Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-02-21
CHAPTER XVII.

HIOuSl tucNl.
Certain disjointed pictures of the first
night and day remained wildly in her
memory; unimportant and inconsequential
episodes haunted her mind, as graphic and
yet as vaguely unrelated the midday
recollection of a night of broken sleep and
dream.
One of these memories was the doctor
hurried question as to whether not she
could stand the sight of little blood A
second memory was Durkins childlike cry
of anguish, as she held the barred arm
over the sheet of white oilcloth, pvngent-
odored with its disinfectant. Still another
memory was that of the rattle of the little
blackened bullet on the floor as it dropped
from the jaws of the surgical forceps. A
more vague and yet more pleasing mem
ory was the thought that had come to her,
when the wound had been washed and
dressed and hidden away under it's white
bandages, and Durkn himself had been
made comfortable on the narrow couch.
that the worst was then over, that the
damage had been repaired, and that week
or two of quiet and careful nursing would
make everything right again.
In this, however, she was sadly mis-
taken. She had even thought of shyly slip
the night alone, until, standing over his
bed she beheld the figure that had always
seemed so well-knit and self-reliant and
tireless, shaking and trembling in the
to tear her very heart strings, as she gave
him brandy, foolishly, and even flung her
own coat and skirt over him, to see him
lying there SO impotent, so childishly
afraid of solitude, so miserably craven. be-
fore this unknown enemy of bodily weak
ness.
AS the night advanced the fever that fol-
lowed on Durlkin'S chill increased, his thirst
became unappeasable, and from the second
leathe couch in the back room, where she
had flung herself down in utter WEAKNESS
of nerve and limb, she could hear him
mumbling. Toward morning she awakened
suddenly. from an hour of sound Sleep and
found Durkn out of bed, fighting at his
bed room mantelpiece, protesting, bah
blingly, that he had seen a blood-red mouse
run under the crate and that at all hazard
it must be got.out.
She led him back to bed, and during the
five days that his fever burned through him
she never once gave herself up to the
luxury of actual sleep. Often, dur
ing the day and night. she would fling
herself down on her couch. in condition of
half-torpor. but at the least word or sound
from him she was astir again.
Then, as his mind grew clearer, and he
came to recognize her once more, her earlier
sense of loneliness and half-helpless isola-
ton crept away from her. She even grew
to take a secret pleasure in giving him his
medicine and milk and tablets, in dressing
his wound. day by day, in making his pill
low more comfortable, in sending the col
ored hall-boy out after fruit and flowers for
him. and in all those duties which broke
down the last paling of reserve between
them.
And it was a new and unlooked-for phase
of Frances Gambler that Durkin slowly
grew to comprehend. The constraint and the
quietness of everything seemed to have
something akin to spirttualiZing effect on
each of them, and it was not long before he
waited for her coming and going with
sort of childish usefulness. Her tenderness
of speech and touch and look, her brooding
thoughtfulness she sat beside him. SEEM
-l,n,, 1.1<e xIp,1
even their old-time most perilous moment
had done.
We're going to be decent now, aren't we,
Frank?" he said, quietly and joyously one
morning.
But there were times when his weakness
and stagnation of life and thought gave rise
to acute suffering in both of them, times
when his imprisonment and his feebleness
chafed and CALLED him. 1t was agony for
her to see him in these passionate out
bursts, to be forced to stand helplessly by
and behold him unnamed and weeping, and
sometimes when his nervous irritability was
at it's worst, wantonly and recklesSly bias
pheming at his fate.
This sinfulness of the flesh she set down
to the pain which his arm might be giving
him and the unrest which came of many
days in bed. AS he grew stronger, she told
herself he would be his old, generous
minded and manly self once more.
But Durkin gained strength very slowly.
rent-day came around and rather than
remind him of it Frances slipped out, of a
rainy afternoon, and pawned her rings to
get money for the payment.
1t was as she was creeping shame-faced
out of the pawnshop that she looked up and
caught sight of a passing carriage. 1t was
a flashing little victoria with a lemon-col-
ored body, and in it, beside woman with
lemon-colored hair, sat MacNutt. gioved,
silk hated and happylooking.
At first she beheld the two with an indie
terminate feeling of relief Then a hot
wave of resentment swept over her, as she
watched them drive away through the fine
mist. A consuming sense of the injustice of
it all took possession of her. her thoughts
went back to the day of the theft. and she
remembered what a little and passing thing
Durkin's money would be to MacNutt, the
spender, the prodigal liver, while to her
and to Durkin it had meant SO much! She
knew. too, that he would soon be asking
about it; and this brought new misery
into her life.
1t was indeed, only a day or two later
that he said to her:
do you know, I'm glad we didn't take
that girls money-the Van Schaick girl, 1
mean 1t all our own from the firSt!'
Frances did not answer
"She a decent sort of girl really,
wasn't she?" he asked again, once more
looking up at her.
Il wish I had a woman like that for
friend" Frances said at last. do you
know, Jim, 1t is years and years since /
have had woman friend. Yes, yes my
beloved own, l know l have you, but that is
different"
He nodded his head sorrowfully, and
stretched out his hand for hers.
You're better than all of emf he said
fondly. They were both silent for several
minutes.
"Were going to be decent now, aren't
we Frank?' he went on at last, quietly,
joyously.
Eyes, Jim, from now on"
81 was just thinking. this town has got
to know us a little too well by this time.
When we start over We'll have to migrate,
suppose" Then he smiled little. I'VE
ought to be thankful. Frank, they haven't
got us both pinned down by the Bertillon
system, over at the Central Officer
"rd defy Bertillon himself to find you,"
she laughed, underneath that two weeks
beard
He rubbed his hand over his stubbled
chin. bsent-mindedly.
Where shall We go, when we migrate?'
he asked, not unhappily.
She gazed with unseeing eyes through
the window, out over the house-tops.
II know little south of England village"
she said, in her soft, flute-like contralto,
II know a little village, nesting down
among green hills, a little town of gardens
and Ivy and walls and thatches, in a coun-
try of brooks and hawthorn hedges-a little
village where the nightingales sing at
night, and the skylarks sing by day, and
the old men and women have rosy faces,
and the girls are shy and soft-spoken-'
But we'd die of loneliness in that sort