Anonymous - Raped on the Railway

The months went on, until one night, Maud, whose belly was now very big, begged him to go and fetch the doctor. He dressed at once, and hurried off to the surgery, and in a few minutes had returned with the medical man. Leaving him to attend to Maud, Brandon hurried away to fetch the monthly nurse. It was a bitterly cold November morning, with the snow falling slightly, and the nurse lived in a distant part of the city. Three o'clock had struck before he had reached the nurse's lodging- it is curious that these affairs usually occur during “the small hours beyond the twelve” — and then of course there was the usual delay whilst the nurse dressed and prepared that mysterious parcel without which no follower of Mrs. Gamp who has a particle of self-respect would think of moving a step.

Whilst he was waiting, Brandon could not help thinking of the years that had elapsed since he married Maud. He remembered the great love he bore her, and how that love, though once crushed to earth, had sprung up again, only to dwindle and slowly die out again. He confessed to himself that perhaps he had been to blame, for this latter part at least, and promised that when she recovered he would be a more affectionate husband, and by love and care, wean her from that moral depravity which was ruining her body and soul.

He was nervous and anxious during all the long ride home, and hardly heard the platitudes which the nurse uttered.

When he arrived home, the nurse at once hurried off to the bedroom where Maud was, and Brandon entered the dining room and sank into an easy chair. He mixed himself a stiff glass of whiskey and water — although as a rule he drank but little — and he tried to smoke to calm his nerves, but the occasional shrieks and moans which came from the bedroom, and which in the stillness of the night could be heard distinctly, sank into his soul, and he threw away the cigar, and swallowed the whiskey at a gulp without tasting it. There are few things which so upset a man's mind as the birth of his first child, but by the time he has a large family, his ear becomes “more Irish and less nice”-besides there is not so much groaning and shrieking on the subsequent occasions.

He must have sat there a couple of hours, which seemed to him like a couple of centuries, when the door opened gently and the doctor appeared looking very grave.

“Is it all right?” asked Brandon in a hoarse whisper.

Being a medical man as well as a Scotsman there were two valid reasons why the doctor should not give a direct reply.

“It has been a most difficult and dangerous labour,” he said — “perhaps the worst that I have ever met in all my practice.

“But it has ended satisfactorily, I hope,” said Brandon in a choking voice.

“Mrs. Brandon's habits of life,” replied the doctor cautiously, “were not I should imagine conducive to an easy labour. It is a great pity she ever became pregnant.”

“You are torturing me, doctor,” cried Brandon, “tell me the worst, and I will try to bear it like a man.

“The child is dead,” said the doctor-gravely, “stillborn.”

“And the mother?”

“We must do the best we can for her,” said the doctor still more serious, “but I cannot conceal from you that she is in a very critical condition, and I cannot pronounce definitely yet whether she will recover. We must hope for the best.”

“Can I see her?” murmured poor Brandon.

“Yes — she wishes to see you, and I think it will be better that you should go to her — it may do her good.”

With one bound Brandon was out of the door and half-way up the stairs. Then he stopped and tip-toed gently to the bed-room door, opened it, entered, and took a seat by the side of the bed.

A faint smile played over Maud's face. She looked extremely beautiful as she lay there, for all her old beauty had returned, and the wonderful masses of golden brown hair made her pale face seem wondrous fair.

“I am glad you have come,” she whispered. “I wanted to see the baby and they won't show it to me.”

Brandon glanced at the doctor, who had followed upstairs more slowly and was now standing by the side of the bed. The doctor made a sign of assent.

“The poor little thing is dead, her husband replied.

A look of pain came into her face, and she was silent for a minute. Then she looked at the doctor, and he, with professional quickness, caught her meaning. He made a sign to the nurse and they both withdrew to the other end of the room.

“I am glad of it,” she whispered, “and I shall soon see it for I feel I am about to follow it.”

“Don't say that, Maud; you will soon be better,” replied her husband.

“I am glad it is dead,” she repeated, “for I have been a bad wife, Bob, and the child was not yours. I'm too weak to tell you all, now; but say you forgive me and I shall die happy.”

“I do forgive you, darling,” said Brandon; “I have been more to blame than you.”

He bent and kissed her fair face and she gently pressed his hand, and closed her eyes. The pressure gradually relaxed, and the doctor, who had been watching her closely, came to the bedside, took her hand and felt her pulse.

Soon he laid her hand down gently, walked round the bed, and touched Brandon on the shoulder.

“You had better come away, Mr. Brandon,” he said gently, “we can neither of us do any more good.

Robert Brandon was a widower.

After Maud's funeral the house seemed so dull and melancholy that Brandon hastened to sell off all the furniture. Life had become distasteful to him. He was alone in the world and had lost all interest in mundane affairs. He felt that if this continued he would be driven to suicide, and he had the sense to know that the only means to drive away these black thoughts was a thorough change of scene and surrounding.

He quickly got together all the money he could raise, and with three hundred pounds in his pocket started for Liverpool, resolved to take the first steamer — he neither knew nor cared whither.

He wandered round Liverpool docks, and seeing a large steamer about to start, asked whither it was bound, and learned that it was going to the Cape. He embarked, and reached Capetown without any incident or accident. In a few weeks he had nearly exhausted all his money, and was wondering what he should do next, when war between England and the Transvaal became almost certain.

His life still seemed dull and aimless, and though he had shaken off the suicidal thoughts he cared little to live, and it seemed to him that if some Boer's bullet should lay him low it would cause no grief to anyone, and be an honourable end to his own misery.

He lost no time in enlisting in one of the Cape regiments, and as he was a man of education, and had been a volunteer in England and knew something of soldiering he was quickly promoted to be sergeant.

In a few weeks war was declared, and it was with the utmost satisfaction that Brandon heard that his battalion was ordered to the front to join the forces under General Symons.

The officers of the Queen's troops found out quickly that he was a gentleman, and many of them had heard of him by reputation as an artist, so he soon became a general favourite amongst them, and more especially with a tall young, delicate looking man whose name was Captain Sinclair, and they used frequently to visit each other's tents.

Brandon soon discovered from his conversation and demeanour, that the Captain was no ordinary man. Of superior education, he was a profound thinker and had not Destiny made him a soldier it is clear that Nature would have turned him out a philosopher. Their talk was always of an intellectual kind and Brandon felt that he had met a man worth listening to on the rare occasions that his friend could be made to “let himself go,” as he termed it. Once, when speaking of the marvellous power of the genital instinct, and of the magnetic influence that Woman exerted over Man, the Captain narrated the following remarkable dream, which struck Brandon so much that he made notes of it the same night on getting back to his own tent.