Chapter VI: Part II (3)

Or perhaps at my age I knew well that to the young and the confident nothing is impossible.

THE PRIVATE WARD

He had been seized with sudden illness in the suburban hotel in which he was staying, and being unknown there, had been removed to the Princess Mary Cottage Hospital. The dozen beds of the men's ward were full, and he had been placed in the private ward. He lay now on the narrow bed, sleeping heavily, the white, bright light of the spring morning showing mercilessly the havoc selfishness and reckless self-indulgence had wrought upon a once sufficiently handsome face. The emaciation of his long form was plainly seen through the single scarlet blanket which covered it.

The visiting doctor and the nurse stood, one on either side, looking down on him.

"What sort of night?" asked the doctor.

"Pretty bad," answered the nurse. The patient had been admitted the previous day, and she had watched by him through the night. "He was awake till three, and very restless."

"You repeated at three the dose I ordered?"

"Yes. He has lain like this since. When he wakes is he to have it again?"

"H'm!" said the doctor, deliberating, his eyes on the patient's face. "We will, I think, halve the dose. We mustn't overdo it; he seems susceptible to the drug."

He lifted his eyes from the unconscious face of the patient to the weary face of the nurse, and, as if struck by what he saw there, studied it with attention.

"You are more than usually tired this morning, sister," he said. "You must go at once to bed when I leave."

"It is always difficult for me to sleep in the daytime. I shall not sleep to-day," she said.

"But you are tired?"

"Dead tired."

The doctor observed her in a minute's silence. Her fine, almost regal form, at which few men looked and turned away, drooped a little this morning, seemed--but that was impossible--to have faded and shrunk since yesterday. There was, however, no sinking of the white eyelids over the pale blue eyes which, set in her darkly tinted face, were a surprise and a joy to the beholder. The eyelids were reddened now, and held wide apart, the eyes shining with a dry feverishness painful to see.

"If you go on night-duty and do not sleep in the day you will be ill," said the doctor, gently.

"Not I," said the nurse, roughly.

He was not, perhaps, sorry to miss in that handsome woman the show of extreme deference with which it was usual for the nurses to treat the doctors, but her brusqueness a little surprised him. Imagining that she resented the personal note, he turned, after a minute's quiet perusal of her face, to the patient.

Having given briefly his directions for his treatment and moved away, he stopped, looking at him for a minute still.

"His friends been communicated with?" he asked.

She shook her head. "By the look of him should you think he has got any friends who would care to hear?" she enquired.

Pityingly the doctor threw up his head. "Poor wretch!" he sighed. "What is his history, I wonder!"

To which Sister Marion made no reply. For she knew.

* * * * *

For the rest of the day she would be off duty. As a rule she took a brisk walk through the suburban town, passed the rows upon rows of neat little one-patterned houses, the fine, scattered villa-residences, with their spotless gardens, reached the common where the goats and the donkeys were tethered, the geese screamed with stretched necks, the children rolled and played. Plenty of good air there to fill lungs atrophied by long night hours in the sick atmosphere of the wards. Then, at a swinging pace home again to her welcome bed and a few hours' well-earned sleep.

To-day, beyond the white walls of the hospital, the sun danced invitingly, the spring breezes were astir. Sister Marion heeded them not at all. Having left the patient in the private ward to the nurse who succeeded her, she lingered listlessly in the wide, white corridor upon which all the wards opened, too preoccupied to remember that she was doing anything unusual.

There the doctor, having made the round of the wards, found her lingering still.

"Go to bed!" he said to her, authoritatively. "You will make yourself ill."

"Not I."

"Go to bed!" he said again, and, although his tone was not less authoritative, he smiled.

The feverish, pale blue eyes looked at him strangely with a regretful, wistful gaze, and he melted in a moment into unmixed gentleness. "Why are you being obstinate to-day? Go and lie down and get to sleep," he begged her.

"What does it matter if I do not?"

"It matters very much, to you, to your patients, to me. Will you go?"

She said yes, turned slowly away, and, passing down a passage leading from the central corridor, went to her tiny room. Arrived, she did not trouble to undress, but throwing off the cap which was tied beneath her chin, flung herself upon her bed.

"It is the last thing he will ask of me and I shall do it," she said.

She had known that she could not sleep. She put her hand above her burning eyes and forcibly closed the lids that remained so achingly open. In the darkness so achieved she must think out her plans; she must think how to get away from this place without attracting observation, leaving no trace of her removal, giving no clue to her destination. It was imperative that the step she decided on should be taken soon; she must form her project clearly, and there must be no blundering or mistake. But her overtired brain, refusing to work as she willed, presented only before her feverish eyes a picture of the young doctor coming in the spring sunshine down the hospital ward, a bunch of violets in his coat. How clean, and strong, and helpful he looked! And his voice--was it not indeed one to obey? It must be her fancy only that of late it had taken on a softer tone for her.

Her fancy! Her vain, mad fancy!

She flung over upon her bed and forced herself to contemplate what it was she had to do: To get away from the man who lay in the private ward; and from the place in which she had found a refuge till her evil angel had set him upon her track again.

Since the day, ten years ago, when she had married him, what a ruin her life had been! There had been, again and again, thank Heaven! periods of peace, periods of regained self-respect, of the enjoyment of the respect of others. These had been secured by flight only, by concealment of her whereabouts, and were of varying lengths of duration. Two years ago, with her hard-earned savings, she had paid his passage out to Africa. She had not believed him likely to earn the money to return, and had looked upon him as happily dead to her. Dead, indeed, perhaps. Until yesterday, when she had helped to lay him, unconscious, in the bed of the private ward. She guessed easily that he had learnt she was in the place, and had been about to seek her when he had been struck down.

If he should mercifully die!

Not he! she said, bitterly. Men sometimes died in _delirium tremens_. In every kind of illness, by every sort of accident, men died every day. Good and useful men, husbands of adoring wives, loving fathers of families, men needed by their country, by humanity, were swept mercilessly away. Only such carrion as this was left to fester upon the earth, to poison the lives of decent men and women. The doctor, standing above him, looking on the defaced image of what God, for some mysterious purpose, had made, had no thought but to restore to this foully-damaged frame the spirit and strength to do its evil work. Nurses, gentle and dutiful women, would give themselves to revive in all its corrupt activity the temporarily dormant mind and body.

Ought this to be? Where was the righteousness of it--the sense? Since that drug to which he was "so susceptible" was a deadly one, would it not be better to give him more of it? To rid society of a pest dangerous to its peace, to restore to one suffering, striving, blameless woman the happiness he had cost her?

"Would that be a crime?" she asked, and set her teeth and cried, "No, no," with hatred in her heart. Then, horrified at herself, flung herself over on her pillow, and, burying her face from the light of day, sobbed long with a tearless sobbing, bringing no relief; and so at last lay still.

* * * * *

She did not know if she had slept or only lain in the quiet and blank of mercifully deadened misery when, roused by the sound of her name, she lifted her head to find the matron of the little hospital standing beside her bed.

"We are having so much trouble with the D.T. patient, sister," she said. "He must not be left for a moment. I am sorry to wake you so soon, but will you go to him?"

She was so used to being alert and ready at the call of duty, that she forgot her plan had been to escape from the hospital at once, and in a minute was again in the private ward. The doctor was standing beside the bed, and Sister Marion saw he had been recalled because of the urgency of the case. For whatever reason, it was such a pleasure to see him again, to let her eyes rest upon the strong and kind and clever face--

And then, looking at him, she saw that down the broad brow and the clean-shaven cheek red blood was streaming.

He put up his hand to wipe the blood from his eyes, and the hand too, she saw, was gashed and bleeding.

He laughed at her look of surprise and horror. "This gentleman had a 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."

"Then don't kape a-lookin' o' that mander. Lay hold o' th' comb an' du my ringolets."

The comb was thrust within cold fingers which did not close upon it.

"If so bein' yer don't set ter wark and comb 'em out I'll shake ye. I'll shake ye, mother, du yer hare? Du yer hare, mother? Th' bell's gone, an' how'm I ter go ter school an' my ringolets not carled?"

They were not curled that morning, however, for at the sound of the child's angry, frightened voice Mrs Barrett came running upstairs and seized her and dragged her from the room.

"Yer baggige, yu! Ter spake i' that mander to a dyin' woman!"

"She ain't a-dyin', then," the child screamed as she was thrust from the house. "She ain't a-dyin', an' I want my ringolets carled."

Once, when Dora had announced in the hearing of a pupil-teacher that she was the prettiest girl in the school: "You ain't, then," the older girl had told her. "You are not pretty at all, Dora, but exactly like your brother Jim."

"Jim's ugly! You're a-tazin' of me!" Dora had fiercely cried.

"If you hadn't your curls you'd be Jim over again," the teacher had persisted.

She was a tempestuous little animal. She had flown to her mother with the horrid insinuation, had sobbed and screamed, and kicked the innocent, ugly Jim. If she had not her curls!

But she had them. Even this morning, when for the first time she must appear in school without having them freshly curled, the consciousness of their weight upon her shoulders was a comfort to the child. As well as she could without disarranging the set of it, she smoothed each long curl into order as she walked along. The sun of autumn shone, lying like a benediction upon the land whose fruits were gathered; among the hips and haws in the hedges the birds, their family cares all over, sang lightsomely, with vacant hearts. Happiness was in the air. Perhaps someone would say how pretty the curls were, to-day. Perhaps, as once, blessedly, before had happened, a lady riding slowly along the green wayside might pull up her horse to inquire whose little girl she was, to give her sixpence, to ask how much she would take for her beautiful curls.

Ah, with what joy on that happy morning Dora had galloped home to give the account to her mother! The sixpence had gone to buy the blue ribbon Dora wore among her locks on Sundays; but how the mother had cheered up! She had seemed almost well for half an hour that evening, and Dora had told the tale again and again.

"I was a-walkin' along, like this here, not a thinkin' a mite o' my ringolets, an' I see th' woman on th' horse keep a-smilin'. So I made my manners, an' she pulled up 'r horse. 'Whu's little gal be yu?' she say; 'an' where did yu git yer lovely hair?'"

Her mother had eaten two bits of bread-and-butter, that evening, and had drunk the tea Dora all alone had made her. How happy it had been! Perhaps it would all happen again.

Morning school over, she was putting on her hat among a struggling mass of children anxious to get into the open, where there was a great blue vault to shout under, and stones to shy, when the schoolmistress from the empty class-room called her back. The woman stood by her silently for a minute, one hand on the child's shoulder, the other moving thoughtfully over the shining fell of hair.

"Don't shout and play with the others to-day, Dora," she said at length. "Wait till they clear off, and then go right home."

"Yes, tacher."

The schoolmistress waited for another minute, smoothing the curls.

"You're only right a little girl, Dora, but you're the only one. You must try to be good, and look after poor little Jack and Jim, and your father--and be a comfort."

"Yes, tacher." Dora took courage beneath the caressing hand: "I like to be a comfit to mother best," she vouchsafed, brightly daring.

"But your mother----" the governess said, then stopped and turned away her head; she could not bring herself to tell the child the news of the mother she had heard that morning, since school began.

So Dora went, sedately for the first few steps, afterwards with a happy rush, the curls dancing on her shoulders.

"Yer mother is a-dyin', she 'ont be here long; you must try to be a better gal"; how often of late had that phrase offended her ears! She had met such announcements with a fury of denial, with storms of tears. She had rushed to her mother with wild reproach and complaint. "Why don't ye tell 'm yu ain't a-dyin', stids o' layin' there, that mander. They're allust a-tazin' of me?"

To-day no one had said the hated words; and mother would like to hear how teacher had "kep'" her at her side, and coaxed her hair. "I ha'n't niver seed her du that to Gladus, nor none on 'em," she would say, and would remind her mother how these less fortunate girls had not her "hid o' hair."

So, her steps quickened with joyful anticipation, she came running across the meadow in which was her home.

"Here come Dora," Mrs Barrett, who had been busy in Mrs Green's room, said to the neighbour who had helped her. Both women peeped through the lowered blind. "She'll come poundin' upstairs to her mother. There ain't no kapin' of 'r away; and a nice how-d'ye-do there'll be!"

The elder boy, Jim, whose ugly little face Dora's was said to resemble, was standing against the gate of the neglected garden. He did not shout at her, nor throw a stone at her, in the fashion of his usual greeting, but pulled open the rickety gate as she came up.

"Mother's dead," he whispered, and looked at her with curiosity.

"She ain't, then," Dora said. He drew his head back to avoid the blow she aimed at it, and shut the gate after her.

Jack, an ugly urchin of five, the youngest of the family, was sitting on the doorstep, hammering with the iron-shod heel of his heavy boot a hazel nut he had found on his way home. The nut, instead of cracking, was being driven deep into the moist earth. He did not desist from his employment, or lift his head.

"Father's gone for mother's corffin," he said.

The howl he gave when Dora knocked him off the step brought Mrs Barrett upon the scene. She pulled the girl off the fallen Jack with a gentler touch than usual.

"You come along upstairs, along o' me," she said.

* * * * *

There was not only the coffin to be ordered in Wotton, but suits of black for himself and children, besides the joint of meat to be cooked for the meal after the funeral. Mr Green did not hurry over his purchases, but went about them with the leisurely attentiveness of one anxious to do the right thing, but unaccustomed to the business of making bargains.

His wages had been "made a hand on," lately; there had been brandy and "sech-like" to buy for the missus; the neighbour to pay, leaving little more than enough for bread for the rest of them. But now, with this burying money--! The new-made widower enjoyed the hitherto undreamed-of experience of knowing that he might put in for a glass at every public-house he passed, and not exhaust it.

He treated himself to a tin of salmon to have with his supper, when he got back to Dulditch. While his wife had been well and about, she had been wont at rare intervals to supply such a "ralish" to the evening meal. Having the means to indulge himself, his thoughts had at once travelled to the luxury.

Yet, arrived at home, he had had too much beer to be very hungry, and the thought of the dead wife, up there, just beyond the ceiling, destroyed what little pleasure the feast might have held.

"Happen she'd been alive, she'd maybe ha' picked a mossel," he said to himself.

That she could be totally indifferent to the delicacy, even although dead and fairly started on her heavenward journeying, was a bewildering fact his dull brain could scarcely grasp. He got up from the table, and taking the unshaded lamp, walked heavily upstairs to look upon this marvel--his wife who was no more.

He was a stolid creature, but was shaken enough to give a sharp growl of fear when, from the other side of the rigid form upon the bed, a head was lifted.

"Hello!" he called. "Hello! What yu a-doin' here? Now then! Come out o' that, yu young warmint; don't, I'll hide ye."

The figure lying by the dead woman slipped to the ground. It wore a brown frock and a crumpled white overall trimmed with lace.

"Hello!" the man said again. He looked stupidly at his little daughter, then pulled aside the sheet which covered his wife.

In the waxen face, with lids still half-open above the dull eyes, with lips drawn back to show the gums, was little change. Beneath the chin a large white bow of coarse muslin had been tied. It was designed to hide the thinness of the throat, but gave, besides, a dreadful air of smartness to the poor corpse. Above the sunken chest the arms were crossed, but, over them, and over the thin hands, in a burning, shining mass of resplendent colour lay--

The husband held the lamp nearer, and bent his dull, red face to peer closer at the scattered heap--the miracle of bronze and red, red living gold. "Hello!" he said again, then moved the lamp to let its light shine on his daughter's face, and stared at her.

"Hello!"

"I ha'n't got no one now to carl my ringolets," the child sobbed, her voice rising high in the scale of rebellious misery; "my ringolets ain't no good to me no more. I ha' cut 'em off; mother, she kin have 'em. They ain't no good ter me."

The glare of the lamp held awry was upon the broad red face of the girl with the streaming, yellow eyes, with the unevenly cropped head.

"I thought yu was the boy Jim," her father said.

PINK CARNATIONS

"You see, they are my lucky flowers," she said. "I can't very well wear them on my wedding-dress, but I'm to have some to go away with. Jack's going to bring them down from town with him to-night."

I asked of Daphne, who had been the favourite of fortune from her birth, in whose cup of sweet no bitter had ever mingled, who had walked for all her happy days along a flowery path, what she meant by such nonsense.

She was ready enough to give me her absurd girlish reasons.

What she told me was the feeblest folly, of course; but even silly superstition must be pardoned to such a pretty person; and the words of a young woman who is going to be married on the morrow must be treated by a hopeless spinster, I suppose, with, at least, a semblance of respect. There had been an occasion, it seemed, long ago in her childhood, when she, having lost from her neck a locket which held her dead father's portrait, had found it, all search for it having ceased, on the carnation-bed where she had stooped to pick a flower. On the day that the news reached them that Hugh, her brother, had won the hurdle race at Cambridge (one of the chief triumphs, it appeared, of her eventless life) she had just finished arranging a vase of pink carnations for her dressing-table. Once, when her mother had been seriously ill and there had been a fear the disease from which she suffered was going to take a dangerous turn, she, Daphne, had been frightened and very unhappy. Longing for, yet dreading the doctor's arrival, she had watched him descend from his carriage, wearing a pink carnation in his coat. She had known at once that his verdict on her mother's state would be favourable; and it was. A burglar had tried to get in at Daphne's sitting-room window--at least Daphne, on what appeared to me insufficient evidence, declared that he had done so. The window-box had fallen to the ground, and had put the burglar to flight--that is, if there had been one. At any rate it was clearly proved that the window-box had fallen. It contained, of course, pink carnations.

And so on to many other instances, chief among which was the fact that the first time she had beheld the handsome face of the Jack she was to marry to-morrow she had worn a bunch of her favourite flowers in the bodice of her white silk dress. Afterwards, on the day of the County Ball, at which function he had proposed, he had sent her a bouquet composed entirely of pink carnations, and had chosen one of those blooms for his own buttonhole.

"Without knowing--without my having even mentioned to him that they brought me luck!" Daphne assured me, the dark, poetic eyes in her small face large with the mystery of it. "Do you wonder Jack agrees with me I _must_ not be without them on my wedding-day?"

By her mother's command, and in order that she might not look, as I am assured many brides do look, a "perfect rag" on her wedding-day, Daphne was to rest for a certain number of hours, that afternoon. She was forbidden, even, to write one of the seventy still remaining out of the three hundred letters of thanks to the donors of wedding-presents.

She should have to work them off--so many a day--on her honeymoon, Daphne ruefully supposed. Jack would help. She would make him direct the envelopes. She bore a grudge apparently against the givers of the treasures under which the tables in the morning-room were groaning.

"If you could only know what it has been!" she sighed. "However hard I wrote I couldn't keep pace. No sooner had I wiped one name off the list than three more presents had come!"

From this onerous duty, however, she was now to desist, and from all fatigue of receiving the guests who were arriving by different trains throughout the day. She was to lie at her ease on silken cushions in that pretty room of her own, upon whose window-box the supposititious burglar had set his too heavy boot. I was amused to see that the white chintzes of the chairs and hangings were flowered with pink carnations, and that garlands of the flower, tied with pink ribbons, formed the frieze of the white wallpaper.

"Well, you were always a petted and spoilt child," I said to her; "and I suppose you are going to be so to the end of the chapter."

"Only more so," she said, with her youthful arrogance. "You can't think what a splendid hand at spoiling Jack is."

I laughed, told her to let me know how much he spoilt her in five years' time, and left her. For a servant had interrupted our conversation with the announcement that Mr Mavor, who had returned from town, would be glad to speak to me.

"Hughie? how absurd!" Daphne said, who wanted to go on talking to me about her lover. "As if Hughie could possibly have a thing to say to you which would not keep, Hannah!"

"It is to make me an offer of marriage I have not the slightest doubt," I told her, being of an age when a woman can make jokes of that kind about herself and pretend not to feel the heartprick.

I found the head of the house in the room which had been turned into a museum of objects of art--precious and not precious--for exhibition on the morrow. I had known the young man from boyhood, and I saw at once that something was amiss. He had left for town before my arrival that morning, and this was our first meeting, but he forgot to come forward and put out his hand. He stalked past me, instead, and banged the door by which I had entered; then he seized me by the arm.