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My former subordinate removed his eyes from me, slowly rose from his chair, and shuffled up to the president's table. 'Brother Ducharme, said that official to me in a quiet tone, 'I introduce you to Brother Simard, whom you are commissioned to see into a place of safety when he has dispersed the procession. Simard turned his fishy goggle eyes upon me, and a grin disclosed wolf-like teeth.
She would have liked to add an entreaty, for his sake, that Miss M'Gann keep this secret. But her pride prevented her. "That Ducharme woman must have been talking," Miss M'Gann proceeded acutely. "I saw her around last year, looking seedy, as if she drank." "Possibly," Alves assented, "though she didn't know anything." "Well, my advice to you is to make that right just as soon as ever you can.
"You had better go now," she said to the woman more calmly. "I shall let Dr. Sommers know what your story is. He will answer you." "Better not tell him," the woman replied, with a laugh. "He knows all he wants to or I'd 'a' gone to him at once. When he hears about the scrape, he'll run and leave you. You ain't married, anyway!" "Go," Alves implored. Mrs. Ducharme rose and stood irresolutely.
The patient who had entered with him was being questioned by the neat young woman whose business it was to stand guard at the outer door. "What is your name, please?" Her tones were finely adjusted to the caste of the patient. Judging from the icy sharpness on this occasion, the patient was not high in the scale. "Caroline Ducharme," the woman replied. "Write it out, please."
The Ducharme woman's black dress intensified the pallor of her flabby face. Her hands twitched nervously over the prayer-book that she held. Subject to apoplexy, Sommers judged; but his thoughts passed over her as well as Miss M'Gann, who stood with downcast eyes ostentatiously close to Mrs.
I s'pose I can stop off there?" she asked timidly, as the express arrived. "You can stop off anywhere on your way to hell," the doctor replied indifferently. "But keep away from Chicago. There is no quicker way of making that journey to hell than to come back here." Mrs. Ducharme trembled afresh and bundled herself on board the train.
She had left him for the commoner uses of life. And all the stains of their experience had been removed, washed out by the pure accomplishment of her end. Already so cold, so sweetly distant, that face, so done with life and with him! He leaned over it and burst into tears. The dream of the summer night had passed away. Mrs. Ducharme returned to the temple at an early hour the next morning.
Whipped by the intolerable imagination of her suffering, he passed swiftly down the sandy path toward the electric lights, that were already lamping silently along the park esplanade. He chose this road, unconsciously feeling that she would plunge out that way. What had the Ducharme woman said?
Ducharme shook her head mournfully. "Bad, allus awful bad and pitiful. Calling for stuff in a voice fit to break your heart." "Mind you don't let him get any," the doctor counselled, preparing to go upstairs. "Better not go up there jest yet," the woman whispered. "He did get away from us yesterdy and had a terrible time over there."
"Well," Sommers drew a bill from his pocket, "there's ten dollars on account of your wages. Now, don't you interfere with the doctor's work. You let him manage the devil his own way, and if you see Ducharme or the other woman, you run away as hard as you can. If you don't, you may bring the devil back again." The woman took the money eagerly.