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Page 25
"No--no," she repeated to herself, "you shall not have her. I will not
give her up; you shall not triumph over me."
Campbell was in the room, warned by the ominous coming and going of
hushed footsteps.
"What is the use, nurse? It's all over. Let her die in peace. It's too
cruel; let her die in peace."
The half-hour passed, then the hour. Once more Lloyd administered
hypodermically the second dose of brandy. Campbell, unable to bear the
sight, had withdrawn to the adjoining room, where he could be heard
pacing the floor. From time to time he came back for a moment,
whispering:
"Will she live, nurse? Will she live? Shall we pull her through?"
"I don't know," Lloyd told him. "I don't know. Wait. Go back. I will let
you know."
Another fifteen minutes passed. Lloyd fancied that the heart's action
was growing a little stronger. A great stillness had settled over the
house. The two servants waiting Lloyd's orders in the hall outside the
door refrained even from whispering. From the next room came the muffled
sound of pacing footsteps, hurried, irregular, while with that strange
perversity which seizes upon the senses at moments when they are more
than usually acute Lloyd began to be aware of a vague, unwonted movement
in the City itself, outside there behind the drawn curtains and
half-opened window--a faint, uncertain agitation, a trouble, a passing
ripple on the still black pool of the night, coming and going, and
coming again, each time a little more insistent, each time claiming a
little more attention and notice. It was about half past three o'clock.
But the little patient's temperature was rising--there could be no doubt
about that. The lungs expanded wider and deeper. Hattie's breathing was
unmistakably easier; and as Lloyd put her fingers to the wrist she could
hardly keep back a little exultant cry as she felt the pulse throbbing
fuller, a little slower, a little more regularly. Now she redoubled her
attention. Her hold upon the little life shut tighter; her power of
resistance, her strength of purpose, seemed to be suddenly quadrupled.
She could imagine the Enemy drawing off; she could think that the grip
of cold fingers was loosening.
Slowly the crisis passed off, slowly the reaction began. Hattie was
still unconscious, but there was a new look upon her face--a look that
Lloyd had learned to know from long experience, an intangible and most
illusive expression, nothing, something, the sign that only those who
are trained to search for it may see and appreciate--the earliest faint
flicker after the passing of the shadow.
"Will she live, will she live, nurse?" came Mr. Campbell's whisper at
her shoulder.
"I think--I am almost sure--but we must not be too certain yet. Still
there's a chance; yes, there's a chance."
Campbell, suddenly gone white, put out his hand and leaned a moment
against the mantelpiece. He did not now leave the room. The door-bell
rang.
"Dr. Street," murmured Lloyd.
But what had happened in the City? There in the still dark hours of that
hot summer night an event of national, perhaps even international,
importance had surely transpired. It was in the air--a sense of a Great
Thing come suddenly to a head somewhere in the world. Footsteps sounded
rapidly on the echoing sidewalks. Here and there a street door opened.
From corner to corner, growing swiftly nearer, came the cry of newsboys
chanting extras. A subdued excitement was abroad, finding expression in
a vague murmur, the mingling of many sounds into one huge note--a note
that gradually swelled and grew louder and seemed to be rising from all
corners of the City at once.
There was a step at the sick-room door. Dr. Street? No, Rownie--Rownie
with two telegrams for Lloyd.
Lloyd took them from her, then with a sharp, brusque movement of her
head and suddenly smitten with an idea, turned from them to listen to
the low, swelling murmur of the City. These despatches--no, they were no
"call" for her. She guessed what they might be. Why had they come to her
now? Why was there this sense of some great tidings in the wind? The
same tidings that had come to the world might come to her--in these
despatches. Might it not be so? She caught her breath quickly. The
terror, the fearful anxiety that had haunted and oppressed her for so
long, was it to be lifted now at last? The Enemy that lurked in the dark
corners, ever ready to clutch her, was it to be driven back and away
from her forever? She dared not hope for it. But something was coming to
her; she knew it, she felt it; something was preparing for her, coming
to her swifter with every second--coming, coming, coming from out the
north. She saw Dr. Street in the room, though how and when he had
arrived she could not afterward recall. Her mind was all alert, intent
upon other things, listening, waiting. The surgeon had been leaning over
the bed. Suddenly he straightened up, saying aloud to Campbell:
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