"No suspicion of the truth ever occurred to him, and the doctor helped us
out with our deception; yet his pulse, which day by day had been getting
stronger, now beat feebler every hour. In that part of the country where
I was born and grew up, the folks say that wherever the dead lie, there
round about them, whether the time be summer or winter, the air grows
cold and colder, and that no fire, though you pile the logs half-way up
the chimney, will ever make it warm. A few months' hospital training
generally cures one of all fanciful notions about death, but this idea I
have never been able to get rid of. My thermometer may show me sixty,
and I may try to believe that the temperature _is_ sixty, but if the dead
are beside me I feel cold to the marrow of my bones. I could _see_ the
chill from the dead room crawling underneath the door, and creeping up
about his bed, and reaching out its hand to touch his heart.
"Jeanie and I redoubled our efforts, for it seemed to us as if Death were
waiting just outside in the passage, watching with his eye at the keyhole
for either of us to make a blunder and let the truth slip out. I hardly
ever left his side except now and again to go into that next room, and
poke an imaginary fire, and say a few chaffing words to an imaginary
living woman on the bed where the dead one lay; and Jeanie sat close to
the corpse, and called out saucy messages to him, or reassuring answers
to his anxious questions.
Pages:
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204