CHAPTER XXI

A Patient for Mrs. Nichols

WHEN the volunteer party started for Camp’s Gulch, Gertrude resolved to remain at her post all night, or, at any rate, for as much of it as there was a need for the office to be open.

She replied to Lytton, telling of the accident to the driver, and that Dr. Russell had volunteered to take the engine up to Camp’s Gulch, with Sam Peters acting as volunteer stoker. When this was done, and Lytton’s inquiries were satisfied, she wired to Roseneath, on the chance of finding the office open, to explain why the engine and freight-wagon had failed to put in an appearance.

Then, when everything had been done that was possible, she set herself to face a dreary watch in the depot while the slow hours crept by.

The station-master also remained on duty. At least, he lay on a bench in the little waiting-room of the depot, and snored with persevering industry, the sound of his slumber reaching to Gertrude’s office, and adding a fresh weirdness to the night.

About midnight Mrs. Nichols walked in at the office door, wheezing and puffing even more than usual. She had been helping Miss Gibson to look after the scalded engine-driver, and from there had gone to console Mrs. Peters, who was frightened half out of her senses at the thought of Sam firing the engine up to Camp’s Gulch and back again. When these neighbourly duties had all been performed, she came on to the depot to stay with Gertrude as long as it was necessary for the girl to remain on duty.

“How different it has all turned out from what we had planned!” sighed Gertrude, who was pale and worn with the excitement of the evening.

“Life is very often like that,” moralized the stout woman. “We get to what we think is a nice easy bit, only to find it is fuller of kinks than any of the rest. I wonder what sort of tribulation that poor Nell is in to-night?”

“It is very strange that she should have wired to us, yet we can get no message through to her,” Gertrude said, in a musing tone.

“Perhaps the wire got cut after she had sent her message,” suggested Mrs. Nichols. Then she burst out vehemently, “Oh dear, oh dear, how I wish I had been on the depot when the message came, then I would have gone up to Camp’s Gulch with the men, and seen for myself what was the matter!”

“But you would have been afraid, surely, to go on such a risky expedition,” said Gertrude.

“I should have been as safe as the men, anyhow, and my life is not of any more value than theirs; besides, we shall none of us die until our time comes. It would have been a comfort to Nell to have a woman there to help her, for poor old Mrs. Trip can’t be much good to anyone, seeing that she is stone deaf,” sighed the stout woman.

“How fond you are of Nell! I believe you love her better than you do me,” said Gertrude, with a short laugh, and a very pronounced stab of jealousy at her heart.

“I’m fond of you both, and if I make more of Nell than of you, I am sure you have no reason to complain, for think of the difference between you. She is, so to speak, nobody’s child—at least there is not one of her own folks left alive to care for her, while you are just the cherished elder daughter of a family,” Mrs. Nichols said warmly.

“Everyone seems to get on with Nell; I wonder why? for she is not pretty, although she has a nice face. She is not well educated either, yet there is a sort of refinement about her, which, as a rule, one finds only in very cultured people.” There was a little envy in Gertrude’s tone now, as if she knew herself to be lacking in the quality which she so much admired in her friend.

“Parson Hamblyn was a gentleman, a real one,” replied Mrs. Nichols, with emphasis. “Dr. Russell reminds me of him sometimes, with his fine manners and educated speech; but the doctor is an active man, and is going to be a successful one if only he can get a chance; while the parson was a dreamer and a thinker. He was a saint too, if ever there was one. But, taken all round he was too good to live, and I suppose that is why he died.”

“Is anyone too good to live?” asked Gertrude, opening her eyes widely, and thinking of her own harassed father, with his gentle uncomplaining patience under heavy tribulation.

“I don’t fancy I shall be in any danger of dying from that complaint yet awhile,” said Mrs. Nichols, with a shrug of her ample shoulders. “But there are some people who are so unworldly, that they seem more fit for heaven than this earth, and Nell’s father was one of them. She gets her refinement from him, but all her kind helpful ways come from her own good heart, poor child! I wish I had been there to help her to-night.”

“What is that?” cried Gertrude, springing from her seat and hurrying to the door.

“I didn’t hear anything, except that man snoring. A deal more noise he makes asleep than he ever does when he is awake,” Mrs. Nichols said scornfully, as she also rose and followed Gertrude to the door.

The night was calm and still, with a touch of frost in the quiet air, which would turn the maples crimson and gold the next time the sun shone down upon them.

A minute or two they stood listening at the door; then Gertrude said eagerly—

“It is a train coming, I am sure of it. Oh, will you wake the station-master, and ask him to see if the points are all right? Sam Peters always attends to that, you know, so it may be forgotten.”

Mrs. Nichols hurried off, nothing loth, for in truth the snoring was getting on her nerves. But Gertrude remained motionless, straining her ears to catch that distant hollow rumble which seemed so long in coming nearer.

There had only been the sleeping official, Mrs. Nichols, and herself on the depot through all those long hours of waiting, but as the rumble of the train sounded coming nearer and nearer, people hurried up by ones and twos, the women wrapped in shawls, the men with their shoulders up to their ears and their hands in their pockets, and stood in silent groups, waiting for that slow-coming train.

It was a relief when a whistle was heard; then the station-master waved a lantern to and fro, and the engine crawled slowly into the depot. The spell of silence was broken, and a perfect shower of questions burst upon the doctor and Sam Peters, who, by reason of their position on the engine, were of course the first to be interviewed.

“All in good time, friends; but it is business first. Will one of you go and wake Mrs. Nichols up, and tell her I am bringing her a patient?”

“She’s here, doctor,” shouted half a dozen voices.

“Miss Lorimer, is she here too?” asked the doctor, who was already off the engine and moving towards the freight-car.

“Been on duty all night, and is waiting to wire on to Lytton all the news you have brought,” said the foremost of the crowd.

“That is right. I will go to her in a few minutes and give her the details; but I must see to my patient first,” said the doctor.

By a series of energetic signs made with her left hand, Nell refused to be carried off the car as she had been carried on, and came tottering out, a strange-looking figure, her head bound up in a towel, her figure draped in a blanket, and her face so white and drawn with pain that it was difficult to recognize her.

“Get her to bed as quickly as you can, but don’t allow her to speak one word. She has a broken wrist, and her jaw is hurt. Give her a little broth, if you have got it, or some milk, but she must have nothing else to-night,” the doctor said briefly. And, escorted by the little crowd of sympathizing women, Nell was led off the scene.

Then the doctor went off to the telegraph office, where Gertrude, weary but alert, was waiting to send the news on to headquarters.

Sam Peters and the miners who had come back on the car entertained the remnant of the crowd with the story of that night’s doings at Camp’s Gulch, and vastly amusing the listeners found the recital, apparently, for they laughed and cheered when they heard how Nell had trapped the burglar who was hidden in the Chinaman’s coffin.

But there was no laughter in the office, where the doctor was writing details for Gertrude to telegraph.

There was no question of the miners who had come back from Camp’s Gulch going on to Roseneath that night, so they all lay down in the waiting-room, and snatched a little slumber so, and were snoring profoundly before Gertrude was ready to lock up her office and go.

The doctor had waited for her until Lytton had got all the information it required, and had sent her word that she might now go off duty until the morning, or rather, seeing that it was morning already, until the proper hour for commencing work had arrived again.

“What a strange sort of night it has been!” she exclaimed, as she went along the dark road with her escort.

“Yes, really an adventurous time for some of us,” he answered, with a laugh, thinking of that wild ride to Camp’s Gulch on the rocking engine.

Gertrude shrugged her shoulders. “I think I prefer monotony to adventure—at least, adventure of this sort. I am thankful I was not in Nell’s place.”

“I also am thankful you were not in her place either,” he answered gravely. With a little flutter at her heart, Gertrude asked—

“Why?”

“Because it would have been a moral and physical impossibility for you to do what Miss Hamblyn did. She of course has now got to pay the price of her doings in nervous breakdown and physical suffering, but you would doubtless have had exactly the same amount of prostration to endure without having been able to accomplish anything.”

“You are not exactly complimentary to me,” said Gertrude, in an icy tone, although privately she was perfectly aware of the truth of the statement.

“I did not mean to be uncomplimentary,” he said gravely. “I am quite positive that wherever you were placed, or in whatever circumstances you found yourself, you would do your very best, and it would not be your fault if you failed in any way.”

Poor Gertrude! Never in all her life had she been made to feel so small, so utterly insignificant; and the worst of it was that the doctor was so perfectly innocent of any attempt to hurt her feelings. Indeed, in his secret heart he was very much drawn to her, and had been ever since their first meeting, and if there had been a prospect of his being able to keep a wife in decent comfort he would have asked her to marry him, so that he and Sonny might have a real home again.

But Gertrude, not being endued with second sight or any specially keen intuitive faculty, had no means of knowing how nearly she realized her companion’s ideal, and, believing that he rather despised her, was miserable accordingly.

She did not even notice that he held her hand closer than usual at the parting, but went indoors with a dragging pain at her heart, which was destined to keep her company for many a long day to come.

Mrs. Nichols was waiting for her, and they had a cup of tea together, talking in whispers for fear of disturbing Nell, who lay in the next room trying to go to sleep.

The door was just ajar, and to her strained sensibilities the whispers were perfectly audible, causing her indeed no small amount of mental torture.

They were saying the kindliest things about her, magnifying her into a heroine, while she, lying there with her broken wrist, hurt jaw, and torn ear, where Doss Umpey’s stick had hit her such cruel blows, knew herself to be a coward, and in a certain sense a traitor to her duty, because she had not said who it was that had planned to rob the big shed.

When Doss Umpey had encountered her, as he came stealing through the quiet moonlight, he had said that this was Brunsen’s job, and he was bound to help it through, although he did not hold with law-breaking himself, because of the danger of it.

She had besought him to go away, to have nothing more to do with the Brunsens, but to get his living honestly if he could; she had even volunteered to send him a little part of her own earnings, to help him to keep clear of his undesirable acquaintances.

Then he had said that this thing must be carried through as planned; that it could not possibly fail. He did not seem to have noticed that distant whistle, which she had been hearing now for some minutes.

But she called his attention to it, and told him it was the help she had telegraphed for from Bratley, by using the cut wire at the top of the nearest testing pole.

Doss Umpey was thoroughly enraged with her then, and, closing with her, had endeavoured to search her pocket for the key of the big shed, she having incautiously told him that the man in the coffin could not possibly escape unaided.

But she was young and vigorous, more than a match for the old man from a muscular point of view. So, wresting herself free from his grip, she snatched the key from her pocket, and flung it away from her in the darkness, because she feared lest some confederate should come to his aid, and she should be completely overpowered. But she had been careful to toss the key on the railway track, because it would be easier to hunt for it there.

The screech of the whistle was rapidly growing nearer—they could even hear the roar of the engine; it was only a matter of minutes, and, grown desperate, Doss Umpey lifted his club and caught her a fearful blow on her right ear and jaw. She had cried out at the intolerable anguish it had caused her, and putting up her hand to ward off the next blow, had received its full force on her wrist. Whether he struck her again, or whether she just sank down to the ground faint and sick with her pain, Nell could not remember, as she lay in bed at Mrs. Nichols’s house, while that worthy woman and Gertrude whispered to each other of her bravery as they drank their tea.

Presently there was a pushing back of chairs, a little rattling of crockery, and then silence. No one had come near her. Gertrude had peeped in at the door, and seeing by the dim light of the lamp that Nell’s eyes were shut, had gone away, supposing her to be asleep.

But, between pain and unrest of mind, there was no sleep for Nell that night. She lay with closed eyes, certainly, but she was wide awake all the same. When the doctor came to see her before he had his breakfast, it was to find her feverish and excited, while the wildness in her eyes made her look like a hunted creature.

“I thought I gave strict orders that Miss Hamblyn was not to be allowed to talk, and that no one was to talk to her,” said the doctor, in a stormy tone, turning to Mrs. Nichols.

“The poor dear has not uttered a word—I don’t believe she could if she tried; and as to talking to her, this is the first time I’ve said a word in her presence, since you gave your orders last night,” replied Mrs. Nichols, rather indignantly; for she did not believe in being accused of doing injudicious things when she was entirely innocent of them.

“It is my fault, then, in not having given her a sleeping draught; but I felt so sure she would sleep naturally,” he said, in a worried tone. Bending over the bed, he proceeded to make a more careful investigation of Nell’s injuries than had been possible on the previous night.

When he had finished his examination he sat down by the bed, and began to talk to Nell with the uncompromising straightforwardness which was winning him favour among these people of the far west, whose lives are too full of toil and endeavour for them to tolerate a medical opinion which says one thing and means another.

“You are not so well this morning as I expected to find you; but that is largely your own fault, because, when you were helped to bed last night, instead of going to sleep, as you ought to have done, you commenced to worry about yourself, and kept it up until sleep became impossible to you.”

A faint smile curved Nell’s lips. She had been worrying, it was true, only the doctor was very much mistaken as to the cause of the worry.

“The reason you find it difficult, perhaps impossible, to talk,” continued the doctor, “is because the dislocation of the jaw caused much swelling and soreness of all the muscles of your throat; but if you are able to get some hours of restful sleep this soreness will largely vanish, and you will be able to talk comfortably.”

Again Nell smiled; but there was something in her eyes which made the doctor ask anxiously—

“You have no other injuries, of which you have not spoken?”

Nell’s eyes and hand said no for her with so much emphasis that the doctor’s fears on that score were completely set at rest. But as the look of trouble still remained in her eyes, he invented an errand for Mrs. Nichols which took her for a brief space from the room, and then he asked, in a low tone—

“If you are not worrying about your own condition, is it some other trouble that you have?”

Nell’s eyes drooped uneasily. She could not tell him, she could not tell anyone, how afraid she was that Doss Umpey would be found and arrested for being concerned with the two Brunsens in the attempt to rob the big shed.

“Ah, I thought I was right!” he exclaimed; then added, with a brusque gravity, “The pity of it is that there is so little sense in worrying; you can’t help or hinder things by lying and stewing over them, but you very seriously retard your own recovery. Now, are you going to be sensible enough to banish worry and go to sleep, or am I to dose you with a sleeping draught?”

For answer Nell turned her head slightly, closed her eyes, drooping into her pillow in such a fashion that the doctor went away satisfied as to her power to sleep unaided by drugs.