Dr. Livingstone's concern was personal, that was plain in the way
he stood looking at the floor of the corridor with his hands in his
pockets, before Hilda reached him. Regret was written all over the lines
of his pausing figure with the compressed irritation which saved that
feeling in the Englishman's way from being too obvious.
“This is a bad business, Miss Howe.”
“I've just come over--I haven't heard. Who is it?”
“It's my cousin, poor chap--Arnold, the padre. He's been badly knifed in
the bazar.”
The news passed over her and left her looking with a curious face at
chance. It was lifted a little, with composed lips, and eyes which
refused to be taken by surprise. There was inquiry in them, also a
defence. Chance, looking back, saw an invincible silent readiness, and
a pallor which might be that of any woman. But the doctor was also
looking, so she said, “That is very sad,” and moved near enough to the
wall to put her hand against it. She was not faint, but the wall was a
fact on which one could, for the moment, rely.
“They've got the man--one of those Cabuli money-lenders. The police had
no trouble with him. He said it was the order of Allah--the brute! Stray
case of fanaticism, I suppose. It seems Arnold was walking along as
usual, without a notion, and the fellow sprang on him, and in two
seconds the thing was done. Hadn't a chance, poor beggar.”
“Where is it?”
“Root of the left lung. About five inches deep. The artery pretty well
cut through, I fancy.”
“Then--”
“Oh no--we can't do anything. The haemorrhage must be tremendous. But he
may live through the night. Are you going to Sister Margaret?”
His nod took it for granted, and he went on. Hilda walked slowly
forward, her head bent, with absorbed uncertain steps. A bar of evening
sunlight came before her, she looked up and stepped outside the open
door. She was handling this thing that had happened, taking possession
of it. It lay in her mind in the midst of a suddenly stricken and
tenderly saddened consciousness. It lay there passively; it did not rise
and grapple with her, it was a thing that had happened--in Burra Bazar.
The pity of it assailed her. Tears came into her eyes, and an infinite
grieved solicitude gathered about her heart. “So?” she said to herself,
thinking that he was young and loved his work, and that now his hand
would be stayed from the use it had found. One of the ugly outrages of
life, leaving nothing on the mouth but that brief acceptance. It came
to hers with a note of the profound and of the supreme. She turned
resolutely from searching her heart for any wild despair. She would
not for an instant consider what she ought to feel. “So,” she said,
and pressed her lips till they stopped trembling, and went into the
hospital.
She asked a question or two, in search of Sister Margaret and the new
case. It was “located,” an assistant surgeon told her, in Private Ward
Number Two. She went more and more slowly toward Private Ward Number
Two.
The door was open; she stood in it for an instant with eyes nerved to
receive the tragedy. The room seemed curiously empty of any such thing,
a door opposite was also open, with an arched verandah outside; the low
sun streamed through this upon the floor with its usual tranquillity.
Beyond the arches, netted to keep the crows away, it made pictures with
the tops of the trees. There was the small iron bed with the confused
outline under the bedclothes, very quiet, and the Sister--the
whitewashed wall rose sharp behind her black draperies--sitting with a
book in her hands. Some scraps of lint on the floor beside the bed, and
hardly anything else except the silence which had almost a presence, and
a faint smell of carbolic acid, and a certain feeling of impotence and
abandonment and waiting which seemed to be in the air. Arnold moved on
the pillow and saw her standing in the door. The bars of the bed's foot
were in the way, he tried to lift his head to surmount the obstruction,
and the Sister perceived her too.
“I think absolutely still was our order, wasn't it, Mr. Arnold?” she
said, with her little pink smile. “And I'm afraid Miss Howe isn't in
time to be of much use to us, is she?” It was the bedside pleasantry
that expected no reply, that indeed forbade one.
“I'm sorry,” Hilda said. As she moved into the room she detached her
eyes from Arnold's, feeling as she did so that it was like tearing
something.
“There was so little to do,” Sister Margaret said; “Surgeon-Major Wills
saw at once where the mischief lay. Nothing disagreeable was necessary,
was it, Mr. Arnold? Perfect quiet, perfect rest--that's an easy
prescription to take.” She had rather prominent very blue eyes, and
an aquiline nose, and a small firm mouth, and her pink cheeks were
beginning to be a little pendulous with age. Hilda gazed at her
silently, noting about her authority and her flowing draperies something
classical. Was she like one of the Fates? She approached the bed to do
something to the pillow--Hilda had an impulse to push her away with the
cry, “It is not time yet--Atropos!”
“I must go now for an hour or so,” the Sister went on. “That poor
creature in Number Six needs me; they daren't give her any more morphia.
You don't need it--happy boy!” she said to Stephen, and at the look he
sent her for answer she turned rather quickly to the door. Dear Sister,
she was none of the Fates, she was obliged to give directions to Hilda
standing in the door with her back turned. Happily for a deserved
reputation for self-command they were few. It was chief and absolute
that no one should be admitted. A bulletin had been put up at the
hospital door for the information of inquiries; later on when the doctor
came again there would be another.
She went away and they were left alone. The sun on the floor had
vanished; a yellowness stood in its place with a grey background, the
background gaining, coming on. Always his eyes were upon her, she had
given hers back to him and he seemed satisfied. She moved closer to
the bed and stood beside him. Since there was nothing to do there was
nothing to say. Stephen put out his hand and touched a fold of her
dress.
The room filled itself with something that had not been there before,
his impotent love. Hilda knelt down beside the bed and pressed her
forehead against the hand upon the covering, the hand that had so little
more to do. Then Arnold spoke.
“You dear woman!” he said. “You dear woman!” She kept her head bowed
like that and did not answer. It was his happiest moment. One might say
he had lived for this. Her tears fell upon his hand, a kind of baptism
for his heart. He spoke again.
“We must bear this,” he panted. “It is--less cruel--than it seems. You
don't know how much it is for the best.”
She lifted her wet face. “You mustn't talk,” she faltered.
“What difference--” he did not finish the sentence. His words were too
few to waste. He paused and made another effort.
“If this had not happened I would have been--counted--among the
unfaithful,” he said. “I know now. I would have abandoned--my post. And
gladly--without a regret--for you.”
“Ah!” Hilda cried, with a vivid note of pain. “Would you? I am sorry for
that! I am sorry!”
She gazed with a face of real tragedy at the form of her captive
delivered to her in the bonds of death. A fresh pang visited her with
the thought that in the mystery of the ordering of things she might have
had to do with the forging of those shackles--the price of the year that
had been very valuable.
“My God is a jealous God,” Arnold said. “He has delivered me--into His
own hands--for the honour of His name. I acknowledge--I am content.”
“No, indeed no! It was a wicked, horrible chance! Don't charge your God
with it.”
His smile was very sweet, but it paid the least possible attention. “You
did love me,” he said. He spoke as if he were already dead.
“I did indeed,” Hilda replied, and bent her shamed head upon her hands
again in the confession. It is not strange that he heard only the
affirmation in it.
He stroked her hair. “It is good to know that,” he said, “very, good. I
should have married you.” He went on with sudden boldness and a new note
of strength in his voice, “Think of that! You would have been mine--to
protect and work for. We should have gone together to England--where I
could easily have got a curacy--easily.”
Hilda looked up. “Would you like to marry me now?” she asked eagerly,
but he shook his head.
“You don't understand,” he said. “It is the dear sin God has turned my
back upon.”
Then it came to her that he had asked for no caress. He was going
unassoiled to his God, with the divine indifference of the dying. Only
his imagination looked backward and forward. And she thought, “It is
a little light flame that I have lit with my own taper that has gone
out--that has gone out--and presently the grave will extinguish that.”
She sat quiet and sombre in the growing darkness, and presently Arnold
slept.
He slept through the bringing of a lamp, the arrival of flowers, subdued
knocks of inquirers who would not be stayed by the bulletin--the
visit of Surgeon-Major Wills, who felt his pulse without wakening him.
“Holding out wonderfully,” the doctor said. “Don't rouse him for the
soup. He'll go out in about six hours without any pain. May not wake at
all.”
The door opened again to admit the probationer come to relieve Miss
Howe. Hilda beckoned her into the corridor. “You can go back,” she said,
“I will take your turn.”
“But the Mother Superior--you know how particular about the rules--”
“Say nothing about it. Go to bed. I am not coming.”
“Then, Miss Howe, I shall be obliged to report it.”
“Report and be--report if you like. There is nothing for you to do
here to-night,” and Hilda softly closed the door. There was a whispered
expostulation when Sister Margaret came back, but Miss Howe said, “It
is arranged,” and with a little silent nod of appreciation the Sister
settled into her chair, her finger marking a place in the Church
Service. Hilda sat nearer to the bed, her elbow on the table, shading
her eyes from the lamp, and watched.
“Is it not odd,” whispered Sister Margaret, as the night wore on, “he
has refused to be confessed before he goes? He will not see the Brother
Superior--or any of them. Strange, is it not?”
Together they watched the quick short breathing. It seemed strangely
impossible to sleep against such odds. They saw the lines of the
face grow sharper and whiter, the dark eye-sockets sink to a curious
roundness, a greyness gather about the mouth. There were times when
they looked at each other in the last surmise. Yet the feeble pulse
persisted--persisted.
“I believe now,” said Sister Margaret, “that he may go on like this
until the morning. I am going to take half an hour's nap. Rouse me at
once if he wakes,” and she took an attitude of casual repose, turning
the Prayer-book open on her knee for readier use, open at “Prayers for
the Dying.”
The jackals had wailed themselves out, and there was a long, dark period
when nothing but the sudden cry of a night bird in the hospital garden
came between Hilda and the very vivid perception she had at that hour of
the value and significance of the earthly lot. She lifted her head
and listened to that, it seemed a comment. Suddenly, then, a harsh
quarrelling of dogs--Christian dogs--arose in the distance and died
away, and again there was night and silence. Night for hours. Time for
reflection, alone with death and the lamp, upon the year that had
been very valuable. “I would have married you,” she whispered. “Yes,
I would.” Later her lips moved again. “I would have taken the
consequence;” and again, “I would have paid any penalty.” There he lay,
a burden that she would never bear, a burden that would be gone in the
morning. There were moments when she cried out on Fate for doing her
this kindness.
The long singing drone of a steamer's signal came across the city from
the river, once, twice, thrice; and presently the sparrows began their
twittering in the bushes near the verandah, an unexpected unanimous bird
talk that died as suddenly and as irrelevantly away. A conservancy cart
lumbered past creaking; the far shrill whistle of an awakening factory
cut the air from Howrah; the first solitary foot smote through the dawn
upon the pavement. The light showed grey beyond the scanty curtains. A
noise of something being moved reverberated in the hospital below, and
Arnold opened his eyes. They made him in a manner himself again, and he
fixed them upon Hilda as if they could never alter. She leaned nearer
him and made a sign of inquiry toward the sleeping Sister, with the
farewells, the commendations of poor mortality speeding itself forth,
lying upon her lap. Arnold comprehended, and she was amazed to see the
mask of his face charge itself with a faint smile as he shook his head.
He made a little movement; she saw what he wanted and took his hand in
hers. The smile was still in his eyes as he looked at her, and then
at the cheated Sister. “I would have married you,” she whispered
passionately as if that could stay him. “Yes, I would.”
So in the end he trusted the new wings of his mortal love to bear his
soul to its immortality. They carried their burden buoyantly, it was
such a little way. The lamp was still holding its own against the
paleness from the windows when the meaning finally went out of his clasp
of Hilda's hand, without a struggle to stay, and she saw that in an
instant when she was not looking, he had closed his eyes upon the world.
She sat on beside him for a long time after that, watching tenderly, and
would not withdraw her hand--it seemed an abandonment.
Three hours later Miss Howe, passing out of the hospital gate, was
overtaken by Duff Lindsay, riding, with a look of singular animation
and vigour. He flung himself off his horse to speak to her, and as he
approached he drew from his inner coat pocket the brown envelope of a
telegram.
“Good-morning,” he said. “You do look fagged. I have a--curious--piece
of news.”
“Alicia told me that you were starting early this morning for Madras!”
“I should have been, but for this.”
“Read it to me,” Hilda said, “I'm tired.”
“Oh, do you very much mind? I would rather--”
She took the missive; it was dated the day before, Colombo, and read--
“Do not expect me was married this morning to Colonel Markin S A we may
not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers glory be to God Laura
Markin”
She raised her eyes to his with the gravest, saddest irony.
“Then you--you also are delivered,” she said; but he said “What?”
without special heed; and I doubt whether he ever took the trouble to
understand her reference to their joint indebtedness.
“One hopes he isn't a brute,” Lindsay went on with most impersonal
solicitude, “and can support her. I suppose there isn't any way one
could do anything for her. I heard a story only yesterday about a girl
changing her mind on the way out. By Jove, I didn't suppose it would
happen to me!”
“If you are hurt anywhere,” Hilda said absently, “it is only your
vanity, I fancy.”
“Ah, my vanity is very sore!” He paused for an instant, wondering to
find so little expansion in her. “I came to ask after Arnold,” he said.
“How is he?”
“He is dead. He died at half-past five this morning.”
She left him with even less than her usual circumstance, and turned in
at the gate of the Baker Institution. It happened to be the last day of
her probation.
There has never been any difficulty in explaining Lindsay's marriage
with Alicia Livingstone even to himself; the reasons for it, indeed,
were so many and so obvious that he wondered often why they had not
struck him earlier. But it is worth noting, perhaps, that the immediate
precipitating cause arose in one evening service at the Cathedral, where
it had its birth in the very individual charm of the nape of Alicia's
neck, as she knelt upon her hassock in the fitting and graceful act
of the responses. His instincts in these matters seem to have had a
generous range, considering the tenets he was born to, but it was to
him then a delightful reflection, often since repeated, that in the
sheltered garden of delicate perfumes where this sweet person took her
spiritual pleasure there was no rank vegetation.
It is much to Miss Hilda Howe's credit that amid the distractions of her
most successful London season she never quite abandons these two to
the social joys that circle round the Ochterlony Monument and the arid
scenic consolations of the Maidan. Her own experience there is one of
the things, I fancy, that make her fond of saying that the stage is the
merest cardboard presentation, and that one day she means to leave it,
to coax back to her bosom the life which is her heritage in the wider,
simpler ways of the world. She never mentions that experience more
directly or less ardently. But I fear the promise I have quoted is one
that she makes too often.