"THROUGH PITY AND TERROR EFFECTING A PURIFICATION OF THE HEART"
One hot day in August, Ariadne slept later than usual and when she woke
was quite unlike her usual romping, active self. Her round face was
deeply flushed, and she lay listlessly in her little bed, repulsing with
a feeble fretfulness every attempt to give her food. Lydia's heart
swelled so that she was choked with its palpitations. Paul was out of
town. She was alone in the house except for her servant. To that
ignorant warm heart she turned with an inexpressible thankfulness. "Oh,
'Stashie! Stashie!" she called in a voice that brought the other
clattering breathlessly up the stairs. "The baby! Look at the baby! And
she won't touch her bottle."
The tragic change in the Irishwoman's face as she looked at their
darling, their anguished community of feeling--there was instantly a
bond for the two women which wonderfully ignored all the dividing
differences between them. Lydia felt herself--as she rarely did--not
alone. It brought a wild comfort into her tumult. "'Stashie, you
don't--you don't think she's--_sick?_" She brought the word out with
horrified difficulty.
'Stashie was running down the back stairs. "I'm 'phonin' to th' little
ould doctor," she called over her shoulder.
Lydia ran to catch up Ariadne. The child turned from her mother with a
moan and closed her eyes heavily. A moment later, to Lydia's terror, she
had sunk into a stupor.
The doctor found mistress and maid hanging over the baby's bed with
white faces and trembling lips, hand in hand, like sisters. He examined
the child silently, swiftly, looking with a face of inscrutable
blankness at the clinical thermometer with which he had taken her
temperature. "Just turn her so she'll lie comfortably," he told
'Stashie, "and then you stay with her a moment. I want a talk with your
mistress."
In the hall, he cast at Lydia a glance of almost angry exhortation to
summon her strength. "Are you fit to be a mother?" he asked harshly.
"Wait a minute," said Lydia; she drew a long breath and took hold of the
balustrade. "Yes," she answered.
"Ariadne's very sick. I oughtn't to have allowed you to wean her with
hot weather coming on. You'd better wire Paul."
"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--damnably 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 'Stashie to tell her sister she
knew she would be only in the way, with two nurses in the house. Lydia
made 'Stashie 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 'Stashie. 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. 'Stashie was the
only person who paid the least attention to her, 'Stashie the only
phenomena to break in on the solitude that surrounded her like an
illimitable plain. 'Stashie made her eat. 'Stashie saw to it that once
or twice she lay down. 'Stashie combed her hair, and bathed her white
face--most of all, 'Stashie went about with eyes that reflected
faithfully the suffering in Lydia's own. She said very little, but as
they passed, 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 assured 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 godchild.
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 'Stashie--silent 'Stashie, with red
eyes, her heart bleeding. But even 'Stashie's loyal heart could not know
all the bitterness of Lydia's. 'Stashie's breasts did not swell and
throb, as if in mockery. 'Stashie 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 passing
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 godfather, 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 'Stashie?"
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 knob. 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, God! Oh, Mary Mother! Oh,
Christ! Oh, Mary Mother! Glory be to God! Hail, Mary, Mother of God!
Thanks be to God! 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 compassionately. "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 'Stashie
to wait on you."
"Yes; I had 'Stashie," 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 pronounced.
"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?"
"Oh, yes; I remember," said Lydia. Her hands dropped to her sides.
"Don't they get over things quickly?" commented Paul, looking around at
the baby. "To see her creeping around like a little hop-toad and
squeaking that rubber bunny--why, I declare, I don't believe that
anything's been the matter with her at all. You and the doctor lost your
nerve, I guess."
Three or four days later he was called away again. Their regular routine
began. The long, slow days, slid past the house in Bellevue in endless,
dreamy procession. Ariadne grew fast, developing constantly new
faculties, new powers. By the end of the summer she was no longer a
baby, but a person. The young mother felt the same mysterious forces of
change and growth working irresistibly in herself. The long summer,
thoughtful and solitary, marked the end of one period in her life.
She looked forward shrinkingly to the winter. What would happen to this
new self whose growth in her was keeping pace with her child's? What
would happen next?