A sudden rush of tears appeared in the eyes of the woman; but the masterful quivering of her lips said clearly that she refused to admit them to be there.
“Another day of this,” she said, “and all is over. Our only chance is to take it out before another hour goes by.”
“Ay, and if you cut it out,” the sufferer gasped, “I am done with if ever man was.”
“Nay, child; I will not have you say that,” she said, caressing his face with her unoccupied hand. The sweet imperious sorrow of her tone touched even the listener at the window, who, after all, was not a man of stone.
Again the sufferer turned his face up to the woman and regarded her with the same dumb, dog-like look. She averted her gaze suddenly, as though she had not the fortitude to look at him.
“Canst thou not trust me?” she said again. “I will be, oh! so gentle. And we dare not have a surgeon—dare we, child? Indeed, we dare not tarry. Thou art in a fever even now, and every hour it rises. It must be done now, mine own, or thou wilt not see to-morrow.”
She spoke so wistfully that she might be beseeching her obdurate lord to gratify some feminine whim. He continued to regard her sickly and faintly, till at last a wan laugh crept upon his lips. It was the herald to the last desperate flicker of his courage—the courage that enables a man to look the mob in the eyes as he lays his neck on the block deliberately, delicately, and proudly. A fuller tone came into his hoarse, querulous voice. There was no longer complaint and petulance. The pettiness had gone out of it; it was almost a companion for the woman’s own.
“As you will,” he said, and he came as near to achieving a careless laugh as a man in his extreme condition ever could. “In with the knife, then, butcher. Thou art aching to carve me up, I can see. Well, well; it were better that you had your way, for I suppose you’ll give me no peace till you’ve done it. But plague take you! You’re tenacious devils, you women. Your damnable iteration would wear away stone. You know the place, and it’s embedded in the thick of my back, I think. Now, mind you cut deep enough. Oh, but I say, good Mistress Surgeon, prithee, where be thy basin?”
By the time the victim had mentioned these among other details of the torture he was about to undergo, the eavesdropper on the ladder had seen and heard rather more than enough for his personal comfort. Therefore, he quitted his station on the top rung but one, and descended to the ground as speedily as he could, lest he should involuntarily become the horrified witness of the knife at its work. When he came down to Will Jackson, he was shaking as one with the ague.
“I shall not want ye to go up to-night, my lad,” he stuttered; “to-morrow will do. Now, take away the ladder. You careless varlet, did I not tell you to make no sound?”