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Page 34
Doctor James brought him a drink. He could scarcely swallow it. The
reaction from the powerful drug was coming in regular, intensifying
waves. But his moribund fancy must have one more grating fling.
"Gambler--drunkard--spendthrift--I've been those, but--a
doctor-burglar!"
The physician indulged himself to but one reply to the other's caustic
taunts. Bending low to catch Chandler's fast crystallizing gaze, he
pointed to the sleeping lady's door with a gesture so stern and
significant that the prostrate man half-lifted his head, with his
remaining strength, to see. He saw nothing; but he caught the cold words
of the doctor--the last sounds hie was to hear:
"I never yet--struck a woman."
It were vain to attempt to con such men. There is no curriculum that can
reckon with them in its ken. Thev are offshoots from the types whereof
men say, "He will do this," or "He will do that." We only know that they
exist; and that we can observe them, and tell one another of their bare
performances, as children watch and speak of the marionettes.
Yet it were a droll study in egoism to consider these two--one an
assassin and a robber, standing above his victim; the other baser in his
offences, if a lesser law-breaker, lying, abhorred, in the house of the
wife he had persecuted, spoiled, and smitten, one a tiger, the other a
dog-wolf--to consider each of them sickening at the foulness of the
other; and each flourishing out of the mire of his manifest guilt his
own immaculate standard--of conduct, if not of honor.
The one retort of Doctor James must have struck home to the other's
remaining shreds of shame and manhood, for it proved the coup de grace.
A deep blush suffused his face-an ignominous rosa mortis; the
respiration ceased, and, with scarcely a tremor, Chandler expired.
Close following upon his last breath came the negress, bringing the
medicine. With a hand gently pressing upon the closed eyelids, Doctor
James told her of the end. Not grief, but a hereditary rapprochement
with death in the abstract, moved her to a dismal, watery snuffling,
accompanied by her usual jeremiad.
"Dar now! It's in de Lawd's hands. He am de jedge ob de transgressor,
and de suppo't of dem in distress. He gwine hab suppo't us now. Cindy
done paid out de last quarter fer dis bottle of physic, and it nebber
come to no use."
"Do I understand," asked Doctor James, "that Mrs. Chandler has no
money?"
"Money, suh? You know what make Miss Amy fall down and so weak?
Stahvation, sub. Nothin' to eat in dis house but some crumbly crackers
in three days. Dat angel sell her finger rings and watch mont's ago. Dis
fine house, suh, wid de red cyarpets and shiny bureaus, it's all hired;
and de man talkin' scan'lous about de rent. Dat debble--'scuse me,
Lawd--he done in Yo' hands fer jedgment, now--he made way wid
everything."
The physician's silence encouraged her to continue. The history that he
gleaned from Cindy's disordered monologue was an old one, of illusion,
wilfulness, disaster, cruelty and pride. Standing out from the blurred
panorama of her gabble were little clear pictures--an ideal home in the
far South; a quickly repented marriage; an unhappy season, full of
wrongs and abuse, and, of late, an inheritance of money that promised
deliverance; its seizure and waste by the dog-wolf during a two months'
absence, and his return in the midst of a scandalous carouse.
Unobtruded, but visible between every line, ran a pure white thread
through the smudged warp of the story--the simple, all-enduring, sublime
love of the old negress, following her mistress unswervingly through
everything to the end.
When at last she paused, the physician spoke, asking if the house
contained whiskey or liquor of any sort. There was, the old woman
informed him, half a bottle of brandy left in the sideboard by the
dog-wolf.
"Prepare a toddy as I told you," said Doctor James. "Wake your mistress;
have her drink it, and tell her what has happened."
Some ten minutes afterward, Mrs. Chandler entered, supported by old
Cindy's arm. She appeared to be a little stronger since her sleep and
the stimulant she had taken. Doctor James had covered, with a sheet, the
form upon the bed.
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