The Ralstons

by F. Marion Crawford

On a fine spring night New York is rarely asleep before two o’clock. It dozes, as it were, turning, half awake, from time to time, and speaking drowsily in its deep voice, like a strong man very tired, but still conscious. It breathes, too, sometimes, as Crowdie was breathing, very heavily, especially in the nights that come after days of passion and struggling; and the breathing of a great city at night is not like any other sound on earth.

Hester was conscious that all was not well with the man she loved, though he had slept so long. She rose, and moved uneasily about the room. She was very pale, and there were dark shadows in her pallor, the shadows that fear’s giant wraith casts upon the human face when death is stalking up and down, up and down, outside the door, waiting to see whether he may take the little life that falls as a crumb from the table of the master, or whether he must go away again to his own place, out of sight.

But Hester did not know that he was there, as she rose and crossed the room and came back to stand at the foot of the bed, gazing at Crowdie’s face. She was anxious and uneasy, though she had watched him once before in the same way. But at that first time she had not done what she had done now, with feverish haste, thinking only of helping him.

All at once she shivered, and she turned to see whether the window were not open. But it was closely shut. It was as though something very cold had been laid upon her. She stared about, nervously, and the pupils of her eyes grew very large, with a frightened look. She laid both hands upon the foot of the bedstead, and grasped it with all her strength, bending forwards and staring at Crowdie’s face, and the chill thrilled very strangely across her shoulders and all through her, so that she felt it in her elbows and in her heels. She glanced over her shoulder into the softly shadowed corner farthest from the bed; for she was sure that something was there, in the room, a bodily presence, which she must presently see. The chill ran through her again and again, cold as ice, but with a painful pricking.

She looked at Crowdie again and saw that his eyes were no longer tightly closed. The lids were a little raised, and she could see the edge of the dark iris, and the white below it and on each side of it. He had moved a little just as she had turned to look into the corner. He ought not to have moved, she thought, without reason. It was as though a dead man had moved, she thought. And again the chill came. She was sure that the window must be open, but she could not look round. Suddenly she remembered how when she had been a little girl she had been taken to be photographed, and the man had put a cold iron thing behind her head that seemed to hold her with two frozen fingers just behind her ears. She felt the frozen fingers now, in the same places, and they were pressing her head down. For a moment everything swam with her, and then it all passed. The iron hand was gone—the window was shut—there was nothing in the corner.

But instantly the terrible, stertorous breathing rent her ears. It had gone on for hours. The servants could hear it downstairs. The bedstead trembled with it under her hands. But she had not been conscious of it. The unnatural thing that had touched her—the thing that had come in through the window and that had stood in the corner—it had unsealed her hearing. She heard now, and fearfully.

With one slender arm under the pillow she raised him, for she thought that he might breathe more easily if his head were higher. His laboured breath deafened her, and she could feel it through her sleeve upon her other arm. Desperately she hastened to arrange the pillows. But the dreadful sound roared at her like the flames of a great fire. In sudden and overwhelming terror she left him as he was, half uncovered, and ran to the door, calling wildly for help, again and again, down into the dimly-lighted staircase. Then she came back in a new terror, lest her screams should have waked him. But he slept on. In the movement of the pillow as she had withdrawn her arm, his head had fallen on one side. His eyes were half open, and the breath was rough and choking.

She had never known how heavy a man’s head was. Her small, bloodless hands made an effort to turn him—then some one was with her, helping her, anxiously and clumsily.

“Not so! Not that way!” she whispered, hoarsely, with drawn, dry lips, and her little hands touched the servant’s rough ones with uncertain direction, in haste and fear.

Then he breathed more easily, and she herself drew breath. But she had been terrified, and she sent for old Doctor Routh, and sat down in her old place to wait and watch until he should come. It was better now. The coming of the servant had broken the loneliness, and there was life in the air again, instead of death. Her heart fluttered still, like a wild bird tired out with beating its wings against the bars. But there was no chill, and presently the heart rested. He was better. She was quite sure that he was better. The rough breathing would cease presently, he would sleep till morning, and then he would waken and be himself again, just as though nothing had happened. Now that the fear was gone, she rose and went to the window and let the shade run up so that she could see the stars. They had a soft and sleepy look, like children’s eyes at bed-time. The musical echo of the horns came to her from the river. In the old Colonnade House opposite and to the right, a single window was lighted high up. Perhaps some one was ill up there—all alone. Then the city moved in its dozing rest, with a subdued thumping, rumbling noise that lasted a few seconds. Perhaps there was a fire far away, and the engines and the hook-and-ladder carts were racing away from the lumbering water-tank down one of the quiet eastern avenues. The light in the window of the Colonnade House went out suddenly—no one was ill there—it had only been some one sitting up late. Hester missed the light, and the great long building looked black against the dim sky, and the stars blinked more sleepily. She drew the shade down again and turned back into the room.