PAGE 5
The Hand On The Latch
by
The man turned his face towards her. It was sunk and hollow, ravaged with pain, an evil-looking face. His right arm was in a sling under his tattered military cloak. He seemed to have made his final effort, and now stood staring dumbly at her.
“My husband will never forgive me,” she said, with a sort of sob.
He said nothing more. He seemed at the last point of exhaustion. Through the dim white night a few flakes of snow fell upon his harsh, repellent face and on his bandaged arm.
A sudden wave of pity carried all before it.
She beckoned him into the house, and locked and barred the door. She put him in her husband’s chair by the fire. He hardly noticed anything. He seemed stupefied. He sat staring alternately at the fire and at her. When she asked him to which regiment he belonged, he did not answer.
She set before him the supper she had prepared for herself, and chafed his hard, emaciated, dirty hand till the warmth returned to it. Then he ate, with difficulty at first, then with slow voracity, all she had put before him.
A semblance of life returned gradually to him.
“I was pretty near done up when I knocked,” he said several times.
She dressed his wound, which did not appear very deep, wrapped it in fresh bandages, and readjusted his sling. He took it all as a matter of course.
She made up a little bed of rugs and blankets for him in the back kitchen. When she came back to the living-room, she found he had dragged himself to his feet, and was looking vacantly at a little picture of President Lincoln on the mantelshelf. She showed him the bed and told him to lie down on it. He obeyed her implicitly, like a child. She left him, and presently heard him cast himself down. A few minutes later she went to the door and listened. His heavy, regular breathing told her he was asleep.
She went back to the kitchen, and sat down by the fire.
Was he really asleep? Was it all feigned, the wound, the story, the exhaustion? Had she been trapped? Oh! what had she done? What had she done?
She seemed like two people. One self, silent, alert, experienced, fearless, knew that she had allowed herself to be deluded, in spite of being warned; knew that her feelings had been played upon, made use of, not even dexterously made use of; knew that she had disobeyed her husband, broken her solemn oath to him, plunged him with herself into disgrace if the money were stolen. And in the eyes of that self it was already stolen. It was still under the plank beneath her feet, but it was already stolen.
The other self, tremulous, inconsequent, full of irresistible tenderness for suffering and weakness even in its uncouthest garb, said incessantly, “I could do no less. If I die for it, still I could do no less. Somebody brought him into the world. Some woman cried for joy and anguish when he was born. He would have died if I had not taken him in. I could do no less.”
Through the long hours she sat by the fire, unable to reconcile herself to going upstairs to her own room and to bed.
Once she got up and noiselessly took down her husband’s revolver from the mantelshelf, and examined it. He had taken its fellow with him, and apparently, contrary to his custom, he had taken the powder-flask with him too, for it was gone from its nail. The revolvers were always kept loaded, but–by some evil chance–the one that remained was unloaded. She could have sworn she had seen her husband load it two days ago. Why was this numbness creeping over her again? She got out powder and bullets from a small store she had of her own, loaded and primed it, and laid it on the table beside her.