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Page 23
"Not if the patient gets well."
"No, but I tell you the chance for that is mighty slim--only one in ten,
at best. So he holds the cards, except for that one chance of mine. And
if the patient dies in the end it's because I didn't operate when he
advised it--or so he'll let them see he thinks. Not in so many words, but
in the cleverest innuendo of face and manner;--_that's_ what makes me so
mad! If he'd fight in the open! But not he."
"Would he have liked to operate himself?"
Burns laughed--an ugly laugh, such as she had never before heard from his
lips. "Couldn't have been hired to, not even in the beginning, when he
first advocated it. And I couldn't have let him, knowing as well as I
know anything in life that the patient would never have left the table
alive. Don't you see I've had to fight for my patient's very life,--or
rather for his slim chance to live,--knowing all the while that I was
probably digging my own grave. Easy enough to let Van Horn operate, in
the beginning, and kill the patient and prove himself right,--if he would
have done it. Easy enough to pull out of the case and let them have
somebody who would operate on Van Horn's advice."
"Is the patient going down?"
"No, he's holding his own fairly well, but the disease isn't one that
would take him off overnight. It'll be a matter of two or three days yet,
either way. How I'm going to get through them, with things going as they
are;--meeting that Judas there at the bedside, three times a day, and
trying to keep my infernal temper from making me disgrace myself--"
"Red, dear,--"
She rose and came to him, putting her hands on his shoulders and looking
straight up into his face.
"That's where Dr. Van Horn is stronger than you, and in no other way. He
can control himself."
"Not inside! Nor outside--if you know him. He's exactly as mad as I am,
only--"
"He doesn't show it. And so he has the advantage."
"Do you think I don't know that? But I'm right and he's wrong--"
"So you are the one who should keep cool. You've heard the saying of some
wise man--_'If you are right you have no need to lose your temper--if
you are wrong you can't afford to.'_"
Red Pepper laid hold of the hands upon his shoulders, and looked down
into his wife's eyes with fires burning fiercely in his own.
"You can give me all the wise advice you want to, but the fact
remains.--I have reason to be angry, and I am angry, and I can't help it,
and won't help it! Great heavens, I'm human!"
"Yes, dear, you're human, and so am I. You have great provocation, and
I think I'm almost as angry, in my small way, with Dr. Van Horn, as
you are, now that I know. But--I want you somehow to keep control of
yourself. You are a gentleman, and he is not, but he is acting like a
gentleman--hush--on the outside, I mean--and--you are not!"
"What!"
"Dear, _are_ you?"
"What do you know about it?"
"From the little I saw outside the house this morning."
He grasped her arms so tightly that he hurt her. "Lord! If you mean that
I ought to grin at him, as he does at me, the snake in the grass--"
"I don't mean that, of course. But I do think you shouldn't allow
yourself to look as if you wanted to knock him down."
"There's nothing in life that would give me greater satisfaction!"
He relaxed his grasp on her arms, and she let them drop from his
shoulders. She turned aside, with a little droop of the head, as if she
felt it useless to argue with one so stubbornly set on his own
destruction.
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