to a number of poor patients who crowded about his door. He came with me instantly. I told him what had happened as exactly as I could while we ran from one house to the other. When I took him into the scene of the tragedy, I found{104} the table cleared away, the room open, the morning air from the opened window playing upon the head, heavy as marble, which Charlotte, seated on the floor, was supporting upon her lap. But no one, not even the most inexperienced tyro, would have been deceived in that look. As far from the warm pursuits of the cheerful day as if he had been dead for a century was Colin, never to be called to account for his errors, or shrink from the eye of an angry father in this world any more.
{103}
{104}
His wife was standing by, crying and scolding together.
“Oh, what did you come here for to drive him wild?” she cried. “He was getting better. And what if he had lost money? there was plenty still. We’d have gone abroad, as he said. We’d have got on. It’s not so very much as him and me could have wanted. What did you come here for to madden him altogether? He said as I wasn’t to have nothing to do{105} with you. Oh, Campbell! Campbell! can’t you hear me crying? It’s only a faint. I know it’s only a faint. If you would go away and let him be quiet with me, he would come to himself.”
{105}
The doctor opened the shirt, on which there was scarcely any blood, though it was black with the smoke of the pistol, which seemed to have been placed against it. Charlotte, motionless as the form that leaned upon her, sat with her tearless eyes fixed upon him, following every movement. After a brief examination, the doctor laid his hand gently on her arm.
“If you will let me,” he said compassionately, “we will lift him on to the bed.” Then he added, still more gently, “You can do nothing more for him.”
He and I together, not without difficulty, did this last service. The woman behind broke out into tears and cries, and mingled questions and reproaches.
“It’s a faint he is in, doctor. Oh, bring{106} him round, bring him round! What is the good of being a doctor if you cannot do that? It’s all their doing, coming so sudden, and he frightened to face them, they’re so hard and cruel. Oh, doctor, don’t you see he’s in a faint? Give him something; do something to bring him to!”
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