i f6c06dd9cf3fe221 by Unknown (100 books to read in a lifetime .txt) 📗

nodded pathetically down at the humped figure on the bed.

The doctor didn't raise himself from his stooping posture over the bed, he didn't even raise his head, but he raised his eyes, and his eyebrows shot into the tumbled, thick black hair on his forehead. And his black eyes stared at Mrs. Clarke for a second in such a way that she thought: "Begod 1 he looks like the divil himself. And he might be that, with his black eyes in that long face and that pointed beard; and him so young and handsome. Holy Mother of God, I must have a drink

I'

Whether it was she slipped, or it was the doctor's remark that momentarily unbalanced her she couldn't afterwards decide; for she was stamping down the narrow dark stairs, in a rage, when her feet. just left her, as she put it, and she found herself in a heap in the Hannigans' kitchen, with Tim Hannigan sitting in his chair by the fireside, wearing his look of sullen anger, only more so, and not moving to give a body a hand up, and Sarah Hannigan, with her weary face bending above her, saying: "Oh, are you hurt, Dorrie?" She picked herself up, grabbed her coat off the back of the kitchen door, pulled a shawl tightly around her head, and, with figure bent, passed out through the door Sarah Hannigan held ajar for her and into the driving snow, without uttering a word. She was too angry even to take much notice of the pain in her knee.

She'd get even with the young sod. Begod t if it took her a lifetime shed get even with him.

"Mrs. Clarke," he had said, "I don't allow intoxicated women to assist at births. And, if you bring the sheets, we won't tear them. They will only be a loan, Mrs. Clarke."

Dorrie Clarke suddenly shivered violently. And it wasn't a shiver caused by the snow as it danced and swirled about her; it wasn't a cold shiver at all.

"Jesus, Mary and TosephI How did he know? He could have heard I take a drop, but he couldn't have known about the sheets.

My God! it's what Father O'Malley said. The divil walks the earth, he has many guises. He's the divil 1 Ah! but as Father O'Malley would say, he's got to be fought, and, begodi I'll fight him! "

Back in the bedroom of 16 Whitley Street Doctor Rodney Prince stood with his elbows on the mantelpiece. He had to bend down a considerable way to do this as it was only four feet high and merely a narrow ledge above the bedroom fireplace. He kept pushing his hands through his hair with a rhythmic movement. God! but he was tired. Wasn't it ever going to come? What a Christmas Eve, "and Stella likely sitting in a blue stately fume, cramming herself with pity ... the beautiful, talented, brutally treated (he gave a soundless laugh at the thought) and neglected wife of a slum doctor 1 Well, he had telephoned her and told her to go on to the Richards. And he had also telephoned the Richards and told them; but they had said, " Well, you know Mrs.

Prince! She won't come without you. " Clever Stella; playing the part of the dutiful wife, awaiting her husband's return with coffee and sandwiches and a loving smile. Clever Stella.... Oh, my God, where was it going to end? Four years of it now, and perhaps ten fifteen ...

twenty more.... Oh no 1 If only he didn't love her so much....

Christmas Day tomorrow; she would go to church and kneel like one of God's angels, somewhere where the choir boys could see her.

Poor choir boys He knew the feelings she would send through them. How could they think of the Trinity? sing their little responses? when the great God Nature, he who gave you concrete proof of his presence, was competing against the other God, who, as far as they understood, wasn't introduced to them until they were dead. Oh, Stella! What was he thinking? He was so tired. If only he could go home after this was over and find her there, soft and yielding, wanting some^

thing from him. "Doctor! Doctor!"

He turned swiftly towards the bed and gripped the hands outstretched to him.

"There, there! Is it starting again? Try hard now."

"How much longer, doctor?"

"Not long," he lied; 'any time now. Only don't worry; you'll be all right. "

"I don't mind ... I don't mind." The tousled head rolled to and fro on the pillow.

"I want to die ... I hope we both die ... just go out quietly...."

"Kate, here, don't talk like that 1' He released one of his hands from hers and brought her face round to look at him, his palm against her cheek.

"Now, we want none of that nonsense. Do you hear?"

Her great blue eyes looked up at him, quietly and enquiringly, for a second.

"What chance has it?" she asked.

He knew she wasn't enquiring after the child's chance of being born alive, although about that he was beginning to have his doubts, but of its chance to live in her world, handicapped as it would be.

"As much as the next," he answered her.

"And more," he added, 'seeing it'll be your child. "

Now, what had made him say that? For, if it inherited her beauty and was brought up in these surroundings, it was doomed from birth. How the feelings of kindliness made one lie, made one tactful and insincere! Only when you hated someone did you tell the truth.

He pulled up a rickety chair and sat down, letting Kate, in her spasms, pull on his arm. Where the deuce had that drunken