City and town life -- Fiction; Mines and mineral resources -- Fiction; Pennsylvania -- Fiction
“Well, I’ll pay you later,” said Emma, and every word she spoke cut
like a whip, her voice was so shrill with contemptuous anger.
She was a young girl, and had hoped he would not take the money; partly
because she didn’t wish to believe that he could be mean enough to
take it from her, when he knew that he was the last person the Swede
would give it to, had he any longer the power to give.
Her lips shrank away from her teeth in contemptuous, writhing smiles
when she thought of it.
She scarcely knew how to array herself for the doctor’s visit. She
wanted to impress him with a sense of her fitness to nurse the patient.
She had had visions of Jarlsen’s departure in an ambulance for some
city hospital, where a uniformed woman would hear his groans and heed
them for hire only.
Quarry knew nothing of the doctor’s advent. Emma understood that he
would talk about it, and that her enemies would say she must be sure of
Jarlsen’s death when she dared let loose a first-class pill-man on him.
Then, besides, the Englishman was unreasonable and iterative, like many
Englishmen; and she knew how he would search his mind for ways to tell
her that Jarlsen was as good as dead already. “I ought to pay him right
away, or he’ll do a little of his fancy talkin’, maybe.”
Black went to the station in a funeral carriage, which was the more
imposing as there were but four in Soot City. (Casually--he paid toll
on the turnpike for the eight horses that drew these vehicles, and they
were always taxed as “pleasure teams.” Again casually--he saw no joke
in this, even when the mourners received legacies.) He wore a red tie
with his black, professionally sombre clothes, and this he did as he
would not imply Jarlsen’s death to the doctor, in case the physician
should be standing on the platform and should see him before he could
get speech of him. Black employed his imagination in this sort of
futile arrangement of improbable circumstance.
On the doctor’s arrival they drove directly to the Buttes. They
alighted at the Bridge and saw thence to Emma’s doorway, where Quarry
was standing. He looked as though he had had rum in his tea, and as if
even that had not reconciled him to existence.
“Where’s Emma?” he asked of Black.
“She’s in with August. Dr. Brent, this gentleman lives here; he’s an
old friend of Mr. Butte’s, and Mr. Jarlsen’s too, I may say.”
Quarry, returned in the noon recess to find a perfect stranger about
to invade the house; did not understand the situation, as was very
evident. He grinned absently, and went toward Jarlsen’s room door.
“Emma, come out here.” His tone was wheedling, and his fingers were
tapping nervously on the wall. She came out to him quickly; her eyes
were bright and her face was full of a vigorous hope.
“Hurry up!” she said; “I want to bring the doctor in.”
“Could you oblige me with the trifle you named Thursday? I want to blow
it right in this noon.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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