“Are you ill?” said Perolli, and, “Oh no, no, not at all!” said Alex, her teeth chattering together. “I would like to lie down, if I could, but it’s all right.”
Another half hour went by, lengthening into an hour. Alex seemed still more ill to me, though I could not see her very well; she grew very, very large before my eyes and then very small and far away. My head ached, and just as I thought I was warm at last, I would be disappointed again by a chill that made me clench my teeth and grip my chair. But when I saw Alex’s head fall forward as though she were faint, I could stand it no longer. I got up.
“Perolli,” I said, “tell our host we’ve got to get Alex dry and warm. If you don’t I’ll undress her and rub her right here!”
I would have said more, but I couldn’t. A pain like a knife stabbed through my lungs, and before I could catch my breath stabbed neatly again. It’s the kind of pain you can’t describe; if you’ve felt it you know it, and if you haven’t, you can’t. I recognized it; it had struck me years before and laid me in a hospital for six weeks. Pneumonia!
There’s a kind of clan morality that controls us. It has nothing to do with the moralities of religions or races or states; it is a group affair, and the groups seem roughly to be made by common occupations. Soldiers must conceal, and deny, their natural fear of death. Labor-union men must let their children starve before they “scab.” Farmers must not let their stock break through fences, or let a bit of unused land become a nursery for weeds. Employers—and one sees this, now, everywhere in Europe—must not pay higher wages than other employers, however easy and more efficient it may be to do so. Women who are married, or expect to marry, must not let a man’s fancy wander from the woman who claims him. Doctors must let a patient die rather than take the case from another doctor. And women like Alex and Frances and me—for whom there is no generic term, except the meaningless “modern women”—must never, so long as they can keep on their feet, admit that they are ill.
How Alex felt I don’t know; for myself, I was in a blue panic. I have never wanted anything so much as I wanted to collapse right there, in sheer terror. Pneumonia, in Shala, a hundred and fifty miles from a doctor, from medicines, from even a bed. Pneumonia, among the Albanians, whose only medical knowledge of it was that it came from drinking rain water!
Perolli had been surprised by my exclamation. “Why didn’t you say you were uncomfortable?” he said to Alex. “If I’d had any idea——”
“I’m all right,” said Alex, getting the words out quickly and shutting her teeth hard.
“Well, what are you fussing about, then?” said Perolli to me, anxiously. “I’d take you girls to a fire if I could, but, you see, they’re cooking in the kitchen, and naturally the padre doesn’t want to take his guests there. We’ve been here three hours now; dinner ought to be ready before long, and you’ll be all right as soon as you’ve had something to eat.”
That pain stabbed through my lungs again, taking all my breath and engaging all my self-control, and I wilted. I wasn’t the good sport Alex was.