第48章

"It was no good my saying anything. There comes a moment when something tells your patient all that is to be known about the case, and the doctor and the nurse can keep their hopeful assurances for where they will be of more use. The only thing that would have brought comfort to her then would have been to convince her that he would soon forget her and be happy without her. I thought it at the time, and I tried to say something of the kind to her, but Icouldn't get it out, and she wouldn't have believed me if I had.

"So all I could do was to go back to the other room, and tell him that I wanted her to go to sleep, and that he must not call out to her until I told him.

"She lay very still all day. The doctor came at his usual hour and looked at her. He patted her hand, and just glanced at the untouched food beside her.

"'Yes,' he said, quietly. 'I shouldn't worry her, nurse.' And Iunderstood.

"Towards evening she opened her eyes, and beckoned to her sister, who was standing by the bedside, to bend down.

"'Jeanie,' she whispered, 'do you think it wrong to deceive any one when it's for their own good?'

"'I don't know,' said the girl, in a dry voice; 'I shouldn't think so. Why do you ask?'

"'Jeanie, your voice was always very much like mine--do you remember, they used to mistake us at home. Jeanie, call out for me--just till--till he's a bit better; promise me.'

"They had loved each other, those two, more than is common among sisters. Jeanie could not answer, but she pressed her sister closer in her arms, and the other was satisfied.

"Then, drawing all her little stock of life together for one final effort, the child raised herself in her sister's arms.

"'Good-night, Jack,' she called out, loud and clear enough to be heard through the closed door.

"'Good-night, little wife,' he cried back, cheerily; 'are you all right?'

"'Yes, dear. Good-night.'

"Her little, worn-out frame dropped back upon the bed, and the next thing I remember is snatching up a pillow, and holding it tight-pressed against Jeanie's face for fear the sound of her sobs should penetrate into the next room; and afterwards we both got out, somehow, by the other door, and rushed downstairs, and clung to each other in the back kitchen.

"How we two women managed to keep up the deceit, as, for three whole days, we did, I shall never myself know. Jeanie sat in the room where her dead sister, from its head to its sticking-up feet, lay outlined under the white sheet; and I stayed beside the living man, and told lies and acted lies, till I took a joy in them, and had to guard against the danger of over-elaborating them.

"He wondered at what he thought my 'new merry mood,' and I told him it was because of my delight that his wife was out of danger; and then I went on for the pure devilment of the thing, and told him that a week ago, when we had let him think his wife was growing stronger, we had been deceiving him; that, as a matter of fact, she was at that time in great peril, and I had been in hourly alarm concerning her, but that now the strain was over, and she was safe;and I dropped down by the foot of the bed, and burst into a fit of laughter, and had to clutch hold of the bedstead to keep myself from rolling on the floor.

"He had started up in bed with a wild white face when Jeanie had first answered him from the other room, though the sisters' voices had been so uncannily alike that I had never been able to distinguish one from the other at any time. I told him the slight change was the result of the fever, that his own voice also was changed a little, and that such was always the case with a person recovering from a long illness. To guide his thoughts away from the real clue, I told him Jeanie had broken down with the long work, and that, the need for her being past, I had packed her off into the country for a short rest. That afternoon we concocted a letter to him, and I watched Jeanie's eyes with a towel in my hand while she wrote it, so that no tears should fall on it, and that night she travelled twenty miles down the Great Western line to post it, returning by the next up-train.