THE FIGHT FOR LIFE
The little wife made a brave fight. For a week there was no sign of a breakdown save an unnatural brightness of the eyes that told the story of struggle within. He gave himself to the effort to help her win. He spent but an hour at the Capitol, left a Speaker pro tem in the chair, hurried to his office, gave his orders and by eleven o'clock he was at home, talking, laughing, and planning a day's work that would interest her and bring back the flush to her pale cheeks.
She had responded to his increasing tenderness and devotion with pathetic eagerness. At the beginning of the second week Doctor Williams gave him hope:
"It looks to me, my boy," he said thoughtfully, "that I'm seeing a miracle. I think she's not only going to survive the shock, but, what's more remarkable, she's going to recover her health again. The mind's the source of health and power. We give medicines, of course, but the thought that heals the soul will reach the body. Bah!—the body is the soul anyhow, for all our fine-spun theories, and the mind is only one of the ways through which we reach it——"
"You really think she may be well again?" Norton asked with boyish eagerness.
"Yes, if you can reconcile her mind to this thing, she'll not only live, she will be born again into a more vigorous life. Why not? The preachers have often called me a godless rationalist. But I go them one better when they preach the miracle of a second, or spiritual birth. I believe in the possibility of many births for the human soul and the readjustment of these bodies of ours to the new spirits thus born. If you can tide her over the next three weeks without a breakdown, she will get well."
The husband's eyes flashed:
"If it depends on her mental attitude, I'll make her live and grow strong. I'll give her my body and soul."
"There are just two dangers——"
"What?"
"The first mental—a sudden collapse of the will with which she's making this fight under a reaction to the memories of our system of educated ignorance, which we call girlish innocence. This may come at a moment when the consciousness of these 'ideals' may overwhelm her imagination and cause a collapse——"
"Yes, I understand," he replied thoughtfully. "I'll guard that."
"The other is the big physical enigma——"
"You mean?"
"The possible reopening of that curious abscess in her throat."
"But the specialist assured us it would never reappear——"
"Yes, and he knows just as much about it as you or I. It is one of the few cases of its kind so far recorded in the science of medicine. When the baby was born, the drawing of the mother's neck in pain pressed a bone of the spinal column into the flesh beside the jugular vein. Your specialist never dared to operate for a thorough removal of the trouble for fear he would sever the vein——"
"And if the old wound reopens it will reach the jugular vein?"
"Yes."
"Well—it—won't happen!" he answered fiercely. "It can't happen now——"
"I don't think it will myself, if you can keep at its highest tension the desire to live. That's the magic thing that works the miracle of life in such cases. It makes food digest, sends red blood to the tips of the slenderest finger and builds up the weak places. Don't forget this, my boy. Make her love life, desperately and passionately, until the will to live dominates both soul and body."
"I'll do it," was the firm answer, as he grasped the doctor's outstretched hand in parting.
He withdrew completely from his political work. A Speaker pro tem presided daily over the deliberations of the House, and an assistant editor took charge of the paper.
The wife gently urged him to give part of his time to his work again.
"No," he responded firmly and gayly. "The doctor says you have a chance to get well. I'd rather see the roses in your cheeks again than be the President of the United States."
She drew his head down and clung to him with desperate tenderness.