The Red Book Magazine/Volume 14/Number 1/Through the Wall

by I. A. R. Wylie

For works with similar titles, see Through the Wall.

 

Through the Wall

BY I. A. R. WYLIE

Author of “The Higher Duty,” etc.

I

THERE had been an accident. He did not know what sort of accident or when and where it had taken place. All he could be sure of was that there had been a terrific, deafening crash and the high, piteous scream of a woman. He remembered both so distinctly because they were the last things he had heard, and now they echoed on through his aching brain, mingling themselves confusedly with other and softer sounds. Someone was whispering: there was the rustle of a skirt, again a faint voice asking for water, and the click of a glass. He did not bother to open his eyes. He lay still and lazily tried to piece his memories together. For a long time it seemed as if there was nothing left him from the past but the recollection of those two sounds, but presently a sharp pain in his right side hastened his returning consciousness and his mind, groping through the mist, caught hold of his life's threads where they had been so roughly broken off and began to disentangle them.

He had been in the act of lifting a glass to his lips when it had all happened. There had been wine in the glass. He had been drinking to something or somebody. To whom? To what? He frowned with the effort of remembering. Then he smiled somewhat cynically. Of course, it had been to his return home.

He had been watching the fields flash past the carriage window, thinking of the years that had drifted since he had bidden them farewell in the heyday of his youth and ambition, and in a sudden fit of grim gayety he had lifted his glass to the Old Country, to his home, to himself. The smile that lifted the gray mustache now was but the continuation of that mood, a mood in which laughter and tears had clasped hands and mingled.

Colonel Robert Mowbray opened his eyes. He knew quite well now who he was and all that had preceded this moment. It was as if his soul had wandered out into space and reluctantly had returned and now sat upon the threshold of its old dwelling, viewing the scarred drab walls with sorrowful and unloving eyes. He would have been glad to have drifted back into the shadows of oblivion, but that was no longer possible. He had forced himself back to full consciousness, and now he looked about him, taking in his surroundings with a languid interest.

His bed stood in a sort of narrow cubicle. On either side a wooden partition rose three-quarters of the way up the wall. At the far end a screen shielded the window light from him. Evidently he was in a hospital ward.

His curiosity satisfied, he was about to close his eyes again when the screen was pushed a little on one side and a bright faced nurse entered carrying a tray with bandages.

When she saw that he was awake she nodded cheerfully to him.

“That's right!” she said. “How are you feeling now?”

“Pretty well,” he returned. “My leg hurts—I don't know which and I can't be bothered to think. What's the matter with me?”

“Your leg is broken and you have a cut on the head. Otherwise you are all right. You don't need to worry.”

“I don't!” he said.

He submitted impatiently to the deft manipulation of her fingers about his head, but after a time, partly to hide the fact that he was in some pain and partly out of interest, he began to ask questions.

“How did it happen?” he demanded.

She laid her finger on her lips.

“The express ran into a freight train. But you mustn't talk!”

“I shall if I want to,” he retorted irritably. “It doesn't hurt me.”

“Not you, perhaps, but your neighbors.”

“Oh!”

He relapsed into a tight-lipped silence. Then he whispered:

“Who are they—I mean the people on either side?”

“On your left there is a poor third-class passenger and on your right a lady. You see, it is rather a mixed ward, but we couldn't help it. There were so many injured and we had not much room. Later on we shall be able to move you.”

“I should hope so!” he muttered.

He lay still while she finished the bandage.

From somewhere quite close to him, as it seemed, he heard a low, long drawn sigh. It sounded so sad and so patient that it stirred him uncomfortably, and he looked at his nurse with his bushy eyebrows raised.

“Is that—she?” he asked.

“Yes, poor little woman!”

“Why do you say 'poor little woman?'” he asked petulantly. “Is she 'worse off than the rest of us?”

“Yes, I think she is. She has so much to bear and she is so frail and delicate and brave.”

“Oh!”

Colonel Mowbray collapsed again. Then his stern, rather handsome features, softened.

“All right!” he said boyishly. “I wont talk!”

He closed his eyes until the nurse had gone out of the room, but when everything was quiet he opened them again and watched the rays of evening sunshine which fell on the foot of his bed between the screen and the partition. He could not sleep, and there was nothing else to do but watch it gradually fading—and to think.

Somehow he did not feel quite the same as he had done before the nurse had come. Then he had felt bitter and not a little sorry for himself. Now, such self-pity seemed petty and cowardly, when next door a delicate woman was suffering—and suffering without a groan or complaint. After all, she was a woman and he was a man—a strong man, moreover, not unaccustomed to wounds and privation.

And then, as far as he was concerned, what did it matter? The thought flashed through him, bearing with it the acid taste of his old bitterness. What he endured affected no one. No one would mind. But his neighbor? He imagined her to himself.

Perhaps she was pretty. Surely, someone cared. Surely someone was hurrying to her side, to share with her every twinge of pain by the communicative power of love and sympathy? Possibly she was engaged—or even married. At any rate, she was not alone, and he did not envy her the knowledge that someone was unhappy on her account. It is better to be alone.

Colonel Mowbray lay very still. Almost unconsciously he went on thinking about his neighbor, wondering if she was still in pain or if she slept. The sunlight faded. Dusk crept over the silent ward, and presently he fell into a slight doze. How long it lasted he did not know. When he awoke it was night.

There was a faint yellow reflection on the ceiling of the next cubicle and someone was speaking.

“Nurse—I don't want to bother—am I very impatient? I try not to be. But shall I never be able to go to sleep again?”

The Colonel opened his eyes wide. It was not the words with their undercurrent of pathos; it was not that in a flash he knew that through those hours when he had believed her asleep she had been awake fighting a brave silent battle against pain, it was the voice itself which touched him to the heart. In all his life he did not believe he had ever heard so much sweetness as those few broken tones contained.

“You will be better to-morrow,” he heard the nurse answer. “Take this, dear.”

There was a low “Thank you” and then silence.

The light faded from the ceiling. The nurse's footsteps hesitated before his cubicle and then passed on.

The Colonel's eyes were still wide open. He could not go to sleep. Without knowing why, he listened intently to every sound that came from the right-hand cubicle. He even held his breath and lifted himself a little on his elbow in order to hear better. Sometimes he imagined that he heard her breathing softly and regularly, and sometimes he thought he heard her sigh, and each time he grumbled at himself for not minding his own business.

“If she would only go to sleep, then, perhaps, I might be able to!” he thought in an outburst of discontent. Though what the two things had to do with each other he would have found it hard to explain.

The hours passed. He counted eleven—twelve—one—two. There was no sound. Certainly she was asleep. No one in pain could lie so still and quiet as she did. He turned a little on one side with a sigh of satisfaction, prepared to close his eyes.

There was a sudden movement in the cubicle on his left. The injured third-class passenger had either waked up or had recovered consciousness. After a series of impatient, restless tossings he began to curse loudly and bitterly.

Colonel Mowbray's heart stood still with alarm.

Supposing he should wake her!

Regardless of his own burning head and aching limb he dragged himself into a half-sitting posture and put his mouth against the wooden partition.

“Shut up!” he hissed between his teeth.

“'Oo 'Shut up?” came the retort, after a moment's surprised silence.

“I did and I mean it. Shut up!”

There was a snort of pain and indignation.

“I like that! If you 'ad two ribs stove in——”

“I have a broken leg and a split head. I dare say I have quite as much cause to whine as you have. Hold your tongue and don't make a noise like a puppy with its tail trodden on. You are disturbing the lady—”

“Wot laidy?”

“There's a young lady next door in great pain and she can't get to sleep. I suppose you can oblige a lady, can't you?”

There was the sound of a heavy frame falling back among the pillows.

“Orl right, guv'ner. Keep yer 'air on. I wont worrit her,” came the assurance.

Then, after a moment:

“I saiy, guv'ner! I 'ope as 'ow I didn't wake the laidy hup?”

“I don't think so, I've been listening.”

“That's orl right. Good-night, guv.”

“Good-night!”

An absolute unbroken silence fell upon the ward. Both men, unknown to each other, lay and listened. But there was no movement in the right-hand cubicle, and presently the Colonel sank into an uneasy sleep.

II

The doctor rubbed his hands cheerfully.

“Six or seven weeks, my dear sir,” he said, “and you'll be on your feet, I've no doubt. What are a few weeks to a young man at your time of life? You mustn't grumble.”

Colonel Mowbray was not thinking of grumbling. Nor did he take any notice of the facetious reference to his years. He plucked the doctor's sleeve and drew him down so he could put his lips close to his ear.

“Doctor,” he whispered, “how's your patient?”

The cheerful medical face grew puzzled.

“Really, my dear sir, I have so many patients—”

“I mean—the one next door.”

“Ah, my broken-ribbed bricklayer?”

The Colonel pshawed impatiently.

“No—no. The lady.”

“Ah, the lady—little Miss Adelaide? She is better this morning.”

The doctor's eyes twinkled slyly.

“Friend of yours, eh?”

“No!” snapped the Colonel, scenting the slyness.

Then, as the doctor beat a retreat, he added under his breath: “Jackass!”

However, a minute afterwards the grim mouth relaxed and he smiled.

“If anyone is a jackass, I am,” he thought. “I wonder what was the matter with me last night? I must have been delirious.”

He fell to wondering what she was like. He imagined that she was very small and delicate. He was sure she had large, steadfast eyes and a white skin which grew easily bright with color. Everything about her would be dainty, gentle and soft—fairy-like. Yes, fairy-like. That was the word that would describe her best, something far removed from the big sporting type which so revolted his old-fashioned ideals.

In the middle of his reflections he was interrupted by some one calling. He recognized the voice at once, and was indignant at his own delight.

“Neighbor!”

“I beg your pardon—?”

The Colonel sat up in his surprise and gave his injured limb a twist which, under other circumstances, would have called forth some strong, soldier-like expressions.

“I thought I heard you talking,” the gentle voice went on, “otherwise I should not have ventured to disturb you. I want to thank you very, very much for last night. It was so thoughtful of you to bother about me.”

“Please don't mention it,' the Colonel stammered. “I understand that you had been awake a good deal and—eh—”

He found no way to finish out the sentence. He felt that he would be making a fool of himself if he explained that he had been listening half the night to her breathing, so he added lamely, “I hope you are better this morning?”

“Much better, thank you. After you asked that poor man next door to be quiet, I managed to get to sleep.”

“You were awake all that time?”

“Yes,”

“I never heard you!” he blurted out.

“I tried to keep quiet,” she answered.

“That was damn plucky of you!”

The Colonel was not and never had been a lady's man, and it must at once be admitted that he occasionally swore, though with the most innocent intentions in the world.

He thought he heard her laugh quietly to herself.

“I don't see that it was very plucky,” she said. “I didn't hear you either, and I know you must have had your share of pain.”

“That's quite another thing,” he retorted. “I am a man and you are a girl.”

She made no answer to this and a silence fell between them. Colonel Mowbray wondered if she had fallen asleep. Otherwise he would have liked to continue the conversation.

Presently he ventured to ask:

“Will you be laid up in this rabbit-hutch long?”

“I don't know. Some weeks, I am afraid. You see, my back was injured and that always takes time. But I have nothing to complain about. Other poor people have had much more to bear.”

After a minute, he added, in spite of a disgusted knowledge that he was yielding to an inexplicable attack of curiosity: “But the time will go quickly with you. No doubt you will have relations—or friends coming to look after you.”

Again there was a moment's silence before she answered, and this time the silence was heavy with an unspoken sadness.

“I do not think so,” she said at last, very slowly. “All my friends and relations are far away. Most of them are dead.”

He bit his lip. He felt that he had jarred roughly upon a new wound, and his heart went out to her. After all, loneliness is well enough for man, but for a woman it is something tragic. And her voice sounded pathetically young and wistful.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I, too, am quite alone. Nobody will bother about me. When I first found myself in this—er—place, I was wild that I hadn't been given a room to myself. Now I am really quite glad. We shall be able to keep each other company.”

He said it as a matter of course—he who disliked chattering and was proud of his bitter, lonely independence. He told himself that he was sorry for her. It was the only reasonable excuse he could think of.

“It is very good of you,” she said, “but I fear I shall be a poor companion. You see, just at first, 1 must not talk much.”

Colonel Mowbray nodded to himself.

“Of course not!” he said severely. “You must go to sleep at once!”

A minute later, when his nurse entered, he met her reproof with defiance.

“We weren't given a tongue in order that we might have the pleasure of holding it,” he muttered. “I believe I cheered her up and I feel better myself. Nurse!”

“What is it?”

She was renewing his bandage and wondering at his abnormal patience.

“When do you get out of this business?”

“I have a free hour to-day if that's what you mean.”

“Would you do me a favor?”

“If it's not against the prescribed regulations.”

Colonel Mowbray deigned to look persuasive. His stern eyes and voice could be most gentle and ingratiating when he chose.

“Look here, you'll find plenty of money in my trousers-pocket, and if there isn't enough I'll write you a check, Go to a good florist's and tell him to send in a heap of fresh flowers—regularly, every day.”

The nurse stared.

“You want flowers?”

“No—no!” His bronzed cheeks turned scarlet. “They are not for me—for the lady next door. She will like them. And, nurse—”

“Yes?”

“Do you think you might be passing a news-agent?”

She smiled.

“I dare say.”

“You might tell him to send in some papers.”

“Sporting papers?”

“Certainly not. No; women's papers—you know. I saw one once. Home Circle I think it was called, or some such driveling name as that. You know the style. They might amuse her.”

“Very well. I'll do what I can.”

When the nurse had gone Colonel Mowbray lay back and smiled to himself.

“Poor little thing!” he thought. “Poor little girl!”

That afternoon he had his reward.

There was a cry of delight from the next cubicle. He could almost see how she buried her face in the rich blossoms. He believed that there were tears in her eyes and that her lips trembled. He did not know how he guessed all this. Perhaps it was because there was a new note in the beautiful voice—a note of happiness unalloyed with weariness and pain.

“Oh, how lovely they are!” she cried. “How lovely! The whole world looks different now! How can I ever thank you, neighbor?”

But the Colonel turned over and pretended to be asleep.

III

“Good-morning, Miss Adelaide!”

“Good-morning, neighbor!”

“How are you this morning?”

“Better, thank you.”

Such was their regular greeting.

Six weeks had passed. Looking back on them, the Colonel was not sure that they had not been the happiest weeks of his life.

At any rate, the doctor had told him he might be moved if he wished it, and he had not made the slightest effort to make use of the permission. He lay stubbornly in bed and talked with his “friend,” as he called her, on the other side of the partition. His left-hand neighbor had been taken elsewhere, so they disturbed no one. They had not seen each other. It would not have been possible, even if they had wished it, since he lay in the men's side of the ward and she in the women's, but, indeed, they seemed to have no curiosity about each other.

The Colonel, in fact, though he would have given a year's pay to have caught a glimpse of her face, had so little desire for her to see him that he avoided the very subject of their eventual meeting, and proved himself a master of strategy where personal questions were concerned.

“After all,” he thought, “it is better so for the present. When she knows what an old bear I am she will be afraid to talk to me any more.”

She, on her side, was equally reticent, so they chatted together about the world, of what they had read and seen, but never about themselves. And every day he found the sound of her voice sweeter and more soothing.

On this particular morning he thought he caught a note of sadness in its quiet tones.

“I heard the doctor tell you that you could move if you wished it,” she said to him as he ate his breakfast. “Shall you?”

“No, I sha'n't!” he said. “I don't feel strong enough. Besides, where am I to go to? I like being here.”

“Oh, you can't really like it!” she said wonderingly.

“At any rate, if I went away I shouldn't have you to talk to, should I? That's what I like. I have never missed any human being before, but I shall miss you.”

There was a little silence after this confession and then he heard her say timidly:

“I should miss you too, Neighbor. You have been so good to me. The flowers—”

“What are they this morning?” he interrupted hastily.

“Roses—dark red roses.”

“I should like to see one.”

He heard a little scrambling movement, and presently a red blossom fluttered over the top of the partition and dropped lightly on his coverlet.

“See how strong I am getting!” she said brightly.

He picked the flower up and held it to his face. He held it there a long time and then he laid it tenderly on the table beside him.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

After a moment she went on:

“Isn't it strange how well we have got to know each other? And yet I have never seen your face or you mine. I wonder if you have made a fancy picture of me as I have of you?”

The Colonel lifted his head with a movement of trouble and surprise. The subject was a new one.

“What do you imagine I look like?” he asked.

She laughed.

Usually it pleased him when she laughed. To-day it hurt him. He did not know why.

“I can only go by what your voice seems to describe to me,” she said. “Do you know, it is rather a pleasant voice, so vigorous and crisp and full. It makes me think of a tall, strong, broad-shouldered man with bold features and bright eyes. I have added a mustache. Am I right?”

Colonel Mowbray looked at the glass at his bedside.

“Yes, that's right enough,” he said, and then to himself he added—“and there are a hundred wrinkles and the mustache is gray. I wonder if she has thought of that?”

But he did not ask her. He only went on quietly:

“I also have drawn a picture of you. I am quite certain it is a correct one, because only one sort of woman could have your voice. You are very small, especially your hands and feet. Your hair is fair and inclined to curl. Your eyes are large and clear. They look you straight in the face, but they are rather sad, as eyes go. Am I right?”

“It sounds better than the reality, but on the whole—yes.”

“You are very pretty.”

“No—no! There you are quite wrong!”

Colonel Mowbray shook his head.

“You can contradict if it amuses you,” he said, “but I know. You are like your voice—and your voice is the most beautiful thing I have ever—”

He stopped short, startled by his own words and his own tone. They glowed with a warmth he did not recognize.

“I beg your pardon!” he stammered. “But you don't know what it has been to me all these weeks. I was sick and bitter and lonely when I first. heard it and then it seemed as if the embodiment of youth—”

He broke off, suddenly and roughly reminded of the gulf of years that separated them. It had never pained him as it pained him in that moment, and it had never seemed plain to him that, at all costs, she must know the truth.

“It is perhaps as well we have never seen each other—”

He began falteringly, but he got no further. He listened, thinking he had heard a smothered exclamation.

“Did you call?” he asked. “Is there anything wrong?”

There was no answer.

“Miss Adelaide—Miss Adelaide!”

The silence appalled him. He sat up, and in a frenzy of alarm repeated—“Adelaide! Adelaide!”

Still no answer.

Then he pressed his finger on the bell till the ward echoed.

IV

Colonel Mowbray lay and stared into the darkness. He did not know that his eyes were open. He had lost all consciousness of his own condition. As in a horrible nightmare, he seemed to have left himself behind and to be watching, helpless and wretched, a scene in which life and death fought out a last desperate battle.

He heard soft, hurried steps, low whispers; he saw a shaded light burning on the table, the doctor bending over the white bed, a pale face thrown back upon the pillow, all its young, tender beauty overcast by the growing shadow. She was dying. That was what they had told him. There had been a sudden relapse and it was possible that she would not live to see the sunrise.

The Colonel had said nothing. He lay there, his beetling brows drawn together, his lips compressed, his fingers twisted in the folds of the coverlet. The night hours had crept past like eternities, but he did not move. At one stroke all his powers seemed to have been paralyzed. His very mind refused its office. Time after time he had tried to think, to explain why he was suffering, why every nerve, every capability of feeling was drawn taut with a hitherto unknown agony. But he could not think, could not reason with himself. His brain had become a hollow space in which the same sounds were echoed with torturing repetition.

“She is dying—she is dying. I shall never hear her voice again!””

Further than that he could not go.

Towards two o'clock he heard a new movement. The doctor had spoken; the nurse answered. He could not hear what they said—a maddening veil seemed to hang between his ears and their words—but instinct told him that the crisis had come. It was as if a spell had been lifted from him. He raised his cramped hands and clasped them as he had not done since he was a child. His lips moved in an inaudible whisper.

“Oh God, be merciful!” he prayed. “Spare her—let her live!”

Then the spell bore down once more upon him, like a numbing cloud upon his senses, and he lay there, motionless, rigid, waiting.

The gray dawn broke through the curtained window. He did not see it; for him the darkness remained unaltered. A ray of light fell full into his open eyes but he did not flinch. Only when the nurse entered with his breakfast he turned his head and looked at her.

She understood his glance. She could not have mistaken it. It was full of a stern, relentless appeal for the truth.

“She is safe,” she said. “She will do well now.”

Colonel Mowbray nodded. For the first time he realized that the darkness had lifted and that it was day. But he did not speak. He turned on his side with his face to the wall and a single tear rolled down his cheek and lost itself in the gray mustache.

“Thank God!” he thought. “Oh, my little girl, thank God!”

It was a moment of rejoicing, of an almost unbearable happiness, a mere moment! Then something in his frozen, aching brain snapped, and as for the first time he knew that the sun had risen, so for the first time he knew the truth, for the first time saw straight into the mystery of his own heart. He knew now why he had suffered, why in that night he had walked through the Shadow of Death at the side of a woman he had never seen.

He buried his face in his pillow in the agony of that revelation.

“I am an old, broken man!” he cried to himself. “And I haved dared to love her—I have dared to love her!”

Colonel Robert Mowbray stood by the window of the hospital waiting-room looking thoughtfully out on the busy street. In reality he saw nothing of the stream of life as it flowed past him. He was looking back through the vista of years—fifty years of duty well accomplished and of an unbroken loneliness. He had never known love. He had never even thought of it, being proud of his solitary independence. Now it had come to him. It had revealed to him a truth—that he had despised the highest consolation which life has to offer—but it had also come too late.

“A decent man does not try to bind a girl to him who is young enough, probably, to be his child,” he argued. “It would be a mean, unfair thing. I care for her too much for that.”

So he put love definitely out of his life and prepared to go back to his loneliness. He had not even said good-by to her. For a fortnight he had lingered in a private room in the hospital, making his plans for the future, yielding perhaps to the temptation of hearing of her progress towards health and strength. But he asked few questions about her and sent no messages.

“It is better so,” he thought. “She will forget.”

And now the day of departure had come,

The door opened. He thought it was the doctor for whom he was waiting, and he turned. A lady stood in the doorway. He noticed that she was small, was dressed in black and heavily veiled, but she had no further interest for him, and after a curt bow he resumed his old attitude with his back towards her.

Nevertheless, her presence troubled him. He heard her go to the table and turn over the papers lying there. The noise irritated his overstrained nerves. He wanted to be gone—to be alone.

With an impatient movement crossed the room and rang the bell.

“Tell Dr. Johns I am here,” he ordered the servant who answered his summons. “I should like to say good-by at once.”

“Yes, sir.”

As the door closed Colonel Mowbray swung around on his heel. He had heard a sound which sent his pulses galloping—an exclamation in a voice he knew, whose accents had never ceased to haunt his memory.

He saw that the lady in black had risen and had turned towards him, one hand blindly outstretched.

Obeying a wild impulse in which every resolution, every thought of prudence was forgotten, he caught it in his own. He knew it as he had known the voice. It was white, beautifully shaped like that of a pure marble statue. He lifted it to his lips and kissed it with all the passion of his lost youth.

“Forgive me!” he said huskily. “Forgive—and forget. Think, if you like, that I am a mad old fool. Be pitiful and generous. I never meant to see you. I meant to go out of your fair young life. I never meant to darken it with my love—the love of an old man.”

“Oh hush!” she said trembling. “Don't you understand? I thought you were young, too. Remember—I never even heard your name. I thought you were in the prime of life—and I loved you.”

Her voice broke and he covered his face with his hands. Remorse, bitter and pitiless, had added itself to the burden of her loss.

“Poor little girl!” he said. “I did not mean to deceive you. I let things drift. I felt so young in heart that I never thought—that it was too late. I hardly knew that I loved you—not till they told me you were dying. Then I knew. But I will go away. You will forget me. Another and younger man, more fit to be your comrade—”

“Hush! Hush!” she interrupted him again. “Don't you understand? Will you never understand? You were mistaken from the beginning, though I did not know it. I, too, let things drift. You were just my friend, my dear unseen neighbor. And I was so lonely. But when you told me of the picture you had made of me—a young and lovely girl—then I knew that you had grown to be more than friend—that I loved you and—”

She pushed his hands desperately away, forcing him to look at her. The veil was thrown back and he saw her face.

It was indeed beautiful—as he had seen it in his dreams—the face of a sweet dear woman, but there were lines about the tender mouth and eyes, and the hair that was brushed smooth from the temples was gray.

“Oh, my dear, I am an old, old woman!” she sobbed wildly from his shoulder. And it was that—that which nearly broke my heart!”