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Page 52
Even during the short time they had been downstairs the angry red around
the abrasion on the cheek had widened, and widened toward the head.
Gordon opened his medicine-case and took out a bottle and hairbrush and
commenced work. Directly the entire cheek was blackened with the
application of iron. Georgie K. had brought glasses, and medicine had
been forced into the patient's mouth. "Now go and have some eggnog
mixed, Georgie K.," said Gordon, "and bring it here yourself, if you
will. I hate to trouble you."
"That's all right, Doc," said Georgie K., and went.
James remained only a short time, since he had the other calls to make.
He returned quite late to find that dinner had been kept waiting for
him, and Clemency in her pretty red gown was watching. Mrs. Ewing had
not come down all day. "Mother says she is easier," Clemency observed,
"only she thinks it better to keep perfectly still." Clemency said very
little about the man at the hotel. She seemed to dread the very mention
of him. She and James spent a long evening together, and she was
entirely charming. James began to put behind him all the mystery and
dark hints of evil. Clemency, although fond, was as elusive as a
butterfly. She had feminine wiles to her finger tips, but she was quite
innocent of the fact that they were wiles. It took the whole evening for
the young man to secure a kiss or two, and have her upon his knee for
the space of about five minutes. She nestled closely to him with a
little sigh of happiness for a very little while, then she slipped away,
and stood looking at him like an elf. "I am not going to do that much,"
said she.
"Why not, darling?"
"Because I am not. It is silly. I love you, but I will not be silly. I
want only what will last. The love will last, but the silliness won't.
We are going to be married, but I shall not want to sit on your knee all
the time, and what is more, you will not want me to. Suppose we should
live to be very old. Who ever saw a very old woman sitting on her very
old husband's knee? The love will last, but that will not. We will not
have so very much of that which will not last."
For all that, James caught Clemency and kissed her until her soft face
was crimson, but he said to himself, when he was in his own room, that
never was a girl so wise, and how much more he wanted to hold her upon
his knee--as if he had not already held her there--and yet she was not
coquettish. She was simply earnest, with an odd, wise, childlike
earnestness.
Early the next morning James went to the hotel, and found Gordon haggard
and intense, sitting beside his patient, who was evidently worse. The
terrible red fire of Saint Anthony had mounted higher, and settled
lower. "It has attacked his throat now," Gordon said in a whisper. "I
expect every minute it will reach his brain. When it does, nobody but
you and I must be with him, not even Georgie K. He is getting some rest.
He was up half the night, bless him! But when it reaches the brain two
will be needed here, and the two must be you and I. Take this list, and
make the calls as quickly as you can, and come back here." James, with a
last glance at the black and swollen face of the man, who now seemed to
be in a state of coma, obeyed. He hurried through his list, and
returned. He found no apparent change in the patient, and tried to
persuade Gordon to take a little rest, but the elder man was obdurate.
"No" he said, "here I stay. I have had a bit to eat and drink. You go
down yourself and get something, then come back. The crisis may arrive
any second. Then I shall need you."
The fire had outstripped the blackness on the man's cheek toward the
temple. One eye was closed.
When James returned after a hurried lunch, he heard a loud, terrible
voice in the room. Outside the door a maid stood with a horrified face
listening. James grasped her roughly by the shoulder. "Get out of this,"
he ordered. "If I find you or any one else here listening, you'll be
sorry for it."
The maid gasped out an excuse and fled. James tried the door, but it was
locked. "Is that you, Elliot?" called Gordon above the other awful
voice.
"Yes."
The door was unlocked, and James sprang into the room, but he was hardly
quick enough, for the man was almost out of bed, when the two doctors
forced him back with all their strength. Then he sat up and raved, and
such raving! James felt his very blood cold within him. Revelations as
of a devil were in those ravings. Once in a while James opened the door
cautiously to be sure that no one was listening. The raving man
reiterated names as of a multitude. Gordon's was among them, and many
names of women, one especially--Catherine. He repeated that name more
frequently than the others, but the others were legion. There was
something indescribably horrible in hearing this repetition of names of
unknown people, accompanied with statements beyond belief regarding them
and the raving man. Gordon's face was ghastly, and so was the younger
doctor's. "Look and see if any one is listening, for God's sake," Gordon
gasped, after one terrific outburst, and James looked, but Georgie K.
was keeping watch that nobody approached the door.
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