Twin Tales: Are All Men Alike, and, The Lost TitianStringer, Arthur
General
Twin Tales: Are All Men Alike, and, The Lost Titian
Stringer, Arthur
Canadian fiction
“Oh, Gerry, I’ve killed you!” she wailed as she sat down beside him and
tore a band of white from her petticoat and bound up the bleeding wrist.
He opened his eyes as she stooped over her work, and promptly closed
them again. “Oh, my love, my love, I’ve killed you!” she said in
helpless little moans as she struggled to knot the bandage tight over
the well-wrapped wrist-bone.
It reminded her of her aeronautical days of old. And she tried to tell
herself to be calm, and to remember what one should do in such cases.
She even slipped a hand over his heart, and found it to be beating, and
summoned up the courage to study his face. On his left temple she
noticed a lump, almost as big as a shirred egg, and a subsidiary small
pain shot through her as she remembered how much it looked like the lump
Gunboat Dorgan had once brought out on Raoul Uhlan’s pallid forehead.
She was brushing the dusty hair back from this slowly discoloring lump
when she awakened for the first time to the knowledge that the driver of
the motor-truck was not only standing there beside her, but addressing
her in none too commiserative tones.
“Yuh’ve kilt him, all right, lady! Yuh’ve kilt him, and I s’pose yuh’re
satisfied!”
“I haven’t killed him,” protested Teddie as she took Gerry’s head in her
lap.
“Yuh sure set out to kill something,” announced the blue-denimed giant
from the truck. “And this looks to me like yuh got what yuh was after!”
“Don’t be silly,” cried Teddie. “But get into my car and get back here
with a doctor. Do you understand: I want a doctor right away!”
“It’d be more sensible to get the body into the truck,” maintained the
heartless one in blue-denim.
“You get that doctor!” blazed Teddie with a stare which drove the
truck-driver off even as naked steel might have done. And when he was
gone she leaned over the still inert Gerry, and wiped the dust from his
face with her tiny mockery of a handkerchief, and murmured ridiculous
little incoherencies which made him open one eye, like a sleepy hound on
a hearth-rug, and quite inconsiderately close it again.
“Oh, Gerry!” she moaned as she put her hand once more in under his vest,
to make sure his heart was still beating, and fell to pondering the
reason for a resultant small writhe of his body. She leaned closer over
his face, assuring herself that he was still breathing.
Then she stooped still lower. She slipped an arm in under his head and
held his dusty cheek against hers. _And then she kissed him._
She kissed him grimly, determinedly, abandonedly, saying “Oh, Gerry!” in
foolish little gasps and not bothering to wipe away the tear that was
running down her nose.
Then she sat back, with his head still in her arms, for his eyes were
open and gazing up into her face.
“How dare you do that?” demanded Gerry, in a voice singularly steady for
one so recently emerging from unconsciousness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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