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Ralstons

<h2>CHAPTER XXXII.</h2> Long after midnight Hester Crowdie sat beside her sleeping husband, watching him with unwinking eyes. The soft, coloured light was shaded so that no ray could fall upon his face to disturb his rest, as he lay back upon the yielding pillow, sleeping very soundly. The house was still, but the servants were not all gone to bed, for Hester was anxious. At any moment she might need to send for a doctor. But she sat watching the unconscious man alone. His eyes were closed, and his face was flushed. He breathed very heavily, though she did not quite realize it; for the sound of his breathing had increased very gradually during many hours, from having been at first quite inaudible until it filled her ears with a steady, rhythmic roar, loud and regular as the noise of a blacksmith’s bellows. But she was scarcely conscious of it, because she had watched so long. Hour after hour she had sat beside him, hardly changing her position, and never leaving the room. To her the house seemed still, and only now and then the echo of the steam horns reached her ears, made musical by the distance, as it floated from the far river across the dozing city. On a fine spring night New York is rarely asleep before two o’clock. It dozes, as it were, turning, half awake, from time to time, and speaking drowsily in its deep voice, like a strong man very tired, but still conscious. It breathes, too, sometimes, as Crowdie was breathing, very heavily, especially in the nights that come after days of passion and struggling; and the breathing of a great city at night is not like any other sound on earth. Hester was conscious that all was not well with the man she loved, though he had slept so long. She rose, and moved uneasily about the room. She was very pale, and there were dark shadows in her pallor, the shadows that fear’s giant wraith casts upon the human face when death is stalking up and down, up and down, outside the door, waiting to see whether he may take the little life that falls as a crumb from the table of the master, or whether he must go away again to his own place, out of sight. But Hester did not know that he was there, as she rose and crossed the room and came back to stand at the foot of the bed, gazing at Crowdie’s face. She was anxious and uneasy, though she had watched him once before in the same way. But at that first time she had not done what she had done now, with feverish haste, thinking only of helping him. All at once she shivered, and she turned to see whether the window were not open. But it was closely shut. It was as though something very cold had been laid upon her. She stared about, nervously, and the pupils of her eyes grew very large, with a frightened look. She laid both hands upon the foot of the bedstead, and grasped it with all her strength, bending forwards and staring at Crowdie’s face, and the chill thrilled very strangely across her shoulders and all through her, so that she felt it in her elbows and in her heels. She glanced over her shoulder into the softly shadowed corner farthest from the bed; for she was sure that something was there, in the room, a bodily presence, which she must presently see. The chill ran through her again and again, cold as ice, but with a painful pricking. She looked at Crowdie again and saw that his eyes were no longer tightly closed. The lids were a little raised, and she could see the edge of the dark iris, and the white below it and on each side of it. He had moved a little just as she had turned to look into the corner. He ought not to have moved, she thought, without reason. It was as though a dead man had moved, she thought. And again the chill came. She was sure that the window must be open, but she could not look round. Suddenly she remembered how when she had been a little girl she had been taken to be photographed, and the man had put a cold iron thing behind her head that seemed to hold her with two frozen fingers just behind her ears. She felt the frozen fingers now, in the same places, and they were pressing her head down. For a moment everything swam with her, and then it all passed. The iron hand was gone—the window was shut—there was nothing in the corner. But instantly the terrible, stertorous breathing rent her ears. It had gone on for hours. The servants could hear it downstairs. The bedstead trembled with it under her hands. But she had not been conscious of it. The unnatural thing that had touched her—the thing that had come in through the window and that had stood in the corner—it had unsealed her hearing. She heard now, and fearfully. With one slender arm under the pillow she raised him, for she thought that he might breathe more easily if his head were higher. His laboured breath deafened her, and she could feel it through her sleeve upon her other arm. Desperately she hastened to arrange the pillows. But the dreadful sound roared at her like the flames of a great fire. In sudden and overwhelming terror she left him as he was, half uncovered, and ran to the door, calling wildly for help, again and again, down into the dimly-lighted staircase. Then she came back in a new terror, lest her screams should have waked him. But he slept on. In the movement of the pillow as she had withdrawn her arm, his head had fallen on one side. His eyes were half open, and the breath was rough and choking. She had never known how heavy a man’s head was. Her small, bloodless hands made an effort to turn him—then some one was with her, helping her, anxiously and clumsily. “Not so! Not that way!” she whispered, hoarsely, with drawn, dry lips, and her little hands touched the servant’s rough ones with uncertain direction, in haste and fear. Then he breathed more easily, and she herself drew breath. But she had been terrified, and she sent for old Doctor Routh, and sat down in her old place to wait and watch until he should come. It was better now. The coming of the servant had broken the loneliness, and there was life in the air again, instead of death. Her heart fluttered still, like a wild bird tired out with beating its wings against the bars. But there was no chill, and presently the heart rested. He was better. She was quite sure that he was better. The rough breathing would cease presently, he would sleep till morning, and then he would waken and be himself again, just as though nothing had happened. Now that the fear was gone, she rose and went to the window and let the shade run up so that she could see the stars. They had a soft and sleepy look, like children’s eyes at bed-time. The musical echo of the horns came to her from the river. In the old Colonnade House opposite and to the right, a single window was lighted high up. Perhaps some one was ill up there—all alone. Then the city moved in its dozing rest, with a subdued thumping, rumbling noise that lasted a few seconds. Perhaps there was a fire far away, and the engines and the hook-and-ladder carts were racing away from the lumbering water-tank down one of the quiet eastern avenues. The light in the window of the Colonnade House went out suddenly—no one was ill there—it had only been some one sitting up late. Hester missed the light, and the great long building looked black against the dim sky, and the stars blinked more sleepily. She drew the shade down again and turned back into the room. She started. Crowdie had seemed better when she had left his side for a moment. It had eased him to move his head. But now he was worse again, and the room almost shook with the noise of his breathing. It was as though he were inhaling water that choked him and gurgled in his throat and nostrils. She was frightened again, and ran to his side. She took her little handkerchief which lay on the small table at her elbow, and passed it delicately over his mouth. Her hand trembled as soon as she had done it, and the handkerchief fell upon the woollen blanket, and gently unfolded itself a little after it had fallen. It caught the light and seemed to be alive, as though it had taken some of the sleeping man’s life from him. She started again, and seized it to crumple it and thrust it away, with something between fear and impatience in her movement, and she bent over her husband’s face once more, and realized where her real fear was, as she tenderly smoothed his fair hair and softly touched his temples. There was nothing to be done but to wait, and she waited, not patiently. Sometimes the noise of his breathing hurt her, and she pressed her hand to her side, and hid her eyes for a moment. The dismal minutes that would not go by, nor make way for one another, dragged on through a long half-hour, and more. Then there was a rumbling of wheels on the cobble stones, and she was at the window in an instant, flattening her face against the glass as she tried to look northward, whence the sound should come. It was Routh’s carriage. That was a certainty, even before she caught sight of the yellow glare of the lamps, moving fan-like along the broad way. It was not likely that any other carriage should stray into the loneliness of Lafayette Place at that time of night. The carriage stopped. Hester saw a man get out, and heard the clap of the door of the brougham as it was sharply closed behind him. Immediately she was at the door, her hand on the handle, but her eyes turned anxiously upon Crowdie’s face. The steps came up the stairs, and she looked out. It was Doctor Routh himself, for she had sent a very urgent message. Without going upon the landing, she stretched out her hand and almost dragged him into the room, for somehow her terror increased to a frenzy as she saw him, and she felt that her heart could not go on beating long enough for him to speak. Her face was very grave, but she was only conscious of his deep violet-blue eyes that glanced at her keenly as he passed her. He had half guessed what was the matter, for the terrible breathing could be heard on the stairs. Without hesitation he took the shade from the light, and held the little lamp close to Crowdie’s face. He raised first one eyelid and then the other. The pupils were enormously dilated. Then he felt the pulse, listened to the heart, and shook his head almost imperceptibly. A moment later he was scratching words hastily in his note-book. “Why didn’t you send word that it was morphia?” he asked, sharply, without looking up. “Send that by the carriage, and tell them to be quick!” He thrust the note into her hands and almost pushed her from the room. “Make haste! I must have the things at once!” he called after her as she flew downstairs. Then he tried such means as he had at hand, though he knew how useless they must be, doing everything possible to rouse the man from the poisoned sleep. He smiled grimly at his own folly, and laid the head upon its pillow again. Hester was in the room in a moment. “It’s morphia,” he said, “and he’s had an overdose. How did he come to get it? Who gave it to him?” “I did,” answered Hester, in a clear voice, and her lips were white. “Will he die?” she whispered, with sudden horror. She almost sprang at Routh as she asked the question, grasping his arm in both her hands. “I don’t know,” he answered, slowly. “I’ll try to bring him round. Control yourself, Mrs. Crowdie. This isn’t the time for crying. Tell me what happened.” She told him something, brokenly, her memory half gone from fear—how something had happened to distress him, and he had turned red and fallen, twisted and unconscious—she did not know what she told him. “Has it ever happened before?” asked Routh, who was holding her hands to quiet her, while she moved her feet nervously. It had happened once, she told him, on a winter’s evening when they had been alone. She could say that much, and then her eyes were drawn to Crowdie’s face, and to the horror of it, as a bent spring flies back to its own line when released. Routh pressed her hand. “Look at me, please,” he said, authoritatively. “We can’t do anything for him till my things come. Tell me why you gave him morphia.” She had thought it was the right thing. Her husband had told her that he had formerly taken a great deal of it. He had suffered great pain when he had been younger, from an accident, and had fallen into the habit that kills. But before they had been married he had given it up—for her sake. Her eyes turned to him again. She snatched her hands from Routh’s and pressed them desperately to her ears to keep out the sound of his breathing. But Routh drew her away and made her look at him again. And these attacks came from having given up morphia, she told him. Crowdie had said so. He had told her that, of course, a dose of the poison would stop one of them, but that he was determined not to begin taking it again. It would ruin his life and hers if he did. The attacks gave him no pain, he had said. He did not remember afterwards what had happened to him. But of course they were bad for him, and might come more frequently. He had been terribly distressed. It had seemed to be breaking his heart, because it must give her pain. He had made her promise never to give him morphia when he was unconscious. He was determined not to fall back into the habit of it. “Then why did you do it?” asked Routh, scrutinizing her pale face and frightened eyes. She had imagined that it would save him pain, though he had told her that he recollected nothing of his sensations after the attack was past. “He was all stiff and twisted!” she cried, in broken tones. “His hands were all twisted—his eyes turned up.” “But where did you get the morphia?” asked the physician, holding her before him, kindly, but so that she had to face him. “He had it,” she said. “I made him show it to me once. He kept it in a drawer with the little instrument for it. He showed me how to pinch the skin and prick it—it was so easy! There was the mixture in a bottle—the cork wouldn’t come out—I did it with a hairpin—” “How much did you give him?” enquired the doctor, bringing her back to her story, as her mind groped, terror-struck amongst its details. “Why—the little syringe full—wasn’t that right?” She saw the despair of life in his eyes. “Oh, God! My God!” she shrieked, breaking from his hands. “I’ve killed him!” “I’m afraid you have,” said Routh, but under his breath, and she could not have heard him speak. She threw herself wildly upon her husband’s breast, clutching him with her small white hands, lifting herself upon them, staring into his face, and then shrieking as she fell forwards again, her hands tearing at her own thick brown hair. Routh knew that Crowdie could not be disturbed. He stood back from the bedside and watched her with far-seeing, dreaming eyes, while the first fever of despair burned itself out in a raving delirium. He had seen such sights many times in his life, but he remembered nothing more terrible than the grief of this woman who had killed her husband by a hideous mistake, thinking to save him pain, thinking it well to break a promise he had taken of her for his safety, and which she had believed had been only for his self-respect. Crowdie was past saving. Routh did all that his science could do, trying in turn every known means of breaking the death sleep, trying to hem in the life before it was quite gone out, that the very least breath of it might be imprisoned in the body. But it was of no use. The poison was in the veins, in the brain, the subtle spirit of the opium devil distilled to an invisible enemy. The little hand of Fate, that had been so small and noiseless a few hours earlier, spread, gigantic, and grasped Science by the throat and shook her off. There was not anything to be done. And Hester twisted her hands, and moaned and shrieked, and beat her breast, like a woman mad, as indeed she was. Routh had understood. Crowdie was an epileptic. He had perhaps believed himself cured when he had married his wife, and had been horrified by the first attack. He loved her, and he would naturally wish to hide from her the secret of his life. The general feeling about epilepsy is not like what is felt for any other human weakness. An epileptic is hardly regarded as a natural being, and the belief that the disease is hereditary brands it with an especial horror. It had been ingenious on Crowdie’s part to invent the story about the morphia, and to carry it out and impress it on her by showing her the instrument and the bottle of poison. It was possible that there might have been some foundation of truth in the tale. He might have had the implements from a physician. But Routh, who had known him long, was convinced, for many reasons, that he had never been a victim to the habit of using the drug regularly. It had been very ingenious of the poor man. Hester could hardly have known anything of the after effects of breaking off such a habit, still less was it probable that she should know much about epilepsy, and trusting him as she did, it was natural that she should never have reported what he had told her to any one who might have explained the truth. The only mistake he had made had been in not throwing away the poison, and refilling the bottle with pure water. He had miscalculated the anxiety she would feel to relieve him, if he ever had an attack again. The mistake had cost him his life. Towards morning the house in Lafayette Place was very still again, though there were lights in the windows, and the shadows of people moving about within passed and repassed upon the shades. Only the policeman on his beat, looking up eastward and seeing the dawn in the sky and glancing at the windows, knew that there had been trouble in the house during the night, and guessed that for a day or two the blinds would not be raised. But all the great city began to breathe again, turning in its sleep, and waking drowsily in the cool spring dawning to begin its daily life of work and play and passion, unconscious of such trifles as the loss of a man, or the madness of a frantic woman’s grief. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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