She had one of Christine’s cold hands in her own, chafing and rubbing it as she spoke, but when she said, so kindly, “We cannot let you die,” the woman drew it away suddenly, and bursting into a paroxysm of tears, exclaimed:
“Better so; better for me to die; but for you, oh! Queenie, you must live—you and——Oh, my child, summon all your strength and courage; you will need it. There is hard work ahead for you. Do you think you can meet it?”
Queenie did not know what the woman meant, but she was greatly moved and agitated, and shook from head to foot with a nameless terror.
“You, too, are cold are trembling, and that will never do. Drink this,” Christine said, pouring from a flask which she always carried with her a quantity of brandy, and offering it to Queenie, who swallowed it in one draught.
The brandy steadied her nerves, and after standing a moment watching Christine as she went slowly down the stairs, holding to the banisters, like one suffering from great physical weakness, she turned toward the door of the sick-room, and opening it softly, went in.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
THE OCCUPANT OF NO. 40.
It was a large, handsome room, but it seemed gloomy and cheerless now, with only a night-lamp burning on the table, casting weird shadows here and there, and only partially revealing the form upon the bed of a tall young man, who lay with his face turned from the light and half buried in the pillow. Outside the counterpane one arm and hand were lying, and Queenie noticed that the latter was white and shapely as a woman’s, and noticed, too, the mass of light brown, slightly curling hair, which clustered around the sick man’s head and sent an indescribable thrill through her veins, as of something familiar. The man was young, she knew, though she had not seen his face, and dared not see it lest she should disturb him.
“Let him sleep; it will do him good and keep back the dreadful vomit,” Christine had said, and not for worlds would Queenie disobey her. She held a human life in her keeping, and with her finger on her lip to Pierre, who crouched almost at her feet, she seated herself in an arm-chair just where she could see the outline of the figure upon the bed, and there for hours she sat and watched, and listened to the irregular breathing, while every kind of wild fancy danced through her brain, and her limbs began at last to feel prickly and numb, and a sense of cold and faintness to steal over her.
The air in the room was hot and oppressive though the windows were opened wide. Outside, the rain was falling heavily, and the sky as black as ink; there was no sound to break the awful stillness, except the occasional tread of some physician or nurse on duty, or the crash of distant wheels, whose meaning Queenie understood full well, shuddering as she thought of the rapid burials which the peril made necessary, and remembering what she had read of the great plague in London, where the death-cart rolled nightly through the street, while the dreadful cry was heard: