The Whirligig of Time.

by Wayland Wells Williams.

PART I

CHAPTER I

UNWRITTEN PAPERS

Two o'clock struck by the tall clock on the stairs, and young Harry Wimbourne, lying wide awake in his darkened bedroom, reflected that he had never heard that clock strike two before, except in the afternoon.

To his ears the two strokes had a curious and unfamiliar sound; he waited expectantly for more to follow, but none did, and the tones of the second stroke died slowly away in a rather uncanny fashion through the silent house. For the house was silent now; the strange and terrifying series of sounds, issuing from the direction of his mother's room, that had first awakened him, had ceased some time ago. There had been much scurrying to and fro, much opening and shutting of doors, mingled not infrequently with the sound of voices; voices subdued and yet strained, talking so low and so hurriedly that no complete sentences could be caught, though Harry was occasionally able to distinguish the tones of his father, or the nurse, or the doctor. Once he detected the phrase "hot water"; and even that seemed to give a slight tinge of familiarity and sanity to the other noises. But then had come those other sounds that froze the very blood in his veins, and made him lie stiff and stark in his bed, perspiring in every pore, in an agony of ignorance and terror. It was all so inexplicable; his mother--! A strange voice would not have affected him so.

But all that had stopped after a while, and everything had quieted down to the stillness that had prevailed for an hour or more when the clock struck two. The stillness was in its way even more wearing than the noises had been, for it gave one the impression that more was to follow. "Wait, wait, wait," it seemed to Harry to say; "the worst is not nearly over yet; more will happen before the night is out; Wait, wait!" and the slow tick of the clock on the stairs, faintly heard through the closed door, took up the burden "Wait! Wait!" And Harry waited. The pa.s.sage of time seemed to him both cruelly slow and cruelly fast; each minute dragged along like an hour, and yet when the hour struck it seemed to him to have pa.s.sed off in the s.p.a.ce of a minute.

Sleep was impossible. For the fiftieth time he turned over in his bed, trying to find a position that would prove so comfortable as to ensure drowsiness; yet as he did so he felt convinced that he could not sleep until something definite, something final, even if unpleasant, should end the suspense of the silence. He looked across the short s.p.a.ce of darkness that separated his bed from that of his elder brother James, and envied him his power of sleeping through anything. But a short sudden change in the dim outline of the other bed told him that his brother was not asleep. Harry felt the other's gaze trying to pierce the darkness, even as his own. He half turned, with a sharp and nervous motion, to show that he was awake, and for some minutes both boys lay silently gazing toward each other, each wondering how much the other had heard.

At length James broke the silence. "It's come," he said.

"Yes, it has," answered Harry. "How long have you been awake?" he added, feeling he must ascertain how much James knew before committing himself any further.

"Oh, hours," said James.

"Since before--"

"Yes."

So James had heard all, thought Harry. It was just like him to be awake all that time and never give a sign. It scarcely occurred to him that James might be as shy as himself in reference to the events of the night.

It must not for a moment be supposed that either of these boys was ignorant of the nature of what was taking place in their mother's room.

Harry was ten at the time, and James was within hinting distance of his twelfth birthday. So that when their father, a few days before, had solemnly informed them that they might expect the arrival of a little brother or sister before long, and that they must be most careful not to disturb their mother in any way, etc., etc., no childish superst.i.tion picturing the newcomer flying through the window or floating down a stream on a cabbage leaf or, more prosaically, being introduced in the doctor's black bag, ever entered their heads. When the trained nurse appeared, a day or two later, they did not need to be told why she was there. They accepted the situation, tried to make as little noise as possible, and struck up a great friendship with Miss Garver, who at first had ample leisure to regale them with tales of her hospital experiences; among which, she was sorry to observe, accounts of advanced cases of delirium tremens were easily the favorites.

For a long time the two boys lay awake without exchanging any more conversation worth mentioning. They heard the clock strike three, and after that they may have slept. At any rate, the first thing they were aware of was the door of their room being opened by a softly rustling figure which they at once recognized as that of the trained nurse. She crossed the room and methodically lit the gas; then she turned and stood at the foot of Harry's bed, resting her hands lightly on the footboard.

Both the boys noticed immediately how white her face was and how grave its expression.

"Are you both awake, boys?" she asked.

They both said they were, and Miss Garver, after pausing a moment, as if to choose her words, said:

"Then get up and put on something, and come into your mother's room with me."

Without a word they rose and stumbled into their dressing gowns and slippers. When they were ready Miss Garver led the way to the door, and there turned toward them, with her hand on the k.n.o.b.

"Your mother is very ill, boys. We are afraid--this may be the last time you will see her."

Dazed and silent they followed her into the hall.

The bedroom into which they then went was a large room at the front of the house, high of ceiling, generous of window s.p.a.ce, and furnished for the most part with old mahogany furniture. It was a beautiful old room when the sun was pouring in through the great windows, and it was quite as beautiful, in a solemn sort of way, now, when it was dimly illuminated by one low-burning gas jet and one or two shaded candles. A low fire was burning in the grate, and its dying flames fitfully shone on soft-colored chintz coverings and glowing mahogany surfaces, giving to the room an air of drowsy and delicious peace. And in the middle of it all, on a great mahogany four-poster bed, curtained, after the fashion of a hundred years ago, Edith Wimbourne lay dying. She, poor lady, white and unconscious on her great bed, cared as little for the setting of the scene in which she was playing the chief part as dying people generally do; but we, who look on the scene with detached and appreciative eyes, may perhaps venture the opinion that, if a choice of deaths be vouchsafed us, we would as lief as not die in a four-poster bed, surrounded by those we love best, and with a flickering fire casting changing and fantastic shadows on the familiar walls and ceiling.

Beside the dying lady on the bed, there were three other people in the bedroom when Miss Garver led Harry and James into it. The doctor, whom they both knew and liked well, sat at the head of the bed. In a large armchair near the fire sat the boys' father, and somewhere in the background hovered another trained nurse, sprung out of nowhere. The presence of these figures seemed, in some intangible way, to make death an actual fact, instead of a mere possibility; if they had not been there, the boys might merely have been going to pay their mother a visit when she was ill. Now they both realized, with horribly sinking hearts, that they were going to see her for the last time.

The doctor looked up inquiringly as Miss Garver brought the two boys into the room and led them over toward the bed. The father did not even turn his head as they came in. They stood by the bedside and gazed in silence at the pale sleeping face on the pillow. A faint odor of chloroform hung about the bed. The doctor stood up and leaned over to listen to the action of the dying woman's heart. After he had finished he drew back a little from the bedside.

"You may kiss her, if you like," he said softly.

The boys leaned down in turn and silently touched the calm lips. It was almost more than Harry could stand.

"Oh, must this be the last time?" he heard himself shrieking. But no one paid any attention to him, and he suddenly realized that he had not spoken the words aloud. He looked at James' face, calm though drawn, and the sight rea.s.sured him. He wondered if James was suffering as much as himself, and thought he probably was. He wondered if his face showed as little as James'.

The doctor and Miss Garver were whispering together.

"Shall I take them away now?" she asked.

"Not yet," was the answer; "there is just a chance that--"

He did not finish, but Miss Garver must have understood, for she nodded and quietly drew the boys away. They walked off toward the fireplace, and their father, without moving his head, stretched out a hand in their direction. Silently they sat down by him, one on each arm of his chair, and he slipped an arm about the waist of each.

So they started on the last period of waiting for what they all knew must come; what they prayed might come soon and at the same time longed to postpone as long as possible. The doctor had resumed his seat at the bedside, and now kept his fingers almost constantly on the patient's wrist. The two nurses sat down a little way off, to be ready in case--The emergency was not formulated. These three people were all present for professional reasons, so we may a.s.sume that most of their meditations were of a professional nature. But even so, they felt beneath their professional calm the mingled sadness and sweetness and solemnity that accompanies the sight of death, be it never so familiar.

And we may easily guess the feelings of the two boys as they awaited the departure of the person they loved most on earth; nothing but the feeling of suspense kept them from giving away completely. The person in the room whom the scene might have been expected to affect most was, in point of fact, the one who felt it least, and that was the shortly to be bereaved husband, Hilary Wimbourne.

"Poor Edith," he mused, "poor Edith. What a wife she has been to me, to be sure! I was fond of her, too. Not as fond as I might have been, of course ... Still, when I think that I shall never again see her face behind the coffee things at the breakfast table it gives me a pang, a distinct pang ... By the bye, I don't suppose she remembered, before all this came on, to send that Sheffield urn to be replated ... But it's all so beautiful--the fire, the draped bed, the waiting figures, the whole atmosphere! Just what she would have chosen to die in; all peace and naturalness. Everything seems to say 'Good-by, Edith; congratulations, Edith; well out of it all,' only much more beautifully.

There is a dirge--how does it go?--

Oh, no more, no more; too late Sighs are spent; the burning tapers Of a life as chaste as fate, Pure as are unwritten papers, Are burnt out--

"That comes somewhere near it; 'a life as chaste as fate'--not a bad description of Edith ... 'Pure as are unwritten papers'--who but an Elizabethan would have dared to cast that line just like that? Let's see; Ford, was it, or Shirley?... If only some one were singing that now, behind the scenes, out by the bathroom door, say, everything would be quite perfect. 'Unwritten papers'--ah, well, people have no business to be as pure as Edith was--and live. But what is to become of my home without her? What will become of the boys? Good Heavens, what am I going to do with the boys? Good little souls--how quiet they are! It all hits them a great deal harder than it does me, I know. It won't be so bad when they're old enough to go off to school, but till then ... I must ask Cecilia's advice; she'll have some ideas, and by the way, I wonder if Cecilia thought to see about that Sheraton sideboard for me?"

And so on, and so on. Hilary Wimbourne's meditations never went very far without rounding up at a Sheraton sideboard or an old Sheffield urn or a nice bit of Chienlung or a new idea for a pleached alley. Let us not judge him. He was that sort of person.

These reflections, and the complete outward silence in which they took place, were at last interrupted by a slight stirring of the sick woman on the bed. For the last time in her mortal life--and for very nearly the first, for the matter of that--Edith Wimbourne was to a.s.sume the center of her family stage. Her husband and sons heard her sigh and stir slightly as she lay, and then the doctor and Miss Garver appeared to be busy over her for a few moments. Probably they made shift to force a stimulant between her teeth, for in a moment or two she opened her eyes to the extent of seeing what was about her. Almost the first sight that greeted them was that of her two sons sitting on the arms of their father's chair, and as she saw them she smiled faintly.

The nurse glanced inquiringly toward the doctor, who nodded, and she went over and touched Harry lightly on the shoulder.

"Come over and speak to your mother," she whispered, and Harry walked to her side. Very gently he took the hand that lay motionless on the bed and held it in his. He could not have uttered a word for the life of him.

Either the reviving action of the stimulant or the feeling of the warm blood pulsing through his young hand, or perhaps both, lent a little strength to the dying woman. She smiled again, and ever so slight a flush appeared on her wasted cheeks. "Harry, dear Harry," she whispered gently, and the boy leaned down to catch the words. "I am going to leave you, dear, and I am sorry. I know I should be very proud of you, if I could live ... Be a good boy, Harry, and don't forget your mother."

She closed her eyes again, exhausted with the effort of speaking. Dazed and motionless Harry remained where he stood until the nurse led him gently away to make room for James.

James stood for some moments as his brother had done, with his hand clasped in that of his mother. Presently she opened her eyes once more, and gazed gravely for a moment or two at the face of her first-born, as though gathering her little remaining strength for what she had to say to him.

"Listen, dear," she said at last, and James bent down. "I'm going to die, James. Try not to be too sorry about it. It is all for the best ...

Dearest, there is something I want you to do for me; you know how I have always trusted you, and depended on you--well, perhaps you don't know, but I have ... James, I want you to look out for Harry. He needs it now, and he will need it a great deal more later. You will see what I mean, as you grow up. He is not made like you; he will need some one to look after him. Can you promise me that you will do this?"

"Yes," whispered James.