The doctor gripped Edward's forearm and bade him pull himself together. That grip in conjunction with the cold air of the passage kept Edward from breaking down. He compelled himself to follow what the doctor with a good deal of technical detail was telling him about Elizabeth's condition. "And so it may be impossible to save the lives of both," the doctor was murmuring. "However, as I was saying, there is no need to decide yet, and I am expecting a new instrument to-morrow, which may do away with the necessity of such a painful decision. I have sent word to have any parcel which arrives for me brought here immediately."
"Decision?" Edward repeated. "What decision do you mean?"
"Whether we save the life of the mother or the child."
"Are you drunk or mad?" Edward shouted. "Why, rather than she should suffer an instant's pain I would have the child cut to pieces. Decision! I believe you're as drunk as that other fellow next door."
The young doctor gazed at Edward in astonishment, for he had heard nothing of the reason for choosing him in preference to his neighbor.
"I was bound to give you the opportunity of deciding," he explained. "Naturally I did not for a moment expect you to give any other answer but the one you have given. I'm sorry to have upset you like this. If I may offer you some sound advice, I should recommend your staying quietly in the kitchen. It would be better, of course, if you could manage to lie down and sleep for a while; but I can understand that you are too anxious for that. You must not work yourself up into a state of mind. There is no immediate cause for anxiety. No, certainly no immediate cause."
Edward allowed the doctor to steer him back into the kitchen where their entrance roused old James Taylor and Mr. Gallagher, both of whom with loud yawns declared their intention of going to bed. Soon Edward was left alone, for Dr. Harrison went back to his patient, and he settled himself down to solitary meditation by what was left of the dead fire in the still fairly warm grate.
It was easy, thought Edward, very easy for that young doctor to talk about childbirth as if it were nothing more than buying a doll in a shop. Doctors soon began to lose their sense of the soul in their familiarity with the body. What did a man like that know about the great mystery of human love? Edward's mind went back to his talk with the Vicar of Barton Flowers on the vigil of his wedding; and now thinking over his brief married life with Elizabeth he apprehended all the truth of what the parson had said. He remembered how much the conversation had elated him at the time and how he had felt an impulse to submit himself to the promptings of what the Vicar had called the Grace of the Holy Spirit. That impulse like so many of them, alas, had gone the way of the rest, had been allowed to expire when the enthusiasm of thought demanded the breath of action to endure. Edward vowed that this time if Elizabeth's life should be granted to him he really would ... what? "I really will grapple with life," he promised to that nebulous emanation of celestial magic which the ordinary man calls God. "Before the sun rises to-morrow morning I may be a father. I shall owe a duty to a human soul which I have brought into the world." Edward discovered with shame that this child, which might even at this moment be uttering its first cry to the darkness of the unimaginable universe around it, had not until this moment presented itself to him as a fact. He regretted now the way he had answered the doctor's question a short while ago. He had been sneering to himself at the doctor's point of view about childbirth; but he should rather have sneered at himself for what he was, a weak and self-indulgent and careless egoist that without foresight and without responsibility might become the parent of a human being from whom in days to come he should expect gratitude, affection, and obedience.
Edward made new vows to that dim God beyond the stars that if he were granted not only the life of his Elizabeth, but also the life of their child, he would devote his future to a worthy fatherhood, that even if himself should fail in his contest with life he would ... what? Edward's mind wandered already to the agony of his adored wife, and he could not bear to contemplate any future at all until he knew that she was safe.