A great surgeon said a few years ago that he was never nervous when
performing an operation, though there was sometimes a moment when every
resource of character, skill, and brain came into play. That was when,
having diagnosed correctly and operated, a new and unexpected seat of
trouble and peril was exposed, and instant action had to be taken. The
great man naturally rose to the situation and dealt with it coolly; but
he paid the price afterwards in his sleep when, night after night, he
performed the operation over and over again with the same strain on his
subconscious self.
So it was with Kitty Tynan in her small way. She had insisted on being
allowed to help at the operation, and the Young Doctor, who had a good
knowledge of life and knew the stuff in her, consented; and so far as
the operation was concerned she justified his faith in her. When the
banker had to leave the room at the sight of the carnage, she remained,
and she and John Sibley were as cool as the Young Doctor and his
fellow-anatomist, till it was all over, and Shiel Crozier was started
again on a safe journey back to health. Then a thing, which would have
been amusing if it had not been so deeply human, happened. She and John
Sibley went out of the house together into the moonlit night, and the
reaction seized them both at the same moment. She gave a gulp and burst
into tears, and he, though as tall as Crozier, also broke down, and they
sat on the stump of a tree together, her hand in his, and cried like two
children.
“Never since I was a little runt--did I--never cried in thirty
years--and here I am-leaking like a pail!” Thus spoke John Sibley
in gasps and squeezing Kitty’s hand all the time unconsciously, but
spontaneously, and as part of what he felt. He would not, however, have
dared to hold her hand on any other occasion, while always wanting to
hold it, and wanting her also to share his not wholly reputed, though
far from precarious, existence. He had never got so far as to tell her
that; but if she had understanding she would realise after to-night what
he had in his mind. She, feeling her arm thrill with the magnetism of
his very vital palm, had her turn at explanation. “I wouldn’t have broke
down myself--it was all your fault,” she said. “I saw it--yes--in your
face as we left the house. I’m so glad it’s over safe--no one belonging
to him here, and not knowing if he’d wake up alive or not--I just was
swamped.”
He took up the misty excuse and explanation. “I had a feeling for him
from the start; and then that Logan Trial to-day, and the way he talked
out straight, and told the truth to shame the devil--it’s what does a
man good! And going bung over a horserace--that’s what got me too, where
I was young and tender. Swatted that Burlingame every time--one eye,
two eyes all black, teeth out, nose flattened--called him an
‘outrageous lawyer’--my, that last clip was a good one! You bet he’s a
sport--Crozier.”
Kitty nodded eagerly while still wiping her red eyes. “He made the judge
smile--I saw it, not ten minutes before his honour put on the black cap.
You couldn’t have believed it, if you hadn’t seen it--
“Here, let go my hand,” she added, suddenly conscious of the enormity
John Sibley was committing by squeezing it now.
It is perfectly true that she did not quite realise that he had taken
her hand--that he had taken her hand. She was conscious in a nice,
sympathetic way that her hand had been taken, but it was lost in the
abstraction of her emotion.
“Oh, here, let it go quick!” she added--“and not because mother’s
coming, either,” she added as the door opened and her mother came
out--not to spy, not to reproach her daughter for sitting with a man
in the moonlight at ten o’clock at night, but--good, practical soul--to
bring them each a cup of beef-tea.
“Here, you two,” she said as she hurried to them. “You need something
after that business in there, and there isn’t time to get supper ready.
It’s as good for you as supper, anyway. I don’t believe in underfeeding.
Nothing’s too good to swallow.”
She watched them sip the tea slowly like two schoolchildren.
“And when you’ve drunk it you must go right to bed, Kitty,” she added
presently. “You’ve had your own way, and you saw the thing through; but
there’s always a reaction, and you’ll pay for it. It wasn’t fit work for
a girl of your age; but I’m proud of your nerve, and I’m glad you showed
the Young Doctor what you can do. You’ve got your father’s brains and
my grit,” she added with a sigh of satisfaction. “Come along--bed now,
Kitty. If you get too tired you’ll have bad dreams.”
Perhaps she was too tired. In any case she had dreams. Just as the great
surgeon performed his operation over and over in his sleep, so Kitty
Tynan, through long hours that night, and for many nights afterwards,
saw the swift knives, helped to staunch the blood, held the basin,
disinfected the instruments which had made an attack on the man of men
in her eyes, and saw the wound stitched up--the last act of the business
before the Young Doctor turned to her and said, “You’ll do wherever
you’re put in life, Miss Kitty Tynan. You’re a great girl. And now get
some fresh air and forget all about it.”
Forget all about it! So, the Young Doctor knew what happened after a
terrific experience like that! In truth, he knew only too well. Great
surgeons do surgery only and have innumerable operations to give them
skill; but a country physician and surgeon must be a sane being to keep
his nerve when called on to use the knife, and he must have a more than
usual gift for such business. That is what the Young Doctor had; but he
knew it was not easy to forget those scenes in which man carved the body
of fellow-man, laying bare the very vitals of existence, seeing “the
wheels go round.”
It haunted Kitty Tynan in the night-time, and perhaps it was that which
toned down a little the colour of her face--the kind of difference of
colouring there is between natural gold and 14-carat. But in the daytime
she was quite happy, and though there was haunting, it was Shiel Crozier
who, first helpless, then convalescent, was haunted by her presence. It
gave him pleasure, but it was a pleasure which brought pain. He was
not so blind that he had not caught at her romance, in which he was
the central figure--a romance which had not vanished since the day he
declared in the court-room that he was married, or had been married.
Kitty’s eyes told their own story, and it made him uneasy and
remorseful. Yet he could not remember when, even for an instant, he had
played with her. She had always seemed part of a simple family life for
which he and Jesse Bulrush and her mother and the nurse-Nurse Egan-were
responsible. What a blessing Nurse Egan had been! Otherwise, all the
nursing would have been performed by Kitty and her mother, and it
might well have broken them down, for they were determined to nurse him
themselves.
When, however, Nurse Egan came back, two days after the operation
was performed, they included her in the responsibility, as one of
the family; and as she had no other important case on at the time,
fortunately she could give Crozier almost undivided attention. She had
been at first disposed to keep Kitty out of the sick-chamber, as no
place for a girl, but she soon abandoned that position, for Kitty was
not the girl ever to think of impropriety. She was primitive and she had
rather a before-the-flood nature, but she had not the faintest vulgar
strain in her. Her mind was essentially pure; nothing material in her
had been awakened. Her greatest joy was to do the many things for the
patient which a nurse must do--prepare his food, give him drink, adjust
his pillows, bathe his face and hands, take his temperature; and on his
part he tried hard to disguise from her the apprehension he felt, and to
avoid any hint by word or look that he saw anything save the actions of
a kind heart. True, her views as to what was proper and improper might
possibly be on a different plane from his own. For instance, he had seen
girls of her station in the West kiss young men freely--men whom they
had no thought of marrying; and that was not the custom of his own class
in his home-country.
As he got well slowly, and life opened out before him again, he felt he
had to pursue a new course, and in that course he must take account of
Kitty Tynan, though he could not decide how. He had a deep confidence in
the Young Doctor, in his judgment and his character; and it was almost
inevitable that he should tell his life-story to the man whose skill had
saved him from death in a strange land, with all undone he wanted to do
ere he returned to a land which was not strange.
The thing happened, as such things do happen, in a quite natural way one
day when he and the Young Doctor were discussing the probable verdict
against the man who had shot him--the trial was to come on soon, and
once again Augustus Burlingame was to be counsel for the defence, and
once again Crozier would have to appear in a witness-box.
“I think you ought to know, Crozier, that, in view of the trial,
Burlingame has written to a firm of lawyers in Kerry to get full
information about your past,” the Young Doctor said.
Crozier gave one of those little jerks of the head characteristic of
him and said: “Why, of course; I knew he would do that after I gave my
evidence in the Logan Trial.” He raised himself on his elbow. “I owe
you a great deal,” he added feelingly, “and I can’t repay you in cash or
kindness for what you have done; but it is due you to tell you my whole
story, and that is what I propose to do now.”
“If you think--”
“I do think; and also I want both Mrs. Tynan and her daughter to hear
my story. Better, truer friends a man could not have; and I want them to
know the worst and the best there is, if there is any best. They and you
have trusted me, been too good to me, and what I said at the trial is
not enough. I want to do what I’ve never done before. I want to tell
everything. It will do me good; and perhaps as I tell it I’ll see myself
and everything else in a truer light than I’ve yet seen it all.”
“You are sure you want Mrs. Tynan and her daughter to hear?”
“Absolutely sure.”
“They are not in your rank in life, you know.”
“They are my friends, and I owe them more than I can say. There is
nothing they cannot or should not hear. I can say that at least.”
“Shall I ask them to come?”
“Yes. Give me a swig of water first. It won’t be easy, but--”
He held out his hand, and the Young Doctor grasped it.
Suddenly the latter said: “You are sure you will not be sorry? That it
is not a mood of the moment due to physical weakness?”
“Quite sure. I determined on it the day I was shot--and before I was
shot.”
“All right.” The Young Doctor disappeared.