That was the image he treasured above all: Nora, turned to gold in the evening sun, dusty, barefoot, stained with blood, smiling, and breathless. But the image was coloured too, as it had been then, by the memory of Nora with her pen, making the figures come alive, and Nora in her nakedness in the moonlight, and the parting of her thighs as she smiled that invitation. They could never be separate again, those images. You could not say "lust" and "huntress" and "adept" and say you had described her. But what word was there? There was only…only…Nora. No other word came near it.
Nora. He whispered it and did not hear himself above the furious rattle of the coach and the huffing of the engine. He said it aloud. He shouted it at the darkness. He had the idea that if he could hold the image of her constantly in his mind, it would somehow keep her alive. He pictured himself as a free spirit, soaring and wheeling over the park at Maran Hill, always turned toward the house. He imagined that, though he was so free, his very movement above the house turned the intervening air into a heavy weight upon its roof and walls, imprisoning everything within it. Not imprisoning. Securing.
When he could sustain that image no longer, he reached his hands into the blackness before him and sought to form her in the nearby air. If she were there, he would grip her so, though it made her cry out; he would hold her so, pull her to him so, fold her so, kiss her so, hug her so, say Nora Nora Nora Nora in the hollow of her ear, hear the soft richness of her laughter hot in his, Nora, put flesh to flesh…treasure her. Nora! Golden, bloodstained, smiling girl, do not die, do not leave me.
At the last he was reduced to one word, which he laid upon the darkness like a prayer. "Please…please…please…" It was not in him to pray that night. The words were an invocation to her; please live was all they said. Please live.
When he arrived at Boxmoor, he could not remember their having stopped to take on more water and coals at Derby. Perhaps, indeed, he had slept.
"Stevenson!"
The voice spun him around on the dark platform. His body was shouting its thanks to the engineer and fireman and taking in the triumphant words: "We averaged over sixty."
"Thornton!"
Walter Thornton was walking up the platform to him, bearing a gig lamp. "Don't be surprised. We're spending Christmas down here with Arabella's father. You made good time! Did he say over sixty?"
"How is she?"
"Have you brought any things?" He answered himself by diving into the carriage and pulling out the writing case, which John had forgotten.
"Thornton!"
Thornton stood up slowly and slowly turned to face him. "I have been here since half past ten, when I sent down the message to York. I left Maran Hill at nine."
"And? There's no point in…in being…"
"Things were not good, Stevenson. She has been in labour two days, and this afternoon she went into some kind of a coma."
"And the baby?"
"No sign. Come on, let's hurry."
John, almost abstractedly, walked behind him to the gig. Walter took the reins and they set off at a smart pace, fast enough for the horses to maintain over the dozen or so remaining miles.
"Who is tending her?"
"Dr. Hales from Hertford. He was talking when I left of getting Professor Liston from University College Hospital." Several moments later he added, "He is professor of surgery at the college."
John, who had been expecting "professor of midwifery," did not at once understand "surgery." Then he did not dare ask why. But Thornton went on: "They think the child may be…already dead."
For the rest of the hour's journey they went mostly in silence, until they were racing down the long driveway. There were lights showing in the kitchen basement, in two of the servants' rooms in the attic and in the Gothic boudoir over the main entrance.
John was out of the gig before it had reached the turning circle. He raced across the grass, up the steps, through the portico, into the hall, on up the great stair, curving around and back upon itself, to the landing outside the boudoir. And there he paused, breathless, with racing heart, suddenly fearful. He stood in the attitude of prayer, still unable to pray.
A man slipped out between the great double doors, a doctor by the cut of him. "Dr. Hales?" John asked.
"Yes. Mr. Stevenson?"
"Yes." He waited, not daring to ask the question he yearned above all to hear answered.
The doctor smiled; it was the merest twitch of the corners of his lips, but it pointed him irrevocably toward hope. "She is a little better," he said. But at once his face was grave again. "Well enough, at least, to operate. We need your consent."
"You and Professor Liston? May I go in?"
The doctor nodded and opened the door for him. He fought down the fear that held him back and strode into the room.
She lay on a high bed in the centre, with a nurse, a midwife, and the professor standing around it. He looked only at her.
At first he could not believe it was her. She was so pale and her face was drawn so thin with the pain. He felt weak just to look at her.
"Mr. Stevenson?" The professor's hand poked into view. He shook it.
Nora stirred at the name and opened her eyes. They were red as coals. "John?" Her lips formed the word while a hoarse croak, unlike any word, came out between them.
He took her hand and felt her answering squeeze; it was strong. "All's well," he said. "Never better."
She smiled and closed her eyes again.
The professor moved away. "A word," he said. It was a Scots voice: "A wurrd."
Delicately he untwined Nora's fingers from his and clenched her fist. He gave it a squeeze and left her again. Still smiling, she opened her eyes and watched him to the door.
"We believe the baby she was—is carrying has died," the professor said. "I want to perform a laparotomy—what, if the child were living, we would call a Caesarean section—to remove it."
"If you do not?"
"The labour has endured so long her muscles are now in a sort of spasm. Like a cramp." He shook his head. "With every minute, a normal birth, even a normal stillbirth, becomes less and less likely."
"I see that. Will it be painful?"
The two doctors exchanged glances. "That is the trouble," the surgeon said. "I have a substance here, a new substance, that will render her insensible." He looked to see if John was following. "It is a volatile substance called sulphuric ether. It has been used in America for some years by dentists. I heard of it some time ago and I have used it in London in a number of operations since—with, I may say, great success."
But there was a hesitation in his voice. "Were any like this?" John asked.
"No. They were…amputations, a broken tooth root, a deep gash, an impaling…What I mean, Mr. Stevenson, is that they were all acute cases. There was no history of long, weakening illness previous to the operation."
"I see." John turned from them and went to the landing rail. What a responsibility. If he said no, the pain might kill her. If he said yes, the…whatever he called it might do it. At least she would feel nothing. "Does it act quickly?" he asked. "This sulphuric-material."
"Ether. They call it an anæsthesiant. It's very quick."
"Minutes or seconds?"
"Seconds."
He took a deep breath. "So it would be possible to give her the very minimum necessary to take her to the shallowest levels of insensibility? And as she grew restless, showing signs of pain, you could…do you see?"
Liston nodded and looked at Dr. Hales. "Who would do it?"
"I will," John said.
But Liston would not consider it. "The legal implications make that impossible."
"I'm willing to try," Hales said, "as well as to assist you."
Liston stood square. "Very well. Let's not delay."
John was halfway up the stairs to the servants' attic, intending to lie in the bedroom over the boudoir with his ear to the floor, when he realized what a monstrous form of self-torture that would be. He turned and wen
t back down to the library.
His entrance woke Walter Thornton, stretched out full on the leather sofa.
"Thornton," he said. "You've been damned marvellous. I can't begin to thank you. Letting Hudson know was the master-stroke."
"How is she?"
"A little better, they say." And he explained what Liston and Hales had proposed. All the while his ear was straining for a sound from upstairs. Which would be worse—cries of pain or silence until morning?
"That's marvellous," Walter said. "If they can use this stuff in ordinary childbirth it would be a godsend. Arabella would have given her sight for some of it when she had Lionel last June. I know that." He got up and threw some small logs on the fire; they soon made a cheerful blaze.
John, strolling restlessly around the room, pulled open a shutter. "It's snowing," he said. "Pretty heavy. I hope the two who brought me down get back for Christmas."
"If they really did average more than sixty miles an hour from Darlington, that's quite an achievement for the narrow Stephenson gauge," Walter said. He came over to the window and looked out at the snow. "Oh, that's it," he said. "I'll stop the night. What little is left of it."
"I'll get one of the servants up to make you a bed." John walked to the bell pull.
But Walter ran to it first and held it with his hand. "No such thing," he said. "I wouldn't hear of it. The resources of this house must now be devoted to one thing and one thing only."
John pulled a punch on Walter's chin. "You're a grand fellow," he said.
For the remaining hour of darkness they sat and talked of the works they had done, together and separately, ranging in a desultory way over past and future, England and abroad, north and south, fact and fantasy, triumph and failure— coming to no conclusion and forgetting most of it the moment it was uttered. "Isn't it strange?" Walter said, looking around at the leaden dawn and the snow, still falling heavily. "The last real chat we had was in a snowstorm too. On the South Devon, remember?"
At that moment they both were brought to a shocked silence. Into it, tearing the air, on and on, rang the cry of…a baby.
"Clement?" Walter asked.
John shook his head. "Can't be. The children are all in the north wing."
"Then…" He did not finish.
John strode from the room and out into the hail. Still the baby's crying rang on—a lusty, malevolent, egotistic caterwaul. It echoed in that great space and re-echoed from the dome above, a cold sound. He fought to suppress the hate it roused within him—fearing all that it might mean.
Slowly, he mounted the stair and sat on the chair below the single lamp that burned. Its light was a hot gold in the pale grey morning, filtering through the drifted snow around the dome above.
God, he was tired. He felt ninety.
For ten murderous minutes the baby yelled, settled, yelled again and yet again. Feet walked over the boudoir floor. Instruments clattered on the slab. But the one sound above all others for which his aching ear was tuned never came. He stood and began to pace the landing. Then he saw Thornton tiptoeing out of the library by the gun-room door. At the foot of the stairs, he looked up but failed to see John standing against the alcove immediately above him. He began slowly to mount the stairs.
At that moment the door of the boudoir opened and Dr. Hales came out. Thornton paused.
"Mr. Stevenson," the doctor said. His voice carried no news.
"How is she?"
"You have a fine daughter."
"I care not a fig for her, sir. How is my wife?"
Hales looked down. "We cannot say. It would be as well to send for the vicar, I fear."
John took three shattered breaths before he heard his wavering voice ask, "May I see her?"
"In a moment. She will be insensible."
"I will come back."
With a resolution that was entirely mechanical, he sped downstairs and ran for the stables. But there he found Walter already saddling a horse—Fontana, the horse Beador had given Nora for her long hunt from Hertford to York.
"Did you hear?"
"I was on my way up. I'll be back with him in less than half an hour. Reverend Paine is his name. And, you may remember, he is Arabella's father."
Wordless, distraught, John raced back across the snow-filled courtyard and up the main stairs again. This time he was let in to see her. The baby was howling in the next-door bedroom. The smell of ether was strong.
He stopped, not daring to breathe, several paces short of the bed. He thought she had already died, she looked so grey in the strengthening dawn. The lines of pain on her face seemed frozen there. His vision closed in to a funnel; he could see only one thing at a time. If he looked at her eyelids he could not see if she might breathe. Yet he could not tear his eyes from her face.
In some way he had come to be standing beside her. He heard a breath, a shallow, rattling breath. From her.
"Fresh air," he said. "It reeks in here."
He felt the surgeon, at his side, nod to someone, and someone opened wide the double doors onto the hall. The nurse shook more coals onto the fire. Fresh air surrounded him.
"She is very far gone, Mr. Stevenson," Liston said. "We must prepare ourselves for the worst."
John took his hand and shook it. "Thank you…" He struggled to say "Professor" but uttered only nonsense.
"There is nothing more I can do for the moment."
A strange voice, which he did not immediately recognize as his own, said: "You will do everything? She is the rarest, most finest woman of this or any other age. You will do everything."
"Of course." That was MacHale. No. Whatsizname. The other.
They put a chair against the back of his knees. His legs folded under him and he sat down heavily.
Still the baby next door kept up her endless routine of crying herself to exhaustion, resting a bare ten seconds, then beginning all over again.
He touched Nora's brow. It was dry and cold as alabaster. But still she breathed. Her fingers too were cold. The sandbag over her stomach made her appear pregnant still.
The door at the side of the hall gallery opened. That could not be the vicar, for it connected only with the upper floor of the house and of the north wing. A moment later Sarah stood, with Winifred and Young John, hand in hand, at the door. The crying of the baby gave them hope, and they were smiling; but the smiles vanished as their eyes took in the scene within the boudoir.
"Come, my dears," John said, standing and holding out his arms. He forced some cheer into his voice.
Liston nodded to Dr. Hales and they went into the other adjoining bedroom, opposite to where the baby was crying.
"Is Mama very tired?" Young John asked.
"Very tired and still very ill," he answered. "We must all be very careful for her."
He could see Sarah close to tears. He gripped her by the wrist and, darting his eyes at the children, said, "Be strong now." It was a leviathan effort for her but she managed it.
"Poor Mama," Winifred said. He could see she knew how close death had come.
Nora's eyes flickered open, saw nothing, and shut again.
He let the children stand there a minute more and then said casually to Sarah, "Reverend Paine is coming soon." He could see it was a shock, like a physical blow, to her.
"Come on, children," she said. "We'll go back with the vicar and go to church and pray." She stayed behind long enough to whisper, "Poor Winifred hasn't slept. I sat with her all night."
He smiled and patted her arm. "Bless you!"
They heard the vicar, Arabella's father, coughing a raw, winter's cough as he came up the stair. Professor Liston came out at once. "If you have a cough, sir," he said, "I think it most unwise to come in here."
The Reverend Paine nodded patiently. "I can administer it from here," he said, settling upon the landing. John went out to him.
In later years, John came to look upon this night, begun in Stockton at midnight, ended in the cold Hertfordshire dawn, as the time when he
finally lost what little faith he had. The vicar rattled through the communion of the sick as if he were holding a private auction with God for Nora's soul. And when it was over he threw in an extra prayer—the commendation at the point of departure. At the words "whatsoever defilements her soul may have contracted in the midst of this miserable and naughty world, through the lusts of the flesh, or the wiles of Satan, being purged and done away, it may be presented pure and without spot before Thee"…he wanted to stand and shout to the heavens: "No! Take her as she is—spots, lusts of the flesh, and all. If that's not good enough for You, then leave her here with me! With me!"
The Rich Are with You Always Page 40