Beulah - Page 287/348

"I don't know, child; this arm is badly fractured, and I am afraid

there is a severe injury on the back of the head. It won't do to

move him home, so send Hal in from my buggy to help put him in bed.

Have me some bandages at once, Beulah."

As they carried him into Mrs. Williams' room and prepared to set the

fractured arm, he groaned, and for a moment struggled, then relapsed

into a heavy stupor. Dr. Asbury carefully straightened and bandaged

the limb, and washed the blood from his temples, where a gash had

been inflicted in the fall.

"Will you go to his wife at once, sir, and inform her of his

condition?" said Beulah, who stood by the blood-stained pillow, pale

and anxious.

"Don't you know his wife is not here? She has gone for the summer.

Wife! did I say? She does not deserve the sacred name! If he had had

a wife he would never have come to this ruin and disgrace. It is

nothing more than I expected when he married her. I could easily put

her soul on the end of a lancet, and as for heart--she has none at

all! She is a pretty flirt, fonder of admiration than of her

husband. I will write by the earliest mail, informing Graham of the

accident and its possible consequences, and perhaps respect for the

opinion of the world may bring her home to him. Beulah, it is a

difficult matter to believe that that drunken, stupid victim there

is Eugene Graham, who promised to become an honor to his friends and

his name. Satan must have established the first distillery; the

institution smacks of the infernal! Child, keep ice upon that head,

will you, and see that as soon as possible he takes a spoonful of

the medicine I mixed just now. I am afraid it will be many days

before he leaves this house. If he lives, the only consolation is

that it may be a lesson and warning to him. I will be back in an

hour or so. As for Proctor, whom I met limping home, it would have

been a blessing to the other young men of the city, and to society

generally, if he had never crawled out of the sand where he was

thrown."

A little while after the silence was broken by a heavy sob, and,

glancing up, Beulah perceived the matron standing near the bed,

gazing at the sleeper.

"Oh, that he should come to this! I would ten thousand times rather

he had died in his unstained boyhood."