|IT was a delightfully cool and crisp morning for midsummer, and Doctor
Dearing was on the lawn between his house and Galt's, when he noticed
that the railroad president had come out into his own grounds for a
smoke. The two exchanged greetings through cordial signals, and Galt
crossed over and joined his friend.
“What news from New York?” he asked, as he flicked the ashes from his
cigar.
“They will be here to-morrow,” Dearing replied. “Madge has been homesick
for fully two weeks; but Uncle Tom made her stay longer, hoping that
she would become more interested in what was going on. They have had all
sorts of attentions paid them, but he writes me that he has never been
worried so much in his life over her. He says she enjoyed the first two
weeks thoroughly, but lately she has been actually depressed. He tried
everything imaginable, but home was what she wanted and would have.”
“And so they are coming?” Galt said, reflectively.
“Yes, they are on the way now. After all, what better could one ask for
than a snug retreat like this in hot weather? Madge is fond of home.
She doesn't care for giddy social things among a lot of money-spending
Yankees, and I admire her taste.”
“Yes, so do I,” Galt answered, and he smoked steadily, his eyes bent on
the ground. .
“I have an unpleasant job on hand,” Dearing remarked. “I have delayed
it several times, but I have decided to do it to-day and have it over
with.”
“What is it?” Galt asked.
“It is a slight operation I have to perform on little Lionel.”
“Operation? Lionel?” Galt started, and then checked himself and stared
blankly. “I didn't know there was anything at all wrong with him.”
“Oh, it is only a slight and common thing with children,” Dearing
explained. “Enlarged tonsils and adenoidal growth which must be removed.
Outwardly the little chap is as sound as a dollar, and, so far, his
wonderful strength has fought the thing off; but for a child so nervous
as he is, and high strung and imaginative, it might, later on affect him
seriously. Neglected cases have brought on permanent deafness and lung
trouble. It is inherited, as a rule; you, _yourself_, had something of
that sort, I think you told me.”
“Yes, yes,” Galt replied. Deep down within him something seemed to
clutch his vitals. In the ear of his naked soul an accusing voice was
sounding: “Inherited! Inherited!” The word rang out like a threat from
the Infinite--from the vast mystery of life which had of late been so
tenaciously closing around him. Even the pain Lionel was to undergo was
the outcome of another's sin.
“Oh, it is a very simple operation,” Dearing went on, “and in any
ordinary case I shouldn't give it a second thought; but, by George, I
have become attached to that little chap. He is the pluckiest little man
I ever knew. I had an exhibition of his grit one day that was ahead of
anything I ever saw in a child. He had fallen, and his upper teeth had
cut a deep gash in his tongue. They sent for me, and I saw that I'd have
to take a stitch in it to close the ugly gap. It was a ticklish job, and
I hardly saw how I could do it, for I didn't want to use an anaesthetic.
But I talked to him just as I would to a man, and he promised me he
wouldn't cry. He didn't. I give you my word, old man, he didn't whimper
as the needle went through, and even while I was tying the thread; but
I could see from his big, strained eyes that it hurt him like rips.
A child with grit like that, Kenneth, is bound to make a stir in the
world. I have noticed that you like him too, and I am glad you do. The
truth is, darn you, you are taking my place! I'm jealous; he thinks you
are a regular king. He is always talking about you.”
“When do you think you will do the--the operation?” Galt faltered, as he
averted his shrinking glance from Dearing's face.
“Why, I want to do it right off. It is like this: his mother knows it
has to be done, and has agreed to leave it entirely to me; but she is
very nervous over it. She has a vein of morbid superstition running
through her. She fancies that some disaster is bound, sooner or later,
to happen to him--in fact, as she has often put it to me, she hardly
believes that a just God would allow such a sensitive and ambitious
child to grow up to a full comprehension of his humiliation.
“I see--I see what you mean,” Galt managed to say, and his soul seemed
to writhe anew as he stood trying to make his words sound casual.
“So I thought,” the doctor went on, “that I'd like, if possible, to
get it over without her knowledge, or without her mother knowing of it.
Nervous people standing around, half frightened out of their wits, at
such a time, unsteady my hand and upset me generally. Now, as I have
everything in readiness up-stairs, I think, when Lionel comes over this
morning, as I've asked him to do, I'll talk him into it. Young Doctor
Beaman, my new assistant, is up-stairs sterilizing my instruments, and
he will give the chloroform. You see, it would be a pleasant surprise
and a relief to those doting women to suddenly find out that the thing
they have made such a fuss about is over and no harm done.” Galt made no
reply. He had seen a trim little figure darting across the lower end of
the lawn, and saw a flash of golden tresses in the sunlight, and knew
that Lionel was coming--and to what? Galt suppressed an inward groan.
The unsuspecting child was bounding along, joyous and full of life, to
the grim, inexplicable snare which had been set for him. Young as he
was, he was to be asked to be firm and brave, that his little form might
take on the semblance of death and submit to the knife, a thing at the
thought of which even strong men had quailed. And what might, after all,
be the as yet unrevealed outcome? One case in every ten thousand, at
least, failed to survive the artificial sleep, owing to this or that
overlooked internal defect. Would this child of malignant misfortune be
that one?
Lionel drew near, sweeping the two men with merry eyes of welcome.
There was an instant's hesitation as to which to greet first, and then
instinct seemed to swerve him toward Galt, his hand outstretched. With
a queer throb of appreciation, the father took it and felt it pulsate in
his clasp.
“Come here, Lionel, my boy,” Dearing said, with affected lightness of
manner. “You remember what I said one day about those ugly lumps down
there in your little throat which are going to get bigger and bigger,
till after a while you can't eat any jam and cake? You wouldn't like
that, would you?”
“I remember.” Lionel passed his tapering hand over his white throat. “I
can feel them when I swallow.”
“And that is why you have those bad dreams, and jump in your sleep, and
think you are falling,” Dearing added, adroitly. “You know you promised
to let me get them out.”
“Oh, not to-day!” the boy protested, throwing a wistful glance up at the
unclouded sky. “I was going to build a really-really house out of the
bricks at the barn. I have a stove-pipe for a smoke-stack. I'll show you
both. Come with me! Oh, it's great!”
“Not to-day. Lionel, listen.” Dearing drew the boy close to him, and
tenderly stroked back his hair from his fine brow. “Mamma, you know, is
terribly nervous about it. _Women_ are that way, aren't they? Men and
boys, like us, know better. She can hardly sleep at night for thinking
about it--even a little thing like that. We can do it now, and I can
run over and tell her you are sleeping like a kitten in my big bed
up-stairs, and she and Granny will be so glad. It won't hurt a bit, you
know, for the medicine will make you sleep through it all.” A shadow of
deep disappointment came into Lionel's expressive eyes. The warm color
of life in his face faded into tense gravity, and they saw him clasp his
little hands and wring them undecidedly.
“And you think to-day is the best time?” he faltered, on the edge of
refusal.
“The very best of all, Lionel,” Dearing said, gently. “You wouldn't be
afraid of me, would you?”
The child stared dumbly. To Galt's accusing sense the world had never
held a more desolate sentient being than this incipient repetition of
himself. The child had proved that he knew no physical fear. To what,
then, did he owe this evident clutch of horror? Could it be due to
some psychic warning of approaching danger, or was the sensitive child
telepathically governed by the morbid fears which, at that moment, were
raging in the heart of his father?
“Come, that's a good, nice boy!” Dearing urged. “I see you are going to
be a brave little man.”
“I'm not afraid it will _hurt_,” Lionel faltered, “but I don't like to
be put to--to sleep.”
“But it must be so, my boy,” the doctor said. “Come on. Mamma will see
us in a minute and smell a mouse.” For a moment yet the child stood
undecided, his gaze alternately on the two faces before him. Suddenly,
while they waited and his eyes were resting in strange appeal on Galt,
he asked:
“Will you come, too?”
A shock as if from some unknown force went through the man addressed,
but, seeing no alternative, he answered:
“If you wish it, yes, of course.”
“And _you_ think I ought to--to do it?”
“Yes,” Galt nodded, his head rocking like that of an automaton. “The
doctor knows best.”
“Well, then, I'll go,” the boy sighed, with another wistful look over
the lawn. “I'll go.”
As they were entering the house, by some strange mandate of fate or
instinct the boy again took his father's hand, and Galt held it as they
began to ascend the broad, walnut stairs. Argue as he would that the
operation was only a most ordinary thing, to Galt's morbid state of mind
it assumed the shape of a tragedy staged and enacted by the very imps of
darkness.
On the way up the boy tripped on the stair-carpeting and slipped and
fell face downward. He was unhurt, but Galt raised him in his arms and
bore him up the remainder of the steps into a big, light room off the
corridor.
“Here we are, Doctor Beaman!” Dearing cheerily called out to a slender,
beardless young man, who, with a towel in hand, was bending over some
polished instruments on the bureau. “This is the little chap who never
cries when he is hurt. He is a regular soldier, I tell you!”
“No, I'm not afraid,” the boy said, as he stood alone in the centre
of the room; but still, as his father noted, there was a certain
contradictory rigidity of his features which he had never remarked
before.
Galt told himself that the child's evident dread, vague as it was, was
also an inheritance; for he recalled how he himself had once taken ether
to have a slight operation performed. He had been a man in years at the
time, and yet the effect on his mind as to what might be the outcome had
been most depressing. That day, as he was doing now, he had looked upon
the drug-induced sleep as a dangerous approach to death; and now, as
then, he gravely feared that the tiny thread of reduced vitality might
be torn asunder. He stood dumb with accusing horror as the two doctors
hastily made their grewsome arrangements, such as securing warm water,
fresh towels and sheets, which, in their very whiteness, suggested a
shroud.
The noise made as they drew a narrow table across the resounding floor
into the best light between the two windows jarred harshly on his tense
nerves. These things were grim enough, but the wan isolation of the
waiting child, as he stood with that war against fear and shame of
fear going on in his great, fathomless eyes, so like those of his
artist-mother--that appealing little figure, nameless, disowned among
men, was stamped on the retina of Galt's eye for the remainder of his
life.
“Now, take off your waist and collar and necktie,” Dearing said to
Lionel--“that will be enough. We'll have you all right in a jiffy. You
are not afraid _now_, are you?”
Galt's heart sank like a plummet, for the child's lips moved, but no
sound issued. The little fellow turned his face away as he began to
undress. He removed the flowing necktie, but his little fingers could
not unfasten the stiff linen collar.
“Help him, Kenneth,” Dearing said. “My hands are full.”
Galt obeyed, his fingers coming into contact with the cold chin of the
child and the soft flesh of his neck. He felt like snatching the boy
from the damnable spot, as a mother might her young from the claws of
a wild beast. Yet, outwardly calm, he drew the sleeves of the child's
blouse off and laid it on a chair.
“Now we are ready for you, young man,” Dearing said, lightly. “I see you
are not afraid I'll hurt you.”
“No, I know it won't _hurt_,” Lionel said, “but--”
“Don't you begin butting me,” Dearing laughed. “You are not a goat like
the one that butted Grover Weston heels over head the other day.”
“If I shouldn't wake up--I mean if I really _shouldn't_, you know,”
Lionel finished, with a faint effort to smile at the doctor's jest,
“won't you please not tell my mother too quick? She gets frightened so
easily, and, you see, if I didn't wake up--if I never woke again--”
“Ah, come off!” Dearing laughed, as he turned to his assistant. “Doctor,
this kid hints that we don't know our business.”
“But if I didn't wake, if I _didn't!_” Lionel insisted, “you'd not scare
her, would you? And--and”--his lower lip quivered--“wouldn't you tell
her that I wasn't a bit afraid, and that I didn't cry, and--wait! wait!
Won't you tell her that it didn't hurt a single bit, not even a little
_teensy bit?_”
“Yes, yes,” Dearing said, and, considerably taken aback, he stared at
Galt rather than at the insistent speaker. “I'll tell her you are the
best boy in the world--the best, the bravest, and the sweetest. And God
knows I'll mean it,” he finished, in a lower tone to Galt. “I've seen
thousands of kids, Kenneth, but this one gets nearer me than all the
rest put together. I swear I am almost tempted to throw the darn job up.
But, you see, it has to be done. Doctor,” turning to his assistant, “put
him on the table, and I'll tickle his nose and make him laugh. We'll
make him have the funniest dreams he ever had.”
Doctor Beaman went to the boy and held out his arms, and Lionel was
lifted to the table and stretched out on the crisp sheet which had been
spread over it. Just then, happening to look round, Dearing saw Galt's
face, and hastily stepped to his side. “My Lord!” he whispered, “I see
this thing is going against you, old man. You are nauseated; you look
faint. Many men are that way--young students sometimes have to give up
surgery for that reason. It is nothing to be ashamed of. You like the
little chap, and your sympathies are worked up, that's all. But, really,
I don't think you ought to stay. I become nervous if others are, and I
must have a free hand. Besides, if you were to keel over in a faint
at an important moment I couldn't look after you. You'd better run
down-stairs and take a whiff of air. I'll call you when it is over.”
“Is he going?--must he go?” Lionel asked, as he turned his head and saw
Galt moving to the door. “Yes,” Dearing said, “but only down-stairs.”
“Oh,” the child exclaimed, regretfully, and averted his face, “I thought
he could stay!”
Down into the still silence of the great hall Galt went. There was
something heartlessly maddening in the calm, yellow sunlight on the
grass, which he could see through the doorway. The birds in the trees,
as they flitted about with twigs in their mouths and chirped in glee,
seemed mocking voices of despair from the deliberate tyranny of the
universe.
“God have mercy and spare him!” the man cried out from the depths of his
agony. “Spare him, O God, spare him!”
Unconscious of the incongruous prayer which had fallen from his lips, he
turned into the drawing-room, on the left of the hall, and sank into an
easy-chair, covering his face with his stiff hands. Suddenly he heard a
light step on the veranda, and, raising his eyes, he saw Dora standing
in the hall, glancing wildly and excitedly about her. Possessed by the
fear that she might call out, and thus make her presence known at that
most crucial moment, he rose and hastened to her. She did not see him
till he was close at her side, and then she turned and their eyes met.
“Where is Lionel--where is my child?” she panted.
He stood staring at her, unable to formulate a reply, and, brushing past
him with an air of contempt, which he read all too clearly, she turned
to the stairs, and started to ascend.
“Oh, you mustn't--you really mustn't!” he called out in protest, and he
put a detaining hand on her arm.
Shrinking from his touch, she stared at him piteously.
“Then they really are doing it!” she cried. “They are up there operating
on my child! I knew it when Doctor Beaman drove up, and Doctor Wynn came
and asked Lionel to play over here.”
Galt made no denial. He stood beside her, swept out of himself by the
sheer power of her astounding beauty, as he now beheld it for the first
time since their parting. In his wildest stretch of fancy as to what
the years might have brought her, he had not dreamed that she had become
such a flower among women. There was a seductive maturity of intellect
in her faultless face. The strange, appealing, and yet unreadable lights
of genius were burning in her dark, mystic eyes. He stood before her
with the smitten humility, the cringing shame, of a subject rebuked by
his queen.
“Yes, I am sure of it!” she moaned, and she lowered her glorious head to
the newel of the stairs and shuddered. “They are cutting my darling,
and I can't go to him. Doctor Wynn thought he'd spare my feelings--as if
that counted.”
She suddenly looked him squarely in the face, and he shrank before the
calm penetration of her stare. “We'll never see him alive again,” she
said, in a low, husky voice--“never again on earth!”
“Oh no, don't say that!” he cried, finding his submerged voice in the
agony produced by her suggestion. “God wouldn't be so unmerciful--the
child has harmed no one!”
“You speak of God,” she suddenly retorted, standing farther from him and
drawing herself erect. “The word was a joke with you once,” she added,
with a bitter sneer. “And I believed your puny theories, and blindly
followed out the deductions you made with your nose in the earth during
our vain dream of intellectual supremacy. But a change was wrought in
me. Into my wretched darkness Lionel came, and I saw and was convinced.
He was my living, pulsating, immortal link to the Infinite. But he is
not for the earth. He is above it. God allowed Christ to suffer the
pangs of a material existence for the salvation of the world, but He
is too merciful to let my sensitive darling face what he would have to
face. Lionel was sent to lift me, with his tiny hands, from the slough
into which I had fallen, but his mission is over--oh, God, it is
over! How can I bear it--how can I live without him? He is my life,
my _soul!_” She covered her tortured face with her bloodless hands
and remained still, save for the emotion which quivered through her
hysterical frame.
Galt stood gazing at her for a moment, an almost uncontrollable yearning
on him to clasp her in his arms and beg her forgiveness. He might have
done so but for the fear of offending her. He glanced up the stairs. How
still it was above! How like death! In his alarmed fancy he saw the two
doctors standing aghast over the still, senseless form of his child.
They had miscalculated! The physical examination had misled them; ether
should have been the drug employed rather than chloroform!
Uncovering her face, Dora read his thoughts. She uttered a low,
despairing wail, and they stood looking into each other's eyes. There
was a sound of sudden movement on the floor above. Some one was raising
a window-sash at the top of the stairs.
“I am sweating like an ox!” they heard Dearing say; and--could they
believe their ears?--he was actually laughing, and calling out to
Lionel: “I told you you'd not know when it was done. Now, lie down and
go to sleep. You are as sound as a silver dollar. It may sting just a
little tiny bit when you swallow, but that will be gone by to-morrow. Go
to sleep, and when you wake I'll have that tricycle ready.”
“Thank God--thank God,” Dora exclaimed, “he is saved!”
She started up the stairs, and in desperation Galt caught her arm. “Wait
one moment, Dora,” he implored, “I have something to say. You must hear
me. I am--”
“Don't stop me!” She shook his hand loose from her sleeve, and the
haughty look of contempt he had noticed before rose into her fathomless
eyes as she glanced back at him. “I am going up to him. I won't waken
him. I'll be very quiet, but I must be near him.”
Standing at the foot of the stairs, he saw her ascend and disappear
above. How beautiful she was! How rare and exquisite--how infinitely
removed from her kind. And that was Dora--the Dora of all that was good
and pure of his past, the guileless victim of all that was low, sordid,
and unworthy within him!