Physically spent herself after hours of struggle with a woman whose strength in intervals of pain was almost incredible, Evelyn watched day dawn, with a face that was haggard and worn. Dora's shrinking at pain she would have borne so gladly shattered her. In moments of physical anguish souls are revealed, and she had never seen Dora in so pitiful, so low, so unworthy a light as she did now. Wearied out at last, she moved mechanically, like one in a dream, going to and from the sick-room as she was bidden. Dora had got her way; the doctor had administered chloroform long before he would have given it in the case of a courageous patient. Sitting alone in the little anteroom, Evelyn watched grey shadows come and go, frightened servants stepping on tiptoe, the doctor and the nurse, even Farquharson, whose ravaged face put him beyond the reach even of her spoken sympathy. In the house it was presently rumoured that the real struggle with death had begun; the piteous struggle of the child to whom Dora had denied any chance of vitality which might have given her one added pain.
The end came in the morning as light trembled into being. As if in a dream, Evelyn heard a cry that pierced her heart; a cry that seemed to sound the death-knell of her own dream-child, that put Farquharson further away from her. Some smell of chloroform or ether—she was no longer able to distinguish between the two—was penetrating into the inner room. When presently her name was called, it seemed to make a definite atmosphere through which she feebly groped her way to Dora's bedroom. One of the nurses met her there with a tiny bundle in her arms. Evelyn took it; it was pitifully light.
"He may not live," the nurse said; "the doctor thought his father would like to see him. I must go back to the room, Mrs. Farquharson is so dreadfully nervous and hysterical; we are both quite worn out. Just hark at her now! Would you kindly take the baby down, Mrs. Brand."
The gods have an unlimited belief in one's powers of endurance. Slowly, with breaking heart, her eyes drowned partly for self-pity, partly for fear lest the flickering little life she held might breathe its last before the end of her journey, she went downstairs and entered the sitting-room where Farquharson stood waiting. She saw his face as he greeted her, its pallor, its anxiety transfigured suddenly by the light which comes but once in a lifetime to a man, and that only when he looks upon his firstborn son. Without a word he held out his arms; without a word Evelyn handed him her dear burden. Then the room rocked, she put out her hands blindly, swaying. So bitter, so cruel, so overwhelming was the moment's agony, that it was as though a chord had snapped in her heart, and left her struggling for breath. But Farquharson neither saw nor heard. She closed the door gently—how she did not know—and left him alone with his son.
CHAPTER X
"The cord breaks at the last by the weakest pull."—Old Spanish Proverb.
At one point in pain, all sense of value dies. Nothing is left but the overwhelming realization that, throb by throb, it will increase until it reaches the climax, when a woman bites her pillow to stifle her shrieks, and a man in all probability blows out his brains—the shortest way of escape. To the woman there succeeds what may be called reaction, a temporary lull, in which body, mind and soul are alike so bruised and stricken that, possibly from sheer weariness, sleep may come for a brief hour. But next day the pain begins again and concentrates again, and so on and on from day to day and week to week, the only change being that soul and mind and body become daily a little more bruised, a little more stricken.
This is worse than a mere period of spiritual dryness; it is an active wrestling with the powers of hell. It is in such moments that religion fails, and the faith to which one was born seems to spell restriction. One would prefer to fling it away altogether, to deny its truth, to escape to a world where the light of the heart might give out its full radiance, even if the soul shrank in gloom.
Doubts creep in in such moments of peril. Catholics do not mince matters. They do not expect to cheat God in their lives and the devil in their deaths by tardy repentance. If they sin, they risk eternal damnation, and know it.
The description of a picture she had once seen had often been in Evelyn's thoughts lately. God sat in judgment on His throne. Before Him was ranged a tribe of kneeling figures—kings laying down their sceptres, soldiers their swords, queens their jewels, men their symbols of ambition, women their guerdons of beauty. Some hung back as though unwilling to give up so soon all that was pleasant. In the foreground of the picture knelt a young girl's shrinking form. Her eyes, mystical and reverent, were looking at the throne; she held one hand bravely outstretched, but the other was concealed within the drapery of her gown. In the hand that pointed direct to God there was the half of a little human heart, her own, all that she had to give, for the other half was withheld. Amongst so vast a crowd of worshippers she thought that perhaps God might not see the gift she offered was divided.