CHAPTER XV. CHLORAL.
It was a half hour past midnight. A cab drew up in front of a residence in New York, and two men bore something into the outer doorway.
The bell gave a startling alarm, and presently, from within, a voice asked, with drowsy tremor:
“Is that you, Robert, husband?”
“Open the door quickly,” some one insisted.
“But that is not Robert’s voice,” she faltered.
“Madam, a friend has brought your husband home.”
This assurance caused the door to be quickly opened.
“Good heavens! is he ill? Is he hurt? Bring him this way,” she excitedly directed.
The silken draperies of the bed were trembling, showing that she had just left their folds. After depositing the burden, the cab man bowed, and left them.
“It is not at all serious, my dear madam,” the friend began, “but the truth is—” here he hesitated confusedly, he did not mean to tell her the truth at all; anything else but that.
“Oh, sir, tell me the worst; what has happened?” and she leaned lovingly over the unconscious man; she looked so earnest in her grief—so unsuspecting—that Marrion was convinced that this was the first “full” of the honeymoon. “I will help him out of this,” he said to himself.
“Robert had a terrific headache at the club, and we gave him chloral—he took a trifle too much—that is all—he will be quite himself by morning.”
“Oh! sir, are you sure it is not fatal?” Cherokee asked, anxiously, “absolutely sure? But how could anyone be so careless,” she remonstrated.
“I do not wonder that you ask, since it was Marrion Latham who was so thoughtless.”
“Marrion Latham! my husband’s dearest friend.”
“I am what is left of him,” he answered, laughingly.
She extended her hand, cordially:
“I am glad to meet you, for Robert loves you very dearly, and came near putting off the wedding until your home-coming.”
“I am very sorry to have missed it. Have I come too late to offer congratulations?”
“No, indeed, every sunset but closes another wedding day with us,” and she kissed the flushed face of the sleeper she so loved. Too blind was that love to reveal the plight in which this accident had left him. Call it accident this once, to give it tone. Cherokee willingly accepted for truth the statement that Marrion had made. Enough for her woman heart to know that her husband needed her attention and love. There over him she leaned, her hair rippling capewise over her gown, while from the ruffled edge her feet peeped, pink and bare. She was wrapped in a long robe of blue cashmere, with a swansdown collar, which she clasped over her breast with her left hand. It was easy to be seen there was little clothing under this gown, which every now and then showed plainly, in spite of the care she took to hide it.
Art was powerless to give these fine and slight undulations of the body that shone, so to speak, through the soft and yielding material of her garment. Marrion studied the poem she revealed; he saw she had a wealth of charms—every line of her willowy figure being instinct with grace and attractiveness, as was the curve of her cheeks and the line of her lips. Imagine a flower just bursting from the bud and spreading ’round the odor of spring, and you may form some faint idea of the effect she produced. To Marrion she was not a woman, she was the woman—the type, the abstraction, the eternal enigma—which has caused, and will forever cause, to doubt, hesitate and tremble, all the intelligence, the philosophy, and religion of humanity.
All his soul was in his eyes; Eve, Pandora, Cleopatra, Phyrne, passed before his imagination and said: “Do you understand, now?” and he answered: “Yes, I understand.”—Robert was safe at home and was now sleeping quietly, so Marrion thought he had done his duty.
“I shall leave you now, Mrs. Milburn; he will be all right when he has had his sleep out.”
“Oh, do not leave us, what shall I do without you?” she pleaded in child-fashion.
“If it will serve you in the least, I shall be glad to remain,” he assured her, as he resumed his seat.
After all, he did not know but that it was best for him to stay. Too well he knew that to every sleep like this there is an awakening that needs a moderator.
Marrion Latham was a tall, splendid-looking man, with a proud, commanding manner. His intimates styled him, “The Conqueror.” He had always had a handsome annuity besides the income he realized from his plays. He had enough money to make the hard world soft, win favors, gild reputation, and enable one to ride instead of walk through life; consequently, he had self-indulgent habits, and was destitute of those qualities of self-endurance and self-control that hard work and poverty teach best. Yet he had that high sense of honor which is most necessary to such an imaginative, passionate and self-willed nature as he possessed.
While he sat there quietly, Robert became restless. The stupor was wearing off, and the dreaded awakening came.
“May I trouble you for a glass of water?” was Marrion’s request, that would absent Mrs. Milburn for awhile.
Robert made a ferocious movement, and began thumping his head.
“Wheels in it,” he muttered.
“Be quiet, she does not suspect you,” Marrion whispered.
Cherokee came back to find her husband in the delirious throes of his spree. With sweet and tender solicitude, she asked:
“Do you feel better, dear?”
“I have been desperately ill,” was his almost rational response.
“Bravo,” was Marrion’s mental comment, “so far, so good.” Now, if she would only allow him to be quiet; but who ever saw a woman tire of asking questions, and who ever saw a drunken man that did not have a tongue for all ten of the heads he imagined he had?
Cherokee chimed in again:
“I have been very uneasy about you. You know I expected you home by ten.”
“Ten! Fifty would be more like it. I know I took that money.”
“What do you mean, Robert?” she asked, as she stared at him, amazed and wounded.
“He means nothing, he is flighty; that’s the way the medicine affects one,” Marrion explained.
“I tell you she is deucedly pretty”—with this Robert calmed down for awhile.
“He is surely out of his head, Mr. Latham.”
“No, I am not,” thundered Robert, “I should feel better if I were,” and all at once he came to his senses.
“What does this mean? What am I doing, lying down in my dress suit?” he demanded, “and it is broad day.”
“It means that you have kept me up all night lying for you,” whispered Marrion.
“The devil you say! have I had too much?”
Cherokee had gone from the room with the stain of wild roses on her cheek, for she had at last understood the situation, and its terrible significance.
“I will leave you now, old boy, and I hope this will not occur again. You have an angel for a wife.”
“Thank you, Latham, stay for breakfast with us.”
“No, I have an appointment early this morning.”
At the door he turned and called to Milburn:
“Oh, Milburn, when you have the headache again, there is one thing you must not forget.”
“What’s that?”
“Chloral,” he answered, chaffingly.