“Ah!” replied the other, “as a father whose only child’s life is in danger, you implore me, of all men in the world, to come and save it!”
There was a strained intensity in the doctor’s low voice that struck Carteret, in spite of his own preoccupation. He thought he heard, too, from the adjoining room, the sound of someone sobbing softly. There was some mystery here which he could not fathom unaided.
Miller turned to the door behind him and threw it open. On the white cover of a low cot lay a childish form in the rigidity of death, and by it knelt, with her back to the door, a woman whose shoulders were shaken by the violence of her sobs. Absorbed in her grief, she did not turn, or give any sign that she had recognized the intrusion.
“There, Major Carteret!” exclaimed Miller, with the tragic eloquence of despair, “there lies a specimen of your handiwork! There lies my only child, laid low by a stray bullet in this riot which you and your paper have fomented; struck down as much by your hand as though you had held the weapon with which his life was taken!”
“My God!” exclaimed Carteret, struck with horror. “Is the child dead?”
“There he lies,” continued the other, “an innocent child—there he lies dead, his little life snuffed out like a candle, because you and a handful of your friends thought you must override the laws and run this town at any cost!—and there kneels his mother, overcome by grief. We are alone in the house. It is not safe to leave her unattended. My duty calls me here, by the side of my dead child and my suffering wife! I cannot go with you. There is a just God in heaven!—as you have sown, so may you reap!”
Carteret possessed a narrow, but a logical mind, and except when confused or blinded by his prejudices, had always tried to be a just man. In the agony of his own predicament—in the horror of the situation at Miller’s house—for a moment the veil of race prejudice was rent in twain, and he saw things as they were, in their correct proportions and relations—saw clearly and convincingly that he had no standing here, in the presence of death, in the home of this stricken family. Miller’s refusal to go with him was pure, elemental justice; he could not blame the doctor for his stand. He was indeed conscious of a certain involuntary admiration for a man who held in his hands the power of life and death, and could use it, with strict justice, to avenge his own wrongs. In Dr. Miller’s place he would have done the same thing. Miller had spoken the truth—as he had sown, so must he reap! He could not expect, could not ask, this father to leave his own household at such a moment.
Pressing his lips together with grim courage, and bowing mechanically, as though to Fate rather than the physician, Carteret turned and left the house. At a rapid pace he soon reached home. There was yet a chance for his child: perhaps some one of the other doctors had come; perhaps, after all, the disease had taken a favorable turn—Evans was but a young doctor, and might have been mistaken. Surely, with doctors all around him, his child would not be permitted to die for lack of medical attention! He found the mother, the doctor, and the nurse still grouped, as he had left them, around the suffering child.
“How is he now?” he asked, in a voice that sounded like a groan.
“No better,” replied the doctor; “steadily growing worse. He can go on probably for twenty minutes longer without an operation.”
“Where is the doctor?” demanded Mrs. Carteret, looking eagerly toward the door. “You should have brought him right upstairs. There’s not a minute to spare! Phil, Phil, our child will die!”
Carteret’s heart swelled almost to bursting with an intense pity. Even his own great sorrow became of secondary importance beside the grief which his wife must soon feel at the inevitable loss of her only child. And it was his fault! Would that he could risk his own life to spare her and to save the child!
Briefly, and as gently as might be, he stated the result of his errand. The doctor had refused to come, for a good reason. He could not ask him again.
Young Evans felt the logic of the situation, which Carteret had explained sufficiently. To the nurse it was even clearer. If she or any other woman had been in the doctor’s place, she would have given the same answer.
Mrs. Carteret did not stop to reason. In such a crisis a mother’s heart usurps the place of intellect. For her, at that moment, there were but two facts in all the world. Her child lay dying. There was within the town, and within reach, a man who could save him. With an agonized cry she rushed wildly from the room.
Carteret sought to follow her, but she flew down the long stairs like a wild thing. The least misstep might have precipitated her to the bottom; but ere Carteret, with a remonstrance on his lips, had scarcely reached the uppermost step, she had thrown open the front door and fled precipitately out into the night.
XXXVII
The Sisters
Miller’s doorbell rang loudly, insistently, as though demanding a response. Absorbed in his own grief, into which he had relapsed upon Carteret’s departure, the sound was an unwelcome intrusion. Surely the man could not be coming back! If it were someone else—What else might happen to the doomed town concerned him not. His child was dead—his distracted wife could not be left alone.
The doorbell rang—clamorously—appealingly. Through the long hall and the closed door of the room where
