Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 February 1915 — MARK AND HIS WIFE [ARTICLE]

MARK AND HIS WIFE

By GEORGE A. ENGLAND.

(Copyright.) “Look here, Malcolm, you’ve got to tell me! She’s my wife, and —” "Hush! Not so loud!” “She can hear, then?” “Yes, she’s conscious —how much longer she will be I can’t say.” “Sinking, Malcolm?” "Now, now, no questions! ■ You’d better go out in the hall.” “Never!” Mark’s reddened eyes glinted defiance. “No, no, I’m not going to leave her while she’s gasping like that!” His voice shrilled hyaterically. “But you’re only harming her by staying!” “No, no, she’s my—” Malcolm slid a broad palm over the protesting mouth; his other hand gripped Mark’s elbow. “Out you go!” he commanded, trying to thrust Mark into the hall, but Mark clung and the doctor could not shake him off. He had perforce to drag him out. When they were both in the ha-H and the door was shut; “Hang you!” said the doctor in a voice tense as steel, “you get out and stay out! Don’t be a crazy fool!’ “Mally, Mally! She’s my wife and you’re my -friend —my best, oldest —” “All the more reason why I’m going to keep you out of there till she —rallies! Till then, I’m not your friend— I’m the doctor, nothing else, nothing. Remember!’ The hand-grip was gone from Mark’s angular elbow; the hall door was shut, the man was alone. He leaned against the wall for a minute, shivering as he heard the windows rattle with the January gale; then he shuffled to the stairs and sat down. His air was that of a man who has been painstakingly mangled on the rack and thep given five minutes’ respite. The gas flame over his head cast a high light'on his salient cheek bonps. After a while he nodded and dozed, with pendent arms. Malcolm’s hand on hiß shoulder wakened him in half an hour; he started up wild-eyed and shivering. “What—what time is it?” he stammered in confusion. "Is Dorry—4s she—" “Come, now, pull yourself together," said the doctor, sternly. "I've got some work for you. Get your things on quick! You’ve got to go down to the dispensary.” "What! And leave—” “Yes. I can’t go, Miss Abbott here can’t go, and somebody’s got to go, so you see how it is. We’ve got to have a tank of oxygen, right off!”

“What?” “Oxygen. It comes in big steel cylinders like soda water tanks, painted blue, with a valve at the top —you’ve seen ’em. The quicker you can get one up here, the better it will be.” “What—what are they for, those tanks?” “Well, when there isn’t anything else to do, we give oxygen to aerate the blood and stimulate the heart; sometimes it keeps the patient up until the congestion begins to resolve and then —” “Her lungs, you mean, are —” he began; but Malcolm interrupted. “Now, you see here, Mark, if you want your wife to die, stand right there where you are and discuss things. If you want her to live, hustle Into your overcoat and get a wheelbarrow and bring up a cylinder of oxygen from the dispensary just as quick as the Lord will let you! Understand?” "Yes, yes—but can’t you telephone? Can’t I? We can save no end of time that way.” “Tried it, and can’t. Central says the wires are going down all over Hampton. This storm’s a recordbreaker. No, you’ve got to go for it yourself. Hustle out with a wheelbarrow and follow the car tracks. The snow plows have probably kept ’em clear. There’s a fellow named Timothy Foley for night orderly down there this week. He knows me. Just say I sent you, and he’ll let you have it all right Now get along! If you’re not back in half an hour—” “All right! All right!” said Mark, end tiptoed shakily downstairs. Tim Foley, reading an old magazine ;in the dispensary office, under the yelflow circle of a hooded electric light became vaguely conscious of a curious sound as of some one struggling and ’floundering up the steps with a burden; then, after a minute or two, he beard a fumbling at the door., Tim dropped the magazine and listened; then he got up, went silently to the door and ppened it Through the snow eddy that swirled in he saw something that looked like a man standing outside—a snow-man, thin and tall, with teeth that chattered like castanets. This man had neither hat nor gloves; he was gripping the handles of a wheelbarrow. He stammered with bloodless lips: “Oxygen! I’ll take it home on this.” He tried to drag the wheelbarrow Into the vestibule, hut Foley restrained hln» “Hould on, man —hould on! Youse can’t bring dat in here 1 ." "Eh?” "I say youse can’t bring dat wheelbarrer Into de hall, see?” Hie man stared, but said nothing. “Say, what d’youse want, anyway f* “Malcolm sent me.”

Drop dat autermobile of yours, an* come in am’ tell me all about it! I can’t keep dis here door open all night —dey’s sick folk in here, see?” "That’s so, that’s so!” Mark let the barrow handles fall and came into the corridor blinking. “No, w’at is it youse want? Who sent you?” ‘Malcolm —that is, Dr. Miller.” "Yes?” r “And he said for me to get oxygen in a tank, right away.” “Say, are you Mr. Andrews?” “Andrews? Yes, that's my name. My wife’s sick —pneumonia —” “Oh, yes, now I know. Say, sit down a minute. I’ll get it!” He padded away on his rubber soles. “Plum dotty!” he said to himself as ho l unlocked the storeroom and switched the light. Mark, left alone, stared unblinking'ly at the incandescent, clenching and unclenching hi* l bony hands. Once he swallowed hard and tried to wet his lips with his dry tongue. After a certain time he heard a metallic rolling noise, and saw in a dream the orderly propelling a long blue cylinder down the hall. "Here you are!” said Foley, “an* here’s de tube an’ inspirator. TO put ’em right here in your pocket, see? Now you wait one minute, an’ I'll fix youse a good dose of whisky an’ git a hat an’ some gloves. I guess one pneumonia case at a time’s enough for anny fam’ly!” “No, no! I don’t want it, I won’t have it! .Let me —” - “Shut up! If youse goes hollerin’ like dat you'll wake up all me par tients! You keep still, see?” Mark, cowed, leaned against the wall and waited. In two minutes.he was hatted, gloved, and ready for the home trip, with a gill of whisky burning his stomach. “Lend a hand now,” commanded Foley, “an’ we'll load it on de wheel-bar-rer. That’s right. Easy down de steps now! Td send somebody wld youse, if dere was annybody here, but dere ain’t Now, den, TO hold de door open till you reach de tracks. All right? Got it? Good luck to youse!” v • • • • • • It was a nightmare, that freezing dark wallow back through the blizzard. Shrieking wind-devils buffeted Mark and snatched the breath from his lips; snow-devils clogged the barrow wheel; cold-devils shot him through and through with long stinging arrows. His clothes, stiffened and frozen, made every movement doubly painful. Twice he was blocked and had to kick the snow away with numb feet. 'Once a snow plow Jolted past, glaring and sputtering; it forced him to drag his load off to one side and almost burled hixp in a smother of snow. The man’s reason and thought staggered down and out; he became nothing more than an automaton, lunging onward, sobbing, thrusting the barrow on and on through the tumult Sight and sound faded; cold faded; darkness and wind and everything faded from his consciousness—every-

thing but the lash of his idea. Time* too, was blotted out; the universe was just a whirl, a whirl, a whirl. Suddenly a light broke through the whirl and stopped it; then the man saw some steps and felt a thrill of recognition—the steps were his! Some* one was coming down those steps —a voice was calling (it seemed miles and miles away): “Hurry! Hurry!” Oh, it was Malcolm, dear old Maßy, and—the cylinder was lifted; it wan carried up the steps. Mark followed. Then his own self surged back again, with sickening pains of memory, and Mark stood shivering, gasping in Ms own house. See! Malcolm was carrying the cylinder upstairs on his shoulder Mark followed again; shuffling up the stairs. At t*e sickroom door the nurse repulsed him. “No, no! You can’t come in here!” she whispered, laying her hand on his thin chest “No, no! You’re all wet and cold. Keep out!” “Quick!” he heard Malcolm whisper to the nurse. “Hurry! Get that inspirator on! She’ll be gone in a minute!” Then there came a little silence and the click of a metal snap. “Now let’s have it—easy at first! Just turn the valve till you hear it hiss!” Another silence. “Well, what’s the matter? Why don’t you turn the valve?” “I am turning it, doctor!” “You are? H-m, that’s odd; there’s no gas coming. Throw it wide open!** “There, it won’t go any further!” “Say, what the— Why, there’s nothing in it! Foley must have given him an empty!” “An empty?” Mark appeared in the doorway. His face was the color of old ivory. “Empty, was It? Empty?” he shouted. “Hush! Go back!” “And she’s dead—dead?” Malcolm started toward him, but the man tossed up Ms arms and whirled about and laughed, laughed, laughed—screamed: . “It’s an empty one! It’s empty! Ha, ha! What a joke! Ho, ho! He gave me an empty one, and she died! Ha. ha, ha! Capital! Cap—” His arms dropped, Ms head dropped, he doubled bp like a pocket knife and fell distorted on the carpet. Malcolm jumped to him, knelt over him, tore open his clothes, put Ms ear to the narrow chest. “Hypodermic?” asked the nurse. “No, no, not the slightest use,” Mal» colm answered. “Cardiac rupture. He was stone dead when he struck the