THE ANSWER
More than once Rose caught herself wondering if, after that day was
done, she would ever be able to smile again. In obedience to the
doctor's prescription for Big Jerry, which it was ever her first duty to
fill, she never looked towards him--as he sat bent over before the fire,
eyes heavy with pain, breath coming in deep rasps, but lips set firmly
against a word of complaint--without sending him a message of love and
compassion through the intangible medium of that smile. Yet, as the
weary hours dragged on with plodding feet, it seemed to her as though
each new one was not an interest payment on a fund of happiness stored
within her heart, but a heavy dipping into the principal itself.
Before she had taken her early morning departure back up to the mountain
over the sodden, slippery path, she had received a telegram that Donald
had sent off as his last act before yielding to the lure of bed, and
which brought her the hope-engendering word that he would be with her as
soon as swift-speeding trains could bring him.
But that was yesterday. By no possibility could he reach them before the
coming evening, and surely never had the sun taken so long to make his
wintry journey across the pale blue sky.
Hour after hour Rose sat by the bedside of little Lou, and tenderly
stroked her cold small hands while she hummed unanswered lullabies, each
note of which was the chant of a wordless prayer. The sufferer lay so
white, so utterly still, save for the periods when her every breath was
a faint moan or she suddenly shook and twisted in a convulsive spasm,
that time and again the girl started up with a cry of terror frozen on
her lips but echoing in her heart, and bent fearfully over to press her
ear close against the baby's thin breast. As often it caught the barely
discernible beat of the little heart within.
The baby's eyes, now piteously crossed, had turned upward until the
starlike pupils were almost out of sight. There were long periods when
only the occasional twitching of the bloodless, childishly curved and
parted lips, or the uneasy moving of the golden crowned head on the
pillow, betrayed the fact that the spark of life still glowed faintly.
Could she, by the power of will and prayer, keep that spark alight until
the one on whom she pinned her faith should arrive, and fan it back to a
flame by his miraculous skill? That was Smiles' one thought.
The violet shadows of evening began at last to tinge the virgin
whiteness of the out-of-doors, and Rose caught herself starting eagerly,
with quickened pulse, at every new forest sound. The crunching tread of
Judd, who paced incessantly outside the window, grew almost unbearable.
She counted the steps as they died away, and listened for them to
return, until her nerves shrieked in protest, and it was only by an
effort that she curbed their clamoring demand that she rush to the door
and scream at him; bid him stand still or begone.
* * * * *
Through the shadows Donald was once again making his way up the now
familiar mountain side. To have climbed up the footpath with Miss
Merriman and their essential baggage would have been impossible, and he
had, after much persuasion, finally succeeded in hiring a man in
Fayville to drive them up in a springless, rickety wagon. This had
necessitated their taking a much more circuitous route, and what seemed
like an interminably long time.
During the railway journey from the Hub, he had told his companion all
of the relevant facts, and much of the story of Rose, and the nurse's
sympathetic interest in the recital had made her almost as anxious as
the man himself to arrive at their destination and answer the girl's cry
for aid.
Once she had voiced a doubt as to the wisdom of leaving his urgent
practice and taking such a trip on so slender grounds.
"But how do you know that it _is_ brain tumor, doctor, or that there is
either any chance of saving the child's life, or any real need of a
surgeon? At the most you have only the conclusion of a country doctor
who can hardly be competent to determine such a question."
"I have considered all that, Miss Merriman," he had replied, shortly,
and then added, as though he felt that an explanation were due,
"Frankly, when I made up my mind to go, I wasn't thinking of the patient
so much as I was of my foster-sister. Perhaps she won't appeal to you as
she has to me; but I really feel a strong responsibility for her future,
and I don't want her faith in m ... in physicians to be shattered. You
see, I have held up the ideal of service, regardless of reward, as our
motto." He sat silently looking out of the car window for a moment,
while the nurse studied his serious, purposeful face and mentally
revised her previous estimate of him. Then he went on, with an
apologetic laugh, "Besides--Oh, I know that it sounds utterly
preposterous, but there are times when a man's groundless premonitions
are more real to him than any logical conclusions of his own. This is
one of those times."
The subject dropped.
Donald had, in addition to a fortnight's compensation in advance, given
Miss Merriman a return ticket and sufficient money to cover all
necessary disbursements, and told her that she must, of course, look to
him for any additional salary. Under no circumstances, he said, was she
to accept what Rose was sure to try and press upon her.
At length the plodding horse turned into the little clearing before
Jerry's cabin, and, as it appeared, the watcher outside, his face
twitching, slunk silently away into the forest, where his racked soul
was to endure its hours of Gethsemane.
Rose heard them. She hastened to the door, and her white lips uttered a
low cry which spoke the overwhelming measure of her relief.
"I just _knew_ you'd come!" she said, as the man, numbed with cold,
swung his companion to the ground. The girl gave her a quick glance of
surprise; but her eyes instantly returned to the doctor's face with an
expression which Miss Merriman decided was as nearly worship as she had
ever seen.
Donald did not return her greeting in words at first; but, after he had
paid the driver, so liberally that the latter was left speechless, and
they had entered the cabin, he held out his strong arms to her. Smiles
swayed into them and pressed her face against the thick fur of his coat
with an almost soundless sigh that told the whole story of anxious
waiting and the end of the tension that had left its mark on her
childlike face.
"This, Miss Merriman, is my little foster-sister, Rose. And Miss
Merriman is a nurse who has come to help us," said he, as he released
her, and passed on to greet the old giant, who had slowly pulled his
shattered, towering frame from his chair, and now stood with a gaunt
hand held out in welcome, while a ghost of his one-time hearty smile
shadowed his lips. Big Jerry's flowing beard was now snow-white, and
Donald was shocked at the change which had taken place in him.
Their greeting was brief and simple, as between men whose hearts are
charged, and, as soon as he had eased him back into his seat, Donald
spoke with a quick assumption of his professional bearing.
"Now, about our little patient. How is she, Rose?"
"Close to the eternal gates, I'm afraid," whispered the girl, with a
catch in her voice. "Oh, Donald, we cannot let her ..." she turned
abruptly and led the way to the door of her tiny bedroom. The doctor
stepped inside and looked briefly, but searchingly, at the child who lay
there, silent, and the semblance of Death itself. With her lips caught
by her teeth, and her hands clasped tightly together to still her
trembling, Rose watched him.
His next words, spoken as he stepped back into the cabin and shook
himself free of his greatcoat, were brusquely non-committal. "And the
doctor? Where is he?"
"The doctor? Why, he ... he isn't here; he hasn't been here for days. He
doesn't even know that you were coming ... that I had sent for you."
"What? But I don't understand, child. Of course he ought to be here."
Donald's voice was so sharp that it brought the tears, that were so near
the surface, into Smiles' eyes, perceiving which, he hastened to add
more gently, "There, there, of course you didn't know; but I can hardly
hope to diagnose ... to determine what the trouble really is, or where
the growth, if there is one, is located, unless I get a full history of
the case from him and his own conclusions to help me."
"But ... but, Donald, he didn't _have_ any conclusions. He said it was
... was brain fever, first, and then he gave up trying and told us that
Lou had just got to die. Besides, _I_ know the ... the history...." She
stopped, with a little wail of distress.
"'Brain _fever_!' Then who ... the telegram certainly said 'tumor.'"
"Yes, yes. _I_ said that. Oh, I can't tell you why; but I just _know_
that it is, Donald, for little Lou has been exactly like you told me
that baby up north was--the one you saved by a ... a miracle. Oh, don't
you remember? It was in the paper."
Her sentences had become piteously incoherent; but their significance
slowly dawned upon him. To Miss Merriman the conversation was somewhat
of an enigma, and she stood aside, regarding Rose with an expression
half bewildered, half frightened. Had this strange child summoned so
famous a physician, whose moments, even, were golden, to the heart of
the Cumberlands on her own initiative and on the strength of her own
childish guess, merely? It was incredible, a tragic farce.
Perhaps something of similar import passed swiftly through the man's
mind, for he placed his large hands upon the girl's slender shoulders,
and, for an instant, sent a searching gaze deep into her eyes, now
luminous with unshed tears, as he had first seen them. They looked up at
him troubled, but frankly trusting.
"Do you mean, Rose," his words came slowly, "that you sent for me
without a doctor's suggestion and advice; that you did it on your own
hook?"
She nodded. "I just couldn't bear to have her die. She is all that ...
that Judd has got in the world, now, and I knew that you could save her
for him."
His hands felt the controlled tension of her body, and he impulsively
drew her close to him. When he answered, his voice was strangely gentle.
"It's all right, little doctor. I'm glad that you did, and only hope
that I can help. Now, let's all sit down here before the fire--how good
it feels after that bitter ride, doesn't it, Miss Merriman?--and you
will tell me all that you can about the baby's trouble--every single
thing that you have noticed from the first, no matter how little it is.
You see, that only by knowing exactly how the patient has acted can the
surgeon even hope to guess where the trouble has its seat. Once before I
told you that a nurse has got to face the truth, understandingly and
bravely, and I may as well tell you about some of the difficulties which
lie in the path that we must tread to-night. Your faith has been
almost--sublime, dear. I wonder if it would have failed if you had
known how like a child in knowledge--a child searching in the dark--is a
surgeon at such a time as this?"
"I ... I don't believe that I understand, and you kind of frightened me,
Don. I thought that all you would have to do would be to ... to cut out
that awful thing that is stealing away Lou's precious life. Wasn't that
what you did for that other little child?"
"Yes, but ... how am I going to explain? If there is a tumor, as we
think, I'll do my best to take it away; but, in order to do that, I
have, of course, got to go inside of her skull right to the brain
itself, and the trouble might be here, or here, or here." He touched her
now profusion of curls at different cranial points. "That is the riddle
which you and I must solve, and I have got to look to you for the key.
The human brain is still a book of mystery to us. Some day, physicians
will be able to read it with full understanding; but so far, we have,
after thousands of years, barely learned how to open its covers and
guess at the meaning of what lies hidden within."
Rose had edged close to Miss Merriman on the rough bench before the
fire, and, with the older woman's arm about her, now sat, wide-eyed and
wondering, while Donald talked. As he kept his gaze fixed on the glowing
heart of the fire, he seemed, in time, to be musing aloud rather than
consciously explaining.
"This much we have learned, however; that certain parts of the brain
control all the different actions or functions of the body--I've called
it a telegraph station once before...." he paused, and both thought of
little Mike in his last home under the snow ... "with different keys,
each sending its message over a separate wire. So you see that, if we
can learn exactly what the message has been, I mean by that just how
certain parts of the body have been affected--Miss Merriman would call
them the 'localizing symptoms'--we can often tell almost exactly which
key is being disarranged by the pressure of a foreign growth, such as a
tumor. Do you think that you can understand that, Rose?"
She nodded slowly.
"That is the first, the great and most difficult thing for us to do. The
rest depends, in part, upon the mechanical skill of the surgeon, but far
more upon Fate, for there are certain kinds of growths which may be
removed with a fair chance of success--it is only that, at present--and
others ... but we won't consider the others. Lou is young, and in one
way that is in our favor. If there _is_ a tumor, there is less
likelihood of infiltration," he added, glancing at the nurse.
Rose opened her lips as though to ask a question, and then decided not
to, but her expression caused Donald to say, "Come child, don't look so
frightened."
"But I didn't know ... it's so ... so terrible. How can any one live if
his head is cut open like that?"
"It sounds desperate, doesn't it," he answered, lightly, "But with our
anesthetics, which put the patient quietly to sleep, and our new,
specially made instruments, the trained and careful surgeon can perform
the operation quite easily--as far as the mechanical part goes, I mean.
But, you can see how all-important it is for you to tell me just how Lou
has been affected. I know what a good memory you have; make it count
to-night."
With her breathing quickened, and eyes shining from pent-up excitement,
Rose began. Simply and painstakingly she recounted everything which she
had observed about the baby's strange behavior from that painful night
when she had brought her from Judd's lonely cabin, through the long days
in which she had steadily weakened and failed, to the time when the
invisible hand of Death seemed to have begun to pluck at the thread of
life itself.
Donald listened intently, without a word of interruption, until she
suddenly broke off her recital with the words, "Oh, I can't think of
anything more, truly I can't; and I'm so afraid ... afraid that it
hasn't been enough to help."
Miss Merriman's encircling arm closed comfortingly about the girl, and
she patted the head which turned and burrowed into her shoulder, but she
said nothing, waiting for the man to speak. He mused for a moment, and
then his words came with the crisp incisiveness of a lawyer in
cross-examination.
"As she lost control of her legs and began to waver and stumble when she
tried to walk, did she seem to turn, or fall, to one side more than to
the other? Think!"
The anxiety deepened in Smiles' eyes; but she answered without
hesitation, "No, I don't think so. It was more as though her little body
was plumb tuckered out."
"And her hearing? Did that fail?"
"No, not until just toward the last, anyway. Even when she couldn't seem
to answer me, somehow I was quite sure that she understood, when I
spoke, or sang, to her. She would kinder smile, but, oh, it was such a
pitiful smile that it 'most broke my heart."
"She seemed to understand, eh?" He paused, and the room was very still,
except for Big Jerry's stentorian breathing. "Can you say quite
certainly--don't be afraid to answer just exactly what you think--can
you say, then, that, aside from the general weakness of all the powers
of her little body and mind, the headache and occasional sickness, the
most noticeable thing in all her strange behavior was that she wasn't
able to talk clearly, and this increased until she wholly lost the power
of speech which happened before she became as ... as I see her now?"
"Yes, doctor."
Donald turned abruptly to the nurse. "Barring the use of technical
phraseology, and a possible expression of his own, probably valueless,
conclusions, could any doctor, such as is likely to be practising in
Fayville, have given me any more information, or told it better?"
"No, doctor."
At these unexpected words of praise the girl's smile appeared mistily
for a moment, and then quivered away.
There was silence again in the cabin, while the man turned his
thoughtful gaze back to the fire, which had now turned to glowing orange
embers. A far-off look, alien to his keen, masterful face crept into it.
Finally he seemed to shake off his new mood, and spoke with a queer
laugh.
"I told you on the train that I was the victim of an uncanny
premonition. I guess that Horatio was right about there being many
things outside the ken of our limited philosophy. What psychic whisper
from a world whose existence we men of 'common sense'"--he spoke the
words sarcastically--"are loath to credit; what inspiration, born of the
memory of that story of the case of the Bentley Moors' child in New
York, which I told her in words of one syllable six months ago, was it
that brought the light of truth to this girl's mind, when the village
doctor utterly failed to catch so much as a glimmer of it?"
"Then you think, doctor ...?" began Miss Merriman.
"My diagnosis coincides with Smiles',--a tumorous growth on the brain,
probably upon the third left frontal convolution ... right here," he
said in explanation, as he touched his forehead between the left eyebrow
and the hair. "Rose, you have done excellently. Now we, too, will do
what we can, and we shall need your help in full measure to-night. I
know that it is going to be bitterly hard for you, perhaps the hardest
thing that you will ever be called upon to do in all your life; you've
got to be a woman, and a brave one. I'd spare you if I could, but...."
"But I don't want to be spared, Donald," she interrupted, eagerly.
"I know, and I trust you more than I could any grown-up woman here in
the mountains. It's hardly necessary to tell you again, that a nurse is
a soldier, and must be not only brave, but obedient. If we decide to ...
to go ahead I will be, not your friend, but your superior officer for a
while, and, if my orders seem harsh and even cruel, you must not
hesitate, or feel hurt. You understand that, don't you, dear?"
"Yes, doctor. I understand."
She spoke bravely, but her voice trembled a little.
"Good. Before I make my final examination, Miss Merriman and I have got
to change our clothes. She will use your room and I the loft; but first
let us bring Lou's bed out here by the fire."
It was done.
"Now," he continued, "while we are getting ready, there are a number of
things which you have got to do, and you will have to work fast. First,
make grandfather comfortable in his room, and build up this fire. Then
heat up as much water as the big kettle will hold, and see that a
smaller one is scoured absolutely clean. Start some water heating in
that, too. Finally, undress Lou completely, and wrap her in a blanket.
Can you remember all that?"
"Yes, Donald ... yes, doctor."
Donald smiled, and added, "One thing more. Partly fill a pillow-case
with sand, or dirt, if it is possible to get any. Perhaps the ground in
the wood-house isn't frozen so hard but that you can get it."
She nodded wonderingly.
In a quarter of an hour her duties were completed and Miss Merriman and
Donald had appeared, clad in their spotless white garments of service.
Rose, likewise, was in her play uniform, which was now considerably too
small for her, and her appearance in it would have caused a smile if it
had not been more provocative of tears.
Six months earlier the doctor and nurse, assisted by others of the most
skilled and highly trained that the metropolis afforded, had prepared to
perform the same desperate service in humanity's cause, within the
perfectly appointed operating room of a modern city hospital. How
different was the setting now!
In the rude, but homey room of the mountain cabin, lighted only by
old-fashioned lamps and lanterns and the pulsating blaze of the fire in
the cavernous fireplace, whose colorful gleam touched with gold the
scoured copper of pot and kettle, the three workers, in the immaculate
garments of a city sickroom, bent intently over the naked form of the
nearly insensible child, to whose alabaster body the leaping flames
imparted a simulated glow of warm tones.
The general examination was brief, and made in silence. Then Donald drew
the covering over the little body as a sculptor might the cloth over his
statue, and straightened up with a look in his gray eyes that was new to
Rose.
He spoke in curt sentences. "Of course the case is far more desperate
than our last, Miss Merriman. It's the proverbial 'one chance in a
thousand.' On that single thread hangs the child's life."
Suddenly he startled Rose by giving a short, mirthless laugh, and,
turning away, he began to speak in an undertone, as though unconscious
of the presence of the other two, for, despite his previous calm, the
thought of what was in prospect had keyed up his nerves to a pitch where
they quivered like the E string of a violin.
"Good God, what a colossal nerve a man is sometimes called upon to have
in this world. Of course she'll die in twenty-four hours if I _don't_
operate; but only a fool--or a genius--would tackle _this_ operation
under such impossible conditions. Practically none of the things here
that science says are necessary. 'A fool, or a genius.'"--He suddenly
smote his hands together, and said, "I hope that I'm a fool for
to-night. God takes care of them ... and drunkards. I wish I had a
strong slug of Judd's white whiskey, it might steady my nerves.
"Where _is_ Judd?" he snapped out, aloud, turning to Rose.