TWO BATTLES.
Before I left the hotel I struck a bargain with Cash. I would go anywhere and do anything, but he was to give me a written itinerary of my movements for the day, clearly stating where I should be at various times. This document I left in the hands of Dolly, who promised faithfully to send for me, if—if necessary.
Then, putting my paternal instincts into my pocket, I braced myself up and plunged into the vortex of polling-day.
Truly, if Time is the healer, Work is the anesthetic. In the turmoil of the crowded streets and polling-booths, I found myself almost as enthusiastic and whole-hearted as if no little girl of mine were fighting for life in a darkened room not many streets away. I shook hands with countless folk, I addressed meetings of the unwashed at street corners, and received the plaudits or execrations of the multitude with equal serenity.
Robin hastened away to the Hide-and-Tallow Works, whence, during the dinner-hour, he charmed many an oleaginous elector to come and plump for Inglethwaite, the Man Whom He Knew and Who Knew Him. Gerald and Donkin, smothered in violets and primroses, were personally conducting a sort of tumbril, which dashed across my field of vision from time to time, sometimes full, sometimes empty, but always at full gallop.
Election "incidents" were plentiful. I was standing in the principal polling-station at one time, when a gentleman called Hoppett, a cobbler by persuasion—I think I have already mentioned him as the benignant individual who used to come to the door of his establishment and pursue me with curses down the street—came out from recording his vote. He did not see me, but caught sight of Robin, who had just arrived with a posse of electors, and was standing by the Returning Officer's table. Hobbling up, the cobbler shook a gnarled fist under my secretary's nose.
"I've voted against your man," he shouted. "We're goin' to be rid of the lot of you this time. Set of reskils!... I've put my mark against Stridge, I have; and against Inglethwaite's name I've put a picture of a big boot—one of my own making, too! The big boot!" he screamed ecstatically—"that's what your man is a-going to get to-day. Set of——"
Robin smiled benignantly upon him, and glanced at the Returning Officer.
"You hear what this gentleman says?" he remarked.
"I do," replied the official.
"Is it not a fact that he has annulled his vote by making unnecessary marks on his voting-paper?" continued Robin solemnly.
"That is so," assented the Returning Officer. "I'm afraid your vote won't count this time, Mr Hoppett. Good morning!"
There was a roar of delighted laughter from friend and foe, and the fermenting Hoppett was cast forth.
I succeeded in getting back to the hotel for ten minutes at luncheon-time. Dolly met me—pale, sleepless, but unbeaten.
"The doctor is with her just now," she said. "She has been in fearful pain, poor kiddy; but he has given her a drug of some sort, and she is easier now."
"Couldn't I see her, just a moment?" I said wistfully.
"The answer to that question, sir," replied Dolly, "is in the negative."
We both smiled resolutely at this familiar tag, and Dolly concluded—
"Kitty is lying down. I made her. But she is going to get up when they—I mean——"
I detected a curious confusion in her voice.
"When what?" I asked.
"Nothing."
I surveyed my sister-in-law uneasily
"Are they expecting—a crisis, then?"
"Yes—a sort of a one."
"When?"
Dolly seemed to consider.
"About five," she said.
"Hadn't I better be near, in case——?"
"Where are you to be this afternoon?"
"Hunnable."
Dolly nodded her head reflectively.
"When can you be back?" she asked.
"I can do it by five, I should think."
"That will be soon enough. The doctor said that if—you were wanted, it would be about then. Good-bye, old gentleman!"
"Good-bye, Dolly! Mind you go to bed." (We seem to have spent a large portion of that twenty-four hours urging each other to go to bed.)
Then I went back to work.
Polling had been brisk during the dinner-hour, and both Cash and Robin considered that we were doing fairly well. Things would be slack at Stoneleigh itself during the afternoon, and the obvious and politic course now was to drive over to the fishing village of Hunnable—I had only time for one, and this was the most considerable—and catch my marine constituents as they emerged from the ocean, Proteus-like, between three and four o'clock.
I did so, and for the space of an hour and a half I solicited the patronage of innumerable tarry mariners, until their horny hands had filled up the voting-papers and my own smelt to heaven of fish. It was a quarter to five, and dark, before I escaped from the attentions of a small but pertinacious group of inquirers who wanted to understand my exact attitude on the question of trawling within the three-mile limit, and proceeded at a hand-gallop back to Stoneleigh. (That odoriferous but popular vehicle, the motor-car, was still in the preceded-by-a-man-ten-yards-in-front-bearing-a-red-flag stage in those days, and we had to rely on that antiquated but much more reliable medium of transport, the horse.) The snow lay very heavily in places, and our progress was not over-rapid. Moreover, passing the central Committee Rooms on my way to the hotel, I was stopped and haled within to conciliate various wobblers, and another twenty minutes of precious time sped. But I stuck to my determination to let nothing interfere with duty that day, and I argued with free-thinkers and pump-handled bemused supporters until all was settled and Cash said I might go.
Still, it was nearer six than five when my panting horses drew up at the Cathedral Arms.
There was no Dolly to receive me this time, but at the top of the stairs leading to our rooms I met the doctor. He was accompanied by a grey-haired, kind-eyed old gentleman in a frock-coat, with "London Specialist" written all over him. It was Sir James Fordyce.
"Well?" I asked feverishly as I shook hands.
The two men motioned me into the sitting-room, and Farquharson said, in a curiously uncertain fashion—
"Mr Inglethwaite, we have done a thing which should not, properly, have been done without your consent. Your secretary suggested the idea, and I agreed. Mrs Inglethwaite made a point of our saying nothing to you, and volunteered to take all responsibility on herself. She said you were not to be worried. So I wired for Sir James——"
"I see," I said, "and he operated?"
"Yes, at three o'clock this afternoon. Indeed, your sister-in-law, I think, purposely concealed from you——"
"She did." That, then, was the "crisis" that Dolly had in her mind, and that, too, was why she had told me to come back at five—when everything would be well over!
I continued—
"And how have you—I mean—is she——?"
"The operation," said the old man, "was entirely successful, and, as it turned out, most necessary. But of course for so young a patient the strain was terrible."
"How is she?"
"She came through finely, but I do not conceal from you the fact that her life hangs by a thread."
I had a premonition that something was going to be "broken" to me. I dropped into a chair, and waited dully. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder, and Sir James continued—
"Just weakness, you understand! Her exhaustion when she came out of the chloroform was extreme, but every moment now is in our favour. Children have such extraordinary recuperative power."
He was speaking in the usual cheery tones of the bedside optimist. I raised my head.
"Tell me straight, Sir James—will the child live?"
The old man's grip on my shoulder tightened just for a moment, and when he spoke it was in an entirely unprofessional voice.
"Thanks to two of the bravest and most devoted of women," he said, "I think she will."
I dropped my head into my hands.
"Please God!" I murmured brokenly.
"Of course," he continued, "anything may happen yet. But the way in which she has been cared for by my good friend here——"
"No, no," said Farquharson. "Give the credit to those that deserve it. I just afforded ordinary professional assistance. It was your wife and her sister, Mr Inglethwaite, that pulled the child through. She has had tight hold of a hand of one of them ever since ten o'clock last night."
"Yes," said Sir James; "I think it will be found that their nursing has just made the difference. You had better give him something, Farquharson."
In truth I needed something, though up to this point I had not realised the fact. Farquharson gave me a draught out of a little glass, which sent a steadying glow all through me, and presently I was able to shake hands, dumbly and mechanically, with the great surgeon, who, I found, was bidding me good-bye; for the world is full of sick folk, and their champion may not stay to see the issue of one battle before he must hurry off to fight another.
They left me to myself, while Farquharson went down to the door with Sir James. Presently he returned.
"I must be getting back to the patient shortly," he said. "The next hour or so will be very critical. The nurse is here, and I have sent the ladies to bed. But you may go in for a look, if you like. I am going out for exactly ten minutes."
"I see—a breather. You deserve it."
"Not exactly. I'm going to vote—for Stridge!"
He chuckled in a marvellously cheering way, and left me.
As I approached Phillis's room the door opened, and I was confronted with that most soothing and comforting of sights to a sick man—a nurse's uniform. She was a pleasant-faced girl, I remember, and she was carrying a basin full of sponges and water, cruelly tinged.
"Just a peep!" she said, with that little air of motherly sternness which all women, however young, adopt towards fractious children and helpless males.
She closed the door very softly upon me, and left me alone.
For a moment I stood uncertain in the shadow of the screen that guarded the door. There was a whiff of chloroform in the air, and through the doorway leading to the room where we had sat throughout the previous night I could see the end of a white-covered table. Thank God, that part of the business was over!
A shaded lamp burned at Phillis's bedside. She lay deathly still, an attenuated little derelict amid an ocean of white bed-clothes.
At first I thought I was alone with the child, and was moving softly forward when I became suddenly aware that some one was kneeling at the far side of the bed. It was Kitty. Evidently she had not obeyed the doctor's orders about going to bed.
A single ray from the lamp fell upon her face. Her eyes were wide open, and she seemed to be looking straight at me. Her lips were moving, and I became aware that she was speaking, very earnestly and almost inaudibly.
I stood still to hear her. Then I realised that her words were not addressed to me. Very carefully I stepped back to the door-handle, turned it, and slipped out.