“That’s who it is,” he said slowly and unemotionally. “It’s Dominick Ryan, all right. Well, by ginger!” and he turned and looked at the amazed innkeeper, “that’s the queerest thing I ever saw. What’s brought him up here?”
Perley, his glass snatched from him by the doctor who seemed entirely indifferent to their recognition of his patient, shrugged helplessly.
“Blest if I know,” he said, staring aimlessly about him. “He was here last summer fishing. But there ain’t no fishing now. God, ain’t it a good thing that operator at Rocky Bar had the sense to telegraph up!”
CHAPTER V
NURSE AND PATIENT
When Dominick returned to consciousness he lay for a space looking directly in front of him, then moved his head and let his eyes sweep the walls. They were alien walls of white plaster, naked of all adornment. The light from a shaded lamp lay across one of them in a soft yet clear wash of yellow, so clear that he could see that the plaster was coarse.
There were few pieces of furniture in the room, and all new to him. A bureau of the old-fashioned marble-topped kind stood against the wall opposite. The lamp that cast the yellow light was on this bureau; its globe, a translucent gold reflection revealed in liquid clearness in the mirror just behind. It was not his own room nor Berny’s. He turned his head farther on the pillow very slowly, for he seemed sunk in an abyss of suffering and feebleness. On the table by the bed’s head was another lamp, a folded newspaper shutting its light from his face, and here his eyes stopped.
A woman was sitting by the foot of the bed, her head bent as if reading. He stared at her with even more intentness than he had at the room. The glow of the lamp on the bureau was behind her—he saw her against it without color or detail, like a shadow thrown on a sheet. Her outlines were sharply defined against the illumined stretch of plaster,—the arch of her head, which was broken by the coils of hair on top, her rather short neck, with some sort of collar binding it, the curve of her shoulders, rounded and broad, not the shoulders of a thin woman. He did not think she was his wife, but she might be, and he moved and said suddenly in a husky voice,
“What time is it?”
The woman started, laid her book down, and rose. She came forward and stood beside him, looking down, the filaments of hair round her head blurring the sharpness of its outline. He stared up at her, haggard and intent, and saw it was not his wife. It was a strange woman with a pleasant, smiling face. He felt immensely relieved and said with a hoarse carefulness of utterance,
“What time did you say it is?”