The Web of Life | Page 3

seemed
to say so. If it was the only chance, and his custom was to operate in
such cases,--if he would have operated had she not been there, why did
he go through this explanation?
"There may be----complications in his recovery," he said at last, in low
tones. "The recovery may not be complete."
She did not seem to understand, and the surgeon frowned at his failure,
after wrenching from himself this frankness. The idea, the personal idea
that he had had to put out of his mind so often in operating in hospital
cases,--that it made little difference whether, indeed, it might be a great
deal wiser if the operation turned out fatally,--possessed his mind.
Could she be realizing that, too, in her obstinate silence? He tried
another explanation.
"If we do not operate, he will probably have a few hours of
consciousness--if you had something to say to him?"
Her face flushed. He humiliated her. He must know that she had
nothing to say to him, as well as if he had known the whole story.
"We could make him comfortable, and who knows, to-morrow might

not be too late!" The surgeon ended irritably, impatient at the
unprofessional frankness of his words, and disgusted that he had taken
this woman into his confidence. Did she want him to say: 'See here,
there's only one chance in a thousand that we can save that carcass; and
if he gets that chance, it may not be a whole one--do you care enough
for him to run that dangerous risk?' But she obstinately kept her own
counsel. The professional manner that he ridiculed so often was
apparently useful in just such cases as this. It covered up incompetence
and hypocrisy often enough, but one could not be human and
straightforward with women and fools. And women and fools made up
the greater part of a doctor's business.
Yet the voice that said, "I am his wife," rang through his mind and
suggested doubts. Under the miserable story that he had instinctively
imaged, there probably lay some tender truth.
"There's a chance, you see!" he resumed more tenderly, probing her for
an evidence. "All any of us have, except that he is not in a condition for
an operation."
This time her mouth quivered. She was struggling for words. "Why do
you ask me?" she gasped. "What--" but her voice failed her.
"I should operate," the surgeon replied gently, anticipating her question.
"I, we should think it better that way, only sometimes relatives object."
He thought that he had probed true and had found what he was after.
"It is a chance," she said audibly, finding her voice. "You must do what
you think--best. I have nothing to say to him. You need not delay for
that."
"Very well," the surgeon replied, relieved that his irregular confidence
had resulted in the conventional decision, and that he had not brought
on himself a responsibility shared with her. "You had best step into the
office. You can do no good here."
Then, dismissing the unusual from his mind, he stepped quickly back to

the patient. The younger nurse was bathing the swollen, sodden face
with apiece of gauze; the head nurse, annoyed at the delay, bustled
about, preparing the dressings under the direction of the interne.
The wife had not obeyed the doctor's direction to leave the room,
however, and remained at the window, staring out into the soft night.
At last, when the preparations were completed, the younger nurse came
and touched her. "You can sit in the office, next door; they may be
some time," she urged gently.
As the woman turned to follow the nurse, the surgeon glanced at her
once more. He was conscious of her calm tread, her admirable
self-control. The sad, passive face with its broad, white brow was the
face of a woman who was just waking to terrible facts, who was
struggling to comprehend a world that had caught her unawares. She
had removed her hat and was carrying it loosely in her hand that had
fallen to her side. Her hair swept back in two waves above the temples
with a simplicity that made the head distinguished. Even the nurses'
caps betrayed stray curls or rolls. Her figure was large, and the
articulation was perfect as she walked, showing that she had had the
run of fields in her girlhood. Yet she did not stoop as is the habit of
country girls; nor was there any unevenness of physique due to hard,
manual labor.
As she passed the huddle of human flesh stretched out in the
wheel-chair, a wave of color swept over her face. Then she looked up
to the surgeon and seemed to speak to him, as to the one human being
in a world