Part 19 (1/2)

”Is that the way to leave your patient, sister?” said the student who sat by Esther's bed, a good-looking boy with a fair, plump face. Esther looked into his clear blue, girl-like eyes, wondered, and turned away for shame.

The sister stopped her imitation of a popular comedian, and said, ”Oh, she's all right; if they were all like her there'd be very little use our coming here.”

”Unfortunately that's just what they are,” said another student, a stout fellow with a pointed red beard, the ends of which caught the light.

Esther's eyes often went to those stubble ends, and she hated him for his loud voice and jocularity. One of the midwives, a woman with a long nose and small grey eyes, seemed to mock her, and Esther hoped that this woman would not come near her. She felt that she could not bear her touch. There was something sinister in her face, and Esther was glad when her favourite, a little blond woman with wavy flaxen hair, came and asked her if she felt better. She looked a little like the young student who still sat by her bedside, and Esther wondered if they were brother and sister, and then she thought that they were sweethearts.

Soon after a bell rang, and the students went down to supper, the nurse in charge promising to warn them if any change should take place. The last pains had so thoroughly exhausted her that she had fallen into a doze. But she could hear the chatter of the nurses so clearly that she did not believe herself asleep. And in this film of sleep reality was distorted, and the unsuccessful operation which the nurses were discussing Esther understood to be a conspiracy against her life. She awoke, listened, and gradually sense of the truth returned to her. She was in the hospital....

The nurses were talking of some one who had died last week.... That poor woman in the other bed seemed to suffer dreadfully. Would she live through it? Would she herself live to see the morning? How long the time, how fearful the place! If the nurses would only stop talking.... The pains would soon begin again.... It was awful to lie listening, waiting. The windows were open, and the mocking gaiety of the street was borne in on the night wind. Then there came a trampling of feet and sound of voices in the pa.s.sage--the students and nurses were coming up from supper; and at the same moment the pains began to creep up from her knees. One of the young men said that her time had not come. The woman with the sinister look that Esther dreaded, held a contrary opinion. The point was argued, and, interested in the question, the crowd came from the window and collected round the disputants. The young man expounded much medical and anatomical knowledge; the nurses listened with the usual deference of women.

Suddenly the discussion was interrupted by a scream from Esther; it seemed to her that she was being torn asunder, that life was going from her. The nurse ran to her side, a look of triumph came upon her face, and she said, ”Now we shall see who's right,” and forthwith ran for the doctor. He came running up the stairs; immediately silence and scientific collectedness gathered round Esther, and after a brief examination he said, in a low whisper--

”I'm afraid this will not be as easy a case as one might have imagined. I shall administer chloroform.”

He placed a small wire case over her mouth and nose, and the sickly odour which she breathed from the cotton wool filled her brain with nausea; it seemed to choke her, and then life faded, and at every inhalation she expected to lose sight of the circle of faces.

When she opened her eyes the doctors and nurses were still standing round her, but there was no longer any expression of eager interest on their faces. She wondered at this change, and then out of the silence there came a tiny cry.

”What's that?” Esther asked.

”That's your baby.”

”My baby! Let me see it; is it a boy or a girl?”

”It is a boy; it will be given to you when we get you out of the labour ward.”

”I knew it would be a boy.” Then a scream of pain rent the stillness of the room. ”Is that the same woman who was here when I first came in?

Hasn't she been confined yet?”

”No, and I don't think she will be till midday; she's very bad.”

The door was thrown open, and Esther was wheeled into the pa.s.sage. She was like a convalescent plant trying to lift its leaves to the strengthening light, but within this twilight of nature the thought of another life, now in the world, grew momentarily more distinct. ”Where is my boy?” she said; ”give him to me.”

The nurse entered, and answered, ”Here.” A pulp of red flesh rolled up in flannel was laid alongside of her. Its eyes were open; it looked at her, and her flesh filled with a sense of happiness so deep and so intense that she was like one enchanted. When she took the child in her arms she thought she must die of happiness. She did not hear the nurse speak, nor did she understand her when she took the babe from her arms and laid it alongside on the pillow, saying, ”You must let the little thing sleep, you must try to sleep yourself.”

Her personal self seemed entirely withdrawn; she existed like an atmosphere about the babe, an impersonal emanation of love. She lay absorbed in this life of her life, this flesh of her flesh, unconscious of herself as a sponge in warm sea-water. She touched this pulp of life, and was thrilled, and once more her senses swooned with love; it was still there. She remembered that the nurse had said it was a boy. She must see her boy, and her hands, working as in a dream, unwound him, and, delirious with love, she gazed until he awoke and cried. She tried to hush him and to enfold him, but her strength failed, she could not help him, and fear came lest he should die. She strove to reach her hands to him, but all strength had gone from her, and his cries sounded hollow in her weak brain. Then the nurse came and said--

”See what you have done, the poor child is all uncovered; no wonder he is crying. I will wrap him up, and you must not interfere with him again.”

But as soon as the nurse turned away Esther had her child back in her arms. She did not sleep. She could not sleep for thinking of him, and the long night pa.s.sed in adoration.

XVII

She was happy, her babe lay beside her. All her joints were loosened, and the long hospital days pa.s.sed in gentle weariness. Lady visitors came and asked questions. Esther said that her father and mother lived in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, and she admitted that she had saved four pounds.

There were two beds in this ward, and the woman who occupied the second bed declared herself to be dest.i.tute, without home, or money, or friends.

She secured all sympathy and promises of help, and Esther was looked upon as a person who did not need a.s.sistance and ought to have known better.

They received visits from a clergyman. He spoke to Esther of G.o.d's goodness and wisdom, but his exhortations seemed a little remote, and Esther was sad and ashamed that she was not more deeply stirred. Had it been her own people who came and knelt about her bed, lifting their voices in the plain prayers she was accustomed to, it might have been different; but this well-to-do clergyman, with his sophisticated speech, seemed foreign to her, and failed to draw her thoughts from the sleeping child.