The Gates Between Part 3

I'm eight minutes behindhand already, all for this senseless anxiety of yours. It is a pity you can't trust me, like other men's wives! I wish I'd married a woman with a little wifely spirit!--or else not married at all."

I shut the door; I am afraid I slammed it. I cleared the steps at a bound, and ran fiercely out into the night air. The wind was rising, and the weather was growing sharp. It was frosty and noisy. Donna, my chestnut mare, stood pawing the pavement in high temper, and called to me as she heard my step. She had dragged at her weight a little; she was thoroughly displeased with the delay. It occurred to me that she felt as I had acted. It even occurred to me to go back and tell my wife that I was ashamed of myself.

I turned and looked in through the parlour windows. The shades were up, and the gas was low. Dimly beyond, the bright panel of the lighted library arose between the crimson curtains. She stood against it, midway between the two rooms. Her hands had dropped closed one into the other before her. Her face was toward the street. She seemed to be gazing at me, whom she could not see. Her white dress, which hung in thick folds, the pallor of her face and her delicate hands, gave her the look of a statue; its purity, and to my fancy at that moment its permanence. She seemed to be carved there, like something that must stay.

I turned to go back--yes, I would have gone. It is little enough for a man to say for himself under circ.u.mstances like these; but perhaps I may be allowed to say it, since to exculpate myself is the last of my motives. I had made a stop or two up the flagging between the deep gra.s.s-plots that fronted the house, when the mare, disturbed beyond endurance at a movement of delay which she too well understood, gave a shrill whinny, and reared, pulling and dragging at her weight fiercely.

She was a powerful creature, and the weight yielded, hitting at her heels. In an instant she had cramped the wheels, and I saw that the buggy would go over. To spring back, reach the bit, s.n.a.t.c.h the reins, leap over the wheel, and whirl away in the reeling carriage was the work of some thing less than a thought; it was the elemental instinct by which a man must manage his horse, come life or death.

Like most doctors, I was something of a horseman, and the idea of being thwarted by any of Donna's whims had never occurred to me. I knew that the horse was pulling hard, but beyond that, I could not be said to have knowledge, much less fear; the mad conflict between the brute and the man possessed me to the exclusion of intelligence.

It was some moments before it struck me that my own horse was running away with me.

My first, perhaps I may say my only emotion at the discovery was one of overpowering rage.

I did not mean to strike her. No driver, ever if an angry one, would have done that. But I had the whip in my hand, around which the reins were knotted for the struggle, and when the horse broke into a gallop the jerk gave her a flick. I was not in the habit of whipping her.

She felt herself insulted. It was now her turn to be angry; and an angry runaway means a bad business. Donna put down her head, struck out viciously from behind, and kicked the dasher flat. From that moment I lost all control of her.

I thought:--

"She is headed down town. At this rate, in five minutes she will be in the thick of travel. I have so many minutes more."

For how long I cannot tell, I had beyond this no other intelligent idea. Then I thought;--

"I should not like to be the man who has got to tell Helen." This repeated itself dully: "I should not care to be the fellow who will be sent to tell Helen."

I had ceased to call to the mare; it only made matters worse; but there was great hubbub in the streets as we leaped on. There were several attempts to head her off, I think. One man caught at her bridle. This frightened her; she threw him off, and threw him down. I think she must have hurt him. We were now well down town. Window lights and carriage lights flared by deliriously. The wind, which was high, at speed like that seemed something demoniac. I remember how much it added to my sense of danger. I remember that my favourite phrase occurred to me:--

"_I am driven to death._"

Suddenly I saw approaching an open landau. The street was full of vehicles, some of which I was sure to run down; but none of them seemed to give me concern except this one carriage. It contained a lady and a little boy, patients of mine. I recognized them forty feet away. He was a pretty little fellow, and she was fond of me; sent for me for everything; trusted me beyond reason; could not live without her doctor--that kind of patient. She had been a great sufferer. It seemed infernal to me that it should be _they_.

I shouted to her coachman:--

"Henry! For G.o.d's sake--to the left! To the _left_!"

But Henry stared at me like one struck dead. I thought I heard him say;--

"Marm, it's the _doctor_!" and after that I heard no more.

As the crash came, I saw the woman's face. She had recognized me with her look of sweet trustfulness; it froze to mortal horror. She clasped the child. I saw his cap come off from his yellow curls, and one little hand tossed out as the landau went over. The mare, now mad as any maniac, ran on.

Something had broken, but it mattered little what. I think we turned a corner. I think she struck a lamp-post or a tree. At all events, the buggy went over; and, scooped into the top, and dragged, and blinded, and stunned, I came to the ground.

As I went down, I uttered the two words of all that are human, most solemn; perhaps, one may add, most automatic. Believer or sceptic, saint or sinner, mortal danger hurls them from us, as it wrests the soul from out our bodies.

I said, "_My G.o.d!_" precisely as I threw out my arms, to catch at whatever could hold me when I could no longer hold myself.

CHAPTER V.

How long I had lain stunned upon the pavement I had no means of knowing; I thought not long. I was surprised, on coming to myself, to find that my injuries were not more severe.

My head felt uncomfortable, and I had a certain numbness or stiffness, as one does from the first trial of long-disused limbs. I had always limped a trifle since that accident beside the trout-brook; and, as I staggered to my feet, I thought:--

"This will play the mischief with that old injury. I shouldn't wonder if it came to crutches."

On the contrary, when I had walked some dozen steps I found that an interesting thing had happened. The shock had dispersed the limp.

It was with a perfectly even and natural gait, although, as I say, rather a weak one, that I trod the pavement to try what manner of man the runaway had left me. I said:--

"It is one of those cases of nervous rearrangement. The shock has acted like a battery upon the nerve-centres. Instead of a broken neck, I have a cured leg. I'm a lucky fellow."

Having already, however, considered myself a lucky fellow for the greater part of my life, this conclusion did not impress me with the force which it might some other men; and, laughing lightly, as lucky people do, at fortune, I turned to examine the condition of my horse and carriage.

Donna was not to be seen. She had broken the traces, the breeching, the shafts, everything, in short, she could, and cleared herself. I had been unconscious long enough to give her time to make herself invisible, and she had made the most of it; in what direction she had gone, it was impossible for me to tell. The buggy was a wreck. No one was in sight who seemed to have interest or anxiety in the matter. I wondered that I did not find myself the victim of a gaping crowd. But I reflected that the mishap had taken place in a quiet dwelling street, not travelled at that hour, and that my fate, therefore, had attracted no attention. I remembered, too, my patient, Mrs. Faith, and her boy, and that dolt of a Henry's helpless face--the whole thing came to mind, vividly. It occurred to me that the crowd might be at the scene of an accident so terrible that no loafer was left to regard my lesser misfortune. It was they who had been sacrificed. It was I who escaped.

My first thought was to go at once and learn the worst; but I found myself a little out of my way. I really did not recognize the street in which I stood. I had been for so many years accustomed to driving everywhere that, like other doctors, I hardly knew how to walk; and by the time I made my way back to the great thoroughfare where I had collided with Mrs. Faith's carriage, no trace of the tragedy was to be found; or at least I could not find any. After looking in vain, for a while, I stopped a man, and asked him if there had not been a carriage accident there within half an hour. He lifted his eyes to me stupidly, and went on. I put the same question to some one else--a lazy fellow, who was leaning against an iron railing and staring at me. But he shook his head decidedly.

A young priest pa.s.sed by, at this moment, saying an Ave with moving lips and unworldly eyes, and I made inquiries of him whether a lady and a child had just been injured in that vicinity by a runaway.

"Nay," he said, gazing at me with a luminous look. "Nay, I see nothing."

After an instant's hesitation the priest made the sign of the cross both upon himself and me; and then stretched his hands in blessing over me, and silently went his way. I thought this very kind in him; and I bowed, as we parted, saying aloud:--

"Thank you, Father," for my heart was touched, despite myself, at the manner of the young devotee.

It had surely been my intention, on failing to find any traces of the accident in the spot where I supposed that it had taken place, to go at once to the house of Mrs. Faith, and inquire for her welfare and the boy's. It was the least I could do, under the circ.u.mstances.

Apparently, however, I myself was more shaken than I had thought; for after my brief interview with the priest I speedily lost my way, and could not find my patient's street or number. I searched for it for some time confusedly; but the brain was clearly still affected by the concussion--so much so that it was not long before I forgot what I was searching for, and went my ways with a dim and idle purpose, such as must accompany much of the action of those in whom the relation between mind and body has become, for any cause, disarranged.

After an interval--how long I cannot tell--of this suspended intelligence, my brain grew more clear and natural, and I remembered that I was very late at the hospital, at the consultation, at Brake's, at every appointment of the evening; so late that my accustomed sense of haste now began to possess me to the exclusion of everything else.

I remembered my wife, indeed, and wondered if I had better go back and tell her that I was not hurt. But it did not strike me as necessary.

Donna, if she had not broken her neck somewhere, by this time, would run straight for the stable; she would not go home. The buggy was a wreck, and the police might clear it away. There was no reason to suppose that Helen would hear of the accident, that I could see, from any source. There would be no scare. I had better go about my business, and tell her when I got home. News like this would keep an hour or two, and everybody the better for the keeping.

Reasoning in this manner, if it can be said to be reasoning, I took my way to the hospital as fast as possible. I did not happen to find a cab; and I gave myself the unusual experience of hailing a horse-car.

The car did not stop for my signal, and I flung myself aboard as best I might; for a man so recently shaken up, with creditable ease, I thought.

Trusting to this circ.u.mstance, when we reached the hospital I leaped from the car, which was going at full speed; it was not till I was well up the avenue that I recalled having forgotten to offer my fare, which the conductor had forgotten to demand.

"My head is not straight yet," I said. The little incident annoyed me.

In the hospital I found, as I expected, a professional cyclone raging.

The staff were all there except myself, and so hotly engaged in discussion that my arrival was treated with indifference. This was undoubtedly good for me, but it was not, therefore, agreeable to me; and I entered at once with some emphasis upon the dispute in hand.

"You are entirely wrong," I began, turning upon my opponents. "This inst.i.tution had seven hundred more applicants than it could accommodate last year. We are not chartered to turn away suffering. We exist to relieve it. It is our business to find the means to do so, as much as it is to find the true remedy for the individual case. It is"--

"It is an act of financial folly," interrupted my most systematic professional enemy, a certain Dr. Gazell. He had a bland voice which irritated me like sugar sauce put upon horse-radish. "It cannot be done without mortgaging ourselves up to our ears--or our eaves. I maintain that the hospital can better bear to turn off patients than to turn on debt."