CHAPTER XII
OUT of a black curdled ocean where for ages he had struggled and stifled, Seth Appleby raised his head for an instant, and sank again. For longer ages, and more black, more terrible, he fought on the bottom of the ocean of life. He had reached the bottom now. He began to rise. His coughing was shaking him into a half-consciousness, and very dimly he heard her cough, too. He feverishly threw out one hand. It struck the mouth-organ he had thrown upon the bed, struck it sharply, with a pain that pierced to his nerve-centers.
He had the dismaying thought, “I’ll never play the mouth-organ to her again.... We won’t ever sit in the rose-arbor while I play the mouth-organ to her. Where is she? Yes! Yes! This is her hand.” He was trying to think now. Something said to him, sharply, “Suicide is wicked.”
Yes, he reflected, in the tangles of a half-thought, he had always been told that suicide was wicked. Let’s see. What was it he was trying to think—suicide wicked—blame the cowards who killed themselves—suicide wicked— No, no! That wasn’t the thought he was trying to lay hold of. What was it he was trying to think? Suicide wicked— God, how this cough hurt him. What was it— Suicide? No! He violently pushed away the thought of suicide and its wickedness, and at last shouted, within himself: “Oh, that’s what I was thinking! I must play to Mother again! Where is she? She needs me. She’s ’way off somewhere; she’s helpless; she’s calling for me—my poor little girl.”
He hurled himself off the bed, to find her, in that cold darkness. He stood wavering under the gas-jet. “Why—oh, yes, we turned on the gas!” he realized.
He thrust his hand up and reached the gas-jet. Then, staggering, feeling inch by inch for leagues along the edge of the cupboard, raising his ponderous hand with infinite effort, he touched a plate, feebly fitted his fingers over its edge, and with a gesture of weak despair hurled it at the window. The glass shattered. He fell to the floor.
Strained with weeks of trying to appear young and brisk in the store, Mother had become insensible before the gas could overcome him, and he awoke there, limp on the floor, before she revived. The room was still foul with gas-fumes, and very cold, for they had not rekindled the fire when they had returned after dinner.
He feebly opened the window, even the door. A passing woman cried, “Gas in the room! My Gawd! my old man almost croaked himself last year with one of them quarter meters.” She bustled in, a corpulent, baggy, unclean, kindly, effectual soul, and helped him fan the gas out of the room. She drove away other inquisitive neighbors, revived Mother Appleby, and left them with thick-voiced words of cheer, muttering that “her old man would kill her if she didn’t get a hustle on herself and chase that growler.”