A Woman's War by Warwick Deeping (ap literature book list .txt) 📖

have temporized, or played the traitor by surrendering to nature. Murchison’s conscience was too strong

to suffer him to shirk his duty.

 

He crossed the room to the bed, and bent over the

farmer.

 

“Mr. Baxter, you are very ill; we must give you chloroform.”

 

The man’s sunken eyes looked up pathetically into

Murchison’s face.

 

“Oh, dear Lord, doctor, anything; I can’t stand the

gripe of it much longer.”

 

“You understand that I am going to operate on you?”

 

“All right, sir, do just what you think proper.”

 

In a few minutes the instrument table, with a powerful

electric surgical-lamp, had been brought near the bed.

Murchison had taken off his coat, tied on an apron, and

was soaking his hands in perchloride of mercury. Inglis

had the chloroform mask over the farmer’s face. The

man was weak with the anguish he had suffered, and took

the anaesthetic without a struggle. Soon came the twitching of the limbs and the incoherent babbling as the vapor

took effect. Murchison gave a rapid glance at the instrument table to see that everything he needed was to

hand Then he bared the farmer’s body, packed it round

with towels, and began to scrub and cleanse the skin.

 

“He’s nearly under, sir.”

 

“Good.”

 

Murchison felt Baxter’s pulse, and frowned.

 

“We must waste no time,” he remarked, setting back

his shoulders.

 

“The pupil reflex has gone.”

 

“Keep him as lightly under as you can.”

 

There was the glimmer of a knife, and a long streaking

of the skin with red. Murchison worked rapidly, spreading the lips of the wound with the fingers of his left hand

while he plied the knife. The patient’s stertorous breathing seemed to fill the room. Murchison swabbed the

wound briskly, and worked on with grim and quiet

patience.

 

Soon half a dozen artery forceps were dangling about

the wound. Murchison was bending over the farmer,

insinuating his hand into the abdominal cavity. Inglis

glanced at him with a worried air.

 

“Can you feel anything, sir?”

 

“Not yet.”

 

“I don’t like the pulse.”

 

“We must risk it; watch the breathing.”

 

Murchison’s forehead had become full of lines. His

face was the face of a man whose intelligence is strained

to the utmost pitch of sensitiveness. The ordeal of touch,

the education of four finger-tips, stood between failure and

success.

 

Inglis shot a questioning glance at his chief’s face.

 

“Found anything?”

 

“No. I must enlarge the wound.”

 

The knife went to work again, with swabs and artery

forceps to choke the blood flow. Murchison was sweating as though he had run half a mile under a July sun.

There was an impatient twitching of the muscles of his

face. He breathed fast and deeply, like a man whose

staying power is being taxed.

 

“Confound the man’s fat!”

 

Inglis smiled feebly but sympathetically.

 

“Not an easy case.”

 

“Wait. No, I thought I had something. Look after

the pulse.”

 

The strain was beginning to tell on Murchison after

the overthrow of the previous night. He looked jaded,

pale, and impatient. The reek of the anaesthetic made

the blood buzz in his temples. At such a time a surgeon

needs superhuman nerve, that iron patience that is never

flustered.

 

Minutes passed, and the skilled fingers were still baffled.

Murchison straightened his back with a kind of groan.

 

“Wipe my forehead,” he said, curtly.

 

Inglis leaned forward, and wiped the sweat away with

a napkin.

 

“Thanks,” and he went to work again, yet with a

hand that trembled. That supreme self-control had

deserted him for the moment. He seemed feverish and

spasmodic, out of temper with the difficulties of the case.

 

“The devil take it! Ah at last.”

 

He drew a relieved breath, his eyes brightening, his

face clearing a little. The deft fingers had succeeded,

and swabs and sponges were soon at work. Sweat dropped from his forehead into the wound, but Murchison

did not heed it in his strained intentness.

 

“Pass me some sponges. Thanks. Count for me.”

 

More minutes passed before Murchison lifted his head

with a great sigh of relief.

 

“Thank God, that’s over.”

 

“Shall I stop the chloroform?”

 

“No, keep it on a little longer. How many sponges

were there? Six? One, two, three, four, five, and the

last. Now for the ligatures,” and he handled the threads

with quivering fingers.

 

Inglis was feeling the man’s pulse.

 

“He won’t stand much more, Murchison.”

 

“All right, you can stop.”

 

Scarcely had the concentration of his mind force relaxed for him than Murchison felt dizzy in the head, and

saw a luminous fog before his eyes. Sweat ran from him;

the room seemed saturated with the reek of chloroform.

The reaction rushed on him with a feeling of nausea and

a great sense of faintness at the heart. Bandage in’ hand,

he swayed back, collapsed into a chair, and bent his head

down between his knees.

 

A decanter of brandy stood on the dressingtable.

Inglis, not a little scared, darted for it, and poured out a

heavy dose into a tumbler.

 

“What’s up, Murchison? Here, drink this down.

Baxter’s all right for the moment.”

 

Murchison lifted a gray face from between his hands

to the light.

 

“Thanks, Inglis, I feel done up. Don’t bother about

me. I shall be right again in a moment.”

 

He put the brandy aside, and wiped his forehead with

the sleeve of his shirt. Inglis was completing the bandaging of the wound that Murchison had left unfinished.

The farmer was breathing heavily, a streak of foam blubbering at his blue and swollen lips.

 

“You had better turn home, sir, I can manage now.”

 

Murchison rose wearily and went to wash his hands.

 

“You must be fagged, Inglis,” he retorted.

 

“Not a bit of it,” and the theorist displayed more

courage now that the responsibility was on other shoulders.

 

“You might stay for an hour or two. I left word in

Roxton for Nurse Sprange to come out. You must put

up with the old ladies’ tongues.”

 

The assistant frowned slightly as he recollected Mrs.

Baxter and her sister.

 

“You will see them, Murchison, before you go?”

 

“Yes, of course.”

 

The two shallow-chested women were waiting for news

in the hideous parlor. Even Mrs. Baxter’s stupidity

could not ignore the look of distress on Murchison’s face.

By the time the doctor’s had taken, she guessed that an

operation had been performed, and by Murchison’s manner that it had not proved successful.

 

“Well, doctor, bad news, I suppose?”

 

Mrs. Baxter was more ready to quarrel than to weep.

 

“The operation has been perfectly satisfactory.”

 

“Indeed!”

 

“Your husband is still in very grave danger, but I see

no reason why he should not recover.”

 

Murchison picked his gloves out of his hat. An expressive glance passed between Mrs. Baxter and her

sister.

 

“You’re not going, doctor?”

 

“Yes, Dr. Inglis remains in charge. One of the Roxton nurses will be here any moment.”

 

The farmer’s wife betrayed her indignation.

 

“What, that ninny! He ain’t fit to doctor a cat. I

tell you, Dr. Murchison, I don’t want him in my house.”

 

The man’s eyes flashed in his tired face. The woman’s

impertinence was insufferable.

 

“Really, madam, Dr. Inglis is perfectly competent to

be left in charge. I shall see your husband early tomorrow.”

 

Mrs. Baxter sniffed.

 

“Well, I call it an insult!”

 

“Call it what you will, my dear woman, but I need

rest like other people, and I must go.”

 

And go he did, leaving two sour and quarrelsome faces

at the farmhouse door.

 

At Lombard Street, Catherine was waiting for her husband after putting Gwen and Jack to bed. She rose

anxiously at the sound of the car, and met Murchison in

the hall. His face shocked her even in the shaded lamplight. He looked like a man who had come through some

great travail.

 

“James, dear how—”

 

“I’m through with it, thank God!”

 

“Safely?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Well done -well done. I knowhowyou have suffered.”