A Sheaf of Corn Part 23

"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 G.o.d."

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 G.o.d 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 ap.r.o.n 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 G.o.d! 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 rec.u.mbent 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 ap.r.o.n, 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.