The Black Cat, Vol. I, No. 5, February 1896

On his return from dinner that evening Dr. Amsden locked all the doors and darkened all the windows of his apartments. Then, after smoking a meditative cigar, he went to bed. It was barely eight o’clock in the evening when his head touched the pillow, but, as he had planned to send his image to Miss Foote at precisely nine o’clock, before that young lady should have retired to her chamber, he wished to have ample time to get himself to sleep. Besides, he was really tired and drowsy, which was certainly a favorable condition for his experiment. He had feared that he would be excited and nervous; but already the suggestion of sleep which he had been constantly reiterating for the past hour was beginning to tell upon his brain. The formula, “I am about to go to sleep, I am becoming sleepy, I sleep,” was having a most magical effect.

Dr. Amsden dropped into the misty chasm of slumber in less than fifteen minutes after getting to bed. But that fifteen minutes had been spent in strenuous command, on the part of the objective mind, that the subjective mind should go, at precisely nine o’clock, to the home of Miss Foote, present itself in the exact and correct image of the lover, and make an ardent appeal to the affections of the lady.

In about two hours Amsden awoke, bathed in perspiration, and feeling thoroughly exhausted. He was not conscious of having dreamed at all, and yet it seemed to him as if he had just shaken off a most horrible nightmare. He arose, lit the gas, and consulted his watch. It was just ten o’clock. “Thank heaven,” he cried, “I did not wake before the time!” He went back to bed, and fell instantly into the deep slumber of complete exhaustion, from which he did not wake until late the next morning.

For two days he did not see Miss Foote. Then he summoned up courage to call upon her. She came downstairs looking pale and anxious, and the moment that Amsden’s eyes fell upon her his heart began to throb with suffocating violence. Undoubtedly his experiment had succeeded as far as the proposal was concerned—but should his attitude be that of the accepted or rejected lover?

Hardly noticing his stammering expressions of solicitude for her altered looks, Miriam led the way into the drawing-room, and, motioning him to a chair, seated herself in a dim corner at the other side of the room. Then, with her blue eyes lowered and her fingers twisting nervously, she said:—

“Dr. Amsden, I owe you an apology. When you called two nights ago and asked me to be your wife I was too much agitated to answer you. To tell the truth,” she continued, reddening a little, “the eloquence of your words, their poetry and melody, so surprised and overcame me that I could not answer as you deserved. When I left you and walked to the other side of the room it was only that I might gain possession of myself, and when I looked up and found you gone—”

“Gone!” exclaimed Amsden, groaning audibly.

“Yes, gone like a spirit (here Miss Foote paused, while Amsden clutched at his chair, feeling as though his whole body were turning to sand and dribbling down upon the floor) without a word of good-bye, I feared that I had mortally offended you and that you would never come back to—”

“Then you were not angry because my ghost—because I left like a ghost? You wanted me to come back? But why?”

“I—I think you ought to know,” said the girl, blushing.

And the next moment Dr. Amsden was kneeling at her feet.

“I did it in a dream—no, I don’t mean that—I mean this is a dream. I ought to explain.”

“No, don’t try. I understand,” said Miriam softly.

The girl’s head sank forward on his shoulder. She was crying a little, but she suffered her lover’s arms to slip around her waist, and into his trembling hand she pressed her own.

It was done, the impossible, the inconceivable! And even Amsden felt in his heaving heart that he had never done anything so easy and so utterly delightful in his whole life.

It was true that Miriam did not understand, but Amsden felt that at such a juncture any explanations would be not merely out of place, but even indelicate.

To his credit be it said, however, that on one occasion before his marriage he attempted to confess to Miriam all the circumstances of his proposal; but while he was still struggling with his introduction she stopped him with a peremptory gesture.

“I don’t understand a word about subjective and objective minds,” she said, in a wounded voice. “All I know is that you made me the most beautiful proposal I had ever heard—I mean imagined—but of course if you want to take it back by saying that you were not responsible at the time—”

Whereupon Amsden was obliged to consume two delightful hours in assuring his sweetheart that he was a blundering fool, and that his metaphysical nonsense, translated, meant that it was his best self that had made that eloquent proposal, and that he was only afraid his every-day self was not one tenth good enough for her.

[Illustration]

The Prince Ward.

BY CLAUDE M. GIRARDEAU.

The hospital was almost finished, but, as there were several wards still unendowed, the board of managers gave a reception. Ostensibly, to enable a curious public to inspect the building; in reality, to obtain benefactions. Among the visitors was a Mr. Prince, a Southerner, and reputed wealthy. He seemed greatly interested in the hospital, and selected for endowment a single ward on the second floor, department of surgery. It was at once completed at his expense and christened with his name.

Its first occupant was his wife. She looked like a dying woman to the superintendent, but he entered her case on the new books without comment, and she was examined by the surgeons in charge. They advised an immediate operation as the only hope—and that a slight one—of saving her life. In fact, they knew she could not recover either with or without it; but the operation would be an interesting one.

“I did not think I was so ill,” said Mrs. Prince pathetically, as the nurse took her back to her room.

“Guess she hasn’t looked in a glass lately,” was the attendant’s unspoken comment.

“She looks for all the world like a starved cat,” she said to another nurse, later on, “with her big green eyes and her black hair. Won’t I have a sweet time combing all that hair? It’s about two yards long. She’s more hair than anything else.”

The morning of the operation found Mrs. Prince cold with nervous terror.

“Do you think I will suffer much?” she inquired of the nurse tremulously.

“Oh, no, indeed,” replied that functionary, with professional cheerfulness, plaiting away at the endless lengths of hair. “If I was you, I’d have about half of this cut off.”

Mrs. Prince looked at the long, heavy plaits, then up at the nurse, her gray eyes darkening.

“If you cannot take care of it,” she said quietly, “I will tell the superintendent to send me another woman.”

The nurse colored.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said awkwardly.

When the toilet of the condemned was completed Mr. Prince came in with a huge handful of roses, smiling genially as his eyes fell on his wife.

“Why, P’tite, you look like John Chinaman in that funny shirt.”

She smiled in return, but wanly.

“I suppose I do look absurd.” She held out her arms; he filled them with the roses, and sat down by the narrow bed. She turned aside her head to hide the sudden tears. He drew her plaits of hair from neck to heel and bent to kiss her cheek as the doctors came in to administer ether.

“Madame Kanaris is here,” he said softly, “and begs to see you. May she come in?”

“Madame Kanaris!” She stared up at him with dilating eyes. “When did she come to B⸺? What is she doing here?”

“The nurse said I might come in for one little moment,” said an exquisitely melodious voice at the door directly facing the sick woman.

The men all looked up. A woman, young, beautiful as the day, stood on the threshold, her tender deep blue eyes fixed upon the patient with an expression of the liveliest emotion.

Her radiant hair, her dazzling complexion, her superb figure enveloped in furs, and the indescribable grace of her attitude made the sick woman appear grotesquely skeleton-like and ghastly.

It was Life confronting Death. Death raised itself upon an emaciated arm, and spoke to Life:—

“I cannot see you now, madame. The physicians have just come in, as you see. I beg that you will go away.”

Prince sprang to his feet and approached the visitor.

“I did not know the physicians would be here,” he murmured. “Shall I take you downstairs? Will you wait for me in the parlors?”

While he was speaking to Madame Kanaris his wife motioned to a surgeon. “I am ready. But, O doctor, are you sure it will make me quite dead? Are you sure I shall not be just iced over, with a frightful consciousness underneath? Are you sure?”

“Quite sure,” said the surgeon pityingly, stealing a glance at the figures in the doorway. “You will be blotted out of existence during the operation. Do not be afraid.”

He took her cold hand into a warm, compassionate palm. In a few seconds she was carried past her husband and Madame Kanaris, who were still talking in the corridor.

Prince was startled as the procession of doctors and nurses came out of the room.

His companion glanced at them, and her brilliant color faded.

“Do not leave me,” she gasped, holding him by the arm. “Take me away. I should not have come.”

Prince hesitated. The stretcher was being carried into the elevator. He turned to the beautiful, agitated woman beside him, drew her hand through his arm, and they went downstairs together.

The operation was long, difficult, and dangerous, taxing both nerve and skill. The operating-room was very hot. One of the nurses fainted, and a young doctor, sick at heart and stomach, helped her away, glad to get out himself.

The operating surgeon, a keen, self-possessed practitioner, looked at the patient when all was over, with a deep breath of relief.

“The very worst case of its kind I ever saw,” he remarked to a colleague. “It will be a miracle if she recovers, although I would give one of my ears to make it possible.”

After three days of delirium and torture the woman died.

It was the twenty-eighth day of February.

Madame Kanaris came into the ward alone, and stood for a few moments looking down at the face on the narrow pillow.

“She could never have recovered in any event?” she said questioningly to the nurse.

“I don’t see how she could,” was the calm reply.

Madame put out a flashing hand.

“May I see?” she said with delicate curiosity.

The nurse lifted a layer of batting.

The beautiful visitor gave a cry of dismay and clapped the hand to her face.

“I thought it would make you sick,” said the nurse quietly. “I guess you had better go to the window.”

Madame stood with her lace handkerchief pressed to her lips and gazed upon the ice and snow without.

Presently she said:—

“Mr. Prince desires the hair of his wife. Will you kindly cut off the plaits close to the head.”

“It does seem a pity,” observed the nurse, snipping at the plaits stolidly, “to take the only thing from her she seemed to care much about. I guess they can bury my hair with me.”

“She is not to be buried,” replied madame softly, still gazing upon the whiteness without. “It would be a pity to burn such splendid hair, would it not?”

“Oh!” said the nurse, “I see. Going to send her to the new crematory?”

“Are you a New Englander?” gently inquired the lady, turning her dark blue eyes upon the inquisitive attendant.

“I guess I am. Why?”

“I have always heard that New Englanders asked a great many questions.”

The nurse colored and snapped the scissors vigorously through the last strands of hair. The thick, short locks stuck out stiffly behind the dead woman’s ears. The nurse held out the snakelike braids to Madame Kanaris, who drew back a little.

“Please put them in this box for me,” she said quickly. “Mr. Prince will send for it.”

In leaving the room she touched the dead forehead lightly with a finger, crossed herself, and murmured something in a strange tongue.

“Catholic, I guess,” sniffed the nurse, watching her as she went down the corridor, with that mingling of envy and unwilling admiration that the beautiful Greek always succeeded in implanting in the bosoms of her less-favored sisters.

In a few days’ time Prince and Madame Kanaris returned to the hospital with a picture they desired hung in the ward. It might have been an idealized portrait of Mrs. Prince,—the face of a saint against a background of sunset, or the head of a martyr dark against flame, as the imagination of the beholder should suggest.

The frame was oval with an inscription below the head. It was also heavy, of plaited bronze, with a boxlike backing. It was the work of a finished artist, however, and, being idealized, the portrait was beautiful. It was hung above the bed, as the other wall spaces were occupied with cheerful landscapes.

Madame Kanaris laid a loose bunch of pomegranate flowers on the pillow beneath it, and she and Prince left B⸺ the next day—as they thought—forever.

* * * * *

The new hospital was a popular one, but for some reason the Prince Ward remained vacant. There was nothing mysterious about this; it had been bespoken many times for patients, but a change of mind would occur so naturally that at first nothing was thought of it. In a year or so, however, the continued vacancy began to be a subject of remark among the nurses. But they were too busy and too practical to regard it in any other light than that of a provoking pecuniary loss to the establishment.

One night in January the night nurse of the second floor, at one end of which was the Prince Ward, sat drowsily waiting for medicine periods or the sound of bells from the various rooms.

It was the last night of her watch, and she was worn out from a month’s sleeplessness.

Toward midnight the tinkle of a bell roused her. She went from door to door trying to place it. As she neared the Prince Ward it sounded again.

She paused at the door.

“Very strange,” she thought; “surely there is no one in here?”

But to make sure she went in. The room was icy cold.

A low moan came from the narrow bed.

“Water!” murmured a voice inarticulately. “Water!”

“Wait until I turn on the light,” said the nurse, going towards the chimney-place. She stepped on something, tripped, would have fallen; caught at the bed and grasped a long thick rope of hair. She lifted it and laid it alongside the figure it evidently belonged to.

“Water, water!” moaned the inarticulate voice again, close to her ear. The nurse went out, much puzzled, and returned with a glass. Two icy hands touched hers as she held it to the lips.

“How cold you are!” she exclaimed, “and this room is like a frozen—frozen tomb,” she added. “You must get warm.”

“No, no!” said the voice, ending in a low, wailing moan.

The nurse looked curiously down at the face on the pillow. Scarcely anything was visible but two large dark eyes and two immensely long snake-like plaits of hair.

“Did you come in to-night? Are you waiting for an operation?” asked the perplexed nurse.

“Yes.” The voice was inarticulate again.

“How strange the day nurse or the head nurse did not tell me. I don’t know what to make of it, at all. You are sure you do not want any light or heat?”

The reply was so inarticulate that she bent down to listen. A faint odor turned her quite sick. She went out hastily into the corridor, leaving the door ajar. She was worried; nay, more, she was conscious of a feeling a trained nurse has no excuse for. She had a crawly sensation along her spine.

“I must be dreaming,” she said to herself angrily.

She went back to her chair and table, and, in spite of heaviness and sleepiness, listened for the bells with a qualm of absolute fright whenever the sound came from the end of the corridor.

At last, just before daybreak, the bell she was straining her ears for, rang again.

She plunged her head into cold water, took a glass in her hand, and approached the Prince Ward. For a second she paused at the door; a wild impulse to dash down the glass of water and rush shrieking through the corridor almost overpowered her for a heart-beat. Then her training reasserted itself; she smiled satirically in her own face and went in, leaving, nevertheless, the door wide open behind her. She paused beside the bed.

“Thirsty again? I have brought some water for you.”

She slid a hand to lift the head. She bent over the pillow with a steady glass.

The bed was empty. It was not even made up. There were no sheets on it, no pillow-slip.

The room was like a frozen tomb. The glass dropped from her hand, deluging the mattress with its contents.

She rushed from the room. Fortunately, her felt slippers made no sound. The door swung to noiselessly behind her. She fled up the corridor, and flattened her back against the wall at its furthest end, shaking as with a mortal chill.

There she remained until the gray light of a snowy day crept through the window at her side.

When the day nurse, rosy and refreshed, came to relieve her, she said, eying the night nurse a little curiously:

“I guess you’d better tumble into bed as soon as you can, Miss Evans. You look as if your month’s work had about finished you.”

The nurse whose turn came next was the one who had been with Mrs. Prince. The last night of her watch was the twenty-seventh of February. She had had an unusually hard month’s work, and was exceedingly tired and not a little cross when, at midnight, a bell rang which she could not locate.

“Some plaguey wire out of gear again,” she said, provoked, after a second, fruitless search for the elusive tinkle. She had turned at the end of the corridor, and stood just by the Prince Ward. The bell rang sharply.

“Well, I want to know!” she said aloud. “If it isn’t in this ward!”

She went in immediately and would have turned on the light, when she was stopped by a curiously familiar, though indistinct, voice.

“Water—water!”

“For the land’s sake,” ejaculated the Down-Easter, going toward the bed. “What’s this?”

Her foot slipped on something; she tripped and came near falling. She stooped and lifted from the floor a long, heavy plait of black hair. She stood stupidly, holding it in her hands, staring down at the bed.

“If I was you,” she said mechanically, “I’d have about half of this cut off.”

Two large dark eyes stared up at her.

“Why!” she stammered, too stupid to know when she was frightened, too trained a nurse to understand, “Why, you died!”

A low laugh echoed in the room.

“How cold you are in here,” the nurse went on. “What will you have?”

“Water,” said the thick voice inarticulately.

The nurse went out. As she closed the door behind her she was seized with a sudden cold shaking.

She went to the room of the head nurse and woke her.

“Say, Mrs. Waxe, who’s the patient in the Prince Ward? Why wasn’t I told about her?” Mrs. Waxe was wide awake instantly.

“Prince Ward? There’s nobody in the Prince Ward, Miss Hall.”

“Yes, there is, too. I’ve just seen her and spoke to her. Seems to me I’ve seen the woman before. But the one I knew died after the operation.”

“What?” asked Mrs. Waxe keenly. She had been in the hospital only six months, but she was a personal friend of Miss Evans. “Who was she?” Miss Hall gave a brief account of the case.

“What was her name?” inquired Mrs. Waxe, sitting up, large and alert.

“Why, it was Prince,” said the night nurse. “She was the wife of the man who endowed the ward.”

Mrs. Waxe gazed for a moment into the stolid face before her.

“I think you have had a dream,” she said calmly.

“I don’t sleep on duty, whatever the others may do,” retorted Miss Hall.