A Speckled Bird Part 27

Cathcart stood and the iron dashboard of the car. In the blinding glare of the explosion two strikers and a policeman were seen to fall, and when the roar and sharp shivering of crashed windows ended, a sudden hush fell upon the mult.i.tude.

Father Temple had slowly forced his way along the outer edge of the quivering throng and reached the centre of the square, where in summer a fountain babbled. Some one behind grasped his ca.s.sock.

"You are a priest? For the love of G.o.d, come to a dying man! Come back."

Death had sounded a temporary truce, and for some moments only whispers pa.s.sed trembling lips, but the strikers still guarded the rails. Mr.

Cathcart wiped off the dust thrown into his face by the explosion, bared his grey head, and lifted his hand:

"Men, don't you think you have worked mischief enough for one night?

Eight dead, and only G.o.d knows how many wounded! That is an ugly bill the law will surely make you pay. You heard those three shots fired into the air? It was a signal for the armory; the troops are now coming. Who will feed your babies when you are bayonetted?"

A mounted policeman spurred his horse close to the president.

"The soldiers are hurrying down."

The leaders recognized the futility of continued resistance, and, as they slowly fell back from the track the police were in undisputed control of the cars when the hurrying line of soldiers reached the square.

Father Temple and his unknown guide paused beside a stretcher. Two men wearing the Red Cross badge bent over it.

"Stand back; here is a priest."

Both rose, and pointed to the sheet covering a motionless figure.

"Too late. He is dead."

Then one added, as he touched Father Temple's sleeve:

"You might be of use over yonder, where a woman is badly hurt. They are waiting for an ambulance to move her."

When Max Harlberg ordered the retreat of the strikers and jumped from the roof of the car to the pavement, he caught sight of a huddled ma.s.s on the step near the motor controller, and simultaneously he and Mr.

Cathcart approached the spot.

Mrs. Dane had sunk down in a sitting posture on the step, and her head rested against the shattered edge of the dashboard, her face tilted skyward, where two stars blinked feebly through thinning snow flakes.

Blood dripped from the right shoulder, and behind one ear a red stream dyed her golden braids, but the blue eyes were open, and her limp hands lay in the crimson pool deepening in her lap, where the waterproof cloak held it.

"My G.o.d, it is my typewriter! Hazleton, Hazleton! Telephone for an ambulance. Hurry! I knew she was mixed up in this deviltry, but didn't think she would actually come to the front and take a hand."

"She did not. She came here hunting Bowen, whose family was burned out to-night, and she had taken some of them to her room. His wife has spasms when she is worried, and was screaming for him, so Mrs. Dane was begging him to go back with her. She wanted a peaceable strike--urged us not to begin any fight--and she s.n.a.t.c.hed a pistol out of my hand. Can't you speak to me, Mrs. Dane? Where are you hurt worst?"

Harlberg stooped to lift her, but Cathcart held him back.

"Stop! You must wait for the doctor. She might bleed to death if you moved her. A pretty night's work in a civilized city! Lord, how I wish all you anarchists had one neck! So Silas Bowen has paid her liberally for helping his family! He threw that bomb--aimed it at Hazleton and me, and when it exploded she was struck by something. Leather-headed, black-hearted scoundrel! The police have just marched him off, and the infernal fool ought to be hung from the first lamp-post."

An ambulance came up at a gallop, and while the surgeon sprang out and hurried toward the group, Father Temple stepped forward. As the electric light shone full on the upturned face and the wide, fixed eyes, a cry broke from the lips of the priest, who tried to thrust all aside.

"My Nona! My own pansy eyes!"

The surgeon pushed him back.

"I must have room to examine her. Help me lay her across the platform.

Here, you! Are you her brother? Take her firmly by the shoulders, so; steady, lower her head."

"She is my wife."

What was done, and exactly why, none but the surgeon ever understood; those who looked on knew only that jagged cuts were sprayed and closed and bandaged; that the lovely hair was shorn away from a wound at the back of the head, and hypodermics inserted in the arm.

No word was spoken until the stretcher was ordered close to the car platform, and the patient was lifted tenderly and laid upon it. Then the thin, shaking hand of the priest clutched the doctor's sleeve.

"I have the right to know exactly what you think."

"Then I must be frank. She has received probably fatal injuries to spine and brain, and paralysis has resulted. Whether the paralysis will be permanent I cannot say now, because the extent of the shock has yet to be determined."

"She is not entirely unconscious."

"I am sure she is. On what do you base your opinion?"

"I know too well the expression of her eyes, and it changed when I spoke to her."

"Her tongue is certainly paralyzed, and she can move neither hand nor foot."

"I do not wish her carried to the charity hospital, though doubtless the treatment is the same. Please take her to the Mercy Infirmary, and will you be so kind as to let me sit close to her in the ambulance?"

Keenly the doctor scanned the convulsed face, where overmastering emotion defied control.

"Your wife, you said? My friend, don't you think it time you laid aside your disguise? Priests are not--in this country--given to acknowledging their wives so publicly. It may be all right, but your marital claims and your clothes don't seem to fit."

"I am not a Romanist. I belong to an Episcopal celibate Order, and my superior understands and directs my movements. If you knew everything you would pity me----"

The surgeon took off his hat, bowed, and waved him to a seat in the ambulance.

In after years, when Father Temple's dark hair had whitened, and vital fires were burning low, to the verge of ashes, he looked back always with supreme tenderness and immeasurable joy to the days that followed the strike, as after some tempest lulls one watches the unexpected l.u.s.tre of an after-glow where it glints over the wreckage wrought, and waves its banners of gilded rose between vanishing storm clouds and oncoming night.

In that small room at the Infirmary reigned profound quiet, broken only by the low voices of two wise-eyed, tender-handed, know-all, tell-nothing nurses, whose ideals of absolute obedience to staff orders were as starched as their caps and collars. They shared the doctor's opinion that the patient was conscious of nothing, because she neither flinched nor moaned when her wounds were dressed, but the watcher who spent part of each morning beside the bed knew better. Waiting one day until the nurses left the room, he drew from his pocket a photograph of Leighton, leaned down, and held it close to her. The half-closed eyes widened, brightened, and, after a moment, tears gathered.

He laid the picture against her lips and left it on her breast.

With that fine instinct which inheres only in supremely unselfish love, he fought down the longing to fondle her, allowed himself no approach to a caress, remembering that his touch was loathsome to her, and in her present helplessness would prove a cruel insult. He accepted as part of his punishment the fierce trial of bending so close to the precious face her hatred denied him; and only once, when the nurse laid the patient's hand in his, while she tightened a bandage and gave a hypodermic, he bowed his face upon it and kissed the palm.

Sometimes for hours she kept her eyes shut; again, for as long a period, she would not close them, and though her gaze, never vacant, wandered from face to face, it held no inquiry, no sadness, no meaning save of profound introspection, of some subtle mental readjustment; but only a deep, slowly drawn sigh of utter weariness ever crossed her pale lips, from which the blood had been drained. Father Temple felt a.s.sured that as she lay motionless, fronting eternity, her self-communion was profound and calmly searching; and ceaselessly he prayed that G.o.d's mercy might comfort the brave, lonely, helpless soul.

One morning the nurse reported that during the night Mrs. Dane had moved her right hand and arm, but the improvement did not continue, and while at times fully conscious, her vitality was evidently ebbing, and the pulse began to fail. She had never spoken, and the doctor said she never would. Standing outside the door, Father Temple waited one noon to hear the physician's report. As he came out he put his hand on the priest's shoulder, and answered the mute appeal in eyes that were wells of hopeless grief.

"Don't leave her. I have asked the matron to let you stay now. We have done all we could, and she does not suffer. She may slip away at any moment."

The room was very still, and sweet with violets which Father Temple brought daily. The muslin curtain had been looped back to admit light that fell full on the pillow where lay the beautiful head, shorn of a portion of its golden crown. Her features were sharpened, and the eyes seemed preternaturally large above dark, deep shadows worn by suffering.

The compa.s.sionate nurse withdrew, closing the door noiselessly. With locked hands the priest stood, looking down into the whitening face which the fine chisel of pain had reduced to a marvel of delicate perfection, and when her long, brown lashes slowly drooped, he fell upon his knees and prayed, his head bowed on the bed close to her pillow. In the agony of his pet.i.tion one pa.s.sionate, broken cry rolled through the solemn silence.

"Lord, visit upon me the punishment of her unbelief! Let me suffer all--everything--because through me she lost her faith. Spare her pure, precious soul and save her! Oh, G.o.d, mercifully receive and comfort her dear soul, for Christ's sake!"