The Little Lady of the Big House / Маленькая хозяйка большого дома. Книга для чтения на английском языке

And while Dick talked, building the fabric of the lie so that even Graham should be fooled, to himself he was understanding how well Paula had played the trick. That last singing of the “Gypsy Trail” had been her farewell to Graham and at the same time had provided against any suspicion on his part of what she had intended directly to do. It had been the same with him. She had had her farewell with him, and, the last thing, over the telephone, had assured him that she would never have any man but him in all the world.

He walked away from Graham to the far end of the porch.

“She had the grit[571], she had the grit,” he muttered to himself with quivering lips. “Poor kid. She couldn’t decide between the two, and so she solved it this way.”

The noise of the racing machine drew him and Graham together, and together they entered the room to wait for the doctor. Graham betrayed unrest, reluctant to go, yet feeling that he must.

“Please stay on, Evan,” Dick told him. “She liked you much, and if she does open her eyes she’ll be glad to see you.”

Dick and Graham stood apart from Paula while Doctor Robinson made his examination. When he arose with an air of finality, Dick looked his question. Robinson shook his head.

“Nothing to be done,” he said. “It is a matter of hours, maybe of minutes.” He hesitated, studying Dick’s face for a moment. “I can ease her off if you say the word. She might possibly recover consciousness and suffer for a space.”

Dick took a turn down the room and back, and when he spoke it was to Graham.

“Why not let her live again, brief as the time may be? The pain is immaterial. It will have its inevitable quick anodyne. It is what I would wish, what you would wish. She loved life, every moment of it. Why should we deny her any of the little left her?”

Graham bent his head in agreement, and Dick turned to the doctor.

“Perhaps you can stir her, stimulate her, to a return of consciousness. If you can, do so. And if the pain proves too severe, then you can ease her.”

* * *

When her eyes fluttered open, Dick nodded Graham up beside him. At first bewilderment was all she betrayed,₄ then her eyes focused first on Dick’s face, then on Graham’s, and, with recognition, her lips parted in a pitiful smile.

“I… I thought at first that I was dead,” she said.

But quickly another thought was in her mind, and Dick divined it in her eyes as they searched him. The question was if he knew it was no accident. He gave no sign. She had planned it so, and she must pass believing it so[572].

“I… was… wrong,” she said. She spoke slowly, faintly, in evident pain, with a pause for strength of utterance between each word. “I was always so cocksure I’d never have an accident, and look what I’ve gone and done.”

“It’s a darn shame,” Dick said, sympathetically. “What was it? A jam?[573]”

She nodded, and again her lips parted in the pitiful brave smile as she said whimsically: “Oh, Dick, go call the neighbors in and show them what little Paula’s din. How serious is it?” she asked. “Be honest, Red Cloud, you know me,” she added, after the briefest of pauses in which Dick had not replied.

He shook his head.

“How long?” she queried.

“Not long,” came his answer. “You can ease off any time.[574]”

“You mean…?” She glanced aside curiously at the doctor and back to Dick, who nodded.

“It’s only what I should have expected from you, Red Cloud,” she murmured gratefully. “But is Doctor Robinson game for it?”

The doctor stepped around so that she could see him, and nodded.

“Thank you, doctor. And remember, I am to say when.”

“Is there much pain?” Dick queried.

Her eyes were wide and brave and dreadful, and her lips quivered for the moment ere she replied, “Not much, but dreadful, quite dreadful. I won’t care to stand it very long[575]. I’ll say when.”

Once more the smile on her lips announced a whimsey.

“Life is queer, most queer, isn’t it? And do you know, I want to go out with love-songs in my ears. You first, Evan, sing the ‘Gypsy Trail.’ – Why, I was singing it with you less than an hour ago. Think of it! Do, Evan, please.”

Graham looked to Dick for permission, and Dick gave it with his eyes.

“Oh, and sing it robustly, gladly, madly, just as a womaning Gypsy man should sing it,” she urged. “And stand back there, so, where I can see you.”

And while Graham sang the whole song through to its:

“The heart of a man to the heart of a maid, light of my tents be fleet,
Morning waits at the end of the world and the world is all at our feet.”

Oh My, immobile-faced, a statue, stood in the far doorway awaiting commands. Oh Dear, grief-stricken, stood at her mistress’s head, no longer wringing her hands, but holding them so tightly clasped that the finger-tips and nails showed white. To the rear, at Paula’s dressing table, Doctor Robinson noiselessly dissolved in a glass the anodyne pellets and filled his hypodermic.