Grand Canary (29 page)

He went out silently, and she was alone. She still felt unaccountably uneasy. Nervously she fingered the peel upon her plate. Tiny beads of oily juice ran into her bruised thumb and set it smarting afresh. But she hardly noticed the stinging ache, thinking dully how uncanny was that old woman, and how very frightening, too.

‘A great stream; and be the last to cross it.' What did that mean? In this parched land where all the streams were dry, it was baffling, inexplicable, but vaguely intimidating. At last, with a decided straightening of her body, she put away her thoughts. She brushed her hair from her brow, made to rise. But as she pushed back her chair the door opened, and Harvey came into the room.

She took one quick breath, drawing from his unexpected entry a dreadful meaning. A question trembled on her lips. Yet she could not utter it, but followed him with startled eyes as he advanced silently and sank into the opposite chair. There he looked across at her and shook his head slowly.

‘It isn't that.' His tone was quite controlled but behind it lay a mortal weariness.

She faltered:

‘She is – she is still all right?'

‘She is not all right. Since the fever became haemorrhagic she is infinitely worse. That final bleeding has left her utterly collapsed.'

‘Then why have you come down?'

He was a long time answering; then, with a sort of icy sternness, he said:

‘She is sinking. Her resistance has completely gone. But her crisis cannot be far off. If she could live till morning she might have a chance. There is only one way to give her that chance. It is dangerous, but it is the only way.'

She whispered:

‘What is that?'

Looking at her directly, he answered:

‘A transfusion.'

There was a silence; the unexpectedness of his reply left her speechless; her heart beat quickly. Then she gave a little shudder.

‘You can't do that,' she stammered. ‘ It's unheard of. She's got fever. It's not the right thing. Oh, it's not like you to suggest such a thing.'

‘I'm not like myself, now.'

‘But it would be better,' she gasped, ‘better just to wait –'

‘And see her die from the effects of that haemorrhage.'

‘You can't do it,' she said again. ‘It's impossible, here of all places. Now of all times. You haven't got the things.'

‘I've got all I want.'

‘You can't do it,' she cried for the third time – pressing her hands together. ‘The risk, it's too frightful. It might easily prove fatal. And they'll blame you. Don't you see they'll blame you if you fail. They'll say you've –'

He said nothing. His lips were outlined by the shadow of his old ironic smile.

‘In the name of God,' she wept, ‘I implore you to get some assistance. I've wanted to say this a hundred times before. No one could have done more than you. You've been wonderful. But the responsibility, like this, away from everyone. Don't you see, if she dies, they'll say you've killed her.'

She reached her hand fumblingly towards his arm. At the sight of his tired, sunken eyes her love for him welled over. She couldn't check her feeling. She wanted to kiss those tired eyes – wanted to – wanted to. Tears streamed down her cheeks mussing up – she didn't care! – mussing up her dowdy face. But he did not seem to see her.

‘Nothing matters to me,' he answered heavily, ‘if she dies.'

Her face altered as though she had been struck; she withdrew her hand, raised it to her forehead to conceal her tears. She snuffled, controlled her trembling lip. At last she said in a different voice:

‘If you are going to do it – then – you'll want me – want me to be the donor?'

He shook his head.

‘No,' he said, ‘I can't have it that way. This is all my affair. I'm going to do it all. Then – if there's any fault it will all be mine.' He paused.

The beating of her heart was stifling her.

‘You might let me have hot water, plenty of hot water.' He was speaking calmly, gently. ‘And I'll give you the needles – they must be boiled.' Then he got up silently. He didn't even look at her as he walked to the door.

But she rose and followed.

At the end of the hall there stood an old Castilian clock which Corcoran had found in clogged inertia and promptly mended. It chimed now three lingering strokes. Mounting the darkness of the hall, the whirring echoes floated along the corridor into the sick-room.

Instinctively Harvey looked at his watch, his first movement in an hour: yes, three o'clock. The silence following the striking of the clock was profound. Actually the silence was not complete, for threading the dimness of the room came the thin rasping of Mary's breathing. But this had now gone on so long it had become part of the room, woven to the very substance of its silence. He was alone with her. The others had not wished to go to bed. Susan especially had protested. But he had insisted. No heroic sentiment had moved him – simply the feeling that it must be so. A strange sense of possession had now taken him. It had come, this sense, when he had felt the current of his blood stream languorously into hers. That transfusion – oh, he would never forget it. Never! Sheer madness in one way, nothing else. This vast bare room, the defective apparatus that filled the seconds with feverish anxiety, his own tense forearm bathed in the pool of candlelight, the encircling darkness pressing nearer, Susan's chalk-white face and nervous trembling fingers – it made a contrast against the background of his hospital experience that was simply ludicrous.

A gigantic joke, with Death splitting his sides with laughter in the corner.

It wasn't right, you see – not orthodox, not scientific – this drastic line of treatment. Six weeks ago he would have joined in the laughter of derision and called the whole thing lunacy.

But now – now he wasn't thinking in terms of his test-tubes. He wanted to save one life. The crude equipment at his disposal could not deter him, nor yet the danger – the frightful danger. He saw that she must die unless something were done to sustain her. Not reason, but passionate intuition, was his guide. He had carried out the transfusion. Yes, it was over. Now, inscrutably, they were united; come what might, nothing could dissever that union. He felt it to be so.

The room was unbearably sultry, and his head, already swimming from lack of sleep, was lighter still from loss of blood. Suddenly he rose, extinguished one of the candles which stood upon the chest. The smoky glare which hurt his eyes might also strike painfully on hers. Shading the remaining flame, he bent forward, gazing intently into her face, while upon the opposite wall his shadow took gigantic shape. Then he sighed and dropped into his chair again. Still no change; still that feverish rasping breathing. Her face, held in the mask of unconsciousness, was yet beautiful; her lips, half parted, drooped wanly at their corners; on her thin cheeks a dusky flush stood high; her eyes were not quite closed, but showed a marble slit of white.

Another sigh broke heavily from his chest. Mechanically he took water, laved her dry lips and burning brow. She had rallied following the transfusion, a quicker and a stronger pulse; his heart had bounded up with hope: but now she was back again, lapsing towards the illimitable desolation that was death.

How he had fought, too, during these last days! He had given everything that was his.

He slipped his hand beneath the sheet and clasped her fingers, so thin and unresistant to his touch. The feel of those burning fingers stirred in him unbelievable depths of pain.

He bit his teeth together, devoured by pain. The sight of her, weakened and sinking, the sense of his impotence, racked him maddeningly. Passionately he gathered his flagging strength and willed that it might flow from him towards her. Two tiny human creatures bound only by their linked hands within the vast unreasoning universe. So negligible under the dark canopy of night, they were like atoms lost in a great blackness. And yet they were together. That made the blackness naught, and stripped the vast universe of every fear but one. It was the beginning; it was the end. Nothing could solve the meaning of that simplicity, nothing dissolve its power. With terrible conviction this bore upon him. His whole attitude towards life was swept and shattered; and from the ruins had emerged this shining revelation. No longer could he find a jibe with which to mock the weakness of humanity; no longer was he cold and hard, contemptuous of life. Life now seemed rare: a lovely, precious gift, fraught with strange, unconsidered sweetness.

As he sat bowed beside the bed, there pressed upon his mind the weight of all the suffering and sacrifice the world had known. Dazedly he felt the crushing weight: beauty and love inextricably mingled with the sweat and tears and blood of all humanity.

And with a writhing of his soul – that soul which he had scoffingly denied – he saw his petty arrogance as something pitiful and powerless. His thoughts flew back. With staggering might came the realisation: his work, the very purpose of his work, had failed and been defeated by that same arrogance. If he had cared about the lives of those three patients – how far away it seemed in time and space! – if he had really thought of them as human creatures to be saved? Then he might have been successful. But he had cared only for the vindication of himself and his research. And it had not been enough.

Humility overwhelmed him. Again, as on that last night in the
Aureola,
all his life seemed wasted suddenly and void.

His eyes drew towards her face, then slowly filled with tears. There lay the slender hope of his redemption. A torturing emotion took him. If he could save her! Life would not then be void. Again the burning thought possessed him: If only she could reach the crisis! If only she might live! He knew so well how crucial were these present hours: as though her body, swinging in space, were balanced in a strange, uncertain equipoise from which abruptly it would slip and fall with star-like flight to safety or oblivion.

Involuntarily he leaned over her, until her hot breath fell upon his cheek, and whispered to her.

As by instinct, her thin face smiled weakly. But she neither saw nor heard him. She muttered a few unintelligible words. And then, without warning, her delirium began again.

‘Why do they take me away? Why do they take me away? Away, away, away.' The muttered words went on in endless repetition, like a stupid lesson that must be apprehended painfully by rote. On and on, wrestling uneasily within her brain against some power that fought to conquer her. ‘ Why do they take me away? Away. Away.'

He couldn't endure it. He got up abruptly, began to pace up and down the room.

As he walked, his shoulders sagged forward; his figure had a shrunken look, so that his clothing seemed to hang on him; from time to time he pressed his fingers hard against his temples. And through it all he was listening – listening acutely to that rambling, incessant voice. He had to listen. It was heart-rending. She could not go on like this; he knew it to be impossible.

Suddenly at the window he stopped short. He raised his head and his eyes, searching the amorphous dimness where no leaf stirred upon the sentinel trees, reached upwards without apparent reason towards the sky. There was no moon; the stars were hidden; but vaguely in the east faint streaks of dawn quivered upon the surcharged sky. What lay behind that sky, behind that coming dawn? Soon he would know.

And then, as though in answer to his fear, the muttered voice was silent. He turned swiftly, his heart leaping into his throat. But, though the voice was silent, the rasping breath went on. For a moment he remained motionless, sick with that sudden dread, then slowly he came back and went upon his knees beside the bed. Her pulse was still unchanged: thin, faintly wavering, and slow; he counted it laboriously, confused by the heavy throbbing which filled his own fingers.

What was he to do? What more could he do? He racked his brain feverishly. At last he decided to administer more strychnine. Still kneeling, he charged the hypodermic syringe, prepared her arm, and thrust the needle home. Clasping the fragile blue-veined wrist, he waited. One, two, three, four – how often had he measured those weak and flagging beats! Five, six, seven – how still she lay, how mask-like was her lovely face! Again tears trembled upon his eyes. He loved her: not with the crass desire of his body, but with the melting tenderness of all his soul. He had denied that soaring union of the spirit with a sneer. This was the answer. He had no wish to pray; he could not pray; but stupidly he thought, and the thought was like a prayer: Nothing matters if only she may live. He asked no more. That alone would be the consummation of their love – for her to live.

She moaned faintly. Again he bathed her brow and lips; there was nothing more for him to do. Leaning against the bed, his eyes scorched by weariness, he waited. He was utterly worn out, but he would not yield to sleep.

The thunder in the air was now unbearably oppressive. It seemed to press forward with the coming dawn. Quiescent, the march of time slipped over him unheeded. Seconds passed, or hours – which, he could not tell. He was waiting, watching her face.

Suddenly an exquisite start ran through his entire body. Kneeling, he remained perfectly rigid for five seconds. He dared not breathe.

Upon her upper lip and brow tiny beads of perspiration had broken. A long, convulsive sigh filled his chest. He was afraid to believe. He was afraid to move. Then slowly, with a pitiful timidity, he stretched out his hand. It was true. Her brow, which had burned with livid fever, was damp. And, as by a miracle stroke, her breathing suddenly had turned easier and soft.

‘It can't be,' he thought blindly; ‘ no, it cannot be.'

Through an eternity of agonised purpose he had longed for this crisis. And now it was here he could not believe. With unsteady touch he reached for the thermometer, placed it with fumbling gentleness beneath her arm. It was a half-minute thermometer, but in his anxiety he let it remain for a full two minutes. His hand trembled so much as he withdrew the thermometer he almost dropped it. His vision was so clouded by fear and hope he could scarcely take the reading. But at last he made out the figures. Her temperature had fallen two full points.