Nurse Mainwaring appeared now.
"Nurse Bradley can't get up, madam," she announced.
"Nonsense! what is it?"
"A sick-headache; she can't see out of her eyes."
It was the moment of dismay in which a hospital realises that its staff, too, is flesh and blood—the hitch in the human machinery.
"Then we're short-handed to-night. You relieve here, Nurse Mainwaring?"
"Yes, madam."
"And Nurse Gay—who should relieve her?"
"Nurse Bradley."
"I'llrelieve her," cried Mary; "I'd like to!"
"You need your night's rest as much as most. And there's no napping with trachy—it means watching all the time."
"I shan't nap; I shan't want to. Somebody must lose her night's rest—why not I?"
"I think we can manage without you."
"It'll be a favour to me—I'm thankful for the chance."
"Well, then, you shall halve it with someone. You can take the first half, and——"
"No, no," she urged, "that's rough on the other and not enough for me. Give it me all!"
The Matron yielded:
"Nurse Brettan relieves Nurse Gay!"
In the room the boy lay motionless as if already dead. From the mouth breath no longer passed; only by holding a hand before the orifice of the tube inserted in the throat could one detect that he now breathed at all. As Mary took the seat by his side, the force of professional training was immediately manifest. She had begged for the extra work with almost feverish excitement; she entered upon it collected and self-controlled. A stranger would have said: "A conscientious woman, but experience has blunted her sensibilities."
On the table were some feathers. With these, from time to time throughout the night, she had to keep the tube free from obstruction. Even the briefest indulgence to drowsiness was impossible. Unwavering attention to the state of the passage that admitted air to the lungs was not merely important, the necessity was vital. A continuous, an inflexible vigilance was required. It was to this that the nurse, already worn by the usual duties of the day, had pledged herself in place of the absentee.
At half-past nine she had cleansed the tube twice. At ten o'clock Kincaid came in.
"I am relieving Nurse Gay," she said, rising; "Nurse Bradley's head is very bad."
He went to the bed and ascertained that all was well.
"It'll be very trying for you; wasn't there anyone to divide the work?"
"I wanted to do it all myself."
"Ah, yes, I understand; you know the father."
It was the only reference that he had made to the father's asking for her, and she was sensible of inquiry in his tone. She nodded. And, alone together for the first time since her appointment, they stood looking at Carew's child.
She had no wish to speak. On him the situation imposed restraint. But to be with her thus had a charm, for all that. It was not to be uttered, not to be dwelt on, but, due in part to the prevailing silence of the house, there was an illusion of confidential intercourse that he had not felt with her here before.
While they looked, the boy gave a quick gasp. The tube had become clogged.
She started and threw out her hand towards the feathers. But Kincaid had picked one up already, favoured by his position.
"All right!" he said; "I'll free it."
He leant over the pillow, feather in hand. She watched him with eyes widening in terror, for she saw that his endeavours were futile and he could not free it.
The waxen placidity of the upturned face vanished as she watched. It regained the signs of life to struggle with the gripe of death—distorted in an instant, and distorted frightfully. The average woman would have wept aloud. The nurse, to all intents and purposes, preserved her calmness still.
It was Kincaid who gave the first token of despondence.
"The thing's blocked!" he exclaimed; "I can't clear it!"
His voice had the repressed despair of a surgeon, who is an enthusiast, too, opposed by a higher force. Under the test of his defeat her composure broke down. Confronted by a danger in which her interest was vivid and personal she—as the father had done before her—became agitated and unstrung.
"You must," she said. "Doctor, for Heaven's sake!"
He was trying still, but with scant success.
"I'm doing my best; it seems no good."
"You must save this life," she repeated.
"You will?"
"I tell you I can't do any more."
"You will—you shall!" she persisted wildly. The very passion of motherhood suffused her features. "Doctor, it ishischild!"
He looked at her—their gaze met, even then. It was only in a flash. Abruptly the gasps of the dying baby became horrible to witness. The eyeballs rolled hideously, and seemed as if they would spring from their sockets. The tiny chest heaved and fell in agonising efforts to gain air, while in its convulsive battle against suffocation the frail body almost lifted itself from the mattress.
"Go away," said the man; "there's nothing you can do."
She refused to stir. She appealed to him frantically.
"Help him!" she stammered.
"There's no way."
"You, the doctor, tell me there's no way?"
"None."
"ButIknow thereisa way," she cried; "I can suck that tube!"
"Mary! My God! it might kill you!"
She flung forward, but the conflict ceased as he pulled her back. A small quantity of the mucus had been dislodged by the paroxysm that it had produced. Nature had done—imperfectly, but still done—what science had failed to effect. The boy breathed.
The outbreak was followed by complete exhaustion, and again it seemed that life was extinct. Kincaid assured himself that it lingered still, and turned to her gravely.
"You were about to do a wicked, and a foolish thing. After what it has gone through, nothing under Heaven can save the child; you ought to know as much as that. At best you could only hope to prolong life for two or three hours."
Tears were dripping down her cheeks.
"'Only!'" she said; "do you think that's nothing to me? An hour longer, and his father will be here—to find him living, or dead. Do you suppose I can't imagine—do you suppose I can't feel—whathefeels, there on the stage, counting the seconds to release? In an hour the curtain 'll be down and he'll have rushed here praying to be in time. If it were revealed that I should do nothing but prolong the life by sacrificing my own, I'd sacrifice it! Gladly, proudly—yes, proudly, as God hears! You could never have prevented me—nothing should prevent me. I'd risk my life ten times rather than he should arrive too late."
"This," drearily murmured the man who loved her, "is the return you would make for his sin?"
"No," she said; "it is the atonement I would offer for mine."
He stood dumbly at the head of the cot; the woman trembled at the foot. But they saw the change next minute simultaneously. Once more the passage had become hopelessly clogged. With a broken cry, she rushed to the cot's vacant side. This time he could not pull her back. He spoke.
"Stop! Nurse Brettan, I order you to leave the ward!"
The voice was imperative, and an instant she wavered; but it was the merest instant. The woman had vanquished the nurse, and the woman was the stronger now. A glance she threw of mingled supplication and defiance, and, casting herself on the bed, she set her lips to the tube.
It was the work of a moment. Almost as he started forward to restrain her, she had raised herself, and, burying her face in a handkerchief, leant, shaking, against the wall.
Kincaid gazed at her, white and stern, and a tense silence followed, broken by her.
"You can have me dismissed," she said—"he will see his child!"
He answered nothing. The cruelty of the speech which ignored and perverted everything outside the interests of the man by whom she had been wronged seemed the last blow that his pain could have to bear. A sense of the inequality and injustice of life's distribution overwhelmed him. Viewed in the light of her defeated enemy, he felt as broken, as far from power or dignity, as if the imputation had been just.
She resumed her seat; and, waiting as long as duty still required, he at last made some remark. She replied constrainedly. The intervention of the pause was demonstrated by their tones, which sounded flat and dull. He was thankful when he could go; and his departure was not less welcome to the woman. To her reactionary weakness the removal of supervision came as balm. He went from her heavily, and she drew her chair yet closer to the bedside.
Tony would see his boy! She had no other settled thought, excepting the reluctant one that she would meet him when he came. The reflection that he would hear of her share in the matter gladdened her scarcely at all; indeed, when she contemplated his enlightenment, she was perturbed. He would learn that his initial faith in her had been justified, and he would be sorry, piteously sorry, for all the hard words that he had used. But byherthere was little to be gained; what she had done had been for him. She found it even a humiliation that her act would be known to him—a humiliation which his gratitude would do nothing to decrease. She looked at the watch that she had pawned for the rent of her garret after his renunciation of her, and determined the length of time before he could arrive.
The stress of the last few minutes could not be suffered to beget any abatement of wariness. But by degrees, as the reverberation of the outburst faded, she felt more tranquil than she had done since the Matron joined her earlier in the evening; and the vigil was continued with undiminished care. Archie would die, but now Tony would be present. The closing moments would not pass while he was simulating misery or mirth on a stage. Horror of the averted fate, more dreadful to a woman's mind even than to the father's own, made the brief protraction appear an almost priceless boon.
It was possible for him to be here already; not likely, perhaps, so soon as this, but possible, supposing that the piece "played quick" and that a cab had been ordered to await him at the door. She listened for the roll of wheels in the distance, but the silence was undisturbed. Archie was lying as calm as when she had entered. If no further impediment occurred, to exhaust the remaining strength more speedily, it seemed safe to think that he might last two hours.
Her misgivings as to her risk were slight. The danger she had run might prove fatal; but the thing had been done with impunity at least once before—she remembered hearing of it. While we have our health, the contingency of sickness appears to us more remote from ourselves than from our neighbours; in her own case, a serious result looked exceedingly improbable. She regarded the benefit of her temerity as cheaply bought. None knew better than she, however, how much completive attention was called for, what alertness of eye and hand was essential afterwards; and, sitting there, her gaze was fastened on the boy as if she sought to hearken to every flutter of his pulse.
Now a cab did approach; she held her breath as it rattled near. It stopped, she fancied, before the hospital gate. Still with her stare riveted on the unconscious child, she strained her ears for the confirmatory tread. The seconds ticked away, swelling to minutes, but no footstep fell. The hope had been a false one! Presently the cab was heard again, driving away. She began to be distressed, alarmed. Making allowance for a too sanguine calculation, it was time that he was here!... The delay was unaccountable; no conjecture could be formed as to its extent. Her fingers were laced and unlaced in her lap nervously. She imagined the rumble of wheels in the soughing of the wind, alternately intent and discomfited. The faint slamming of a cottage-door startled her to expectation. In the profundity of the hush that spread with every subsidence of sound, she seemed to hear the throbbing of her heart.
Out in the town a clock struck twelve, and apprehension verged upon despair. The eyes fixed on the boy were desperate now; she leant over him to contest the advent of the end shade by shade. So far no change was shown; Tony's fast dwindling chance was not yet lost. "God, God! Send him quick!" she prayed. Racked with impatience, tortured by the fear that what she had done might, after all, be unavailing, she strove to devise some theory to uphold her. Debarred from venting her suspense in action, she found the constraint of her posture almost physical pain.
The clock boomed the hour of one. It swept suddenly across her mind that the Matron had been doubtful of letting him proceed to the ward on his return: he must have come and gone! She had been reaching forward, and her arm remained extended vaguely. Consternation engulfed her. If during ten seconds she thought of anything but her neglect to ensure his being admitted, she thought she felt the blood in her freezing from head to foot. He had come and gone!—she was thwarted by her own oversight. Defeat paralysed the woman.... Her exploit now assumed an aspect of grievous hazard, enhanced by its futility. She lifted herself faint at soul. Her services were instinctive, mechanical; she resumed them, she was assiduous and watchful; but she appeared to be prompted by some external influence, with her brain benumbed.
All at once a new thought thrilled her stupor. She heard the stroke of three, and the boy was still alive! The ungovernable hope shook her back to sensation. She told herself that the hope was wild, fantastic, that she would be mad to harbour it, but excitement shivered in her; she was strung with the intensity of what she hesitated to own. Every second that might bring the end and yet withheld it, fanned the hope feebly; the passage of each slow, dragging minute stretched suspense more taut. She dreaded the quiver of her lashes that veiled his face from view, as if the spark of life might vanish as her eyelids fell. Between eternities, the distant clock rang forth the quarters of the hour across the sleeping town, and at every quarter she gasped "Thank God!" and wondered would she thank Him by the next. Hour trailed into hour. The boy lingered still. Haggard, she tended and she watched. The dreariness of daybreak paled the blind before the bed. The blind grew more transparent, and hope trembled on. There was the stir of morning, movement in the street; dawn touched them wanly, and hope held her yet. And sunrise showed him breathing peacefully once more—and then she knew that Heaven had worked a miracle and the child would live.
Among the staff that case is cited now and still the nurses tell how Mary Brettan saved his life. The localExaminergave the matter a third of a column, headed "Heroism of a Hospital Nurse." And, cut down to five lines, it was mentioned in the London papers. Mr. Collins, of Pattenden's, glanced at the item, having despatched the youth of the prodigious yawn with a halfpenny, and—remembering how the surname was familiar—wondered for a moment what the woman was doing who could never sell their books.
It was later in the morning that Carew entered the hospital, as Kincaid crossed the hall. The porter heard the doctor's answer to a stammered question:
"Your child is out of danger. I'm sorry to say Nurse Brettan risked her life for him."
Then the visitor started, and stopped short hysterically, and the doctor moved by, with his jaw set hard.
To Mary he had said little. He was confronted by a recovery that it had been impossible to foresee, but his predominant emotion was terror of its cost. From the Matron she heard of Carew's gratitude, and received his message of entreaty to be allowed to see her. It was not delivered, however, till she woke, and then he had gone; and by the morrow her reluctance to have an interview had deepened. She contented herself with the note that he sent: one written to say that he "could not write—that in a letter he was unable to find words." She read it very slowly, and it drooped to her lap, and she sat gazing at the wall. She brushed the mist from her eyes, and read the lines again, and yet again —long after she knew them all by heart.
Next day she rose with a strange stiffness in her throat. With her descent to the ward, it increased. And she was frightened. But at first she would not mention it, because she was loath for Kincaid to know. She felt it awkward to draw breath; by noon the difficulty was not to be concealed. She went to bed—protesting, but by Kincaid's command.
Nurse Brettan had become a patient. She said how queer it was to be in the familiar room in this unfamiliar way. The nurse whose watch of Archie she had relieved was chosen to attend on her; and Mary chaffed her weakly on her task.
"It ought to be a good patient this spell, Sophie! If I'm a nuisance, you may shake me."
But to Kincaid she spoke more earnestly now the danger-signal was displayed.
"You did all you could to stop me, doctor. Whatever happens, you'll remember that! You did everything that was right, and so did I."
"Don't talk rubbish about 'happenings,' Nurse!" he said; "we shall want you to be up and at work again directly."
Nevertheless, she grew worse as the child grew stronger; and for a fortnight the man who loved her suffered fiercer pain each time he answered "Rubbish!" And the man whom she loved sought daily tidings of her when he called to view the progress of his boy. She used to hear of his inquiries and turn her face on the pillow, and lie for a long while very quiet. Her distaste to meeting him had gone and she craved for him to come to her. But now she could not bring herself to let him do it, because her neck and face were so swollen and unsightly, and her voice had dwindled to a whisper that was not nice to hear.
Then all hope was at an end—it was known that she was dying. And one morning the nurse said to her:
"Perhaps this afternoon you'd like to see him? He has asked again."
"This afternoon?" Momentarily her eyes brightened, but the shame of her unloveliness came back to her, and she sighed. "Give me ... the glass, Sophie ... there's a dear!" She looked up at her reflection in the narrow mirror held aslant over the bed. "No," she said feebly, "not this afternoon. Perhaps tor morrow."
The girl put back the glass without speaking. And a gaze followed her questioningly till she left.
When Kincaid came in, Mary asked him how long she had to live.
He was worn with a night of agony—a night whose marks the staff had observed and wondered at.
"How long?" she asked; "I know I can't get better. When's it going to be?" He clenched his teeth to curb the twitching of his mouth. "It isn'tnow?"
"No, no," he said. "You shouldn't, youmustn'tfrighten yourself like this!"
"To-day?"
"Not to-day," he answered hoarsely, "I honestly believe."
"To-morrow?"
"Mary!"
"To-morrow?" she pleaded in the same painful whisper. "Tell me the truth. What to-morrow?"
"I think—to-morrow you may know how much I loved you."
She did not move; and he had turned aside. He noticed it was raining and how the drops spattered on the window-sill.
"I didn't see," she murmured; "I thought-you—had—forgotten."
"No," he said; "you never saw. It doesn't matter; I know now it would never have been any use. Hush, dear; don't talk; it's so bad for you!"
"I'm sorry. But I washisbefore you came. I couldn't. Could I?"
"No, of course. Don't worry; don't, for God's sake! There's nothing to be sorry about. I must go to the next ward; I shall see you this afternoon. Try to sleep a little, won't you?"
He went out, with a word to the nurse, who came back; and Mary lay silent.
Presently she said:
"Sophie—yes, this afternoon,"
Something in the voice startled; the girl gulped before she spoke:
"All right! he shall hear as soon as he comes."
"Don't forget."
"I won't forget, chummy; you can feel quite sure about it."
"Thanks, Sophie. I'm so tired."
The rain was falling still. She heard it blowing against the panes, and lay listening to it, wondering if it would keep him away. Then her thoughts drifted; and she slept.
When Kincaid returned he took Sophie's place, and sat watching till the figure stirred. The eyes opened at him vaguely.
"I've been asleep?"
"Yes."
"Is it very late?"
"It's about three, I think.... Just three."
"Ah!" she said with relief.
She closed her eyes again, and there was a long pause. He covered her nerveless hand with his own.
"Don't grieve," she whispered; "it doesn't hurt."
"Oh, my dear, my dear! You, and my mother, too—helpless with both!"
"The many," she said faintly, "think of the many you've pulled through. You've ... been very good to me ... very good."
To his despair it seemed that ever since they met she had been telling him that. It was the dole that she had yielded, the atom that his devotion had ever wrung from her—she found him "good"!
And even as she said it, her eagerness caught the footfall, that she had been waiting for; and she nestled lower on the pillow, trying to hide her disfigurement from view.
"Mary," said Kincaid, "you didn't care for me; but will you let me kiss you on the forehead—while you know?"
A smile—a smile of tenderness wonderfully new and strange to him irradiated her face; and, turning, he saw the other man had come in.