The Potter and the Clay: A Romance of Today

  *XVIII.*

  The light deepened in the east and the sunrise crept into the ward ofthe hospital and turned its search light curiously on the group in thefurthest corner of the ward, and on the still figure on the bed. Allmorning the sunlight lingered around there as though it wanted to helpMackenzie in his fight, and impart into the chill of the rigid figure,some of its own warmth, and when the afternoon shadows came and drew itoff, it retreated lingeringly, loath to say "good-night."

  The shadows deepened and the quietness of midnight fell over the wearyStation and the outlying cholera hospital. Mackenzie continued to sitby the bed.

  The quietness outside crept in to meet the silence of the ward, and thenight lamp cast strange shadows on the wall, at which Mackenzie stared.Once or twice he got up and visited the other beds and leaned over themen. Most were pulling through and were sleeping. McHennessy was drowsywith the morphia. Then Mackenzie would go back and sit down again byTrevelyan’s bed. At midnight, Clarke, with eyes heavy with sleep, camein. He did not speak but he looked down at Trevelyan and then upquestionally to Mackenzie, and at the syringe and the salt lying nearby.

  "It didn’t work," said Mackenzie. "If you’ll listen to the lungs you’llknow why—pneumonia."

  "You’d better go and rest a bit. I’ll stay—I won’t leave him," saidClarke, blinking at the light and wondering at the quietness of his ownvoice.

  Mackenzie looked hard at the flickering night lamp.

  "No," he said slowly. "I guess not."

  After Clarke had gone back to their room, the surgeon riveted his eyeson Trevelyan’s sunken face, and once he put his hand out quickly andpressed it over the bloodshot eyes, but the lids opened again and wouldnot remain closed. The slow labor of the feeble breathing went on. Thealmost imperceptible rise and fall of the great chest fascinatedMackenzie, and he found himself watching for it feverishly, hoping andyet dreading for it to cease.

  While it was still dark he rose and went over to the window and lookedout fixedly at the impenetrable pall of blackness that lay over theStation and the hospital. It seemed as though the heaviness of theblackness was over all the world.

  By and by the night pall lifted a little, and a dull grayness crept intothe heavens and rested on the station. He could dimly distinguish theoutline of some of the military buildings. He turned away and went overto the lamp that was smoking and lowered it. From the trooper’s bed camea low moaning.

  He paused to speak to him and then he went back to Trevelyan, and lookeddown at him, his eyes fixed on the great chest, watching for its slowrise and fall. Somehow he could not see the rise and fall—they did notseem to be there. He bent over him quickly.

  "Trevelyan!" he called sharply.

  The trooper in the next bed ceased moaning and raised himself on his armpainfully, and looked over to where Mackenzie was standing.

  Mackenzie knelt down suddenly on one knee, and his hand passed rapidlyfrom Trevelyan’s forehead to his pulse. The trooper in the next bedbegan to moan again.

  Mackenzie laid his ear down quickly to the heart, an expectant look uponhis face. Then he raised it slowly and bit his lip and stared hardthrough the window to where the barracks were defined against the palinggrayness of the sky.