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>“I will send over word,” he said, dejectedly.

 

“Thank you; you sympathize, I am sure.”

 

“Of course.” And being a nice youth he showed his

consideration by retreating and buttoning his coat up

over his burden of incompetence.

 

The physical prostration of a strong man who has

sinned against his body is as nothing to the bitter humiliation of his soul. Ethical defeat is the most poignant of

all disasters. Like an athlete who has strained heart and

lungs only to be beaten, he feels that anguish of exhaustion, that miserable sense of impotence, the conviction

that his strength has been of no avail. Spiritual defeat

has its more subtle agonies. In some such overwhelming

of the soul the man may turn his face like Hezekiah to the

wall, and refuse to be comforted because of his own shame.

 

To Catherine her husband’s awakening anguish had

been pitiable in the extreme. He had lain like one wounded to the death, refusing to be comforted or to be assured

of hope. Slowly, as she had sat by him and held his hand,

he had told her everything, blurting out the confession

with a sullen yet desperate self-hate. The very pathos of

her trust in him, the divine quickness in her to forgive,

had been as girdles of thorn about his body. What had

he done to justify her love? Disgraced and humiliated

her in this haven of rest her hands had made for him!

 

To appreciate to the full the irony of life, a man has

but to be unfortunate for perhaps three days. It

was about four in the afternoon when Catherine, sitting

beside her husband’s bed, heard the unwelcome panting

of the car. The man Gage had driven fast from Boland’s

Farm. He had a letter from Dr. Inglis, an urgent message, so he had been told.

 

Catherine met him at the gate, and took the letter to

her husband.

 

“A message, dear, from Dr. Inglis.”

 

He reached for it with a hand that trembled, his eyes

faltering from her face. She sat down by the bed, watching him silently as he tore open the envelope and read

the letter.

 

“DEAR MURCHISON, Please come over at once, if possible. Hicks has diagnosed acute internal strangulated

hernia. He has been called off to a midwifery case.

The relatives are getting out of hand. I think an immediate operation will be necessary. I have been to

Lombard Street, and got the instruments together.

 

“INGLIS.”

 

The jerky, straggling sentences betrayed the theorist’s

loss of nerve and self-control. It was evident that the

gentleman with the gilded degrees was in no enviable

panic.

 

“Well, dear?”

 

She bent over him, and touched his forehead.

 

“I shall have to go,” he said, sombrely.

 

“Go, but you are not fit!”

 

He sat up in bed, looked at her, and gave a wry and

miserable smile.

 

“If I had not been such an infernal fool! The last time,

Kate, I swear!”

 

She caught the letter and read it through.

 

“Inglis is a miserable thing to lean on.”

 

“Don’t blame the youngster. At least he is sober.”

 

She winced, as though his self-condemnation hurt her,

and surrendering her fortitude of a sudden, broke out

into tears. Murchison looked at her helplessly, feeling

like a man bound and chained by the shame of his own

manhood. He felt himself unworthy to touch her, too

much humiliated even to offer comfort. The very sincerity

of his self-disgust drove him to action. He sprang out

of bed and began to dress.

 

Catherine, still sobbing, went to the window and strove

to overcome the shuddering weakness that had seized

her. Her husband’s determination appeared to increase

at the expense of her surrender. It was as though they

had exchanged moods in a moment, and that the wife’s

tears had given the man courage.

 

“Kate.”

 

She leaned against the window, and brushed her tears

aside with her hand.

 

“Forgive me, dear. I was a fool, an accursed fool.

Never again. Trust me.”

 

He touched her arm appealingly, like an awed lover

who fears to offend. Catherine turned her head and

looked at him, her courage shining through her tears.

 

“Your words hurt me. You called yourself a drunkard. No, no, you are not that. Oh, my beloved, I need

you now and you must go.”

 

His arms were round her in an instant.

 

“Wife, look up. God help me, I will conquer the curse!

How can I fail, with you?”

 

“Never again? swear it.”

 

“Never. It was a trick of the brain, a damned piece

of moral vanity. And I am a man who advises others!”

 

She turned, and, standing before the glass, pinned on

her hat and threw her dust cloak round her.

 

“I will come with you.”

 

“Where?”

 

“Home, to the children,” and she gave a great sob.

“Mrs. Graham can look after the cottage. You will

want me at home.”

 

“Wife, I want you always.”

CHAPTER XIII

IT is the privilege of short-tempered women to wax

testy under the touch of trouble, and Mrs. Baxter, her

hard face querulous and unlovely, stood in the doorway

of Boland’s Farm, watching the road for the flash of the

doctor’s lamps. A couple of cypress-trees, dead and

brown towards the house, built a deep porch above the

door. Beyond the white palings of the garden the broad

roof of a barn swept up against the sombre azure of the

summer night; and the blackness of the byres and outhouses contrasted with the lawn that was lit by the lighted

windows. To the west stood four great Lombardy poplars whose leaves made the night breeze seem restless

about the house.

 

The austere figure of her sister joined itself to Mrs.

Baxter’s under the cypresses. They talked together in

undertones as they watched the road, their voices harsh

and unmusical even in an attempted whisper. Mrs.

Baxter and Miss Harriet Season were tall and sinewy

women, narrow of face and mind, hard in eye and body,

their sense of sex reduced to insignificance. The unfortunate Inglis, who sat pulling at his watchchain beside

Mr. Thomas Baxter’s bed, had found their hawk faces

too keen and uncompromising for his self-esteem. They

had scented out his incompetence as two old crows will

scent out carrion.

 

“Drat the man, is he never coming!”

 

Mrs. Baxter smoothed her dress, and stood listening

irritably, an angular and inelegant silhouette against the

lamplight.

 

“Just hear Tom groaning.”

 

“And that poor ninny sitting by the bed and trying to

look wise. Ain’t that a light over the willows? I shall

lose my temper if it ain’t Murchison.”

 

Miss Harriet tilted her head like an attentive parrot.

 

“I can hear the thing puffing.”

 

“Just keep quiet can’t you?”

 

“Lor, Mary, you are peevish!”

 

“How can I listen with all your chattering?”

 

Murchison, depressed and out of heart, met these two

ladies at the farmhouse door. They greeted him with

no relieved and hysterical profuseness. Mrs. Baxter extended a red-knuckled hand, looking like a woman ready

to express a grievance.

 

“Glad you’ve come at last, doctor; we’ve been waiting

long enough.”

 

They ushered Murchison into the parlor, a room that

cultivated ugliness from the wool-work mantel-cover to

the red and yellow rug before the door. Murchison, like

most professional men, had become accustomed to the

impertinent petulance of sundry middle -class patients.

Unstrung and inwardly humiliated as he was that night,

the austere woman’s tartness roused his impatience.

 

“My car broke down on the way. How is Mr. Baxter?” and he pulled off his gloves.

 

“Bad, sir, sorry to say. I can’t think, doctor, how you

could send that young chap over here.”

 

“Dr. Inglis?”

 

“He don’t know his business; we hadn’t any faith in

him from the minute he entered the door.”

 

“Dr. Inglis is perfectly competent to represent me

when I am away from Roxton.”

 

“Indeed, doctor, I beg to differ.”

 

Mrs. Baxter’s grieved contempt suggested that Murchison had no Christian right to rest or eat when duty

called him. Had the lady been less selfish and aggressive

she might have been struck by the man’s tired eyes and

nervous, irritable manner. But Mrs. Baxter was one of

those crude and complacent people who never consider

the sensitive complexities of others.

 

“I will see your husband at once.”

 

“I hope you’re not going to operate, doctor.”

 

Murchison’s face betrayed his irritation as he moved

towards the door.

 

“My dear madam, do you wish me to attend your husband, or do you not?”

 

The bony woman tilted her chin.

 

“I don’t hold with people being cut about with knives.”

 

Ignorance when insolent is doubly exasperating, and

Murchison was in no mood for an argument.

 

“Mrs. Baxter, from what Dr. Hicks has said, your husband will die unless operated on immediately.”

 

The farmer’s wife shrugged, and pressed her lips together.

 

“Very well, doctor, have your own way.”

 

“If I am to attend your husband you must trust in my

opinion.”

 

“Oh of course. Do what you think proper, sir. I

know we don’t signify.”

 

Murchison abandoned Mrs. Baxter to her prejudices,

and climbed the stairs to the bedroom, where Dr. Inglis

dabbled scalpels and artery forceps in surgical trays.

The assistant’s thin face welcomed his superior with a

worried yet grateful smile. No heroine of romance had

listened more eagerly for the sound of her lover’s gallop

than had Dr. Inglis for the panting of Murchison’s car.

 

On the bed with its white chintz valance and side curtains lay the farmer, skin ashy, eyes sunken, the typical

facies of acute abdominal obstruction. A sickly stench

rose from a basin full of brown vomit beside the bed.

The man hiccoughed and groaned as he breathed, each

spasm of the diaphragm drawing a quivering gulp of

pain.

 

Murchison, his eyes noting each significant detail,

seated himself on the edge of the bed. He had hoped

that Inglis might have been mistaken, and that he should

find the case less grave than Dr. Hicks had suggested.

Murchison dreaded the thought of an operation, even as

a tired man dreads the duty he cannot justify. He felt

unequal to the nerve strain that the ordeal demanded,

for his hand was not the steady hand of the master for

the night. Slowly and with the uttermost care he examined the man, realizing with each sign and symptom

that Hicks ‘s diagnosis appeared too true. There was no

escaping from the gravity of the crisis. Unless relieved,

Thomas Baxter would surely die.

 

Murchison rose with a tired sigh, and pressing his eyes

for a moment with the fingers of his right hand, went to

the table where Inglis had been arranging the instruments and dressings.

 

“You have anaesthetics?”

 

“Yes. Are you going to operate?”

 

“Yes, I must. It is our only chance.”

 

“And the bed, it is a regular feather pit.”

 

“We have to put up with these things in the country.

I have performed tracheotomy with a pair of scissors and

a hair-pin.”

 

Inglis had faith enough in his chief’s resources. True,

Murchison looked fagged and out of fettle, yet the theorist

little suspected how greatly the elder man dreaded what

was before him. Poor Porteus Carmagee’s port had

worked havoc with that delicate marvel, the brain of the

scientific age. Murchison had sustained a moral shock,

and he was still tremulous with humiliation and remorse.

One of the most trying ordeals of surgery lay before him,

with every disadvantage to test his skill. A weaker man

might

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