Lydia answered: “Ariadne slightly worse. Doctor says crisis in three days.”
This time she put in no extra information as to the baby’s suffering, and her message was under ten words, like his own. She despatched him thereafter a bulletin every four or five hours. They ran mostly to the effect that Ariadne was about the same.
The doctor came and went, the nurses relieved each other, the telephone rang for Marietta’s inquiries, Flora Burgess called once a day to get the news from ’Stashie. Lydia was slave to the nurses, alert for the slightest service she could render them, divining, with a desperate intuition, their needs before they were formulated. ’Stashie was the only person who paid the least attention to her, ’Stashie the only phenomena to break in on the solitude that surrounded her like an illimitable plain. ’Stashie made her eat. ’Stashie saw to it that once or twice she lay down. ’Stashie combed her hair, and bathed her white face—most of all, ’Stashie went about with eyes that reflected faithfully the suffering in Lydia’s own. She said very little, but as they passed, the two women sometimes exchanged brief words: “Niver you think it possible, Mis’ Hollister!”
“No,” Lydia would answer resolutely; “it’s not possible.”
But as the hours slowly filed past the doctor assured her bluntly that it would be quite possible. “There’s a fighting chance,” he said, “and nothing more.” He added relentlessly, “If I hadn’t been such a fool as to let you wean her—”
There was in his manner none of his usual tenderness to his godchild. One would have thought he scarcely saw her. He was the physician wholly. Lydia was grateful to him for this. She could not have borne his tenderness then, but his professional concentration left her horribly alone.
No, not alone! There was always ’Stashie—silent ’Stashie, with red eyes, her heart bleeding. But even ’Stashie’s loyal heart could not know all the bitterness of Lydia’s. ’Stashie’s breasts did not swell and throb, as if in mockery. ’Stashie did not hear, over and over, “If she had not been weaned—”
On the night and near the hour when the crisis was expected, Lydia was at the end of the hall, where she had installed an oil-stove. She was heating water needed for some of the processes of the sick room. It had begun to steam up in the thick, hot night air, was singing loudly, and would boil in an instant. She sat looking at it in her tense, trembling quiet. There was no light but the blue flame of the stove.
Suddenly there rang loudly in her ears the question to which she had deafened herself with such crucifying effort—“What if Ariadne should die?” It was as though someone had called to her. She looked down into the black abyss from which she had willfully turned away her eyes, and saw that it was fathomless. A throe of revolt and hatred shook her. She bowed her head to her knees, racked by an anguish compared with which the torture of childbirth was nothing; and out of this deadly pain came forth, as in childbirth, something alive—a vision as swift, as passing as a glimpse into the gates of Paradise; a blinding certainty of immensity, of the hugeness of the whole of which she and Ariadne were a part; of the sacredness of life, which was to be lived sacredly, even if— She raised her head, living a more exalted instant than she had ever dreamed she would know.
The water broke into quick, dancing bubbles. In a period of time incalculably short, transfiguration had come to her.