Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1924-09-16
HIS BROTHERS WIFE
BY RUBY M. AYRES
CHAPTER IX
In No. 4 Ward


q HE was lying so still, so very STILL when
David Bretherton followed the nurse
~ down the ward, that for a moment his
heart seemed to stop beating he bent over
the narrow bed, with it's painfully even
folded clothes, and looked at her white face.
"Mary!' He spoke her name through the
unbearable silence, but it fell on deaf ears
The nurse looked at him pityingly.
"She not hear you-she has not been
conscious ever since they brought her in
She smoothed a little crease in the coarse
sheet.
David was conscious of sort OF angry i'm
patience; her calmness got on his nerves
How could one bother about a crease in
sheet when death was lowering round the
bed? What did anything matter if Mary
were dying?
He sat down beside the bed, and leaned
his face in his hands. 1t seemed to him now
that he had been very cruel to her in the
past; he had held back and kept silent, when
a word from him might have lifted the bur-
den she carried and brought peace between
them
He had gone on, hoping that she would
tell him of her own free will; believing that
some day she would come to him and make
a full confession of her innocent deception.
He told himself that he had tried her too
much, that he had allowed the misunder-
standing to exist too long.
Ills natural reserve ana COldneSS seemed
to be broken up in sudden flame of pas
sionate remorse; he felt as if he could fall
on his knees beside that silent figure and
beg her to open her eyes and smile at him
once more.
But he only sat there suffering dumbly.
The nurse stood there for a moment
there was sort of compassion in her eyes,
then she turned slowly away.
She believed that Mary was dying. She
did not believe that she would ever regain
consciousness.
David had wired to Miss Varney that Mary
had been found. He did not tell her how
or when, but he knew that she would come
up to town as soon as she possibly could.
He stayed at the hospital all night. They
had drawn a screen round Mary's bed now;
and David sat there in the almost unbear-
able silence, watching her in agonized sus-
pense, not daring to hope that she would
ever speak to him again.
1t was too late! Often that knowledge
has broken a mans heart-too late to ask
forgiveness, too late to speak the word of
simple understanding and comfort that
might have saved much pain and suffer
ing. Dawn broke gray and chilly; it stole
into the long ward like timid visitor grad
ually driving away the shadows, and lighting
up the wan faces of those who filled the mar
row beds.
David was cold and weary, but he hardly
knew it. He seemed to have lived through
a lifetime in that one night. The face he
lifted to the nurse when she came round
again was gray and haggard.
"You don't think she will get better?'
There was hopeless despair in his voice;
she shook her head.
There is always hope" she said gently.
The old platitude! And yet what else is
there to say when human skill has given Of
it's best and one can only pray?
The long hours dragged by. It was mid
L. Choh bod
to the Fishers, and came straight on. She
was frightened and fearful; she broke down
altogether when she saw Marys still face.
ooh poor child! Poor darling child"
She stopped and kissed the girls white
cheek; her tears fell fast
David moved restlessly. Somehow he en-
We'd her easy expression of grief, 1t was
beyond him altogether. He felt as if his
heart had frozen during those long hours Of
night watching.
Presently he allowed Miss Varney to take
him away
Its absurd! You can do nothing, and
youll only be i'll YOURSELF" she protested,
with pretended anger, ''They will let you
know at once if she wakes"
David followed her from the ward. He
looked back once as they reached the door
way All his life he remembered the long
room, with it's rows Of beds, and that one
with the ominous screen drawn round it.
whole story. She piled David with hundreds
of questions-how he had found her, what
had happened.
He answered them as best he could, but it
was all such an effort.
What did the "how' and the "why" mat
ter when the all-absorbing fact was accom-
plished and irrevocable?
If she were to die, what did it matter how
her death had been brought about?
Dora Fisher was hardly civil to me-.
Miss Varney sobbed. "She was so rude and
off-hand. David. l am so glad you never
really liked that girl. At one time
thought you were rather interested in her
was dreading that perhaps some day you
would ask her to marry you. | could not
have borne it; | could never have lived in
the house with her-not that she would nave
wanted me, I suppose the old lady added
sadly.
David colored. He stood looking out of
the window into the sunshine. He laughed
rather mirthlessly.
This story comes to an end in Saturdays