Out there in the dark, several things became plain to him. He saw that he had not had any real confidence in Rogers from the start; while the effect of the evening spent at close quarters had been to sink his opinion to nothing. Rogers belonged to an old school; his method was to sit by and let nature take its course—perhaps just this slowness to move had won him a name for extreme care. His old fogyism showed up unmistakably in a short but heated argument they had had on the subject of chloroform. He cited such hoary objections to the use of the new anaesthetic in maternity cases as Mahony had never expected to hear again: the therapeutic value of pain; the moral danger the patient ran in yielding up her will ("What right have we to bid a fellow-creature sacrifice her consciousness?") and the impious folly of interfering with the action of a creative law. It had only remained for him to quote Genesis, and the talking serpent!
Had the case been in his own hands he would have intervened before now. Rogers, on the contrary, was still satisfied with the shape of affairs—or made pretence to be. For, watching lynx-eyed, Mahony fancied each time the fat man propelled his paunch out of the sickroom it was a shade less surely: there were nuances, too, in the way he pronounced his vapid: "As long as our strength is well maintained ... well maintained." Mahony doubted Polly's ability to bear much more; and he made bold to know his own wife's constitution best. Rogers was shilly-shallying: what if he delayed too long and Polly slipped through his hands? Lose Polly? Good God! the very thought turned him cold. And alive to his finger-tips with the superstition of his race, he impetuously offered up his fondest dream to those invisible powers that sat aloft, waiting to be appeased. If this was to be the price exacted of him—the price of his escape from exile—then... then ...
To come back to the present, however, he was in an awkward position: he was going to be forced to take Polly's case out of the hands of the man to whom he had entrusted it. Such a step ran counter to all the stiff rules of conduct, the punctilios of decorum, laid down by the most code-ridden profession in the world.
But a fresh visit to Polly, whose pulse had grown markedly softer, put an end to his scruples.
Stalking into the sitting-room he said without preamble: "In my opinion any further delay will mean a risk to my wife. I request you to operate immediately."
Rogers blinked up from his cards, surprise writ across his ruddy countenance. He pushed his spectacles to his forehead. "Eh? What? Well, well ... yes, the time is no doubt coming when we shall have to lend Mother Nature a hand."
"Coming? It's come ... and gone. Are you blind, man?"
Rogers had faced many an agitated husband in his day. "Now, now, Mr. Mahony," he said soothingly, and laid his last two cards in line. "You must allow me to be the judge of that. Besides," he added, as he took off his glasses to polish them on a red bandanna; "besides, I should have to ask you to go out and get some one to assist me."
"I shall assist you," returned Mahony.
Rogers smiled his broad, fat smile. "Easier said than done, my good sir! ... easier said than done."