THE SISTERS

Miller’s doorbell rang loudly, insistently, as though demanding a response.  Absorbed in his own grief, into which he had relapsed upon Carteret’s departure, the sound was an unwelcome intrusion.  Surely the man could not be coming back!  If it were some one else—­What else might happen to the doomed town concerned him not.  His child was dead,—­his distracted wife could not be left alone.

The doorbell rang—­clamorously—­appealingly.  Through the long hall and the closed door of the room where he sat, he could hear some one knocking, and a faint voice calling.

“Open, for God’s sake, open!”

It was a woman’s voice,—­the voice of a woman in distress.  Slowly Miller rose and went to the door, which he opened mechanically.

A lady stood there, so near the image of his own wife, whom he had just left, that for a moment he was well-nigh startled.  A little older, perhaps, a little fairer of complexion, but with the same form, the same features, marked by the same wild grief.  She wore a loose wrapper, which clothed her like the drapery of a statue.  Her long dark hair, the counterpart of his wife’s, had fallen down, and hung disheveled about her shoulders.  There was blood upon her knuckles, where she had beaten with them upon the door.  “Dr. Miller,” she panted, breathless from her flight and laying her hand upon his arm appealingly,—­when he shrank from the contact she still held it there,—­“Dr. Miller, you will come and save my child?  You know what it is to lose a child!  I am so sorry about your little boy!  You will come to mine!”

“Your sorrow comes too late, madam,” he said harshly.  “My child is dead.  I charged your husband with his murder, and he could not deny it.  Why should I save your husband’s child?”

“Ah, Dr. Miller!” she cried, with his wife’s voice,—­she never knew how much, in that dark hour, she owed to that resemblance—­“it is my child, and I have never injured you.  It is my child, Dr. Miller, my only child.  I brought it into the world at the risk of my own life!  I have nursed it, I have watched over it, I have prayed for it,—­and it now lies dying!  Oh, Dr. Miller, dear Dr. Miller, if you have a heart, come and save my child!”

“Madam,” he answered more gently, moved in spite of himself, “my heart is broken.  My people lie dead upon the streets, at the hands of yours.  The work of my life is in ashes,—­and, yonder, stretched out in death, lies my own child!  God! woman, you ask too much of human nature!  Love, duty, sorrow, justice, call me here.  I cannot go!”

She rose to her full height.  “Then you are a murderer,” she cried wildly.  “His blood be on your head, and a mother’s curse beside!”

The next moment, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, she had thrown herself at his feet,—­at the feet of a negro, this proud white woman,—­and was clasping his knees wildly.

“O God!” she prayed, in tones which quivered with anguish, “pardon my husband’s sins, and my own, and move this man’s hard heart, by the blood of thy Son, who died to save us all!”