"Good luck, old man."
"I'm afraid to go, Bobs," he said brokenly, "but it's something to do! Good-bye. God bless you."
"And you, and Jane, and Baby!" she cried after him.
CHAPTER XXXIV
It seemed to Jane that the world was a great void, filled with the strangled breathing of the baby. Since the first swift descent of danger she had worked mechanically, under the doctor's orders, without sleep, with no attention to the food which they forced her to swallow. Her muscles obeyed the orders of her brain, but her subconscious mind spilled over into her consciousness every minute of the time, and a dreary monologue repeated itself interminably:
"Why did I bring him here? Why did I risk his life this way? For my own selfish purposes, and now God will punish me. He will take him away. I shall have killed him—little Jerry." Over and over it ran, the same words, the same aching accusation. With a reversion to the old, avenging God of her childhood, she foresaw quick doom for sin.
Jerry Jr. had never been ill before and Jane was unprepared for the suddenness of the seizure. A strange doctor had to be summoned, Anna's terror quieted, a trained nurse sent for. Things had to be done quickly for the need was immediate. The baby had evidently taken cold—it had gone into membranous croup before they realized that he was really ill.
Miss Garnett and the doctor were kindness itself, but it seemed to Jane that she was as alone with Nemesis, as if she were lost in the desert. The first day, and part of the second, the doctor insisted there was no need of alarm, but the afternoon of the second day the breathing grew more and more difficult. Then Jane wired for Jerry.
As she waited for him, she tried to think how he would feel toward her, if his son were sacrificed. She thought of the night before they came away—how he had bathed him and said his good-bye to him. He was just beginning to take an interest in him, to be proud of him. And now! She fought down the desire to break into hysterical weeping. She must spare him that, at least.