Part 17 (1/2)
”Yes, sir; he's upstairs; and Miss Fuller, and Mr. Talbot--_he's_ some use, and the boy wants him. I don't believe you'll ever get him to take the ether unless his papa's 'round; and I thought, if Miss Fuller would stay outside and look after _her_?”
”Certainly.”
”Then, if Mrs. Wilson will take the others off, why, the sooner the better.”
The doctor looked at his wife, who was quick to respond, though with her whole soul she longed to stay. She wanted to see Eugene; to know how he was taking it; to hear him say something to her, no matter what; to give him the comfort and support his wife was evidently past giving; and then, she wanted to see her husband as nearly as possible at the moment he had saved the child's life. She did not let the thought that he might fail enter her mind,--not in this case, the crowning case of his life!
For this alone he had toiled, and she had striven. She gave his hand one hard squeeze, as if to make him catch some of the pa.s.sionate longing of her heart, and then drew back with the fear that it might weaken rather than strengthen his nerve. He looked as immobile as ever; and she turned to take the children's little hands in hers.
”Oh, Lucy!” faltered out her successful rival, ”how good of you! I can't tell you--it does not seem as if it could be true that my beautiful Eugene--” Here another burst of sobs shook her all over. Lucy's own tears, as she kissed the poor mother, were bright in her eyes, but they did not fail. She led the two older girls silently away, and young Dr.
Walker, who had been standing in the background, followed with the third in his arms, his cool business air, just tempered by a proper consideration for the parents' feelings, covering his inward excitement at this first chance of a.s.sisting the great physician at an operation.
As he helped the pretty Mrs. Wilson, adored of all her husband's pupils, into her handsome carriage, which had come for her, and settled his little charge on her lap, he was astonished, and even awe-struck, to see that she was crying. ”I never thought,” he said to himself, ”that Mrs.
Wilson had so much feeling! but to be sure she has a boy just this little fellow's age!”
At nine o'clock, the Talbot children, weary of the delights of that earthly paradise, Harry Wilson's nursery, had been put to bed, and Lucy was waiting for her husband. She looked anxiously at his face when he came, but it told her nothing.
”How--is he?” she faltered out at last.
”Can't tell as yet.”
”Was the operation successful?”
”Yes, that was all right enough.”
”And how soon shall you know if he's likely to rally?”
”Impossible to say.”
”Any bad signs?”
”No, nothing apparent as yet.”
”You must be very tired,” she said, with a tender, unnoticed touch of her hand to his forehead.
”Not very.”
”Have you been there all this time?”
”No, I have made one or two other calls. I was there again just now.”
”Do have some tea,” said Lucy, striking a match and lighting the alcohol lamp under her little bra.s.s kettle, to prepare the cup of weak, sugarless, creamless tea, the only luxury of taste which the doctor, otherwise rigidly keeping to a special unvaried regimen, allowed himself; and while he sipped it languidly, she watched him intently. If only he would say anything without being asked! But she could not wait.
”How is Mabel?”
”Very much overcome.”
”She has no self-control.”