The Squirrel-Cage Part 37

"Yes," she said, not blenching. "What else can I do?"

"'Phone to the hospital for a trained nurse, start some water boiling to sterilize things, and get somebody here in a hurry to go to the nearest drug store for me. I'll go back to her now."

"Is she--is she--dangerously--?" asked Lydia in a low, steady voice.

"Yes; she is," he said unsparingly.

The telegram Lydia sent her husband read: "Ariadne suddenly taken very sick. Dr. Melton says dangerously. He thinks she does not suffer much, though she seems to. When shall I expect you?"

The answer she received in a few hours read: "Have two nurses. Get Jones, Cleveland, consultation. Impossible to leave."

It was handed her as she was running up the stairs with a pitcher of hot water. She read it, as she did everything that day, in a dreamlike rapidity and quietness, and showed it to Dr. Melton without comment. He handed it back without a word. Later, he turned for an instant from the little bed to say, irrelevantly, "Peterson, of Toledo, would be better than Jones, if I have to have anybody. But so far, it's simple enough--d.a.m.nably simple."

He was obliged to leave for a time after this, called by a patient at the point of death. That seemed quite natural to Lydia. Death was thick in the air. He left the baby to a clear-eyed, deft-handed, impersonal trained nurse, on whom Lydia waited slavishly, sitting motionless in a corner of the room until she was sent for something, then flying noiselessly upon her errand.

Her mother and father were out of town, and Marietta limited herself to telephoning frequent inquiries. She told 'Stas.h.i.+e to tell her sister she knew she would be only in the way, with two nurses in the house. Lydia made 'Stas.h.i.+e answer all the telephone calls. She felt that if she broke her silence, if she tried to speak--and then she could not bear to be out of the sight of the little figure with the flushed cheeks, moving her head back and forth on the pillow and gazing about with bright, unseeing eyes. As night came on, she began to give, in a voice not her own, little piteous cries of suffering, or strange delirious mockeries of her pretty laughter and quaint, unintelligible, prattling talk. Once, as the long, hot night stood still, the baby called out, quite clearly: "Mamma! Mamma!" It was the first time she had ever said it.

Lydia sprang up and rushed toward the bed like an insane person, her arms outstretched, her eyes glittering. Dr. Melton did not forbid her to take up her child, but he said in a neutral tone, "It would be better for her to lie perfectly quiet."

Lydia stopped short, shuddering. The doctor did not take his eyes from his little patient. After a moment the mother went slowly back to her seat. "Hand me the thermometer," said the doctor to the nurse.

In the early morning came a telegram from Paul. "Wire me frequently baby's condition. Spare no expense in treatment."

Lydia answered: "Ariadne slightly worse. Doctor says crisis in three days."

This time she put in no extra information as to the baby's suffering, and her message was under ten words, like his own. She despatched him thereafter a bulletin every four or five hours. They ran mostly to the effect that Ariadne was about the same.

The doctor came and went, the nurses relieved each other, the telephone rang for Marietta's inquiries, Flora Burgess called once a day to get the news from 'Stas.h.i.+e. Lydia was slave to the nurses, alert for the slightest service she could render them, divining, with a desperate intuition, their needs before they were formulated. 'Stas.h.i.+e was the only person who paid the least attention to her, 'Stas.h.i.+e the only phenomena to break in on the solitude that surrounded her like an illimitable plain. 'Stas.h.i.+e made her eat. 'Stas.h.i.+e saw to it that once or twice she lay down. 'Stas.h.i.+e combed her hair, and bathed her white face--most of all, 'Stas.h.i.+e went about with eyes that reflected faithfully the suffering in Lydia's own. She said very little, but as they pa.s.sed, the two women sometimes exchanged brief words: "Niver you think it possible, Mis' Hollister!"

"No," Lydia would answer resolutely; "it's not possible."

But as the hours slowly filed past the doctor a.s.sured her bluntly that it would be quite possible. "There's a fighting chance," he said, "and nothing more." He added relentlessly, "If I hadn't been such a fool as to let you wean her--"

There was in his manner none of his usual tenderness to his G.o.dchild.

One would have thought he scarcely saw her. He was the physician wholly.

Lydia was grateful to him for this. She could not have borne his tenderness then, but his professional concentration left her horribly alone.

No, not alone! There was always 'Stas.h.i.+e--silent 'Stas.h.i.+e, with red eyes, her heart bleeding. But even 'Stas.h.i.+e's loyal heart could not know all the bitterness of Lydia's. 'Stas.h.i.+e's b.r.e.a.s.t.s did not swell and throb, as if in mockery. 'Stas.h.i.+e did not hear, over and over, "If she had not been weaned--"

On the night and near the hour when the crisis was expected, Lydia was at the end of the hall, where she had installed an oil-stove. She was heating water needed for some of the processes of the sick room. It had begun to steam up in the thick, hot night air, was singing loudly, and would boil in an instant. She sat looking at it in her tense, trembling quiet. There was no light but the blue flame of the stove.

Suddenly there rang loudly in her ears the question to which she had deafened herself with such crucifying effort--"What if Ariadne should die?" It was as though someone had called to her. She looked down into the black abyss from which she had willfully turned away her eyes, and saw that it was fathomless. A throe of revolt and hatred shook her. She bowed her head to her knees, racked by an anguish compared with which the torture of childbirth was nothing; and out of this deadly pain came forth, as in childbirth, something alive--a vision as swift, as pa.s.sing as a glimpse into the gates of Paradise; a blinding certainty of immensity, of the hugeness of the whole of which she and Ariadne were a part; of the sacredness of life, which was to be lived sacredly, even if-- She raised her head, living a more exalted instant than she had ever dreamed she would know.

The water broke into quick, dancing bubbles. In a period of time incalculably short, transfiguration had come to her.

The door at the other end of the hall opened and Dr. Melton's light, uneven footstep echoed back of her. She did not turn. He laid a hand on her shoulder. It was trembling, and with a wonderful consciousness of endless courage she turned to comfort him. His lips were twitching so that for an instant he could not speak. Then, "She'll pull through. I'm pretty sure now, she'll--" he got out and leaned against the wall.

Lydia took him into a protecting embrace as though it were his baby who had turned back from the gates of death. She had come into a larger heritage. She was mother to all that suffered. Looking down on the head which, for an instant, lay on her bosom, she noticed how white the hair was. He was an old man, her G.o.dfather, he had been on a long strain--.

He looked up at her. And then in an instant it was over. He had mastered himself and had grasped the handle of the basin.

"How long has this been boiling?" he asked.

Lydia pointed to her watch, hanging on the wall. "Three minutes by that," she said. "May I leave to tell 'Stas.h.i.+e?"

The doctor nodded absently.

Neither spoke of Paul.

Lydia hurried across the dark, silent house with swift sureness. The happiness she was about to confer cast a radiance upon her. She touched the door to the servant's room, and ran her fingers lightly over it to find the k.n.o.b. Faint as the noise was, it was answered instantly by a stir inside. There was a thud of bare feet and a quick rush. Lydia felt the door swing open before her in the darkness and spoke quickly to the trembling, breathing form she divined there, "The doctor says she's safe."

Strong arms were about her, hot tears not her own rained down on her face. Before she knew it, she was swept to her knees, where, locked in the other's close embrace, she felt the big heart thump loud against her own and heard go up above her head a wild "Oh, G.o.d! Oh, Mary Mother! Oh, Christ! Oh, Mary Mother! Glory be to G.o.d! Hail, Mary, Mother of G.o.d!

Thanks be to G.o.d! Thanks be--"

Kneeling there in the blackness, with her servant's arms around her, Lydia thought it the first prayer she had ever heard.

Ariadne grew well with the miraculous rapidity of children, and when Paul came back was almost herself again, if a little thinner.

It was upon Lydia that Paul's eyes fastened, Lydia very white, her face almost translucent, her starry eyes contradicting the tremor of her lips. He drew her to him, crying out: "Why, Lydia darling, you look as though you'd been drawn through a knot-hole! This has been enough sight harder on you than on the baby! What in the world wore _you_ out so? I thought you had two nurses!"

He looked closely into her face, seeing more changes: "Why, you poor, poor, poor thing!" he said compa.s.sionately. "You look positively years older."

"Oh, I am that," she told him, seeming to speak, oddly enough, he thought, exultantly.

"You just shouldn't allow yourself to get so wrought up over Ariadne,"

he expostulated affectionately. "You'll wear yourself out! What earthly good did it do the baby? Sickness is a matter for professionals, I tell you what! You had the two nurses and your precious old Dr. Melton that you swear by! What more could be done? That's the reason I didn't come back. I knew well enough that there wasn't an earthly thing I could do to help."

Lydia looked at him so strangely that he noticed it. "Oh, of course I could have been company for you. But that was the _only_ thing! Getting the baby well was the business of the hour, _wasn't_ it now? And the doctor and nurses were looking out for that. Besides, you had 'Stas.h.i.+e to wait on you."

"Yes; I had 'Stas.h.i.+e," admitted Lydia.

Paul perceived uneasily some enigmatic quality in her quiet answer, and went on reasonably: "Now, Lydia, don't go making yourself out a martyr because I didn't come back. You know I'd have come if there was anything to be done! I'd have come from the ends of the earth to help you nurse her if we'd had to do that! But, thank the Lord, I make enough money so we could do better by the little tad than that!"

"Suppose I had gone to the theater that night," asked Lydia slowly.

"There was nothing I could do here."

Paul was justifiably aggrieved. "Good Lord, Lydia! I wasn't off amusing myself! I was doing _business!_"

His special accent for the word was never more p.r.o.nounced.

"Making money to pay for the trained nurses that saved her life," he ended. His conviction of the unanswerable force of this statement put him again in good humor. "Now, little madame, you listen to me. You're going to take a junketing honeymoon off with me, or I'll know the reason why! I'm going to take you up to Put-in-Bay for a vacation! Pretty near all our card-club gang are there now, and we'll have a gay old time and cheer you up! I bet you just let yourself go, and worried yourself into a fever, didn't you?"

During this speech Lydia stood leaning against him, feeling the cloth of his sleeve rough on her bare forearm, feeling the stir and life of his body, the warmth of his breath on her face. She had an impulse to scream wildly to him, as though to make him hear and stop and turn, before he finally disappeared from her sight; and she faced him dumbly. There were no words to tell him--she tried to speak, but before his absent, kind, wandering eyes, a foreknowledge of her own inarticulateness closed her lips. He had not been there, and so he would never know. She stirred, moved away, and rearranged the flowers in a vase. "Oh, yes; I worried, of course," she said. "The baby was awfully sick for three days."

She felt desperately that she was failing in the most obvious duty not to try to make him understand what had happened in his absence. She bethought herself of one fact, the mere statement of which should tell him a thousand times more eloquently than words, something of what she had suffered. "The doctor told me twice that she wouldn't have been sick if she hadn't been weaned." She said this with an accent of immense significance, clasping her hands together hard.

Paul was unpacking his suit-case. "Great Scott! You nursed her six months!" he said conclusively, over his shoulder. "Besides, you _had_ to wean her--don't you remember?"