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Revelations of a Wife

<h2 id="id02060" style="margin-top: 4em">XXIX</h2> <h5 id="id02061">"BUT YOU WILL NEVER KNOW—"</h5> I do not believe that ever in my life can I again have an experience so horrible as that which followed the development of infection in the dagger wound which Grace Draper had inflicted upon herself after her unsuccessful attempt to shoot Dicky. Against the combined protest of Dicky and Lillian, I shared the care of the girl with the trained nurse whom Lillian's forethought had provided and Dicky's money had paid for. The reason for my presence at her bedside was a curious one. At the close of the third day following the girl's attempt at murder and self-destruction, Lillian came to the door of the room where I was reading to Dicky, who was now almost recovered, and called me out into the hall. "Madge," she said abruptly, "that poor girl in there has been calling for you for an hour. We tried every way we could think of to quiet her, but nothing else would do. She must see you. I imagine she has made up her mind she's going to die and wants to ask your forgiveness or something of that sort." "I will go to her at once," I said quietly. As I moved toward the door my knees trembled so I could hardly walk. Lillian came up to me quickly and put her strong arm around me. We went down the hall to a wonderful room of ivory and gold, which I knew must be Lillian's guest room. In a big ivory-tinted bed the girl lay, a pitiful wreck of the dashing, insolent figure she had been. Her face was as white as the pillows upon which she lay, while her hands looked utterly bloodless as they rested listlessly upon the coverlet. Only her eyes held anything of her old spirit. They looked unusually brilliant. I wondered uneasily if their appearance was the result of their contrast to her deathly white face or whether the fever which the doctor dreaded had set in. She looked at me steadily for a long minute, then spoke huskily—I was surprised at the strength of her voice. "Of course I have no right to ask anything of you, Mrs. Graham," she said, "but death, you know, always has privileges, and I am going to die." I saw the nurse glance swiftly, sharply, at her, and then go quietly out of the room. "She's hurrying to get the doctor," the girl said, with the uncanny intuition of the very sick, "but he can't do me any good. I'm going to die and I know it. And I want you to promise to stay with me until the end comes. I shall probably be unconscious, and not know whether you are here or not, but I know you. You're the kind that if you give a promise you won't break it, and I have a sort of feeling that I'd like to go out holding your hand. Will you promise me that?" Her eyes looked fiercely, compelling, into mine. I stepped forward and laid my hand on hers, lying so weak on the bed. "Of course I promise," I said pitifully. There was a quick, savage gleam in her eyes which I could not fathom, a gleam that vanished as quickly as it came. I told myself that the look I had surprised in her eyes was one of ferocious triumph, and that as my hand touched hers she had instinctively started to draw her hand away from mine, and then yielded it to my grasp. "All right," she said indifferently, closing her eyes. "Remember now, don't go away." "Dicky! Dicky! what have I done that you are so changed? How can you be so cold to me when you remember all that we have been to each other? Don't be so cruel to me. Kiss me just once, just once, as you used to do." Over and over again the plaintive words pierced the air of the room where Grace Draper lay, while Dr. Pettit and the nurse battled for her life. The theme of all her delirious cries and mutterings was Dicky. She lived over again all the homely little humorous incidents of their long studio association. She went with him upon the little outings which they had taken together, and of which I learned for the first time from her fever-crazed lips. "Isn't this delicious salad, Dicky?" she would cry. "What a magnificent view of the ocean you can get from here? Wouldn't Belasco envy that moonlight effect?" Then more tender memories would obsess her. To me, crouching in my corner, bound by my promise to stay in the room, it seemed a most cruel irony of fate that I should be compelled to listen to this unfolding of my husband's faithlessness to me within so short a time of our tender reconciliation. I do not think Dr. Pettit knew I was in the room when he first entered it, anxious because of his imperative summons by the nurse. Lillian's guest room had the alcove characteristic of the old-fashioned New York houses, and she and I were seated in that. The physician bent over the bed, carefully studying the patient. Through his professional mask I thought I saw a touch of bewilderment. He studied the girl's pulse and temperature, listened to her breathing, then turned to the nurse sharply. "How long has she been delirious?" "Since just after I called you," the girl replied. "Did you notice anything unusual about her before that? You said something over the telephone about her talking queerly." The nurse looked quickly over to the alcove where Lillian and I sat. Dr. Pettit's eyes followed her glance. With a quick muttered exclamation he strode swiftly to where we sat and towered angrily above us. "What does this mean?" he asked imperatively. "Why are you here listening to this stuff? It is abominable." "I agree with you, Dr. Pettit. It is abominable, but she made Madge promise to stay," Lillian said quietly. She made an almost imperceptible gesture of her head toward the bed, and her voice was full of meaning. He started, looked her steadily in the eyes, then nodded slightly as if asserting some unspoken thought of hers. "Dicky darling," the voice from the bed rose pleadingly, "don't you remember how you promised me to take me away from all this, how we planned to go far, far away, where no one would ever find us again?" Dr. Pettit turned almost savagely on me. "Promise or no promise," he said, "I will not allow this any longer. You must go out of this room and stay out." I stood up and faced him unflinchingly. "I cannot, Dr. Pettit," I answered firmly. "I must keep my promise." "Then I will get your release from that promise at once," he said and strode toward the bed. I watched him with terrified fascination. Had he gone suddenly mad? What did he mean to do? As Dr. Pettit turned from Lillian and me, and strode toward the bed where the sick girl lay, apparently raving in delirium, I called out to him in horror. "Oh, don't disturb that delirious, dying girl!" I made an impetuous step forward to try to stop him when Lillian caught my arm and whirled me into a recess of the alcove. "You unsuspecting little idiot," she said, giving me a tender little shake that robbed the words of their harshness, "can't you see that that girl is shamming?" For a moment I could not comprehend what she meant; then the full truth burst upon me. If what Lillian said were true, if the girl was pretending delirium that she might utter words concerning Dicky's infatuation for her which would torture me, then it was more than probable, almost certain, in fact, that there was no word of truth in her pretended delirious mutterings. Dicky was not faithless to me, as I had feared during the tortured moments in which I had listened to, the girl's ravings. The joy of the sudden revelation almost unnerved me. I believe I would have swooned and fallen had not Lillian caught me. "Listen," she said in my ear, pinching my arm almost cruelly to arouse me, "listen to what Dr. Pettit is saying, and you'll see that I am right." My eyes followed hers to the bed where Dr. Pettit stood gazing down upon the seemingly unconscious girl and speaking in measured, merciless fashion. "This won't do, my girl," he was saying, and his tone and manner of address seemed in some subtle fashion to strip all semblance of dignity from the girl and leave her simply a "case" of the doctor's, of a type only too familiar to him. "It won't do," he repeated. "You are simply shamming this delirium, and you are lessening your chances for life every minute you persist in it. I'm sorry to be hard on you, but I'm going to give you an ultimatum right now. Either you will release Mrs. Graham from her promise at once and quit this nonsense, or I shall call an officer, report the truth of this occurrence, and you will be arrested not only upon a charge of attempted suicide, but of attempted murder. "Of course, you will then be removed to the jail hospital, where I am afraid you may not enjoy the skilful care you are getting now. And, if you live, the after effects of these charges will be exceedingly unpleasant for you." My heart almost stopped beating as I listened to the physician's relentless words. Suppose Dr. Pettit was mistaken and the girl should be really delirious, after all. But just as I had reached the point of torturing doubt hardly to be borne, the girl stopped her delirious muttering, opened her eyes and looted steadily up at the physician. "You devil," she said, at last, with quiet malignity. "You've called the turn. I throw up my hands." "I thought so." This was the physician's only response. He stood quietly waiting while the girl gazed steadily, unwinkingly at him. "Tell me," she said at last, coolly, "am I going to die?" "I do not know," the physician returned, as coolly. "You have a slight temperature, and I am afraid infection has developed. But I can tell you that your performance of the last hour or two has not helped your chances any. You must be perfectly quiet and obedient, conserve every bit of strength if you wish to live." "How about that very chivalric threat you made just now," the girl retorted, sneeringly. "If I live, are you going to have me arrested for this thing?" "Not if you behave yourself and promise to make no more trouble," the physician replied gravely. There was another long silence. The girl lay with eyes closed. The physician stood watching her keenly. Presently she opened her eyes again. "Call Mrs. Graham over here," she said peremptorily. "What are you going to say to her?" the physician shot back. "That's my business and hers," Miss Draper returned, with a flash of her old spirit. "If you want a release from that promise you'd better let her come over here, otherwise I'll hold her to it." Disregarding Lillian's clutch upon my arm I moved swiftly to the side of the bed and looked down into the sick girl's eyes, brilliant with fever. "Did you wish to speak to me?" I asked gently. "Yes," she said abruptly, "I release you from your promise, and you are free to believe or not what I have said during my—delirium." She emphasized the last word with a little mocking smile. The same smile was on her lips as she added, slowly, sneeringly: "But you will never know, will you, Madgie dear, just how much of what I said was false and how much true?" Her eyes held mine a moment longer, and the malignance in their feverish brightness frightened me. Then she closed them wearily. As I turned away from her bedside I realized that she had prophesied only too truthfully. There would be times in my life when I would believe Dicky only. But I was also afraid there would be others when her words would come back to me with intensified power to sear and scar. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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