CHAPTER VI

A doctor’s life is not lightly to be envied. Like a traveller in a half-barbarous country, he must be prepared for all emergencies, trusting to his own mother-wit and the resourcefulness of his manhood. He may be challenged from cock-crow until midnight to do battle with every physical ill that affects humanity on earth, and to act as arbiter between life and death. The common functions of existence are hardly granted him; he is a species of supramundane creature to whom sleep and food are scarcely considered vital. However critical the strain, he must never slacken, never show temper when pestered by the old women of the sick-room, never lose the suggestion of sympathy. People will run to catch him “at his dinner-hour,” poor wretch, and drag him from bed to discover that some fat old gentleman has eaten too much crab. Of all men he must appear the most infallible, the most assured and resolute of philosophers. He walks on the edge of a precipice, for the glory of a thousand triumphs may be swallowed up in the blunder of a day.

The responsibilities of such a life are heavy, and may be said to increase with the sensitiveness of the practitioner’s conscience. The man of heart and of ideals will give out more of the vital essence than the mere intellectual who works like a marvellous machine. Yet, flow of soul is necessary to true success in the higher spheres of the healing art. There is a vast difference between the mere chemist who mixes tinctures in a bottle, and the psychologist whose personality suggests the cure that he wishes to complete.

James Murchison was a practitioner of the higher type, a man who wrestled Jacob-like with problems, and took his responsibilities to heart. He was no clever automaton, no perfunctory juggler with the woes and sufferings of his fellows. Life touched him at every turn, and there was none of the cynical adroitness of the mere materialist about Murchison. He worked both with his heart and with his head, a man whose mingled strength and humility made him beloved by those who knew him best.

The winter’s work had been unusually heavy, and the burden of it had not lightened with the spring. Murchison enjoyed the grappling of difficulties, that keen tautness of the intellect that vibrates to necessity. Strong as he was, the strain of the winter’s work had told on him, and his wife, ever watchful, had seen that he was spending himself too fast. Interminable night work, the rush of the crowded hours, and hurried meals, grind down the toughest constitution. Murchison was not a man to confess easily to exhaustion, possessing the true tenacity of the Saxon, the spirit that will not realize the nearness of defeat. It was only by constant pleading that Catherine persuaded him to consider the wisdom of hiring help. Sleeplessness, the worker’s warning, had troubled her husband as the spring drew on.

One Wednesday evening in May, Murchison came home dead tired and faint for want of food. The day had been rough and stormy, a keen wind whirling the rain in gray sheets across the country, beating the bloom from the apple-trees, and laying Miss Gwen’s proud tulips in red ruin along the borders. Murchison’s visiting-list would have appalled a man of frailer energy and resolution. The climbing of interminable stairs, the feeling of pulses, and all the accurate minutes of the craft, the interviewing of anxious relatives, slave work in the slums! A premature maternity case had complicated the routine. Murchison looked white and almost hunted when he sat down at last to dinner.

Catherine dismissed the maid and waited on him in person.

“Thanks, dear, this is very sweet of you.”

She bent over him and kissed him on the forehead.

“You look tired to death.”

“Not quite that, dear; I have been rushed off my legs and the flesh is human.”

“Crocker will send a suitable man down in a day or two. He can take the club work off your hands. You have finished for to-night?”

He lay back in his chair, the lines of strain smoothed from his face a little, the driven look less evident in his eyes.

“Only a consultation or two, I hope. I shall get to bed early. Ah, coffee, that is good!”

Catherine played and sang to him in the drawing-room after dinner, with the lamp turned low and a brave fire burning on the hearth. Murchison had run up-stairs to kiss his children, and was lying full length on the sofa when the “detestable bell” broke in upon a slumber song. The inevitable message marred the relaxation of the man’s mind and body, and the tired slave of sick humanity found himself doomed to a night’s watching.

“What is it, dear?”

He had read the note that the maid had brought him.

“No peace for the wicked!” and he almost groaned; “a maternity case. Confound the woman, she might have left me a night’s rest!”

His wife looked anxious, worried for him in her heart.

“How absolutely hateful! Can’t Hicks act for you to-night?”

“No, dear, I promised my services.”

“Will it take long?”

“A first case—all night, probably.”

He got up wearily, threw the letter into the fire, and going to his study took up his obstetric bag and examined it to see that he had all he needed. Catherine was waiting for him with his coat and scarf, wishing for the moment that the Deity had arranged otherwise for the bringing of children into the world.

“Shall you walk?” she asked.

“Yes, it is only Carter Street. Go to bed, dear, don’t wait up.”

She kissed him, and let her head rest for a moment on his shoulder.

“I wish I could do the work for you, dear.”

He laughed, a tired laugh, looking dearly at her, and went out into the dark.

A vague restlessness took possession of Catherine that night, when she was left alone in the silent house. She had sent the servants to bed, and drawing a chair before the fire, tried to forget herself in the pages of romance. Color and passion had no glamour for her in print, however. It was as though some silent watcher stood behind her chair, and willed her to brood on thoughts that troubled her heart.

She put the book aside at last, and sat staring at the fire, listening to the wind that moaned and sobbed about the house. The curtains swayed before the windows, and she could hear the elm-trees in the garden groaning as though weary of the day’s unrest. There was something in the nature of the night that gave a sombre setting to her thoughts. She remembered her husband’s tired and jaded face, and her very loneliness enhanced her melancholy.

The Dutch clock in the hall struck eleven, the antique whir of wheels sounding strange in the sleeping house. Catherine stirred the fire together, rose and put out the lamp. She lit her candle in the hall, leaving a light burning there, and climbed the stairs slowly to her room. Instinct led her to cross the landing and enter the nursery where her children slept.

The two little beds stood one in either corner beside the fireplace, each headed by some favorite picture, and covered with red quilts edged with white. Gwen was sleeping with a doll beside her, her hair tied up with a blue ribbon. The boy had a box of soldiers on the bed, and one fist cuddled a brass cannon.

Catherine stood and looked at them with a mother’s tenderness in her eyes. They spelled life to her—these little ones, flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone. They were her husband’s children, and they seemed to bring into her heart that night a deep rush of tenderness towards the man who had given her motherhood. All the joy and sorrow that they had shared together stole up like the odor of a sacrifice.

“When the strength’s out of a man, the devil’s in.”

She remembered those words he had spoken, and shuddered. Was it prophetic, this voice that came to her out of the deeps of her own heart? Tenderly, wistfully, she bent over each sleeping child, and stole a kiss from the land of dreams. Betty Steel’s speech recurred to her as she passed to her own room, feeling lonely because the arms she yearned for would not hold her close that night.

Catherine went to bed, but she did not sleep. Her brain seemed clear as a starlit sky, the thoughts floating through it like frail clouds over the moon. She heard the wind wailing, the rain splashing against the windows, the slow voice of the hall clock measuring out the hours. Some unseen power seemed to keep her wakeful and afraid, restless in her loneliness, listening for the sound of her husband’s return.

The clock struck five before she heard the jar of a closing door. Footsteps crossed the hall, and she heard some one moving in the room below. For some minutes she sat listening in bed, waiting to hear her husband’s step upon the stairs. Her heart beat strangely when he did not come; the room felt cold to her as she shivered and listened.

A sudden, vague dread seized her. She slipped out of bed, lit the candle with trembling hands, and throwing her dressing-gown round her, went out on to the landing. The lamp was still burning in the hall, and the door of the dining-room stood ajar. Shading the candle behind her hand, she went silently down the stairs into the hall. The only sound she heard was the clink of a glass.

“James, husband!”

Catherine stood on the threshold, her hair loose about her, the candle quivering in her hand. For the moment there was an agony of reproach upon her face. Then she had swayed forward, snatched something from the table, and broke it upon the floor.

“My God, Kate, forgive me!”

He sank down into a chair and buried his head in his arms upon the table. Catherine bent over him, her hands resting on his shoulders.

“Oh, my beloved, I had dreaded this.”

He groaned.

“Miserable beast that I am!”

“No, no, you are tired, you are not yourself. Come with me, come with me, lie in my arms—and rest.”

He turned and buried his face in the warmth of her bosom.

“Thank God you were awake,” he said.