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

Mrs. Waxe lumbered out of bed, untying her cap strings.

“Go back to the floor,” she said quietly. “I’ll be coming to you after a bit.”

She dressed quickly and presently waddled into the corridor.

“Now, you go and get to sleep in my room, Miss Hall, and I’ll be taking your place to-night.”

The hospital was filled to overflowing with grippe cases. The epidemic was raging in the city, and the Prince Ward was the only vacant spot in the place. Its defective register had prevented its use. It could be but insufficiently heated from the fireplace.

Mrs. Waxe went to it at once and turned on the electric light. She then stripped the bed of everything except the springs, carried the small table to the other side of the room, put out the light, took up the hand bell, and locked the door as she went out.

She then sat down at the table in the corridor, opened a Bible, and began to read.

She had read perhaps fifteen minutes when a bell tinkled. Her long experience enabled her to locate it almost immediately. She went to the ward adjoining the Prince.

No; the patient there had not rung for her, but was awake and sure the bell next her on the right was the one. It had rung before.

The Prince Ward was on the right. As Mrs. Waxe stepped into the corridor the bell sounded again.

It was in the Prince Ward. The Englishwoman was convinced that an ugly trick was being played.

Thoroughly indignant, she unlocked the door and stepped within. A low moaning and a peculiar unpleasant odor arrested her progress towards the electric button. The first turned her ruddiness pale; the second made her sick. Her foot slipped; she stumbled, twisted her ankle, and, being a heavy woman, she fell on her knees, catching at the bed-rail. A hand crept upon her shoulder, striking cold through her gingham dress.

“Water!” breathed a hoarse voice at her ear inarticulately. “Water!”

In spite of the strained ankle, the head nurse got upon her feet. She staggered out of the room, followed by the moaning cry of “Water—water.”

She shut the door behind her and crept along the corridor, holding to the wall; then called one of the private nurses and bade her light up the Prince Ward. The woman did so, remained in the room a few moments, then came back leisurely.

“Well?” said Mrs. Waxe.

“Well,” returned the nurse, “I opened the window. Did not know the ward had been used lately. Pretty bad case, wasn’t it?”

“Bad case?” repeated Mrs. Waxe, a light shining through her nostrils to her brain. “Yes; perhaps.”

“Perhaps?” repeated the private nurse satirically. “I guess I ought to know by this time. I should say there hadn’t been much left of that case to put under ground.”

She went back to her case, wondering at the stupidity of the English generally and in particular.

Mrs. Waxe put her aching foot into hot water and meditated.

* * * * *

The twenty-eighth of February dawned dark, for a blizzard from the northwest was blowing. It was the worst storm of the last half of the century.

Men were lost and frozen to death in the streets while going from their business houses to their homes.

A lady attempting to alight from a carriage at one of the railroad stations, in order to make an outgoing train, slipped, or was blown down upon the icy pavement. She was taken up insensible and carried to the nearest hospital.

“I do not think we have even a corner vacant,” said the superintendent; “but of course she cannot leave the building now.”

She sent for Mrs. Waxe.

“The Prince Ward is unoccupied?”

The head nurse glanced at the stretcher and hesitated.

“Yes; but it is next to impossible to heat it, you know, doctor.”

“Do the best you can,” replied the superintendent. “The woman should have been taken to the Emergency, but you see what the weather is.”

Mrs. Waxe divested the traveler of her velvet and furs, her lace and linen, the bag of diamonds secreted in her bosom, her long perfumed gloves, her silk underwear, her jeweled garters and hairpins. She left nothing on her but the black pearls in her ears and the magnificent rings on her fingers; then slipped a hospital shirt on her fair body, and tucked her shining curls into a cap. The fall had fractured the bone of one leg and several ribs.

The ward surgeon, entering, started at the sight of the beautiful face on the narrow pillow. Instantly the scene of two years before renewed its living colors on the sensitive film of memory. He even recalled the name of the woman before him, so deeply had that scene and her beauty impressed him.

“It is Madame Kanaris,” he said.

The patient opened her dark blue eyes.

“I am Mrs. Prince,” she corrected; “I wish to send a telegram to New York at once.”

She turned white; fainted again. The broken bones were attended to with expedition.

Before night the telegram was sent. There had been some delay of letters, some misunderstanding that had sent Mrs. Prince to B⸺ by mistake.

That lady’s brilliant eyes examined her surroundings.

“I am in the ⸺ Hospital, in the Prince Ward?” she said presently.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Waxe, disturbed by the coincidence of names.

“I selected the fittings and furniture for it,” Mrs. Prince went on softly. “But I did not think, at the time, of myself.” She looked at the picture above the bed.

“You must have that picture taken down for me, Mrs. Waxe. I do not like to have anything ‘hanging over me,’ even if it is the counterfeit presentment of a saint.”

An ugly sneer disfigured her delicate lips for a moment.

“I will have it taken down as soon as possible,” said the head nurse; “but it cannot be done immediately, my dear. We have sent out all the nurses we can spare, and extra beds have been put in nearly every ward. I am too heavy to risk myself on a ladder, but I will see the superintendent about it after a bit. It is well fastened up, I assure you.”

Towards night, not hearing from Mr. Prince, madame grew nervous, then feverish.

In a sick-bed for the first time in her life, strapped immovably to its narrow confines, her head beginning to throb with agony, she lay suffocating with impatience, suspense, and apprehension, she,—the spoiled darling of every good fortune.

The raging storm shrieked unceasingly about the House of Pain like a legion of infernal spirits.

There were so many others more critically ill than herself, and the number of nurses was so reduced, that she was of necessity left alone much of the time.

Just before midnight Mrs. Waxe came in, weary, but the embodiment of strength and kindness.

“I think,” she said coaxingly, “you must try and get to sleep. I shall give you something to quiet you, and then turn off the light, and I hope you will soon drop off. I shall be near you in the corridor. If you want anything just tinkle the bell. Close to hand, you see, my dear.”

She administered a draught, straightened the pillow, then bent down impulsively and kissed the lovely, disquieted face maternally. Two beautiful arms closed about her ample neck, and the patient was sobbing on her generous bosom.

“Come, come, you must be brave. They did not want me to tell you, but a telegram came half an hour since for you. Your husband will be here sometime toward morning. Will you go to sleep now, like a good child? Ah! I thought so.”

She turned off the light and went out, leaving the door half open. After making the round of the corridor she dropped into a chair. Her head fell forward on the table before her. In all her experience as a nurse she had never done such a thing before,—she fell asleep at her post.

She was roused by the sharp, continued ringing of a bell. She sat up, dazed, rubbing her eyes.

The superintendent, the resident physician, and a stranger were coming up the wide staircase. The bell had never ceased its imperious, insistent summons.

Without stopping to think, the head nurse ran, ponderously but swiftly, to the Prince Ward. As she stepped within the threshold the bell suddenly ceased, but the air was vibrating. She ran to the mantelpiece, reached up, and turned on the light.

The three men were at the door, the fur-clad stranger, a tall and handsome apparition, carrying a huge handful of roses. They all stared at the figure of the head nurse.

Petrified in position, her fingers on the key of the electric bulb, she stood with her usually florid face, now paper white, turned over her shoulder, her starting eyes fixed upon the bed.

Mr. Prince entered quickly, then drew back with a loud cry of fear and horror. The roses fell from his hands upon the edge of the bed and over the floor.

The heavy picture had dropped like a stone from its anchor in the cornice. Its edge had struck the sick woman on breast and forehead, but it had fallen painting upward. From beneath it uncoiled on either side two immensely long, ropelike plaits of black hair, between which the painted face smiled upon the white faces by the bedside.

The superintendent was the first to recover his wits. He sprang forward, lifted the picture, wondering at its weight. As he did so, the back, loosened by the fall, fell to pieces; a heavy bronze jar rolled from the face on the pillow, scattering a thin, fine, dust-like ashes that powdered the luxuriant curls, and floated above the stiff, stripped figure in a fine, impalpable cloud.

Then the ashes settled slowly upon the lifeless body, upon the scattered roses on the floor, and upon the splendid furs of the man who shrank against the wall and put up his hands against the dreadful sight.

[Illustration]

A Meeting of Royalty.

BY MARGARET DODGE.

It was not according to the schedule that the special train, consisting of a locomotive, an empty baggage car, and the regally equipped private car, Priscilla, should stop for three quarters of an hour at Mayville Junction. Indeed, in his instructions, the Great Man who was the car’s sole occupant had provided for a wait of only five minutes. It is a matter of record, however, that for forty-five minutes the official train waited at the lonesome little station on the Indiana prairie. What happened in those forty-five minutes is now for the first time given to the public.

After the Great Man—who was no other than the president of the A. M. & P. Trunk Line, which joins the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes—after the Great Man had taken a perfunctory turn about the little station and had asked a few stereotyped questions of the station agent, he went back to his seat in the Priscilla’s white-and-gold drawing-room, and sat down to a game of solitaire. Being a very young president—not over forty—the Great Man was not specially fond of solitaire. But he was still less fond of the thoughts engendered by a two weeks’ solitary tour of inspection through the flat, drab, malarial country of the middle West. After prolonging his luncheon to the latest possible hour, and extracting all the comfort to be obtained from a single mild cigar, he found himself longing to exchange his gold-and-white grandeur for even the plebeian red velvet of a day coach, where he could observe the vagaries of country bridal couples, and invite the confidence of smudgy small boys with prize packages of magenta lozenges.

It was while the Great Man was indulging in these vain visions, much to the detriment of his success at solitaire, that he was startled by these words, spoken in a shrill little voice, apparently just at his back:

“If you please, sir, are you the king?”

The moment that elapsed before the Great Man could whirl about in the direction of the voice was long enough for several detached bits of “Alice in Wonderland” to flit through his brain. What he saw, however, when faced around, was simply a very solemn, very pale little girl who stood with one thin hand on the door knob, and one small scarlet-stockinged leg well advanced, while her hazel eyes gleamed at him anxiously from under a fuzzy brown hat.

“Really,” said the Great Man, good humoredly, “I don’t know—why, yes, now that you speak of it—I suppose I am a sort of king. At least, I believe newspapers call me a railroad king. Won’t you come here and sit down?”

The small girl shut the door and slid to his side in a gait that combined a hop and a glide. “I suppose it isn’t just the thing to sit down in—in the presence of royalty,” she said, as she perched on the edge of a big tapestry-cushioned Turkish chair. “But, you see, I am a princess myself—a fairy princess,”—she added, with an emphatic shake of her fluffy yellow locks.

“Indeed.” The “Alice in Wonderland” memories suddenly revived. “That’s very interesting, and I don’t like to doubt the word of a lady. But all the fairy princesses of my acquaintance have had wings and spangles, and carried star-tipped wands—and—and all that,” concluded the Great Man vaguely.

“But that was because you saw them during the performance,” said the small girl, clasping her thin little fingers over one scarlet-stockinged knee. “I wear wings and spangles and carry a wand myself, in the evenings, and at the Wednesday and Saturday matinées. I’m the Princess Iris,” she explained, “in the Golden Crown Opera Company; and if I wore my fairy clothes all the time my wings would fade and the spangles would wear off.

“But you know,” said the small girl, “you don’t look a bit like the kings of my acquaintance. They all wear gilt crowns and velvet and ermine robes, and carry scepters. And, besides, you are a great deal too young.”

The Great Man laughed. “I am afraid you have me there; at least, I mean, I suppose you are right,” said he, leaning back in his chair and regarding the Princess Iris with twinkling eyes. “I don’t look my part. But, then, I am not performing now myself. We are in the same boat—that is—”

“Oh, you needn’t bother to explain,” said the small girl, “I understand slang. Only I don’t talk it myself, now, except when I forget, because the Queen doesn’t like it.”

“So there is a queen, too, is there?” said the Great Man, the merry lines around his blue eyes growing deeper. “Dear me, we shall soon have the entire royal family.”

“Yes, there is a queen, and she is not to be laughed at,” said the child gravely. “In fact, it’s partly about her I’ve come. I—I wanted an audience.”

“Well, really,” said the man nervously, “I should like to accommodate you, but”—looking at his watch—“my train leaves in about one minute, and I don’t see exactly how I can.”

“Oh, my!” said the small girl, “can’t you even make your own train wait while a princess talks to you?”

“Well, since you put it that way, I suppose I can,” said the Great Man, pressing an electric button. Then, as the black porter appeared, listened deferentially to his whispered order and glided out again, the royal personage continued:

“Very likely I don’t get half the fun out of being a king that I might. You see, I sometimes forget the extent of my power.”

“Ah! yes, that’s the very thing I’ve come to speak to you about,” said the child. “I—I hope you will excuse me if I hurt your feelings,” she went on gently, “but sometimes it’s necessary, you know.”

Upon her hearer’s assurance that he would endeavor to bear up under censure, the small girl continued:

“It’s like this: I s’pose you’ve such a big kingdom you don’t get a chance to straighten out all the things that go wrong.”

“And something has gone wrong, now, has it?”

“Yes, as wrong as can be. But,” reassuringly, “of course I understand you couldn’t have known about it. It’s the train to Washita. It was put down on the time-table, you know, to go at four this afternoon, and we all came down to the station to get it. And now they say it may be two hours before it arrives; so, instead of getting to Washita at half-past six, it will be long after nine, and we’ll be too late to give our performance. And that will be a very d-r-eadful loss to the Queen.”

“How’s that?” said the Great Man. “One night can’t make very much difference.”

“Oh, but this is Saturday night, and the whole house was sold long ago. Washita’s the best show town in the State, you know, and the Queen was counting on the money.

“You see, it’s been a dreadfully poor season in the profession, and even the Queen has lost heaps. And just now when she found out we’d be late, her face got all white, and she hung onto my hand, oh, so hard, and said—”

Here the child stopped suddenly and, digging her little fists into the chair, blinked very fast and caught her breath. Then,

“It quite upsets me to think of it,” she said in a muffled little voice. “The Queen said that she was afraid that the company would have to disband now, and the season’s hardly begun.”

Two great tears rolled down the white little face.

The man stirred uneasily. There was a deep line between his eyebrows.

“That is hard luck!” he exclaimed. “But, then,” with an affected hardihood, “after all she’s only a play queen, you know, and I presume she’s—well—roughed it before. Anyway, you’ll probably all find nice engagements soon, and be just as well off as you are now.”

“How can you say that?” the child flashed out. “Of course we can’t be so happy with any one else. There never was any one half so sweet, and kind, and beautiful as she is. And we all love her dearly. And, besides, if the rest are make-believes, she isn’t; she is a real queen all the time!”

The child had risen. Her shabby hat had fallen to the floor and her big hazel eyes blazed angrily out of her pale little face. The next moment, with a shame-faced lowering of her head, she slid nearer to the Great Man’s side.

“I—you must excuse me if I hurt your feelings,” she said humbly. “The Queen wouldn’t like it if she thought I’d done that, and on her account, too; but, you see, I really couldn’t bear to have her called a make-believe. And now,” she continued, “I think I’ll go back to the station. My auntie and the Queen will be wondering where I am.”

“Wait a minute,” said the man, drawing the child to his side. “I want to know more about this real Queen. You know they say all the royal families are connected, and she may be a relative of mine.”

“No, she isn’t,” said the small girl, leaning a little shyly against the royal shoulder; “because she told me once that she had no relations left since her father died. You see, she used to live in a big palace in New York in the winter and a stone castle in Newport in the summer, and she had horses, and carriages, and diamonds, and—and all those things. But she wasn’t a queen because she had them, you know, but they belonged to her because she was a queen.

“Well, one day her father died, and they found he’d lost all his money, and some that belonged to other people besides, so the Queen had to go on the stage and get some money to take care of herself and to pay back what he—he borrowed, you know. And that was four years ago, and now she’s paid back all Mr. Denbigh’s debts except two thousand dollars—”

“Mr. Denbigh!”

“Why, what’s the matter?” said the child half turning. “Ain’t you feeling well? Your arm trembles so.”

“Oh, yes; quite well. Only I felt so sorry for your Queen.”

“I knew you would,” said the child enthusiastically. “Well, as I told you, she paid it all back except just that two thousand dollars, and this season she expected to finish it. And that made her so happy, because she doesn’t like being a make-believe queen, and it was only on her father’s account she did it.”

“You’re sure it was only that? She didn’t care to be famous, after all?” said the Great Man, clutching the tiny hand hard.

“Why, how queer your voice sounds,” said the little girl in a motherly tone. “I’m sure you can’t be feeling well or you wouldn’t say such things. I should think that being a king yourself you’d know that when a person’s been a real queen once she wouldn’t care about being a make-believe one.”

“But that’s just like men; they never do understand. Now there was one that the Queen knew. She told me just a little about him one day when things seemed very make-believey to her. She put it in a kind of story, you know, but I liked her so much I knew who it was about.