The King of Schnorrers (Collection)/A Successful Operation
A Successful Operation.
Robert came home, anxious and perturbed. For the first time since his return from their honeymoon he crossed the threshold of the tiny house without a grateful sense of blessedness.
"What is it, Robert?" panted Mary, her sweet lips cold from his perfunctory 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 scarcely thought about it at all. The doctor at the Eye Hospital merely asked him 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 a friend to you."
"Oh, Robert! how can you think of all that now? If he did try to keep you from marrying a penniless, friendless girl, if he did force you to work long years for me, was it not all for the best? Now that his fortune has been swept away, where would you be without money or occupation?"
"Where would Providence be without its women-defenders?" murmured Robert. "You don't understand finance, A SUCCESSFUL OPERATION. 365
dear. He might easily have provided for me long before the crash came."
" Never mind, Robert. Are we not all the happier for having waited for each other?" And in the spiritual ec- stasy of her glance he forgot for a while his latest trouble.
Robert's father lived in a little room on a small allowance made him by his outcast son. Broken by age and mis- fortune, he pottered about chess-rooms and debating forums, garrulous and dogmatic, and given to tippling. But now the consciousness of his coming infirmity crushed him, and he sat for days on his bed brooding, waiting in terror for the darkness, and glad when day after day ended only in the shadows of eve. Sometimes, instead of the dreaded dark- ness, sunlight came. That was when Mary dropped in to cheer him up, and to repeat to him that the hospital took a most hopeful view of his case, was only waiting for the dark- ness to be thickest to bring back the dawn. It took four months before the light faded utterly, and then another month before the film was opaque enough to allow the cata- ract to be couched. The old man was to go into the hospital for the operation. Robert hired a lad to be with him during the month of waiting, and sometimes sat with him in the evenings, after business, and now and then the landlady looked in and told him her troubles, and the attendant was faithful and went out frequently to buy him gin. But it was only Mary who could really soothe him now, for the poor old creature's soul groped blindly amid new apprehensions — a nervous dread of the chloroforming, the puncturing, the strange sounds of voices of the great blank hospital, where he felt confusedly he would be lost in an ocean of unfathomable night, incapable even of divining, from past experience, the walls about him or the ceiling over his head, and withal a paralysing foreboding that the operation would 366 A SUCCESSFUL OPERATION,
be a failure, that he would live out 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, and then 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 and hesitant.
" Couldn't we have the operation performed here? "
He was startled ; protested, pointed out the impossibility. But she had answers for all his objections. They could give up their own bedroom for a fortnight — it would only be a fortnight or three weeks at most — turn their sitting-room into a bedroom for themselves. What if infinite care would be necessary in regulating the " dark room," surely they could be as careful as the indifferent hospital nurses if they were only told what to do, and as for the trouble, that wasn't worth considering.
" But you forget, my foolish little girl," he said at last, " if he comes here we shall have to pay the expenses of the operation ourselves."
"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 subsequent medical attendance."
But Mary was not altogether crushed. " It wouldn . ~>e all our savings," she murmured.
" Are you forgetting what we shall be needing our savings for?" he said with gentle reproach, as he stroked her soft hair.
She blushed angelically. " No, but surely there will be enough left and — and I shall be making all his things A SUCCESSFUL OPE X ATI OX. 367
myself — and by that time we shall have put by a little more."
In the end she conquered. The old man, to whom no faintest glimmer now penetrated, was installed in the best bedroom, which was darkened by double blinds and strips of cloth over every chink and a screen before the door ; and a nurse sat on guard lest any ray or twinkle should find its way into the pitchy gloom. The great specialist came with two assistants, and departed in an odour of chloroform, conscious of another dexterous deed, to return only when the critical moment of raising the bandage should have arrived. During the fortnight of suspense an assistant replaced him, and the old man lay quiet and hopeful, rous- ing himself to talk dogmatically to his visitors. Mary gave him such time as she could spare from household duties, and he always kissed her on the forehead (so that his band- age just grazed her hair), remarking he was very glad to see her. It was a strange experience, these conversations carried on in absolute darkness, and they gave her a feeling of kinship with the blind. She discovered that smiles were futile, and that laughter alone availed in this uncanny inter- course. For compensation, her face could wear an anxious expression without alarming the patient. But it rarely did, for her spirits mounted with his. Before the operation she had been terribly anxious, wondering at the last moment if i f n» nld not have been performed more safely at the hospital, ana ready to take upon her shoulders the responsibility for a failure. But as day after day went by, and all seemed going well, her thoughts veered round. She felt sure they would not have been so careful at the hospital. It was owing to this new confidence that one fatal night, carrying her candle, she walked mechanically into her bedroom, for- getting it was not hers. The nurse sprang up instantly. 368 A SUCCESSFUL O PER, 17V OX.
rushed forward, and blew out the light. Mary screamed, the screen fell with a clatter, the blind old man awoke and 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 or two the great specialist came to remove the bandage, while the nurse carefully admitted a feeble illumination. If the patient could see now, the rest was a mere matter of time, of cautious gradation of light in the sick chamber, so that there might be no relapse. Mary dared not remain in the room at the instant of supreme crisis ; she lingered outside, overwrought. Slowly, with in- finite solicitude, the bandage 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, hearty accents.
" Thank God ! " sobbed Mary's voice outside.
When her child was born it was blind.