A Christmas Mystery: The Story of Three Wise Men | Page 6

helpless, abashed before this, the commonest phenomenon
of nature.
"My wife had no child," said McCurdie.
"I've avoided women all my life," said Biggleswade.
"And I've been too busy to think of them. God forgive me," said
Doyne.
* * * * *
The history of the next two hours was one that none of the three men
ever cared to touch upon. They did things blindly, instinctively, as men
do when they come face to face with the elemental. A fire was made,
they knew not how, water drawn they knew not whence, and a kettle
boiled. Doyne accustomed to command, directed. The others obeyed.
At his suggestion they hastened to the wreck of the car and came
staggering back beneath rugs and travelling bags which could supply
clean linen and needful things, for amid the poverty of the house they
could find nothing fit for human touch or use. Early they saw that the
woman's strength was failing, and that she could not live. And there, in
that nameless hovel, with death on the hearthstone and death and life
hovering over the pitiful bed, the three great men went through the pain
and the horror and squalor of birth, and they knew that they had never
yet stood before so great a mystery.

With the first wail of the newly born infant a last convulsive shudder
passed through the frame of the unconscious mother. Then three or four
short gasps for breath, and the spirit passed away. She was dead.
Professor Biggleswade threw a corner of the sheet over her face, for he
could not bear to see it.
They washed and dried the child as any crone of a midwife would have
done, and dipped a small sponge which had always remained unused in
a cut-glass bottle in Doyne's dressing-bag in the hot milk and water of
Biggleswade's thermos bottle, and put it to his lips; and then they
wrapped him up warm in some of their own woollen undergarments,
and took him into the kitchen and placed him on a bed made of their fur
coats in front of the fire. As the last piece of fuel was exhausted they
took one of the wooden chairs and broke it up and cast it into the blaze.
And then they raised the dead man from the strip of carpet and carried
him into the bedroom and laid him reverently by the side of his dead
wife, after which they left the dead in darkness and returned to the
living. And the three grave men stood over the wisp of flesh that had
been born a male into the world. Then, their task being accomplished,
reaction came, and even Doyne, who had seen death in many lands,
turned faint. But the others, losing control of their nerves, shook like
men stricken with palsy.
Suddenly McCurdie cried in a high pitched voice, "My God! Don't you
feel it?" and clutched Doyne by the arm. An expression of terror
appeared on his iron features.
"There! It's here with us."
Little Professor Biggleswade sat on a corner of the table and wiped his
forehead.
"I heard it. I felt it. It was like the beating of wings."
"It's the fourth time," said McCurdie. "The first time was just before I
accepted the Deverills' invitation. The second in the railway carriage
this afternoon. The third on the way here. This is the fourth."

Biggleswade plucked nervously at the fringe of whisker under his jaws
and said faintly, "It's the fourth time up to now. I thought it was fancy."
"I have felt it, too," said Doyne. "It is the Angel of Death." And he
pointed to the room where the dead man and woman lay.
"For God's sake let us get away from this," cried Biggleswade.
"And leave the child to die, like the others?" said Doyne.
"We must see it through," said McCurdie.
* * * * *
A silence fell upon them as they sat round in the blaze with the
new-born babe wrapped in its odd swaddling clothes asleep on the pile
of fur coats, and it lasted until Sir Angus McCurdie looked at his
watch.
"Good Lord," said he, "it's twelve o'clock."
"Christmas morning," said Biggleswade.
"A strange Christmas," mused Doyne.
McCurdie put up his hand. "There it is again! The beating of wings."
And they listened like men spellbound. McCurdie kept his hand
uplifted, and gazed over their heads at the wall, and his gaze was that of
a man in a trance, and he spoke:
"Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given--"
Doyne sprang from his chair, which fell behind him with a crash.
"Man--what the devil are you saying?"
Then McCurdie rose and met Biggleswade's eyes staring at him
through the great