Together they went each day to the hospital where Bertram lay. The German doctors would not let them go into his ward, because of infection, and their reports were not comforting.
“Sehr krank! . . . Gross gefähr. . . . Es geht nicht wohl.”
Bertram was very ill. He was in great danger. It was not going well with him.
It was Janet who remembered that Bertram had a sister in Berlin—the beautiful Dorothy, now Frau von Arenburg. A note from her brought Dorothy and her husband to Christy’s room, infinitely distressed by the grave news. They haunted the hospital and Von Arenburg interviewed the doctors, and in his rather Prussian way impressed them with “the enormous importance” of Bertram’s recovery to the friendly relations between England and Germany.
Anna von Wegener sent immense bouquets of hot-house flowers which were never allowed to enter the sick man’s room, and other German ladies whom Bertram had met at his sister’s house were prodigal with fruit and flowers. But Bertram, lying there in delirium, knew none of this kindly remembrance from those whom he had called “the Enemy.”
“It is the crisis,” said the German doctors one day. “If he lives through the night—”
“Let’s pray a bit,” said Janet to her friend. “We’re both infidels, but God will understand.”
“I don’t believe in prayer,” said Christy. “I’m a blasphemer and a heretic.”
“So is all humanity,” said Janet. “But in time of trouble we cry out to God, in spite of disbelief.”
“It’s our cowardice,” said Christy. “It’s the dark of the mind. The primitive savage before the Ju-ju of his fears and hopes.”