“She’s dying, man; there’s nothing to do for her that could be done out of Liverpool.”
“Liverpool,” said Samuel.
His thoughts seemed to be somewhere in the back of his mind, inaccessible, walled up from contact with the reality of what he heard and saw. He appeared unable to grasp what had happened, what was coming. Surely he was walking in a dream, and every minute there was the chance, so he thought, that he might awake from it. What was this that had come upon him in a night? Certainly not the reality, for with that he had been living for years—that was life. Barbara was dying; the words rang oddly in his ears without reaching his mind. Some stranger was speaking with him; he did not understand. Barbara was dying; no, not Barbara, somebody else; other people did die. Barbara, was dying; not his Barbara, not the mother of his children, the wife of his fireside, his companion during a lifetime. Somebody was dying; no, not his Barbara but somebody else; just give him time to think. Barbara was dying—could it be his Barbara?
“Dyin’?” asked Samuel aloud, “Barbara dyin’?” He repeated the words as if questioning and testing them.
“Aye, man,” replied the doctor sharply, “she’s dying; she’s caught herself lifting something. With an operation there might be some chance; but there’s none here in this place, only in Liverpool.”
“Aye, Liverpool,” answered Samuel, “we’re goin’ to Liverpool soon.”
The doctor glanced at him keenly; before this he had seen childishness with some shock of grief take a sudden, unrelinquishing hold on old age.
“Well,” continued Samuel, still as if talking to himself or to some one outside the room, “we’ll go now; aye, we’ll take the chance.”
“But, man,” replied the doctor, “it’ll cost more money than ye spend in two years.”