young person was taking her leave. He could hear her sympathetic—“Well—good night! I hope she'll be no worse. Good night Mrs. Sisson!” She was gone—he heard the windy bang of the street-gate. Presently Millicent emerged again, flitting indoors.
So he rose to his feet, balancing, swaying a little before he started into motion, as so many colliers do. Then he moved along the path towards the house, in the rain and darkness, very slowly edging forwards.
Suddenly the door opened. His wife emerged with a pail. He stepped quietly aside, on to his side garden, among the sweet herbs. He could smell rosemary and sage and hyssop. A low wall divided his garden from his neighbour's. He put his hand on it, on its wetness, ready to drop over should his wife come forward. But she only threw the contents of her pail on the garden and retired again. She might have seen him had she looked. He remained standing where he was, listening to the trickle of rain in the water-butt. The hollow countryside lay beyond him. Sometimes in the windy darkness he could see the red burn of New Brunswick bank, or the brilliant jewels of light clustered at Bestwood Colliery. Away in the dark hollow, nearer, the glare of the electric power-station disturbed the night. So again the wind swirled the rain across all these hieroglyphs of the countryside, familiar to him as his own breast.
A motor-car was labouring up the hill. His trained ear attended to it unconsciously. It stopped with a jar. There was a bang of the yard-gate. A shortish dark figure in a bowler hat passed the window. Millicent was drawing down the blind. It was the doctor. The blind was drawn, he could see no more.
Stealthily he began to approach the house. He stood by the climbing rose of the porch, listening. He heard voices upstairs. Perhaps the children would be downstairs. He listened intently. Voices were upstairs only. He quietly opened the door. The room was empty, save for the baby, who was cooing in her cradle. He crossed to the hall. At the foot of the stairs he could hear the voice of the Indian doctor: “Now little girl, you must just keep still and warm in bed, and not cry for the moon.” He said “de moon,” just as ever.—Marjory must be ill.
So Aaron quietly entered the parlour. It was a cold, clammy room, dark. He could hear footsteps passing outside on the asphalt pavement below the window, and the wind howling with familiar cadence. He began feeling for something in the darkness of the music-rack beside the piano. He touched and felt—he could not find what he wanted. Perplexed, he turned and looked out of the window. Through the iron railing of the front wall he could see the little motorcar sending its straight beams of light in front of it, up the street.
He sat down on the sofa by the window. The energy had suddenly left all his limbs. He sat with his head sunk, listening. The familiar room, the familiar voice of his wife and his children—he felt weak as if he were dying. He felt weak like a drowning man who acquiesces in the waters. His strength was gone, he was sinking back. He would sink back to it all, float henceforth like a drowned man.
So he heard voices coming nearer from upstairs, feet moving. They were coming down.
“No, Mrs. Sisson, you needn't worry,” he heard the voice of the doctor on the stairs. “If she goes on as she is, she'll be all right. Only she must be kept warm and quiet—warm and quiet—that's the chief thing.”
“Oh, when she has those bouts I can't bear it,” Aaron heard his wife's voice.
They were downstairs. Their feet click-clicked on the tiled passage. They had gone into the middle room. Aaron sat and listened.
“She won't have any more bouts. If she does, give her a few drops from the little bottle, and raise her up. But she won't have any more,” the doctor said.
“If she does, I s'll go off my head, I know I shall.”
“No, you won't. No, you won't do anything of the sort. You won't go off your head. You'll keep your head on your shoulders, where it ought to be,” protested the doctor.
“But it nearly drives me mad.”
“Then don't let it. The child won't die, I tell you. She will be all right, with care. Who have you got sitting up with her? You're not to sit up with her tonight, I tell you. Do you hear me?”
“Miss Smitham's coming in. But it's no good—I shall have to sit up. I shall HAVE to.”
“I tell you you won't. You obey ME. I know what's good for you as well as for her. I am thinking of you as much as of her.”
“But I can't bear it—all alone.” This was the beginning of tears. There was a dead silence—then a sound of Millicent weeping with her mother. As a matter of fact, the doctor was weeping too, for he was an emotional sympathetic soul, over forty.
“Never mind—never mind—you aren't alone,” came the doctor's matter-of-fact voice, after a loud nose-blowing. “I am here to help you. I will do whatever I can—whatever I can.”
“I can't bear it. I can't bear it,” wept the woman.
Another silence, another nose-blowing, and again the doctor:
“You'll HAVE to bear it—I tell you there's nothing else for it. You'll have to bear it—but we'll do our best for you. I will do my best for you—always—ALWAYS—in sickness or out of sickness—There!” He pronounced there oddly, not quite dhere.
“You haven't heard from your husband?” he added.
“I had a letter—“—sobs—“from the bank this morning.”
“FROM DE BANK?”
“Telling me they were sending me so much per month, from him, as an allowance, and that he was quite well, but he was travelling.”
“Well then, why not let him travel? You can live.”
“But to leave me alone,” there was burning indignation in her voice. “To go off and leave me with every responsibility, to leave me with all the burden.”
“Well I wouldn't trouble about him. Aren't you better off without him?”
“I am. I am,” she cried fiercely. “When I got that letter this morning, I said MAY EVIL BEFALL YOU, YOU SELFISH DEMON. And I hope it may.”
“Well-well, well-well, don't fret. Don't be angry, it won't make it any better, I tell you.”
“Angry! I AM angry. I'm worse than angry. A week ago I hadn't a grey hair in my head. Now look here—” There was a pause.
“Well-well, well-well, never mind. You will be all right, don't you bother. Your hair is beautiful anyhow.”
“What makes me so mad is that he should go off like that—never a word—coolly takes his hook. I could kill him for it.”
“Were you ever happy together?”
“We were all right at first. I know I was fond of him. But he'd kill anything.—He kept himself back, always kept himself back, couldn't give himself—”
There was a pause.
“Ah well,” sighed the doctor. “Marriage is a mystery. I'm glad I'm not entangled in it.”
“Yes, to make some woman's life a misery.—I'm sure it was death to live with him,
