e on the pillows and the stately head bending over her, with the
delicately hollowed cheek, whereon the marks of those mad fingers stood
out red and angry. He had already had experience of this girl in one or
two other cases.
"Well," he said, taking up his hat, "it is no good shilly-shallying. I
will go and find Dr. Swift." Dr. Swift was the parish doctor.
When he had gone, the big husband broke down and cried, with his head
against the iron of the bed close to his wife. He put his great hand on
hers, and talked to her brokenly in their own patois. They had been
eight years married, and she had never had a day's serious illness till
now. Marcella's eyes filled with tears as she moved about the room,
doing various little tasks.
At last she went up to him.
"Won't you go and have some dinner?" she said to him kindly. "There's
Benjamin calling you," and she pointed to the door of the back room,
where stood Benny, his face puckered with weeping, forlornly holding out
a plate of fried fish, in the hope of attracting his father's attention.
The man, who in spite of his size and strength was in truth childishly
soft and ductile, went as he was bid, and Marcella and Mrs. Levi set
about doing what they could to prepare the wife for her removal.
Presently parish doctor and sanitary inspector appeared, strange and
peremptory invaders who did but add to the terror and misery of the
husband. Then at last came the ambulance, and Dr. Angus with it. The
patient, now once more plunged in narcotic stupor, was carried
downstairs by two male nurses, Dr. Angus presiding. Marcella stood in
the doorway and watched the scene,--the gradual disappearance of the
helpless form on the stretcher, with its fevered face under the dark mat
of hair; the figures of the straining men heavily descending step by
step, their heads and shoulders thrown out against the dirty drabs and
browns of the staircase; the crowd of Jewesses on the stairs and
landing, craning their necks, gesticulating and talking, so that Dr.
Angus could hardly make his directions heard, angrily as he bade them
stand back; and on the top stair, the big husband, following the form of
his departing and unconscious wife with his eyes, his face convulsed
with weeping, the whimpering children clinging about his knees.
How hot it was!--how stifling the staircase smelt, and how the sun beat
down from that upper window on the towzled unkempt women with their
large-eyed children.
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