As they passed the wicket gate Dr. Ransome paused.
"Mr. Quinney," he said gravely, "I advise you to go for a brisk walk. You can do nothing more."
"But if my wife should want me?"
"She is not likely to want you. It might make it easier for her, if she knew you were out of the way."
"I'll sit in the dining-room," said Quinney.
He did so, casting longing eyes at the decanter of port, sorely tempted to drink and drink till he became drunk. He was learning much upon this terrible night. Ever afterwards, when he encountered drunkards, he forebore to condemn them, wondering what had first driven them to seek oblivion, and thankful that the temptation to do so had never mastered him.
Presently the nurse joined him, and he was struck by the change in her pleasant, capable face. Upon being pressed, she admitted cautiously that there were slight complications.
Worse followed!
At midnight, Quinney was dispatched for another doctor. And then what he had predicted, half in jest, came to pass. Mrs. Biddlecombe was seized with violent pains. Quinney had been right about the mackerel; and the nurse was called upon to give undivided attention to the elder woman. Quinney took refuge in the kitchen, where Maria was busy preparing hot poultices and predicting two deaths in the house, if not three, before morning. Never in his short life, not even in the throes of nightmare, had Quinney imagined any concatenation of misery which could compare with the realities of this night.
At three in the morning, once more alone in the dining-room, he went down on his knees. In a wild, unreasoning fashion, dazed by what he had experienced, he proposed to bargain with Omnipotence. Solemnly, he swore that he would sell no more new oak as old, if his precious Susan was spared. He renounced fervently all claim to Joseph Quinney, junior. If choice had to be made, let the child be taken and the mother left!