'Smiles', Eliot H. Robinson [books suggested by elon musk TXT] 📗

The baby's eyes, now piteously crossed, had turned upward until the starlike pupils were almost out of sight. There were long periods when only the occasional twitching of the bloodless, childishly curved and parted lips, or the uneasy moving of the golden crowned head on the pillow, betrayed the fact that the spark of life still glowed faintly. Could she, by the power of will and prayer, keep that spark alight until the one on whom she pinned her faith should arrive, and fan it back to a flame by his miraculous skill? That was Smiles' one thought.

The violet shadows of evening began at last to tinge the virgin whiteness of the out-of-doors, and Rose caught herself starting eagerly, with quickened pulse, at every new forest sound. The crunching tread of Judd, who paced incessantly outside the window, grew almost unbearable. She counted the steps as they died away, and listened for them to return, until her nerves shrieked in protest, and it was only by an effort that she curbed their clamoring demand that she rush to the door and scream at him; bid him stand still or begone.

Through the shadows Donald was once again making his way up the now familiar mountain side. To have climbed up the footpath with Miss Merriman and their essential baggage would have been impossible, and he had, after much persuasion, finally succeeded in hiring a man in Fayville to drive them up in a springless, rickety wagon. This had necessitated their taking a much more circuitous route, and what seemed like an interminably long time.

During the railway journey from the Hub, he had told his companion all of the relevant facts, and much of the story of Rose, and the nurse's sympathetic interest in the recital had made her almost as anxious as the man himself to arrive at their destination and answer the girl's cry for aid.

Once she had voiced a doubt as to the wisdom of leaving his urgent practice and taking such a trip on so slender grounds.

"But how do you know that it is brain tumor, doctor, or that there is either any chance of saving the child's life, or any real need of a surgeon? At the most you have only the conclusion of a country doctor who can hardly be competent to determine such a question."

"I have considered all that, Miss Merriman," he had replied, shortly, and then added, as though he felt that an explanation were due, "Frankly, when I made up my mind to go, I wasn't thinking of the patient so much as I was of my foster-sister. Perhaps she won't appeal to you as she has to me; but I really feel a strong responsibility for her future, and I don't want her faith in m ... in physicians to be shattered. You see, I have held up the ideal of service, regardless of reward, as our motto." He sat silently looking out of the car window for a moment, while the nurse studied his serious, purposeful face and mentally revised her previous estimate of him. Then he went on, with an apologetic laugh, "Besides—Oh, I know that it sounds utterly preposterous, but there are times when a man's groundless premonitions are more real to him than any logical conclusions of his own. This is one of those times."

The subject dropped.

Donald had, in addition to a fortnight's compensation in advance, given Miss Merriman a return ticket and sufficient money to cover all necessary disbursements, and told her that she must, of course, look to him for any additional salary. Under no circumstances, he said, was she to accept what Rose was sure to try and press upon her.

At length the plodding horse turned into the little clearing before Jerry's cabin, and, as it appeared, the watcher outside, his face twitching, slunk silently away into the forest, where his racked soul was to endure its hours of Gethsemane.

Rose heard them. She hastened to the door, and her white lips uttered a low cry which spoke the overwhelming measure of her relief.

"I just knew you'd come!" she said, as the man, numbed with cold, swung his companion to the ground. The girl gave her a quick glance of surprise; but her eyes instantly returned to the doctor's face with an expression which Miss Merriman decided was as nearly worship as she had ever seen.

Donald did not return her greeting in words at first; but, after he had paid the driver, so liberally that the latter was left speechless, and they had entered the cabin, he held out his strong arms to her. Smiles swayed into them and pressed her face against the thick fur of his coat with an almost soundless sigh that told the whole story of anxious waiting and the end of the tension that had left its mark on her childlike face.

"This, Miss Merriman, is my little foster-sister, Rose. And Miss Merriman is a nurse who has come to help us," said he, as he released her, and passed on to greet the old giant, who had slowly pulled his shattered, towering frame from his chair, and now stood with a gaunt hand held out in welcome, while a ghost of his one-time hearty smile shadowed his lips. Big Jerry's flowing beard was now snow-white, and Donald was shocked at the change which had taken place in him.

Their greeting was brief and simple, as between men whose hearts are charged, and, as soon as he had eased him back into his seat, Donald spoke with a quick assumption of his professional bearing.

"Now, about our little patient. How is she, Rose?"

"Close to the eternal gates, I'm afraid," whispered the girl, with a catch in her voice. "Oh, Donald, we cannot let her ..." she turned abruptly and led the way to the door of her tiny bedroom. The doctor stepped inside and looked briefly, but searchingly, at the child who lay there, silent, and the semblance of Death itself. With her lips caught by her teeth, and her hands clasped tightly together to still her trembling, Rose watched him.

His next words, spoken as he stepped back into the cabin and shook himself free of his greatcoat, were brusquely non-committal. "And the doctor? Where is he?"

"The doctor? Why, he ... he isn't here; he hasn't been here for days. He doesn't even know that you were coming ... that I had sent for you."

"What? But I don't understand, child. Of course he ought to be here." Donald's voice was so sharp that it brought the tears, that were so near the surface, into Smiles' eyes, perceiving which, he hastened to add more gently, "There, there, of course you didn't know; but I can hardly hope to diagnose ... to determine what the trouble really is, or where the growth, if there is one, is located, unless I get a full history of the case from him and his own conclusions to help me."

"But ... but, Donald, he didn't have any conclusions. He said it was ... was brain fever, first, and then he gave up trying and told us that Lou had just got to die. Besides, I know the ... the history...." She stopped, with a little wail of distress.

"'Brain fever!' Then who ... the telegram certainly said 'tumor.'"

"Yes, yes. I said that. Oh, I can't tell you why; but I just know that it is, Donald, for little Lou has been exactly like you told me that baby up north was—the one you saved by a ... a miracle. Oh, don't you remember? It was in the paper."

Her sentences had become piteously incoherent; but their significance slowly dawned upon him. To Miss Merriman the conversation was somewhat of an enigma, and she stood aside, regarding Rose with an expression half bewildered, half frightened. Had this strange child summoned so famous a physician, whose moments, even, were golden, to the heart of the Cumberlands on her own initiative and on the strength of her own childish guess, merely? It was incredible, a tragic farce.

Perhaps something of similar import passed swiftly through the man's mind, for he placed his large hands upon the girl's slender shoulders, and, for an instant, sent a searching gaze deep into her eyes, now luminous with unshed tears, as he had first seen them. They looked up at him troubled, but frankly trusting.

"Do you mean, Rose," his words came slowly, "that you sent for me without a doctor's suggestion and advice; that you did it on your own hook?"

She nodded. "I just couldn't bear to have her die. She is all that ... that Judd has got in the world, now, and I knew that you could save her for him."

His hands felt the controlled tension of her body, and he impulsively drew her close to him. When he answered, his voice was strangely gentle.

"It's all right, little doctor. I'm glad that you did, and only hope that I can help. Now, let's all sit down here before the fire—how good it feels after that bitter ride, doesn't it, Miss Merriman?—and you will tell me all that you can about the baby's trouble—every single thing that you have noticed from the first, no matter how little it is. You see, that only by knowing exactly how the patient has acted can the surgeon even hope to guess where the trouble has its seat. Once before I told you that a nurse has got to face the truth, understandingly and bravely, and I may as well tell you about some of the difficulties which lie in the path that we must tread to-night. Your faith has been almost—sublime, dear. I wonder if it would have failed if you had known how like a child in knowledge—a child searching in the dark—is a surgeon at such a time as this?"

"I ... I don't believe that I understand, and you kind of frightened me, Don. I thought that all you would have to do would be to ... to cut out that awful thing that is stealing away Lou's precious life. Wasn't that what you did for that other little child?"

"Yes, but ... how am I going to explain? If there is a tumor, as we think, I'll do my best to take it away; but, in order to do that, I have, of course, got to go inside of her skull right to the brain itself, and the trouble might be here, or here, or here." He touched her now profusion of curls at different cranial points. "That is the riddle which you and I must solve, and I have got to look to you for the key. The human brain is still a book of mystery to us. Some day, physicians will be able to read it with full understanding; but so far, we have, after thousands of years, barely learned how to open its covers and guess at the meaning of what lies hidden within."

Rose had edged close to Miss Merriman on the rough bench before the fire, and, with the older woman's arm about her, now sat, wide-eyed and wondering, while Donald talked. As he kept his gaze fixed on the glowing heart of the fire, he seemed, in time, to be musing aloud rather than consciously explaining.

"This much we have learned, however; that certain parts of the brain control all the different actions or functions of the body—I've called it a telegraph station once before...." he paused, and both thought of little Mike in his last home under the snow ... "with different keys, each sending its message over a separate wire. So you see that, if we can learn exactly what the message has been, I mean by that just how certain parts of the body have been affected—Miss Merriman would call them the 'localizing symptoms'—we can often tell almost