The End Of The Rainbow Part 29

"I don't know," said Roderick dully.

"I must urge you especially to come to-day. We have Dr. Berger here, from New York. He is going to the congress at Halifax. You have heard of him, of course. He is coming to see some patients of mine this morning, and I should like him to see you too. Indeed, I feel I must urge you, Mr. McRae. You are trifling with your health, perhaps your life," he went on, puzzled by Roderick's indifference. "It is imperative that something be done at once. How about coming with me now? It leaves plenty of time for your train."

Roderick considered a moment. He could not meet Mr. Graham now in any case. He must leave a message for him that he had been called back to Algonquin and telegraph home for more specific news. That was all he could do until train time, so he decided he might as well obey the doctor.

When he had despatched a telegram and written a message for Mr. Graham he followed the doctor to his car. The professional man seemed eagerly delighted, as though Roderick were merely a wonderful new specimen he had found and upon which he intended to experiment. He chattered away happily on the way to the hospital.

"Yes, Berger will be very much interested. Yours is really a rare case, from a medical standpoint, Mr. McRae. Quite unique. You said you believed it was injured when you were only six years old?"

He seemed almost pleased, but Roderick did not care. The pain in his arm and that fiercer pain raging in his heart made him indifferent.

"My father! My father!" he was repeating to himself in anguished inquiry. What had happened to his father? Perhaps he was dying, while his son lingered far away from him. And what an age he had to wait for that train, and what another age to wait till it crawled back to Algonquin! He remembered with wonder the strange wild impulse he had had the night before to leap across into the home-bound train and go back. He speculated upon what might have happened, until his brain reeled. And when would he get another telegram? And why had not Lawyer Ed told him more? He asked himself these futile questions over and over in wild impatience. The fever of the night before had returned, his head was hot, and ached as if it would burst.

He obeyed the doctor's orders mechanically. His mind was focussed on the time for the train to leave and in the interval he did not care what they did with him. So he let himself be put into a bare little white room, heavy with the smell of disinfectants, while a nurse in a blue uniform and a young house surgeon in white and a silent footed orderly moved about him.

The nurse's blue dress reminded him of another blue gown, one for which he used to watch at the office window on summer mornings. He followed it with his eyes, as the great surgeon took him in hand and examined and questioned him. He answered mechanically, his parched lips uttering things with which his fevered brain seemed to have no interest.

He listened in a detached way, as though the doctor were speaking of some one else as, with many technical terms, he diagnosed the case.

Doctor Nicholls was there, and two young house surgeons, all eagerly listening, but the patient's mind was away in the old farm house on the sh.o.r.e of Lake Algonquin desperately seeking relief from its suspense.

He scarcely noticed when they left the room, but he came to himself completely when they returned, and Dr. Nicholls announced to him briskly and almost joyfully that Dr. Berger's ultimatum was an immediate operation.

"No, you won't," said the patient with sudden vigour. "I have to leave this afternoon for home on the three-fifteen."

The great man looked down at him. "Young man," he said quietly, and there was a still strength in his manner that carried conviction, "you will do as you please of course, but if you don't take my advice and have that limb attended to immediately, you'll go to your long home, and not much later than 3.15 either. Yours is a most critical case.

If you refuse you are committing suicide. Now, Doctor Nicholls, I have just half-an-hour to see your other patients."

He walked out of the room. And Roderick sat up in the bed and stared after them stupefied. A young house-surgeon, who had been regarding the patient with eyes holding more than professional interest, came to his side. He tried to speak cheerfully.

"It's a most unusual thing to operate in such a hurry, but it's better for a patient, I think. It's all over quickly you know, and no long weary waiting."

"But my father!" cried Roderick. "My father is critically ill. I've got to go home! I've got to, I tell you! I can have this done--later--at home."

The fever flush deepened to a hot crimson. He got to his feet, then staggered back, dizzy with pain. The young physician laid him on the bed. "Look here, now, you mustn't get worked up like that, Roderick,"

he said.

Roderick looked up at him. The young man had come into the room with Dr. Berger, but not till this moment had he noticed him. He stared, and a light, brighter even than the fever had brought, leaped into his eyes.

"Wells!" he cried. "Is it d.i.c.k Wells?"

"d.i.c.k Wells, it is," said the other, smiling, pleased that he had created such a complete diversion. He took the patient's left hand and shook it with a cordiality that was not returned.

"I haven't seen you since old 'Varsity days, Rod. And 'pon my word I didn't know you for a minute. We'll see you through this all right; don't worry."

Roderick was staring at him in a disconcerting way.

"Where have you been since you graduated?" he asked.

That harsh unsmiling manner was not at all like the Roderick McRae he had known in college, but the young man laid the change to his fevered condition.

"Here, in Montreal. Next year I hope to go to Europe." He made a sign to the nurse who entered, and quietly began preparing the arm for its operation. Roderick did not pay any attention to even her blue uniform this time, his eyes were fixed with a fierce intentness upon the young doctor's face. Wells had always been known as a very handsome fellow, but his appearance had not improved; he had grown stouter and coa.r.s.er.

He was still good-looking, however, and his manner had the old easy kindness Roderick remembered. He was just going to ask him another abrupt question, when the young doctor slipped his finger over the patient's pulse, and began talking quietly and soothingly.

"And you went back to your old home town, didn't you? Let me see--"

his casual air did not deceive his alert listener--"Algonquin's your home, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"You've been practising law there, haven't you?" He took out his watch and looked at it.

"Yes,--in Algonquin."

A smile pa.s.sed over the young physician's face, as of pleasant reminiscence. "Algonquin," he repeated--"pretty name. You don't happen to know--er--a Miss Murray there, do you? A teacher."

"Yes," said Roderick, "I've met her," and held his breath for the next words.

"I've met her too--several times." He laughed, glancing at Roderick in a shamefaced manner. "I think when you go home, if you'll take me, I'll go along as travelling physician. I'd like most awfully well to see that town of yours."

Roderick involuntarily jerked his wrist from the other's grasp. Had he not done so, the doctor would have been amazed at the leap of the already bounding pulse.

"I thought--rumour had it at college--that your affections were in process of transition when you graduated." Roderick looked straight at him. It was impossible to keep from his voice something of the bitterness rising in his heart. He was risking his own secret. But he felt he must know.

d.i.c.k Wells' eyes dropped to his watch again. He was silent for a moment. The nurse left the room and he immediately spoke in a low tone.

"It a fellow plays the fool once in life," he said, "that's no reason why he should take it up as a steady profession. I've dropped it for good and all. And if you behave yourself and have this operation right away I'll come and take Christmas dinner--no, that's holiday time--I'll come and prescribe for you shortly after New Year's!" He laughed joyfully. "I hope you'll welcome me," he said, half-shyly. "For I've reason to believe I'm going to be welcomed in other quarters."

"Dr. Wells, you are wanted in the corridor," said the nurse, returning.

He left the room, and Roderick lay back and stared at the ceiling. He caught the word amputation, and he knew they were talking about his arm. They were going to cut it off, then. The knowledge did not seem to add anything to the overwhelming weight which had fallen upon him, and was crushing him. The whole structure of his life was tumbling about him, and he lay caught helpless in its fall. His new position was gone, for well he knew the company could not wait--indeed, would not wait--for so insignificant a servant as he. His father--perhaps his father was gone. And now the rosy hope that had steadily and surely arisen in his heart, since the day he had seen Helen Murray on board the _Inverness_, until it had lighted up his whole life, had suddenly vanished in darkness. His fighting spirit rose against these odds. He shoved the deft hands of the nurse aside and sat up.

"I'm going home," he said hoa.r.s.ely. Then the nurse, and the little white table by the bedside with the bottles on it, and the white uniformed man standing outside the doorway, swung up to the ceiling and became an indistinct blur. He recovered almost immediately. The nurse slipped a little thermometer under his tongue, and put a cool finger on his pulse.

"I must go home," mumbled Roderick. "Where's Dr. Wells?"

"Dr. Wells is wanted in the operating room," she said soothingly. "You will be glad to know he is going to a.s.sist. I understand you are old friends." She looked at him anxiously. He was in the worst possible condition mentally for an operation.

"If you'd just brace up, you know," she said encouragingly. "If you would get hold of yourself." She had prepared many a patient for the operating table, and had seen few so exercised as this one. "You must be courageous," she said. "The operation may not be serious. And it will be over soon."

Roderick looked at her uncomprehendingly. He cared not at all for the operation itself, but it was the trap that had caught him, and he was writhing to be free.

Her next words put a new face on it.

"If you have any message to send to your friends," she said gently, "I should be glad to have it attended to. Have you any--property or anything that should be settled. We hope this operation will be simple; but if not--you should be prepared, Mr. McRae."

"There's nothing," said Roderick. "Nothing."

Everything in the world was slipping from him. The props of life had given way one by one, and now perhaps life itself was going. He lay there on the small cot-bed, watching the nurse and orderly hurry to and fro, and looked squarely at the situation. It was desperate. Always he had taken hold of difficulties and wrenched them out of his path and gone proudly on his way. But here he was helpless. For the first time in his strong, successful youth he realised that which his father had striven all his years to teach him, man's utter impotence before G.o.d.

He was bound hand and foot, helpless, just as the door of success had flung open at his touch. He had paddled out bravely into the open sea of life after the rainbow gold, only to find it vanish and leave him lost in a world of mists and shadows. He remembered Dr. Leslie's words: "If His love cannot draw us into the way, it meets us on the Damascus road and blinds us with its light."

He lay there for what seemed an interminable time. He was clinging to one faint hope. Lawyer Ed would surely answer his telegram. But the nurse returned with the word that there had been no message, and that the doctors were preparing. He was to go down to the operating room in ten minutes.