THE TRANSFUSION OF BLOOD.
Three days had elapsed since the events just narrated. The first bursts
of grief in the two bereaved households were appeased, and though there
were still tears there were no longer sobs.
Karl grew better and better; for two days past he had raised himself in
his bed and had been able to give signs of consciousness, not only by
broken utterances, tender exclamations, and endearing words, but by
taking part in conversation. His brain, which like the rest of his body
had been greatly enfeebled, was gradually recovering the supremacy which
it exercises over the rest of the body in health.
Helen, who beheld this resurrection, and was at the age when youth gives
one hand to love and one to hope, rejoiced in this visible recovery as
though heaven itself had promised that no accident should come to
disturb it. Twice a day the surgeon visited the wounded man, and without
destroying Helen's hopes he persisted in withholding any assurance of
complete safety. Karl saw her hope; but he remarked, too, the reserve
with which the surgeon received all her joyful schemes for the future.
He, also, was making schemes, but of a sadder kind.
"Helen," said he, "I know all you have done for me. Benedict has told me
of your tears, your despair, your weariness. I love you with so selfish
a love, Helen, that I wish, before I die--"
And as Helen made a movement, he added:
"If I die, I wish first to call you my wife, so that in case there
exists--as they tell us, and as our own pride leads us to believe--a
world beyond this, I may find my wife there as here. Promise me, then,
my sweet nurse, that if any one of those accidents that trouble the
doctor's mind should occur, promise me that you will instantly send for
a priest, and with your hand in mine say: 'Give us your blessing,
father, Karl von Freyberg is my husband.' And I swear to you, Helen,
that my death will be as easy and calm then as it would be full of
despair if I could not say: 'Farewell, my beloved wife.'"
Helen listened with that smile of hope upon her lips with which she made
answer to all Karl's words, whether sad or happy. From time to time,
when she saw her patient becoming excited, she would sign to him to be
still, and taking down from her bookshelves Uhland, or Goethe, or
Schiller, would read aloud to him, and almost always Karl would close
his eyes and presently fall asleep to the sound of her melodious, liquid
voice. His need of sleep, after so great a loss of blood, was enormous;
and then, as though she could see the sleep-bringing shadows thickening
over his brain, she would let her voice grow dim, little by little, and
with her eyes half upon the sick man and half upon her page would cease
to speak at the very moment when he began to sleep.
At night she allowed Benedict to take her place by Karl for two or three
hours, because Karl entreated it, but she did not go out of the room. A
curtain was drawn across the recess in which her bed--now brought into
the middle of the room for the patient, previously stood, and behind the
curtain she slept on a couch, slept so lightly that at the least
movement in the room, or the first word uttered, the curtain would be
lifted and her voice would ask anxiously:
"What is it?"
Helen was a sister of those delightful creations that are to be found on
every page of Germany's popular poetry. We attribute great merit to
those poetic dreamers who perceive Loreleis in the mist of the Rhine and
Mignons in the foliage of thickets, and do not remind ourselves that
there is, after all, no such great merit in finding these charming
images, because they are not the visions of genius, but actual copies,
whose originals the misty nature of England and of Germany sets before
them as models weeping or smiling, but always poetical. Observe, too,
that on the shores of the Rhine, the Main, or the Danube, it is not
necessary to seek these types--rare, if not unknown among ourselves--in
the ranks of the aristocracy, but they may be seen at the citizen's
window or the peasant's doorway, where Schüler found his Louisa, and
Goethe his Margaret. Thus Helen accomplished deeds that seem to us the
height of devotion with the most entire simplicity, and never knew that
her loving toil deserved a glance of approval from man, or even from
God.
On the nights when Helen sat up, Benedict rested in Frederic's room,
throwing himself fully dressed upon the bed, so as to be ready at the
first call to run to Helen's assistance or to go for the surgeon. We
have already said that a carriage ready harnessed was always at the
door, and, oddly enough, the further recovery progressed, the more the
doctor insisted that this precaution should not be neglected.
July 30th had been reached, when, after having watched by Karl during a
part of the night, Benedict had yielded his post to Helen, had returned
to Frederic's room and flung himself upon the bed, when, all at once he
thought he heard himself loudly called. Almost at the same moment his
door opened, and Helen, pale, dishevelled, and covered with blood,
appeared in the doorway making inarticulate sounds that seemed to stand
for "Help!"
Benedict guessed what had happened. The doctor, less reserved towards
him than towards the young girl, had told him what possibilities he
feared, and evidently one of these possibilities had come to pass.
He rushed to Karl's room; the ligature of the artery had burst and blood
was flowing in waves and in jets. Karl had fainted.
Benedict did not lose an instant; twisting his handkerchief into a rope
he tied it round Karl's upper arm, broke the bar of a chair with a kick,
slipped the bar into the knot of the handkerchief, and turning the stick
upon its axis, made what is known in medical language as a _tourniquet_.
The blood stopped instantly.
Helen flung herself distractedly upon the bed, she seemed to have gone
mad. She did not hear Benedict calling to her: "The doctor! the doctor!"
With his free hand--the other was pressing upon Karl's arm--Benedict
pulled the bell so violently that Hans, guessing something unusual to be
the matter, arrived quite scared.
"Take the carriage and fetch the doctor," cried Benedict. Hans
understood everything, for in one glance he had seen all. He flung
himself downstairs and into the carriage, calling out in his turn: "To
the doctor's!"
As it was scarcely six o'clock in the morning, the doctor was at home,
and within ten minutes walked into the room.
Seeing the blood streaming over the floor, Helen, half fainting, and,
above all, Benedict compressing the wounded man's arm, he understood
what had happened, the rather that he had dreaded this.
"Ah, I foresaw this!" he exclaimed, "a secondary hæmorrhage, the artery
has given way."
At his voice Helen sprang up and flung her arms about him.
"He will not die! he will not die!" she cried, "you will not let him
die, will you?"
The doctor disengaged himself from her grasp, and approached the bed.
Karl had not lost nearly so much blood as last time, but to judge from
the pool that was spreading across the room he must have lost over
twenty-eight ounces, which in his present state of weakness was
exorbitant.
However, the doctor did not lose courage; the arm was still bare; he
made a fresh incision and sought with his forceps for the artery, which,
fortunately, having been compressed by Benedict, had moved only a few
centimetres. In a second the artery was tied, but the wounded man was
completely unconscious. Helen, who had watched the first operation with
anxiety, followed this one with terror. She had then seen Karl lying
mute, motionless, and cold, with the appearance of death, but she had
not seem him pass, as he had just done, from life to death. His lips
were white, his eyes closed, his cheeks waxen; clearly Karl had gone
nearer to the grave than even on the former occasion. Helen wrung her
hands.
"Oh, his wish! his wish!" she cried, "he will not have the joy of seeing
it fulfilled. Sir," she said to the doctor, "will he not reopen his
eyes? Will he not speak again before he dies? I do not ask for his
life--only a miracle could grant that. But, make him open his eyes,
doctor. Doctor! make him speak to me! Let a priest join our hands! Let
us be united in this world, so that we may not be separated in the
next."
The doctor, despite his usual calm, could not remain cold in the
presence of such sorrow; though he had done all that was in the power of
his art and felt that he could do no more, he tried to reassure Helen
with those commonplaces that physicians keep in reserve for the last
extremities.
But Benedict, going up to him, and taking him by the hand, said:
"Doctor, you hear what she asks; she does not ask for her lover's life,
she asks for a few moments' revival, long enough for the priest to utter
a few words and place a ring upon her finger."
"Yes, yes!" cried Helen, "only that! Senseless that I was not to have
yielded when he asked and sent at once for the priest. Let him open his
eyes, let him say 'Yes,' so that his wish may be accomplished and I may
keep my promise to him."
"Doctor," said Benedict, pressing the hand which he had retained in his,
"how, if we asked from science the miracle that Heaven seems to deny?
How if we were to try transfusion of blood?"
"What is that?" asked Helen.
The doctor considered for a second and looked at the patient: then he
said:
"There is no hope; we risk nothing."
"I asked you," said Helen, "what is transfusion of blood?"
"It consists," replied the doctor, "in passing into the exhausted veins
of a sick man enough warm, living blood to give him back, if only for a
moment, life, speech, and consciousness. I have never performed the
operation, but have seen it once or twice in hospitals."
"So have I," said Benedict, "I have always been interested in strange
things, so I attended Majendie's lectures, and I have always seen the
experiment succeed when the blood infused belonged to an animal of the
same species."
"Well," said the doctor, "I will go and try to find a man willing to
sell us some twenty or thirty ounces of his blood."
"Doctor," said Benedict, throwing off his coat, "I do not sell my blood
to my friends, but I give it. Your man is here."
At these words Helen uttered a cry, flung herself violently between
Benedict and the doctor, and proudly holding out her bare arm to the
surgeon, said to Benedict:
"You have done enough for him already. If human blood is to pass from
another into the veins of my beloved Karl it shall be mine; it is my
right."
Benedict fell on his knees before her and kissed the hem of her skirt.
The less impressionable doctor merely said:
"Very well! We will try. Give the patient a spoonful of some cordial. I
will go home and get the instruments."