Her agonised touch, the expression of her wild, troubled eyes, made Dot's heart thump within him, but his face showed no sign.
With seeming severity he clasped her wrists and drew her to the adjoining dressing-room.
"It is a matter of life and death—your child's. I dared not tell you how serious—I hoped to save you alarm. Now there is no time to spare."
With that he returned to the room, closed the door, and locked it, leaving her in a passion of tears on the other side. Then he rang for the nurse, and proceeded.
Though at first his very soul seemed shaken with suppressed emotion, in a few seconds the sight of the infant's sufferings, its near approach to suffocation, overwhelmed all remembrance of his own personality, and restored the equilibrium. One thought of the woman, and his frame had throbbed and shivered like the forest trees in March; another, the greater, nobler thought of his science, his sacred mission at the hands of his Maker, and the trembling fingers grew steady.
With accuracy and judgment he inserted the shining channel into the windpipe of the sufferer; with patience and deliberation he held the end of the instrument in his mouth and sucked!
And all the while from the inner room came the sound of sobs—the passionate wail of the woman who had betrayed herself, who stood self-accused of neglecting her child. He heard the grievous sound as he strained the poisonous mucus from the tiny throat and breathed the death-laden air into his lungs. He knew that he swayed on the bridge between life and eternity; that possibly—nay, probably—he should never hear the sweet enchantment of her voice again; that if he should die it must be without so much as a pressure from her hand; and yet the great heart never wavered, but beat evenly like the pulse of some grand cathedral clock, which, spite of marriage chime or funeral knell, pursues its steadfast purpose for ever.
At last the work was over, and its reward, the free respiration of the little sufferer, was assured. Then a feeling of dizziness crept over his brain, and he hastened home, but not before summoning his partner to relieve him.
When Doctor Davis arrived, he learnt from the nurse and Mrs Cameron what had taken place. He was a practical, prosaic person, cumbered with a delicate wife and up-growing children, and censured Danby's conduct as foolhardy in the extreme.