A Watch in the Night (Seaman)

by Augusta Huiell Seaman

A Watch in the Night

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BY AUGUSTA HUIELL SEAMAN

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A SHORT STORY

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PRISCILLA DUNSCOMB drew back the curtain and peered incuriously into the night. The action was purely automatic; and the discovery that the fine drizzle of an hour before had turned to a drenching downpour alone restored her to a consciousness of her movements.

“It’s going to be a bad night,” she half whispered, and stood watching the trickling streaks on the small panes with an intentness that betokened sheer absence of mind.

In the dull light of a single kerosene lamp her sharp features were blurred and softened, but the haggard, work-chiseled lines were still visible. At the back of her head the knot of hair was wound so tight as to lend her face an almost drawn appearance, yet the gray-shot strands would have been soft and wavy had they not been so uncompromisingly restrained.

Priscilla Dunscomb stared into the rain-soaked darkness, but her mind was busy with many thoughts. For her hour was approaching—the hour of release from a thraldom dating back over twenty years—and she was striving hard that her joy be not too apparent, even to herself.

Something stirred in the great four-poster, and she turned at the sound, stepping with the mechanical caution natural to service in the sick-room. After slightly adjusting the patchwork cover and shifting the screen before the lamp, she stood looking down at the prostrate figure.

There was no softness in her eyes as she noted the gray, deathlike pallor, the piteous pinched features, the alternately sharp and muffled breathing. There was no softness in her heart at the knowledge of Daniel Dunscomb’s approaching end—only a grim, unrelenting exultation that the hour of her freedom was at hand.

Presently she sat down in a wooden rocker by the bedside and resumed her vigil. At certain intervals she moistened a cloth in a bowl by her side and bathed the unconscious man’s forehead and wrists. Her manner of performing this soothing act suggested an indomitable repugnance, fought down by sheer will power. In the interim she sat with averted eyes, one hand shielding her face from the light—and waited.

A clock somewhere below struck the hour with two rasping, wheezy strokes. Priscilla Dunscomb started slightly, and glanced at the sick man. It was the hour the doctor had told her to watch for—the crisis, the turning-point, the mysterious moment where the scales of life and death hang evenly balanced.

“I wish I could be with you, Mrs. Dunscomb,” the physician had ended kindly, “but I could not do anything more for him if I were, and you are an excellent nurse. You see, I’ve got that critical case in the village. There isn’t one chance in a hundred that he will live, and if he does it will only mean hopeless invalidism for another year—so perhaps it would be more merciful to have it all ended now.”

Dr. Brewster had the good taste not to condole with Priscilla Dunscomb. He knew—all the village knew, for that matter—the incompatibility of those two ill-mated lives, the twenty years of slavery to the demands of a man who had crushed every atom of joy out of Priscilla Dunscomb’s existence. And Priscilla inwardly rejoiced that the doctor could not know how madly thankful she was to be alone when the great moment arrived.

She recognized absolutely no fear of death, experienced no physical shrinking at the nearness of the great mystery. Five times had she fought with it a losing battle for the lives of her children. On occasions innumerable had she “sat up” with a stricken friend or neighbor, watching while the flame of vitality flickered out. Death was very familiar to Priscilla Dunscomb.

At the stroke of the clock a faint, scarcely perceptible tremor quivered through the form on the bed. Almost involuntarily she bent forward, her hands clasped on her knees, to watch the struggle more closely. Some deep instinct warned her that there would be a moment of consciousness before the end. She was curious to see just what that moment would disclose. With steady intensity she regarded the deathlike mask. For many years she had systematically avoided scanning her husband’s face. It drew her gaze now, in spite of herself.

Suddenly, as she looked, she caught her breath. Something in the pinched, haggard features recalled the face of her eldest child, and stinging memories surged over her like a torrent. Again they came before her—her children—the only beings she had ever really loved, all snatched from her in the early years of life. Priscilla Dunscomb had been a woman of passionate maternity. The mother-love she had expended on her little brood of weaklings had crushed down and stamped out every other emotion.

She bent nearer. Yes, there was certainly a resemblance. She felt as though she ought to resent it fiercely, but for some reason, as yet occult, she could not.

“Daniel was pretty proud when little Dan came along,” she found herself remembering. “I suppose because it was the first one. He didn’t care much about any of the others. Never came near me for a week after little Hetty was born. I wonder why Daniel didn’t love the children? His own children! But then I don’t believe he ever loved me—even in the beginning. Used to act as though he did, at first, but that soon quit—after little Dan came. Then he changed round like a shot. I wonder—”

She broke the thread of her thoughts to moisten her husband’s lips. He was breathing more heavily. The indentations in his pinched nostrils were deeper.

“He isn’t going to last much longer,” she told herself as she resumed her seat. “He’s getting weaker.” Unconsciously she took up her train of thought where she had broken off.

“I wonder—if he’d have cared more—if I hadn’t given so much time to the children?” The suggestion startled her. Not only had she never put it into words before, but it had never so much as occurred to her.

“I have always done my duty,” she reminded herself sternly—which, being interpreted, meant that Daniel Dunscomb had never lacked for clothing, food, and a home properly conducted. “Even after—he began to make it very—hard for me, I did my duty.”

A tingle of self-pity almost brought the tears to her eyes at the remembrance of how difficult that duty had finally become.

“I wonder—if he was jealous—of the children?” She was amazed at the possibility. That he was a man of violent and lasting emotions she had always known, but she realized now for the first time that, stung to a continual jealousy, he might easily be capable of—all that had occurred later. She began to experience a strange, embryonic pity for the man.

“I wonder—if—I did right?” she asked herself.

II.

The sick man stirred uneasily, and moved his head from side to side. One hand reached out blindly, gropingly, and grasped her sleeve. The action brought vividly to her memory how her last, littlest baby had passed out into the Beyond, clutching pitifully at her hands.

In that moment something broke within Priscilla Dunscomb—something hard, icy. and unforgiving that had bound her in its iron grasp for twenty long years! The man before her appeared no longer the hateful being who had embittered her life. He was weak, he was helpless, he was less than a child in every faculty; he was dying! A great, pitying tenderness swept over her, instantly augmented by a deep, soul-scorching terror. She slipped to her knees by the bedside in an ecstasy of unwonted prayer.

“Oh, Lord, don’t let him die!” she stumbled. “I haven’t done right by him all my life! Give me another chance! Give him back to me, if it’s only for a year, and I’ll try to make up for it. Don’t let him go, Lord! I’ll give him my love!”

She held herself rigid, gripped by the thought that slid into her consciousness. He was going to come to himself for a moment—soon! She searched his gray countenance intently. It might come now at any time—she knew by familiar, infallible signs. On that moment of consciousness, she felt, hung the answer to her petition.

“I wish he could see me as I used to be—before! It might make a difference!” she groaned. Getting to her feet, she went across the room and scanned herself feverishly in the little cracked mirror over the bureau.

“I’m changed—dreadfully changed! I wonder—” With trembling hands she loosed the tight knot of her hair, and fluffed the waving strands softly about her face. In the dim light the effect lent her a strange, illusively youthful appearance. Hurriedly she groped about in a drawer and found a piece of old and yellowed lace, which, unfastening and throwing aside her stiff collar, she folded about her throat. For a moment she regarded the metamorphosis steadily.

“It’s better!” she said as she turned away. At the bedside she resumed her vigil, placing herself in such a position that the opening eyes should rest on her alone. Then she waited.

When the change came, by that strange perversity of expectation, she was as unprepared for it as though her whole being had not hung upon it with heartrending intensity, and she shook like a frightened child. It was only a rolling up of the eyelids; the look was one of blankness. She was on her knees again, bending over him. Gradually the slow light of dawning intelligence kindled.

“Dan!” she breathed.

The marvel at her resurrected youth deepened in his sunken eyes.

“Prissy! Why, Prissy!” It was his old, endearing pet name for her, unused these twenty years!”

“Dan—oh, Dan!” she whispered. “Are you going to leave me?” He struggled weakly to speak again:

“Do you want—me to stay—Prissy? I didn’t—think—you did!”

“I do—I do! I—I love you, Dan!”

“Then—I’ll try!” he said simply.

With a smile he closed his eyes, but his hand groped for and found hers, and he yielded himself up to sleep like a tired child. Hour after hour she sat, with his hand in hers, watching the regular breathing of his health-giving sleep. The whole wretched past between them was wiped out—banished by the resurgence of her forgotten youth.

“It turned the balance!” she told herself. “It was the only thing that could.”

And when the dawn broke, she lifted her face to meet the year of her reparation in the peace that passeth all understanding.