“Good-morning, madam,” said the physician, with a cold and distant bow; and to the students, “We’ll pass right along to the other side,” and they moved into the next aisle.
“I am a little pressed for time this morning,” he presently remarked, as the students showed some unwillingness to be hurried. As soon as he could he parted with them and returned to the ward alone.
As he moved again down among the sick, straight along this time, turning neither to right nor left, one of the Sisters of Charity—the hospital and its so-called nurses are under their oversight—touched his arm. He stopped impatiently.
“Well, Sister”—(bowing his ear).
“I—I—the—the”—His frown had scared away her power of speech.
“Well, what is it, Sister?”
“The—the last patient down on this side”—
He was further displeased. “I’ll attend to the patients, Sister,” he said; and then, more kindly, “I’m going there now. No, you stay here, if you please.” And he left her behind.
He came and stood by the bed. The patient gazed on him.
“Mrs. Richling,” he softly began, and had to cease.
She did not speak or move; she tried to smile, but her eyes filled, her lips quivered.
“My dear madam,” exclaimed the physician, in a low voice, “what brought you here?”
The answer was inarticulate, but he saw it on the moving lips.
“Want,” said Mary.
“But your husband?” He stooped to catch the husky answer.
“Home.”
“Home?” He could not understand. “Not gone to—back—up the river?”
She slowly shook her head: “No, home. In Prieur street.”
Still her words were riddles. He could not see how she had come to this. He stood silent, not knowing how to utter his thought. At length he opened his lips to speak, hesitated an instant, and then asked:—
“Mrs. Richling, tell me plainly, has your husband gone wrong?”
Her eyes looked up a moment, upon him, big and staring, and suddenly she spoke:—
“O Doctor! My husband go wrong? John go wrong?” The eyelids closed down, the head rocked slowly from side to side on the flat hospital pillow, and the first two tears he had ever seen her shed welled from the long lashes and slipped down her cheeks.
“My poor child!” said the Doctor, taking her hand in his. “No, no! God forgive me! He hasn’t gone wrong; he’s not going wrong. You’ll tell me all about it when you’re stronger.”
The Doctor had her removed to one of the private rooms of the pay-ward, and charged the Sisters to take special care of her. “Above all things,” he murmured, with a beetling frown, “tell that thick-headed nurse not to let her know that this is at anybody’s expense. Ah, yes; and when her husband comes, tell him to see me at my office as soon as he possibly can.”
As he was leaving the hospital gate he had an afterthought. “I might have left a note.” He paused, with his foot on the carriage-step. “I suppose they’ll tell him,”—and so he got in and drove off, looking at his watch.
On his second visit, although he came in with a quietly inspiring manner, he had also, secretly, the feeling of a culprit. But, midway of the room, when the young head on the pillow turned its face toward him, his heart rose. For the patient smiled. As he drew nearer she slid out her feeble hand. “I’m glad I came here,” she murmured.
“Yes,” he replied; “this room is much better than the open ward.”
“I didn’t mean this room,” she said. “I meant the whole hospital.”
“The whole hospital!” He raised his eyebrows, as to a child.
“Ah! Doctor,” she responded, her eyes kindling, though moist.
“What, my child?”
She smiled upward to his bent face.
“The poor—mustn’t be ashamed of the poor, must they?”
The Doctor only stroked her brow, and presently turned and addressed his professional inquiries to the nurse. He went away. Just outside the door he asked the nurse:—
“Hasn’t her husband been here?”
“Yes,” was the reply, “but she was asleep, and he only stood there at the door and looked in a bit. He trembled,” the unintelligent woman added, for the Doctor seemed waiting to hear more—“he trembled all over; and that’s all he did, excepting his saying her name over to himself like, over and over, and wiping of his eyes.”
“And nobody told him anything?”
“Oh, not a word, sir!” came the eager answer.
“You didn’t tell him to come and see me?”
The woman gave a start, looked dismayed, and began:—
“N-no, sir; you didn’t tell”—
“Um—hum,” growled the Doctor. He took out a card and wrote on it. “Now see if you can remember to give him that.”
CHAPTER XVI.
MANY WATERS.
As the day faded away it began to rain. The next morning the water was coming down in torrents. Richling, looking out from a door in Prieur street, found scant room for one foot on the inner edge of the sidewalk; all the rest was under water. By noon the sidewalks were completely covered in miles of streets. By two in the afternoon the flood was coming into many of the houses. By three it was up at the door-sill on which he stood. There it stopped.
He could do nothing but stand and look. Skiffs, canoes, hastily improvised rafts, were moving in every direction, carrying the unsightly chattels of the poor out of their overflowed cottages to higher ground. Barrels, boxes, planks, hen-coops, bridge lumber, piles of straw that waltzed solemnly as they went, cord-wood, old shingles, door-steps, floated here and there in melancholy confusion; and down upon all still drizzled the slackening rain. At length it ceased.
Richling still stood in the door-way, the picture of mute helplessness. Yes, there was one other thing he could do; he could laugh. It would have been hard to avoid it sometimes, there were such ludicrous sights—such slips and sprawls into the water; so there he stood in that peculiar isolation that deaf people content themselves with, now looking the picture of anxious waiting, now indulging a low, deaf man’s chuckle when something made the rowdies and slatterns of the street