The old soul imagined everything now. Her faculties were stampeded with
the wildest fantasies. Her boy had killed a girl, and she was the only
witness. She would have to testify. One of those cyclones of scandal
that tear quiet homesteads to ruins had fallen upon her little house.
She cried out: “Noll! Noll!”
He called up the stairs, and ran up as he called:
“Don’t worry, Mother. Something’s happened outside. A girl—hurt—or
fainted, I guess. Don’t worry.”
He had so little of crime in his mien that she felt able to think of
other humanity. She said:
“You’re going to fetch the poor thing inside out of the rain, aren’t
you?”
“Shall I, Mother? You’re not supposed to move people like that till the
police come.”
“But it’s terrible to leave anybody out in the—the rain.”
The commonplace dread of wet clothes and lying on the ground in a storm
outweighed the unknown significances of unusual tragedy. Noll said,
“You’re right; I’ll go get her.”
She checked him to ask, “Who was the girl that screamed—the other girl,
the girl with Ward Pennywell?”
“I don’t know, Mother. She ran home alone, I guess. I didn’t see her. He
didn’t say who she was.”
He was out and scuttering down the stairs. There was some hesitation
below, then a hurry of footsteps on the porch, then a slower movement
such as two men would make carrying a body in the dark.
Mrs. Winsor could not endure the suspense. She called her son again and
again, but he did not answer. Under the stimulus of anxiety she rose
from her chair and stumbled across the room. She lowered herself down
the stairway, using the banisters and the wall like crutches.
She found Noll and Ward Pennywell staring at a girl stretched on a sofa.
She seemed to be asleep rather than dead. The two young men seemed to be
more impressed by her beauty than by her fate.
They turned in an almost guilty surprise as they heard Mrs. Winsor gasp.
Noll whirled and turned to support her to a chair. She would not be
checked from approaching the strange visitor. First she drew the skirt
down below one revealed bruised knee. The skirt would not reach the
shoe-tops; it was of a fine stuff. The stockings were of silk, the shoes
of an excellent leather. Mrs. Winsor brushed a loop of hair back from
the closed eyelids, took off the crumpled hat with difficulty, lifting
the head in terror to take the long pins from the wet hair. She saw that
the invader was dangerously pretty. There were raindrops on her face
like tears, and in her hair like pearls. Mrs. Winsor felt that if the
great eyelids were to open, they would stare in amazement, and the long
pale lips would babble a strange story.
She put her old, cold hand on the girl’s hand, and it was colder than
hers. She could not find a throb in the wrist where the pulse lurks. She
studied the palms; they were delicate, without calluses. The fingers
were soft and slim, and the nails had been well kept, though they were
cut close to the finger-tips. That struck her as odd. The finger-tips
themselves were rather blunt.
She marveled at those hands; what instruments of terror they were! Hands
can do—those hands might have done—such graceful, such hateful,
beautiful, loathsome, terrible, exquisite things.
“We ought to send for a doctor,” she sighed. “My doctor is out of town.”
“The marshal will be here in a minute,” said Ward Pennywell.
Mrs. Winsor sank back into the chair her son brought to her, and gazed
at the peculiar visitor from nowhere. She said to Ward Pennywell:
“I heard a girl scream, Ward. It wasn’t this girl.”
“No, it was—it was—the girl I was with.”
“Who was that, Ward?”
“I think I hear the marshal driving up.” He hurried out.
Mrs. Winsor turned to her son and spoke firmly: “What kept you so late,
honey?”
“I’ll tell you afterward, Mother.”
“Do you know who this poor creature is?”
“No, Mother.”
“Did you ever see her before?”
“I don’t think so. There’s the marshal. I’ll let him in.”
The marshal arrived, important with his office but very deferential as
usual to people he was not in the habit of arresting.
“Evening, Miz Winsor. Kind of rainy to-night. Been looking like rain all
day. Kind of looks like all night now. What’s this I hear about finding
a girl? That her? Humph! How’d it happen?”
Mrs. Winsor did not tell him that she had seen two shadows enter the
shadow of the old maple, and only one shadow come forth and flee. She
had an intuition that she ought to keep out of it.
She nodded to Ward Pennywell and let him describe how he was on his way
home when he stumbled over something, lighted a match, saw what it was
and lost no time in notifying the police. He said this with a sort of
boastfulness, as if he were showing what a law-abider he was. He did not
mention the fact that he was with a girl who screamed. Neither did Mrs.
Winsor. Neither did Noll. Pennywell’s eyes seemed to ask them not to.
Mrs. Winsor felt that the mutual forbearance was a fair exchange.
The marshal stood and scowled down at the girl and pulled his long
mustaches, as if to milk them of some intelligence. Mrs. Winsor stared
from him to the girl and to the young men. The influence of that still
white being, the very blossom of youth fallen from the tree, was
strangely various.
[Illustration]
Mrs. Winsor felt that if the great eyelids were to open, they
would stare in amazement, and the long pale lips would babble a
strange story.
All four were afraid of her, each with his own fear. Mrs. Winsor noted a
kind of resentful anxiety in Pennywell’s eyes, as if he were blaming the
girl for getting him into trouble and yet found her enticingly
attractive.
Noll regarded her in a kind of ecstasy, his eyes seeming to touch her
beauty and her grace with timid attention. Youth was seeing youth
wrecked. Mrs. Winsor felt a new fear for her son; a son is a dangerous
weapon that a woman forges for another woman’s capture or protection or
destruction. And Mrs. Winsor, having been a girl like this one, and
after that a wife and a mother and a widow and an elder, understood how
much of life this girl had begun and how much she had missed.
The marshal was both citizen and policeman, a sporting-man with a
cynical experience, and a man of the law who must not be baffled. He
cleared his throat with an effort at importance that only admitted his
confusion.
“Kind of nice-lookin’ kid!” he suggested. “Right smart of a dresser.
Don’t suppose she’s just kind of fainted, do you?
“Kind of” was with the marshal a kind of deprecating expression, a
shading of too downright conviction.
“Put something under her feet,” said Mrs. Winsor, “so that the blood
will go back to her head.”
The three men started with surprise at the command, and recoiled a
little. Each waited for the other; then Noll went forward and, taking a
cushion from the sofa, lifted the feet with reluctance a little, and
stuffed the cushion under them. His mother was glad to see how this
simple contact terrified him.
The girl’s head was upheld by the opposite arm of the sofa. Mrs. Winsor
indicated this with a gesture, and Noll with new qualms laid hold of the
girl’s ankles and drew her feet toward him so that her body slid along
the sofa. Now her chin, which had pressed down like a bird’s beak
preening its breast, went back with the sudden motion of a spasm of
agony, and her throat was abruptly revealed, long, slender, and pitiful.
And now she seemed to have died indeed. The throat is the home of
pathos, and hers was unendurable with tragedy.
Noll gasped and sprang away. The marshal leaned forward with a
business-like determination. His coarse fingers went to the satin
throat, and he bent close to stare.
“No sign of bein’ choked,” he said. “No wounds anywhere as I can see.”
He lifted a hand and let it fall. The arm flopped, bending at every
joint with a hideous lifelessness. Noll gasped aloud. The officer felt
for her pulse and could not find it. Noll winced at his roughness with
that delicate wrist.
The marshal waited awhile before he spoke again:
“Kind of looks like she ain’t goin’ to come to. She’s gettin’ cold.”
That fatal, icy word sent a shiver through Mrs. Winsor. She knew what it
was to have beings that had lived grow cold.
“I guess it’s heart disease or p’ralysis,” the marshal said. “I had a
cousin just kind of keeled over once thataway. Maybe she was just goin’
along the street when it kind of took her. Too bad!”
“But how about—” Mrs. Winsor had begun to ask, “But how about the man
that was with her and ran away?” But she glanced at her son again, and
he was shaken with such agitation that she clenched her lips on the
words.
The marshal waited for her to go on. When she did not he said, “What
say?”
And she merely asked, “How about sending for a doctor?”
“I guess we better. No need hurrying the coroner.”
This ghastly word smote Noll Winsor like a club.
The marshal went to the hall, leaving the three alone with the girl.
They felt unprotected, outnumbered by her terrible powers, with no
officer of the law to protect them from her.
The marshal spent an eternity fumbling with the book.
“I’ll go,” said Noll, impatiently.
From where he stood in the hall he could see the girl lying like a form
cast up by the sea. He turned from her, looked back. She must have
danced well. She was so shapely. He rebuked himself for thinking of the
shape of the dead. He felt that people must never dance any more, now
that such beauty was ruined. Perhaps she was not quite dead. It seemed
impossible that grace like hers should be brought to perfection only to
be drowned in nothingness. The doctor might save her, if he came at
once. Noll commanded his immediate presence.
Noll’s haste brought a flare of joy in his mother’s heart. He could not
be impatient for the doctor’s arrival if he were guilty of the girl’s
murder.
She only smiled, reproaching herself for the treachery of her suspicion.
She wanted to tell him of it and beg his forgiveness. But the confession
was impossible in Ward Pennywell’s presence. And now that the doctor was
coming she felt she had no right to tell the marshal of the man who had
slunk away. The poor girl might be brought back to life, and be hurt by
the publication of her secret. What the marshal got, the newspapers got.
So she postponed again.
The marshal was studying the girl. He ran his fingers into her hair and
about her head. The sensitive Noll, to whom a woman’s hair was almost
sacred, resented his profanation. But the marshal did not notice him. He
mumbled:
“Skull’s all right. She ain’t been hit with nothin’—or throttled. If
she was stabbed or shot there’d be plenty of signs. It’s kind of
mysterious. No sign of poison around her mouth. But she’s kind of still
and cold. Who is she, anyway? Any of you ever see her before?”
All three shook their heads. The marshal was shocked.
“I ain’t ever seen her myself. Keep track of ‘most everybody. I meet
most of the trains. Nobody like her has stepped off one the last few
days. Wonder who her folks are. I guess it’s kind of up to me to search
her for what the feller calls a clue.”
He put out his hands, but they kind of retracted themselves before Noll
made a leap at him; his only protest was a strangled groan. “Don’t!
Don’t touch her!”
The marshal eyed him suspiciously. “What’s it to you, young feller?”
“I can’t bear to see your big old hands on her.”
The marshal laughed sheepishly and said: “Maybe you better do the
searchin’, Miz Winsor. It’s a kind of lady’s job.”
“No, thank you,” said Mrs. Winsor. “I guess we’d better all wait till
the doctor comes.”
“I’ll be going if you don’t mind,” said Ward Pennywell.
“I do mind,” said the marshal. “Set right where you air!”
There was a long silence. Nobody spoke. All stared and waited for the
girl to rise. But she did not budge. Her breast did not lift with a
breath; her nostrils were as still as marble. Her attitude was one of
such discomfort that a living being would surely have moved. Noll was
tempted to go to her assistance, but he lacked the power.
By and by the door-bell whirred and Noll went to admit the doctor.
The silence in the hall was so profound that Mrs. Winsor could hear the
rustle of the doctor’s raincoat as he took it off and hung it on the
hall-tree. He shook hands with Mrs. Winsor and then turned to the girl.
He was amazed. He went in haste to her as if drawn by a rope. He gripped
the girl’s wrist, and his two finger-tips listened in vain for the
pulse-beat; the other hand went to her forehead. He knelt down and
peered into her face as if he would kiss her. He put his cheek close to
her lips. He cupped his palm over her heart. He pushed back one eyelid,
and he alone knew what color the iris was. He got no reassuring message
from the stare that answered him. The pupil was dilated. The eye did not
follow his. He lighted a match and moved it before the eye, with no
effect. He put his cheek on the girl’s left breast and rested there. He
shook his head again. He opened the little hand-bag he had brought in
from his car, took out a stethoscope, and, swiftly unfastening the
girl’s frock at the neck and throwing it back, set the instrument over
the heart. Noll turned away with something of the terror of Noah’s
better sons, but Ward Pennywell stared like Ham till Mrs. Winsor glared
him away.
“Get me a mirror, will you?” Doctor Mitford mumbled.
Noll ran up the stairs and ran down with his shaving-glass. Kirke held
it in front of the girl’s nostrils, then he stared at it, found a dim
vapor on its surface and gave a little gasp of joy.
“She’s not gone—yet!” he muttered. And now he was in a mood of snarling
rapture. He was the young doctor challenging old Death to a duel. From
his knees he spoke to Mrs. Winsor.
“I don’t know what’s wrong, but there’s not much life in her. If I take
her to the hospital in this cold rain——”
“Certainly not. The spare room! Noll, run up and make a light.”
Noll hurried, but Mitford was right after him. He rose, gathered the
almost soulless bundle of flesh into his arms and carried her up to bed
as if she were a Sabine, the girl’s nodding head and swaying arms
hanging at Mitford’s shoulder.
Mrs. Winsor hobbled out and labored up the stairs and was glad to find
that necessity gave her strength. Necessity is the supreme tonic.
The young doctor called to Noll: “Take off her shoes. No, run fill a
hot-water bag—two if you have ’em. Hurry! Mrs. Winsor, you might
unfasten these infernal hooks while I take off her shoes and stockings.”
Their struggle for her life rendered the ordinary delicacies
contemptible for the moment. The waif had both a valet and a maid.
While Mrs. Winsor was at her task Doctor Mitford was in and out and up
and down stairs, equipping himself for the contest. He snatched the
hot-water bottles from Noll and sent him to telephone the drug-store for
stimulants, the hospital for a pulmotor and a trained nurse, his own
boarding-house for his electric battery.
He ran out into the kitchen and used the steaming kettle for a
sterilizer. He filled his hypodermic needle. He turned the house upside
down, but he gave the comforting impression that he was neglecting
nothing.
In one of his charges through the sitting-room he was checked by the
marshal:
“Say, Doc, just a moment.”
“Can’t spare a second, Chief.”
“Hold on! I just want to ask you is they any use my hangin’ ’round any
longer?”
“Not the slightest; you’re absolutely no use—just in the way.”
“All right. You needn’t wait, neither, Ward. Consider yourself arrested
or somethin’. I’ll let you know when I need you. I’m goin’ out to look
’round that tree with my flashlight, and see if she’s lost anything
that’ll give a kind of clue or somethin’. Night, Doc.”
A little later the door-bell rang and Noll answered him. It was the
marshal.
“Tell the doc I didn’t find nothin’,” he said, and left.
Noll sat on the top step of the stairway, pondering deeply, profoundly
shaken by the invasion of this eerie ghost-woman. Meanwhile the young
doctor, who had had none too much experience, was trying to make the
most of his few weapons.
Mrs. Winsor, acting as a sort of chaperon, hovered about. She spent most
of her time examining the girl’s clothes for some clue. There was no
dressmaker’s label on her frock, no laundry mark on her linen. The name
of the maker of her shoes was blurred.
There was just one bit of treasure trove for Mrs. Winsor. A silk
money-belt was fastened about the girl’s waist, and in the pockets of
that she found several little clumps of money, new money that had never
been spent even once—several thousand dollars in large bills—and two
diamond rings. That was all she found.
She showed the wealth to the doctor. He pushed it aside brusquely.
“It doesn’t interest me how much she’s worth. The thing is can I get her
back.”
Mrs. Winsor struggled out into the hall and sank down on the step at
Noll’s side. She showed him the money and the money-belt. He counted it
expertly—four thousand eight hundred and forty-five dollars. It was a
larger sum than either of them had ever seen at once before in that
house. Noll handled money in bundles at the bank, but this was
different. Mrs. Winsor looked over her shoulder and gasped when the
doctor opened the door.
“Come here, Noll, and help me,” he commanded.
Noll restored the money-belt to his mother. She pushed it away.
“For Heaven’s sake, keep it. It frightens me to death.”
He showed the money to Mitford.
“Put it up,” said Mitford, “and take hold of her feet and help me carry
her over to that couch by the light.”
Noll suffered anguishes of modesty. He seemed to be committing a
lynchable offense in embracing this young woman to whom he had never
been introduced. She was in one of his mother’s nightgowns now, and she
was grotesquely pretty. She was so cold that she appalled him. There was
a rigidity about her that chilled him. She was as awkward as a jointed
doll.
He had never held a woman so; she was unutterably fearful to him, and
yet somehow ineffably dear.
He prayed, for her and to her, not to leave him. He vaguely remembered
Walt Whitman’s lines to the wounded soldier:
Hang all your weight on me—
By God, I will not let you die.
He suffered cruelly with the assaults the doctor was making on the
citadels of her soul’s retreat. Mitford tried by loud noises, by
flashing lights, to startle her to her windows. He set to her nose a
bottle of ammonia that almost blinded Noll with its knife-like odor.
Noll was nauseated with the loathsome shock of asafetida, but her
exquisite nostrils showed no repugnance.
“Don’t!” he growled at last. “You’re hurting her.”
“No, I’m not,” said Mitford. “I’m trying to, but I can’t.”
After every effort Mitford stepped back, baffled yet somehow convinced
by failure that success was waiting for the lucky try.
Noll thought of him as of one of the priests of Baal trying to lure his
god to answer, while Elijah taunted: “Cry aloud. . . . Either he is
talking or pursuing or in a journey.”
Doctor Mitford had not awakened the first hint of life when the trained
nurse came and took Noll’s place. He had to leave the room. He felt as
if he had deserted his charge. The door was closed on him.
He took up a vigil-place on the stairs. He heard strange noises in the
spare room, which Mitford had turned into a laboratory. He wondered what
they were doing, the nurse and the doctor. He knew that they were
hurting her, or hoping to. There was so much pain on earth, it seemed
better to let her sleep on out of the ugly world. And yet it seemed that
her life was too precious to be surrendered, at any cost.
He fell asleep at last in the turbulence of his own emotions. He was
wakened by Mitford’s shaking his arm. The hall was lighted ambiguously
by the gas and by the daylight round the chinks of the curtain. Seeing
the desperate look in Mitford’s face, Noll said:
“How is she? Is she——”
“She’s not dead, anyway.”
“Oh, thank God!”
“Don’t be too previous. If it’s the sleeping sickness, she’ll just fade
away. I’m all in!”
He stumbled down the stairway, and Noll caught his elbow to keep him
from pitching forward headlong.
“What do you think caused her—death-sleep, or whatever it is?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. I’ve made a thorough examination. I can’t
find anything wrong. I wonder who the dickens she is and where the devil
she comes from.”
“Good night!”
“Good morning!”
Noll staggered to his own room. As he pulled down the curtain he saw the
doctor clambering into his car.
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