_A Successful Operation._
Robert came home, anxious and perturbed. For the first time since hisreturn from their honeymoon he crossed the threshold of the tiny housewithout a grateful sense of blessedness.
"What is it, Robert?" panted Mary, her sweet lips cold from hisperfunctory kiss.
"He is going blind," he said in low tones.
"Not your father!" she murmured, dazed.
"Yes, my father! I thought it was nothing, or rather I scarcelythought about it at all. The doctor at the Eye Hospital merely askedhim to bring some one with him next time; naturally he came to me."There was a touch of bitterness about the final phrase.
"Oh, how terrible!" said Mary. Her pretty face looked almost wan.
"I don't see that you're called upon to distress yourself so much,dear," said Robert, a little resentfully. "He hasn't even been afriend to you."
"Oh, Robert! how can you think of all that now? If he did try to keepyou from marrying a penniless, friendless girl, if he did force you towork long years for me, was it not all for the best? Now that hisfortune has been swept away, where would you be without money oroccupation?"
"Where would Providence be without its women-defenders?" murmuredRobert. "You don't understand finance, dear. He might easily haveprovided for me long before the crash came."
"Never mind, Robert. Are we not all the happier for having waited foreach other?" And in the spiritual ecstasy of her glance he forgot fora while his latest trouble.
Robert's father lived in a little room on a small allowance made himby his outcast son. Broken by age and misfortune, he pottered aboutchess-rooms and debating forums, garrulous and dogmatic, and given totippling. But now the consciousness of his coming infirmity crushedhim, and he sat for days on his bed brooding, waiting in terror forthe darkness, and glad when day after day ended only in the shadows ofeve. Sometimes, instead of the dreaded darkness, sunlight came. Thatwas when Mary dropped in to cheer him up, and to repeat to him thatthe hospital took a most hopeful view of his case, was only waitingfor the darkness to be thickest to bring back the dawn. It took fourmonths before the light faded utterly, and then another month beforethe film was opaque enough to allow the cataract to be couched. Theold man was to go into the hospital for the operation. Robert hired alad to be with him during the month of waiting, and sometimes sat withhim in the evenings, after business, and now and then the landladylooked in and told him her troubles, and the attendant was faithfuland went out frequently to buy him gin. But it was only Mary who couldreally soothe him now, for the poor old creature's soul groped blindlyamid new apprehensions--a nervous dread of the chloroforming, thepuncturing, the strange sounds of voices of the great blank hospital,where he felt confusedly he would be lost in an ocean of unfathomablenight, incapable even of divining, from past experience, the wallsabout him or the ceiling over his head, and withal a paralysingforeboding that the operation would be a failure, that he would liveout the rest of his days with the earth prematurely over his eyes.
"I am very glad to see you, my dear," he would say when Mary came, andthen he fell a-maundering self-pitifully.
Mary went home one day and said, "Robert, dear, I have been thinking."
"Yes, my pet," he said encouragingly, for she looked timid andhesitant.
"Couldn't we have the operation performed here?"
He was startled; protested, pointed out the impossibility. But she hadanswers for all his objections. They could give up their own bedroomfor a fortnight--it would only be a fortnight or three weeks atmost--turn their sitting-room into a bedroom for themselves. What ifinfinite care would be necessary in regulating the "dark room," surelythey could be as careful as the indifferent hospital nurses if theywere only told what to do, and as for the trouble, that wasn't worthconsidering.
"But you forget, my foolish little girl," he said at last, "if hecomes here we shall have to pay the expenses of the operationourselves."
"Well, would that be much?" she asked innocently.
"Only fifty guineas or so, I should think," he replied crushingly."What with the operating fee, and the nurse, and the subsequentmedical attendance."
But Mary was not altogether crushed. "It wouldn't be all our savings,"she murmured.
"Are you forgetting what we shall be needing our savings for?" he saidwith gentle reproach, as he stroked her soft hair.
She blushed angelically. "No, but surely there will be enough leftand--and I shall be making all his things myself--and by that time weshall have put by a little more."
In the end she conquered. The old man, to whom no faintest glimmer nowpenetrated, was installed in the best bedroom, which was darkened bydouble blinds and strips of cloth over every chink and a screen beforethe door; and a nurse sat on guard lest any ray or twinkle should findits way into the pitchy gloom. The great specialist came with twoassistants, and departed in an odour of chloroform, conscious ofanother dexterous deed, to return only when the critical moment ofraising the bandage should have arrived. During the fortnight ofsuspense an assistant replaced him, and the old man lay quiet andhopeful, rousing himself to talk dogmatically to his visitors. Marygave him such time as she could spare from household duties, and healways kissed her on the forehead (so that his bandage just grazed herhair), remarking he was very glad to see her. It was a strangeexperience, these conversations carried on in absolute darkness, andthey gave her a feeling of kinship with the blind. She discovered thatsmiles were futile, and that laughter alone availed in this uncannyintercourse. For compensation, her face could wear an anxiousexpression without alarming the patient. But it rarely did, for herspirits mounted with his. Before the operation she had been terriblyanxious, wondering at the last moment if it would not have beenperformed more safely at the hospital, and ready to take upon hershoulders the responsibility for a failure. But as day after day wentby, and all seemed going well, her thoughts veered round. She feltsure they would not have been so careful at the hospital. It was owingto this new confidence that one fatal night, carrying her candle, shewalked mechanically into her bedroom, forgetting it was not hers. Thenurse sprang up instantly, rushed forward, and blew out the light.Mary screamed, the screen fell with a clatter, the blind old man awokeand shrieked nervously--it was a terrible moment.
After that Mary went through agonies of apprehension and remorse.Fortunately the end of the operation was very near now. In a day ortwo the great specialist came to remove the bandage, while the nursecarefully admitted a feeble illumination. If the patient could seenow, the rest was a mere matter of time, of cautious gradation oflight in the sick chamber, so that there might be no relapse. Marydared not remain in the room at the instant of supreme crisis; shelingered outside, overwrought. Slowly, with infinite solicitude, thebandage was raised.
"Can you see anything?" burst from Robert's lips.
"Yes, but what makes the window look red?" grumbled the old man.
"I congratulate you," said the great specialist in loud, heartyaccents.
"Thank God!" sobbed Mary's voice outside.
When her child was born it was blind.
The King of Schnorrers: Grotesques and Fantasies Page 15