Chapter 6 No.6

Dale was confronted with the problem with which every medical man comes face to face during his career.

Here was a man who, both for his own sake and still more for the sake of those about him, would be very much better dead than living; who wanted to die, and, as he believed, make an end; who begged constantly for the relief of death;-and yet, against his own equally strong feeling of what would be best for all concerned, his doctor must do his very utmost to keep his patient alive and all about him in torment.

Wulfrey wished, as devoutly as the more immediate sufferers, that he would die. He wished it more ardently each time he saw Mrs Carew, and wholly and entirely on her account.

Her white face, which grew more deathly white each day, and her woful eyes, which grew ever more despairing in their shadowy rings, were sure indexes of what she was passing through. Dale wondered how much longer she would be able to stand it.

He gave her tonics, and his most helpful sympathy and encouragement. And at the same time, by the irony of circumstance and the claims of his profession, he must do everything in his power to perpetuate the burden under which she was breaking.

But the whole matter came to a sudden and unlooked for end, on the seventh day after the accident.

Wulfrey was hastening up to the Hall to clear this, the unpleasantest item, out of his day's work, when he met young Job coming down the drive with a straw in his mouth and three couples of young hounds at his heels.

"Wur comen fur you, Doctor," said young Job. "He's dead."

"Dead?" jerked the Doctor in very great surprise, for his patient had been more venomously alive than ever the night before.

"Ay-dead. An' a good thing too, say I, and so too says everyone that's heard it."

"But what took him, Job? He was going on all right last night."

"'Twere the Devil I expecs, Doctor, if you ask me straight. He were getten too strampageous to live. Th' air were so full o' fire and brimstone with his curses, it weren't safe. 'Twere like bein' under a tree wi' th' leeghtnin' playin' all round."

"And Mrs Carew? ... Who was with him when he died? Tell me all you know about it," as they hurried along.

"I come up at ten o'clock as ushal, an' the missus met me at door wi' her finger to her lips. 'He's sleeping, Job,' she says, an' glad I was to hear it. 'I'll go an' lie down, Job, for I'm very tired,' she says, and she looked it, poor thing. 'Knock on my door if you need me, Job,' she says, and she went away. He were lying quiet and all tucked up, an' I sat down an' waited for him to wake up and start again. But he never woke, and when the missus came in this morning she went and looked at him, and she says, 'Why, Job, I do believe he's dead,' and I went and looked at him, and, God's truth, he looked as if he might be. But I couldn't be sure, not liking to touch him, and I says, 'No such luck, ma'am, I'm afraid,'-polite like, for we all knows the time she's had wi' him, and she says, 'Go and fetch Dr Dale.' So I just loosed these three couple o' young uns-they're all achin' for a run,-an' I'm wondering who'll work th' pack now he's gone, if so be as he's really gone, which I'm none too sure of. Th' Hunt were best thing he ever did, but he were terrible hard on his horses."

Dale hurried into the house and up the stair, and into the sick-room, the windows of which were opened to their widest, as though to cleanse the room of the fire and brimstone which had seemed over-strong even to such a pachyderm as young Job.

Carew lay there on the bed, at rest at last, as far as this world was concerned, startlingly quiet after the storm-furies of the last seven days and nights.

Dale was still standing looking down at him, full of that ever-recurring wonder at the quiet dignity which Death sometimes imparts even to those whose lives have not been dignified; full too of anxious desire to learn how it had come about.

The tightly-clenched hands and livid rigidity of the body suggested a startling possibility. He was bending down to the dead man to investigate more closely when a sound behind him caused him to look round, and he found Mrs Carew standing there. Her face was whiter, her eyes heavier and more shadowy, than he had ever seen them.

"He is dead," she said quietly.

"One can only look upon it as a merciful release-for all of you. How was it?"

"He wanted to die," she began, in the dull level tone of a child repeating an obnoxious lesson. Then the self-repression she had prescribed for herself gave way somewhat. Her hands gripped one another fiercely and she hurried on with a touch of rising hysteria, but still speaking in little more than a whisper. "You know how he wanted to die. He was asking you all the time to give him something to end it. But you could not. I know-I quite understand-being a doctor, of course you could not. But there was something he kept-for the rats, you know, in the stables. And he told me where it was and told me to get some. So I got it and gave it him in his sleeping-draught, and--"

"Good God! Elinor!..." he gasped. "... You never did that!"

"Yes, I did. Why not? He wished it. We all wished it. It is much better so," and she pointed at the dead man on the bed. "It is better for him ... and for all of us. I only did what he told me."

He stood staring at her in blankest amazement, and found himself unconsciously searching her face and eyes for signs of aberration. Her face was wan-white still, but had lost the broken, beaten look it had worn of late. The shadow-ringed eyes were perfectly steady and had in them a curious wistful look, like that of a child expecting and deprecating a scolding.

"Do you know what it means?" he asked at last, in a hoarse whisper.

"It means release for us all," she said quickly, and then more quickly still, "Oh, Wulfrey, I couldn't help thinking-hoping that-sometime-not for a long time, of course,-but sometime-when we have forgotten all this-you might-you and I might--"

"Stop!" he said sternly. "Were you thinking that when you did this?" and he pointed to the bed.

"Not then-at least-no, I think not. I just did what he told me to do. But when I saw he was really dead--"

He stopped her again with a gesture, and broke out with brusque vehemence, "Is it possible you don't understand what you have done? Do you know what the law will call it?"--

"The law? No one needs to know anything about it but you and me--"

"The law will want to know how this man died--"

"But you can tell them all that is necessary. It was Blackbird falling at the old road that killed him. If he hadn't broken his back he wouldn't have been lying here, and if he hadn't--"

"He might have lived for twenty years," he said, breaking her off short again with an abrupt gesture. "The law requires of me the exact truth. Do you understand you are asking me to swear to a lie? I would not do it to save my own life."

"He took it himself--"

"He could not get it himself, and the law will hold you responsible for supplying it."

"Oh-Wulfrey! ... You won't let them hang me?"-and he saw that at last she understood clearly enough the peril in which she stood if the whole truth of the matter became known.

Hang her they most certainly would if the facts got out, or coop her for life in a mad-house, which would be infinitely worse than hanging. And the thought of either dreadful ending to her spoiled life was very terrible to him.

She stood before him, little more than a girl still, woful, wistful, with terror now in her white face and shadowy eyes, and he remembered their bygone days together.

"Go back to your room, and rest, if you can. And say nothing of all this to anyone. You understand?-not a word to anyone. I must think what can be done," he said, and she turned and went without a word.