the stout woman. “We get to
what we think is a nice easy bit, only to find it is fuller of kinks
than any of the rest. I wonder what sort of tribulation that poor Nell
is in to-night?”
“It is very strange that she should have wired to us, yet we can get no
message through to her,” Gertrude said, in a musing tone.
“Perhaps the wire got cut after she had sent her message,” suggested
Mrs. Nichols. Then she burst out vehemently, “Oh dear, oh dear, how I
wish I had been on the depot when the message came, then I would have
gone up to Camp’s Gulch with the men, and seen for myself what was the
matter!”
“But you would have been afraid, surely, to go on such a risky
expedition,” said Gertrude.
“I should have been as safe as the men, anyhow, and my life is not of
any more value than theirs; besides, we shall none of us die until our
time comes. It would have been a comfort to Nell to have a woman there
to help her, for poor old Mrs. Trip can’t be much good to anyone, seeing
that she is stone deaf,” sighed the stout woman.
“How fond you are of Nell! I believe you love her better than you do
me,” said Gertrude, with a short laugh, and a very pronounced stab of
jealousy at her heart.
“I’m fond of you both, and if I make more of Nell than of you, I am sure
you have no reason to complain, for think of the difference between you.
She is, so to speak, nobody’s child—at least there is not one of her
own folks left alive to care for her, while you are just the cherished
elder daughter of a family,” Mrs. Nichols said warmly.
“Everyone seems to get on with Nell; I wonder why? for she is not
pretty, although she has a nice face. She is not well educated either,
yet there is a sort of refinement about her, which, as a rule, one finds
only in very cultured people.” There was a little envy in Gertrude’s
tone now, as if she knew herself to be lacking in the quality which she
so much admired in her friend.
“Parson Hamblyn was a gentleman, a real one,” replied Mrs. Nichols, with
emphasis. “Dr. Russell reminds me of him sometimes, with his fine
manners and educated speech; but the doctor is an active man, and is
going to be a successful one if only he can get a chance; while the
parson was a dreamer and a thinker. He was a saint too, if ever there
was one. But, taken all round he was too good to live, and I suppose
that is why he died.”
“Is anyone too good to live?” asked Gertrude, opening her eyes widely,
and thinking of her own harassed father, with his gentle uncomplaining
patience under heavy tribulation.
“I don’t fancy I shall be in any danger of dying from that complaint yet
awhile,” said Mrs. Nichols, with a shrug of her ample shoulders. “But
there are some people who are so unworldly, that they seem more fit for
heaven than this earth, and Nell’s father was one of them. She gets her
refinement from him, but all her kind helpful ways come from her own
good heart, poor child! I wish I had been there to help her to-night.”
“What is that?” cried Gertrude, springing from her seat and hurrying to
the door.
“I didn’t hear anything, except that man snoring. A deal more noise he
makes asleep than he ever does when he is awake,” Mrs. Nichols said
scornfully, as she also rose and followed Gertrude to the door.
The night was calm and still, with a touch of frost in the quiet air,
which would turn the maples crimson and gold the next time the sun shone
down upon them.
A minute or two they stood listening at the door; then Gertrude said
eagerly—
“It is a train coming, I am sure of it. Oh, will you wake the
station-master, and ask him to see if the points are all right? Sam
Peters always attends to that, you know, so it may be forgotten.”
Mrs. Nichols hurried off, nothing loth, for in truth the snoring was
getting on her nerves. But Gertrude remained motionless, straining her
ears to catch that distant hollow rumble which seemed so long in coming
nearer.
There had only been the sleeping official, Mrs. Nichols, and herself on
the depot through all those long hours of waiting, but as the rumble of
the train sounded coming nearer and nearer, people hurried up by ones
and twos, the women wrapped in shawls, the men with their shoulders up
to their ears and their hands in their pockets, and stood in silent
groups, waiting for that slow-coming train.
It was a relief when a whistle was heard; then the station-master waved
a lantern to and fro, and the engine crawled slowly into the depot. The
spell of silence was broken, and a perfect shower of questions burst
upon the doctor and Sam Peters, who, by reason of their position on the
engine, were of course the first to be interviewed.
“All in good time, friends; but it is business first. Will one of you go
and wake Mrs. Nichols up, and tell her I am bringing her a patient?”
“She’s here, doctor,” shouted half a dozen voices.
“Miss Lorimer, is she here too?” asked the doctor, who was already off
the engine and moving towards the freight-car.
“Been on duty all night, and is waiting to wire on to Lytton all the
news you have brought,” said the foremost of the crowd.
“That is right. I will go to her in a few minutes and give her the
details; but I must see to my patient first,” said the doctor.
By a series of energetic signs made with her left hand, Nell refused to
be carried off the car as she had been carried on, and came tottering
out, a strange-looking figure, her head bound up in a towel, her figure
draped in a blanket, and her face so white and drawn with pain that it
was difficult to recognize her.
“Get her to bed as quickly as you can, but don’t allow her to speak one
word. She has a broken wrist, and her jaw is hurt. Give her a little
broth, if you have got it, or some milk, but she must have nothing else
to-night,” the doctor said briefly. And, escorted by the little crowd of
sympathizing women, Nell was led off the scene.
Then the doctor went off to the telegraph office, where Gertrude, weary
but alert, was waiting to send the news on to headquarters.
Sam Peters and the miners who had come back on the car entertained the
remnant of the crowd with the story of that night’s doings at Camp’s
Gulch, and vastly amusing the listeners found the recital, apparently,
for they laughed and cheered when they heard how Nell had trapped the
burglar who was hidden in the Chinaman’s coffin.
But there was no laughter in the office, where the doctor was writing
details for Gertrude to telegraph.
There was no question of the miners who had come back from Camp’s Gulch
going on to Roseneath that night, so they all lay down in the
waiting-room, and snatched a little slumber so, and were snoring
profoundly before Gertrude was ready to lock up her office and go.
The doctor had waited for her until Lytton had got all the information
it required, and had sent her word that she might now go off duty until
the morning, or rather, seeing that it was morning already, until the
proper hour for commencing work had arrived again.
“What a strange sort of night it has been!” she exclaimed, as she went
along the dark road with her escort.
“Yes, really an adventurous time for some of us,” he answered, with a
laugh, thinking of that wild ride to Camp’s Gulch on the rocking engine.
Gertrude shrugged her shoulders. “I think I prefer monotony to
adventure—at least, adventure of this sort. I am thankful I was not in
Nell’s place.”
“I also am thankful you were not in her place either,” he answered
gravely. With a little flutter at her heart, Gertrude asked—
“Why?”
“Because it would have been a moral and physical impossibility for you
to do what Miss Hamblyn did. She of course has now got to pay the price
of her doings in nervous breakdown and physical suffering, but you would
doubtless have had exactly the same amount of prostration to endure
without having been able to accomplish anything.”
“You are not exactly complimentary to me,” said Gertrude, in an icy
tone, although privately she was perfectly aware of the truth of the
statement.
“I did not mean to be uncomplimentary,” he said gravely. “I am quite
positive that wherever you were placed, or in whatever circumstances you
found yourself, you would do your very best, and it would not be your
fault if you failed in any way.”
Poor Gertrude! Never in all her life had she been made to feel so small,
so utterly insignificant; and the worst of it was that the doctor was so
perfectly innocent of any attempt to hurt her feelings. Indeed, in his
secret heart he was very much drawn to her, and had been ever since
their first meeting, and if there had been a prospect of his being able
to keep a wife in decent comfort he would have asked her to marry him,
so that he and Sonny might have a real home again.
But Gertrude, not being endued with second sight or any specially keen
intuitive faculty, had no means of knowing how nearly she realized her
companion’s ideal, and, believing that he rather despised her, was
miserable accordingly.
She did not even notice that he held her hand closer than usual at the
parting, but went indoors with a dragging pain at her heart, which was
destined to keep her company for many a long day to come.
Mrs. Nichols was waiting for her, and they had a cup of tea together,
talking in whispers for fear of disturbing Nell, who lay in the next
room trying to go to sleep.
The door was just ajar, and to her strained sensibilities the whispers
were perfectly audible, causing her indeed no small amount of mental
torture.
They were saying the kindliest things about her, magnifying her into a
heroine, while she, lying there with her broken wrist, hurt jaw, and
torn ear, where Doss Umpey’s stick had hit her such cruel blows, knew
herself to be a coward, and in a certain sense a traitor to her duty,
because she had not said who it was that had planned to rob the big
shed.
When Doss Umpey had encountered her, as he came stealing through the
quiet moonlight, he had said that this was Brunsen’s job, and he was
bound to help it through, although he did not hold with law-breaking
himself, because of the danger of it.
She had besought him to go away, to have nothing more to do with the
Brunsens, but to get his living honestly if he could; she had even
volunteered to send him a little part of her own earnings, to help him
to keep clear of his undesirable acquaintances.
Then he had said that this thing must be carried through as planned;
that it could not possibly fail. He did not seem to have noticed that
distant whistle, which she had been hearing now for some minutes.
But she called his attention to it, and told him it was the help she had
telegraphed for from Bratley, by using the cut wire at the top of the
nearest testing pole.
Doss Umpey was thoroughly enraged with her then, and, closing with her,
had endeavoured to search her pocket for the key of the big shed, she
having incautiously told him that the man in the coffin could not
possibly escape unaided.
But she was young and vigorous, more than a match for the old man from a
muscular point of view. So, wresting herself free from his grip, she
snatched the key from her pocket, and flung it away from her in the
darkness, because she feared lest some confederate should come to his
aid, and she should be completely overpowered. But she had been careful
to toss the key on the railway track, because it would be easier to hunt
for it there.
The screech of the whistle was rapidly growing nearer—they could even
hear the roar of the engine; it was only a matter of minutes, and, grown
desperate, Doss Umpey lifted his club and caught her a fearful blow on
her right ear and jaw. She had cried out at the intolerable anguish it
had caused her, and putting up her hand to ward off the next blow, had
received its full force on her wrist. Whether he struck her again, or
whether she just sank down to the ground faint and sick with her pain,
Nell could not remember, as she lay in bed at Mrs. Nichols’s house,
while that worthy woman and Gertrude whispered to each other of her
bravery as they drank their tea.
Presently there was a pushing back of chairs, a little rattling of
crockery, and then silence. No one had come near her. Gertrude had
peeped in at the door, and seeing by the dim light of the lamp that
Nell’s eyes were shut, had gone away, supposing her to be asleep.
But, between pain and unrest of mind, there was no sleep for Nell that
night. She lay with closed eyes, certainly, but she was wide awake all
the same. When the doctor came to see her before he had his breakfast,
it was to find her feverish and excited, while the wildness in her eyes
made her look like a hunted creature.
“I thought I gave strict orders that Miss Hamblyn was not to be allowed
to talk, and that no one was to talk to her,” said the doctor, in a
stormy tone, turning to Mrs. Nichols.
“The poor dear has not uttered a word—I don’t believe she could if she
tried; and as to talking to her, this is the first time I’ve said a word
in her presence, since you gave your orders last night,” replied Mrs.
Nichols, rather indignantly; for she did not believe in being accused of
doing injudicious things when she was entirely innocent of them.
“It is my fault, then, in not having given her a sleeping draught; but I
felt so sure she would sleep naturally,” he said, in a worried tone.
Bending over the bed, he proceeded to make a more careful investigation
of Nell’s injuries than had been possible on the previous night.
When he had finished his examination he sat down by the bed, and began
to talk to Nell with the uncompromising straightforwardness which was
winning him favour among these people of the far west, whose lives are
too full of toil and endeavour for them to tolerate a medical opinion
which says one thing and means another.
“You are not so well this morning as I expected to find you; but that is
largely your own fault, because, when you were helped to bed last night,
instead of going to sleep, as you ought to have done, you commenced to
worry about yourself, and kept it up until sleep became impossible to
you.”
A faint smile curved Nell’s lips. She had been worrying, it was true,
only the doctor was very much mistaken as to the cause of the worry.
“The reason you find it difficult, perhaps impossible, to talk,”
continued the doctor, “is because the dislocation of the jaw caused much
swelling and soreness of all the muscles of your throat; but if you are
able to get some hours of restful sleep this soreness will largely
vanish, and you will be able to talk comfortably.”
Again Nell smiled; but there was something in her eyes which made the
doctor ask anxiously—
“You have no other injuries, of which you have not spoken?”
Nell’s eyes and hand said no for her with so much emphasis that the
doctor’s fears on that score were completely set at rest. But as the
look of trouble still remained in her eyes, he invented an errand for
Mrs. Nichols which took her for a brief space from the room, and then he
asked, in a low tone—
“If you are not worrying about your own condition, is it some other
trouble that you have?”
Nell’s eyes drooped uneasily. She could not tell him, she could not tell
anyone, how afraid she was that Doss Umpey would be found and arrested
for being concerned with the two Brunsens in the attempt to rob the big
shed.
“Ah, I thought I was right!” he exclaimed; then added, with a brusque
gravity, “The pity of it is that there is so little sense in worrying;
you can’t help or hinder things by lying and stewing over them, but you
very seriously retard your own recovery. Now, are you going to be
sensible enough to banish worry and go to sleep, or am I to dose you
with a sleeping draught?”
For answer Nell turned her head slightly, closed her eyes, drooping into
her pillow in such a fashion that the doctor went away satisfied as to
her power to sleep unaided by drugs.