The Complete Novellas & Short Stories. Bennett Arnold

      'Not you, Ted!' And her smile cost her an awful pang.

      'I am. I know it.' This time he spoke with sad resignation. 'You must face it. And—listen.'

      'What, dear?'

      A physical sensation of sickness came over her. She could not disguise from herself the fact that he was dying. The warped and pallid face, the panic-struck eyes, the sweat, the wound in the neck, the damp hands nervously pulling the hem of the sheet—these indications were not to be gainsaid. The truth was too horrible to grasp; she wanted to put it away from her. 'This calamity cannot happen to me!' she thought urgently, and all the while she knew that it was happening to her.

      He collected the feeble remnant of his powers by an immense effort, and began to speak, slowly and fragmentarily, and with such weakness that she could only catch his words by putting her ear to his mouth. The restless hands dropped the sheet and took the end of the black scarf.

      'You'll be comfortable—for money,' he said. 'Will made.... It's not that. It's ... I must tell you. It's——'

      'Yes?' she encouraged him. 'Tell me. I can hear.'

      'It's about your father. I didn't treat him quite right ... once.... Week after I first met you, May.... No, not quite right. He was holding Hull and Barnsley shares ... you know, railway ... great gambling stock, then, Hull and Barn—Barnsley. Holding them on cover; for the rise.... They dropped too much—dropped to 23.... He couldn't hold any longer ... wired to me to sell and cut the loss. Understand?'

      'Yes,' she said, trembling. 'I quite understand.'

      'Well ... I wired back, "Sold at 23." ... But some mistake. Shares not sold. Clerk's mistake.... Clerk didn't sell.... Next day rise began.... I didn't wire him shares not sold. Somehow, I couldn't.... Put it off.... Rise went on.... I took over shares myself ... you see—myself.... Made nearly five thousand clear.... I wanted money then.... I think I would have told him, perhaps, later ... made it right ... but he died ... sudden ... I wasn't going to let his creditors have that five thou.... No, he'd meant to sell ... and, look here, May, if those shares had dropped lower ... 'stead of rising ... I should have had to stand the racket ... with your father, for my clerk's mistake.... See?... He'd meant to sell.... Hard lines on him, but he'd meant to sell.... He'd meant——'

      'Don't say any more, dear.'

      'Must explain this, May. Why didn't I give the money to you ... when he was dead?... Because I knew you'd only ... give it ... to creditors.... I knew you.... That's straight.... I've told you now.'

      He lost consciousness again, but for an instant May did not notice it. She was crying, and her tears fell on his face.

      Then came a doctor, a little dark man, who explained with calm politeness that he had been out when the messenger first arrived. He took off his coat, hung it up, opened his bag, and proceeded to a minute examination of the patient. His movements were so methodical, and he gave orders to May in a tone so quiet, casual, and ordinary, that she almost lost her sense of the reality of the scene.

      'Yes, yes,' he said, from time to time, as if to himself; nothing else; not a single enlightening word to May.

      'I'm dying,' moaned Edward, opening his eyes.

      The doctor glanced round at May and winked. That wink, deliberate and humorous, was like an electric shock to her. She could actually feel her heart leap in her breast. If she had not been afraid of the doctor, she would have fainted.

      'You all think you're dying,' the doctor remarked in a low, amused tone to the ceiling, as he wiped a pair of scissors, 'when you've been knocked silly, especially if there's a lot of blood about.'

      The door opened.

      'Here's John, ma'am,' said the cook, 'with two more doctors. What am I to do?'

      May involuntarily turned towards the door.

      'Don't you go, Mrs. Norris,' the little dark man commanded. 'I want you.' Then he carelessly scrutinized the elderly servant. 'Tell 'em they're too late,' he said. 'It's generally like that when there's an accident,' he continued after the housekeeper had gone. 'First you can't get a doctor anywhere, and then in half an hour or so we come in crowds. I've known seven doctors turn up one after another. But in that affair the man happened to have been killed outright.'

      He smiled grimly. In a little while he was snapping his bag.

      'I'll come in the morning, of course,' he said, as he wrote on a piece of paper. 'Have this made up, and give it him in the night if he is wakeful. Keep him warm. You might put a couple of hot-water bags, one on either side of him. You've got beef-tea made, you say? That's right. Let him have as much as he wants. Mr. Norris, you'll sleep like a top.'

      'But, doctor,' May inquired the next morning in the hall, after Edward had smiled at a joke, and been informed that he must run down to Bournemouth in a week, 'have we nothing to fear?'

      'I think not,' was the measured answer. 'These affairs nearly always seem much worse than they are. Of course, the immediate upset is tremendous—the disorganization, and all that sort of thing. But Nature's pretty wonderful. You'll find your husband will soon get over it. I should say he had a good constitution.'

      'And there will be no permanent effects?'

      'Yes,' said the doctor, with genial cynicism. 'There'll be one permanent effect. Nobody will ever persuade him to ride in a hansom again. If he can't find a four-wheeler, he'll walk in future.'

      She returned to the bedroom. The man on the bed was Edward Norris once more, in control of himself, risen out of his humiliation. A feeling of thankfulness overwhelmed her for a moment, and she sat down.

      'Well, May?' he murmured.

      'Well, dear.'

      They both realized that what they had been through was a common, daily street accident. The smile of each was self-conscious, apprehensive, insincere.

      'Quite a concert going on next door,' he said with an affectation of lightness.

      It was the Hungarian Rhapsody, impetuous and brilliant as ever. How she hated it now—this symbol of the hurried, unheeding, relentless, hollow gaiety of the world! Yet she longed for the magic fingers of the player, that she, too, might smother grief in such glittering veils!

      IV

      The marriage which had begun so dramatically fell into placid routine. Edward fulfilled the prophecy of the doctor. In a week they were able to go to Bournemouth for a few days, and in less than a fortnight he was at the office—the strong man again, confident and ambitious.

      After days devoted to finance, he came home in the evenings high-spirited and determined to enjoy himself. His voice was firm and his eye steady when he spoke to his wife; there was no trace of self-consciousness in his demeanour. She admired the masculinity of the brain that could forget by an effort of will. She felt that he trusted her to forget also; that he relied on her common-sense, her characteristic sagacity, to extinguish for ever the memory of an awkward incident. He loved her. He was intensely proud of her. He treated her with every sort of generosity. And in return he expected her to behave like a man.

      She loved him. She esteemed him as a wife should. She made a profession of wifehood. He gave his days to finance and his nights to diversion; but her vocation was always with her—she was never off duty. She aimed to please him to the uttermost in everything, to be in all respects the ideal helpmate of a husband who was at once strenuous, fastidious, and wealthy. Elegance and suavity were a religion with her. She was the delight of the eye and of the ear, the soother of groans, the refuge of distress, the uplifter of the heart.

      She made new acquaintances for him, and cemented old friendships. Her manner towards his old friends enchanted him; but when they were gone she had a way of making him feel that she was only his. She thought that she was succeeding in her aim. She thought that all these sweet, endless labours—of traffic with dressmakers, milliners, coiffeurs, maids, cooks, and furnishers; of