"Has it presented?" the nurse asked.

"Not yet," he said, and turned to look at the temperature of the room.

It was so, then--there was nothing to be done! Thyrsis was dazed--he could hardly believe it. He had never dreamed it could be anything like this.

"How long is this to last, doctor?" he cried. "She is suffering so horribly!"

"I fear it will be until morning," he said--"it is a question of the rigidity of certain muscles. But you need not be alarmed, she is doing very well."

He spoke a few words to the patient, and then turned towards the door.

"I shall sleep in the next room," he said to his a.s.sistant; "you may call me at any time."

Section 8. So the two went apart again; and the leaden-footed hours crept by, and the girl still wrestled with the fiend. The young nurse was asleep on the couch, and the elder sat dozing in her chair; the two were alone--all alone! One of the window-shades was raised, and Thyrsis could see far over the tops of the buildings. Somewhere out there was another single light, where perhaps some other soul counted the fiery pulses of torture. A death--or another birth, perhaps! The doctor had said it happened twice every second!

Thyrsis was unskilled in pain, and perhaps he bore it ill; he feared that the nurses thought so too--that Corydon called too often for something, or cried out too much in mere aimless misery.

But the time sped on, and at last a faint streak of day appeared in the sky, and the shadows began to pale in the room. Thyrsis started, realizing that it was morning. He had given up the morning, as a thing that would never come again. He insisted upon sending for the doctor, who came, striving not to yawn, but to look pleased. Once more he shook his head; there was nothing to do.

The street began to waken. The milkman came, his cans rattling; now and then he shouted to his horse, or whistled, or banged upon a gate. Then the sun came streaming into the room. The newsboys began to call--the young nurse woke up and began to straighten her hair. The elder nurse also opened her eyes, but did not stir; she seemed to challenge anyone to a.s.sert that she had ever been asleep.

"Perhaps, Miss Mary," ventured the young nurse, timidly, "we had best prepare the patient."

Corydon seemed to rest a little easier now, and they carried her and laid her on the couch. They made the bed, with many sheets and with elaborate care; and then they brought her back and dressed her, putting a short gown upon her, and drawing long white bags over her limbs. Ah, how white she was, and what fearful lines of suffering had been graven into her forehead!

She lay in a kind of stupor, and Thyrsis, exhausted, began to doze. He knew not how long a time had pa.s.sed--it had been an hour, perhaps two, when suddenly he opened his eyes and sat up with a bound galvanized into life by a cry from Corydon. She had started forward, grasping around her wildly, uttering a series of rising screams. He clutched her hand, and stared around the room in fright.

They were alone. He leaped up; but the nurse ran into the room at the same instant. She gazed at the girl, whose face had flushed suddenly purple; she came to her, and took her hand.

"You feel some pain?" she asked.

Corydon could not speak, but she nodded; a moment later she sunk back with a gasp.

"A kind of bearing-down pain?" said the nurse. "Different from the other?"

Corydon gasped her a.s.sent again.

"That is the birth," the nurse said. "The doctor will be here in a moment."

Again the horrible spasm seized the girl, and brought her to a sitting posture; again her hand clutched Thyrsis' with a grip like death, and again the veins on her forehead leaped out. Like the surging of an ocean billow, it seemed to sweep over her; and then suddenly she screamed, and sank back upon the pillow.

Thyrsis was wild with alarm; but the doctor entered, placid as ever. "So they've come?" he said.

Nothing seemed to disturb him. He was like a being out of another region. He took off his coat and bared his arms; he put on a long white ap.r.o.n, and washed his hands elaborately again, and then once more examined his patient. His face was opposite to Thyrsis, and the latter watched his expression, breathless with dread. But the doctor only said, "Ah, yes."

He turned to Corydon. "These pains that you feel," he said, "are from the compressing of the womb. Don't let them frighten you--everything is just as it should be. You will find that you can help at each pang by holding your breath; just as soon as you cry out, it releases the diaphragm, and the pressure stops, and the pain pa.s.ses. You must bear each one just as long as you can. I don't want you to faint, of course--but the longer the pressure lasts, the sooner it will all be over."

The girl was staring at him with her wild eyes--she looked like a hunted creature in a trap. It sounded all so very simple--but the horror of it drove Thyrsis mad. Ah, G.o.d, it was monstrous--it was superhuman--it was a thing beyond all thinking! It wrung all his soul, it shook him as the tempest shakes a leaf--the sight of this awful agony.

It was like the sudden closing of a battle; the shock of squadrons, the locking of warriors in a grip of death. There was no longer time for words now, no longer time for a glance about him; the spasms came, one after another, relentless, unceasing, inevitable--each trooping upon the heels of the last; they were uncounted--uncountable--piling upon one another like waves upon the sea, like the gusts of a raging storm. And this girl, this child, that he had watched over so hungrily, that was so tender and so sensitive--it was like wild horses tearing her apart! The agony would flame up in her, he would see her body turn rigid, her face flush scarlet, her teeth become set and her gums fleshed. The muscles would stand out in her cheeks, the perspiration start upon her forehead.

She would grip Thyrsis' hand until all the might of both his arms was not enough to match her.

On the other side of the bed knelt the young nurse, wrestling with the other hand; and Thyrsis could see her face flush too, each time--until at last a cry seem to tear its way from the girl's throat, and would sink back, faint and white.

It was a new aspect of life to Thyrsis, a new revelation of being; it was pain such as he had never dreamed it was horror the like of which was unknown in his philosophy. All the suffering of the night was nothing to a minute of this; it came upon her with the rush of a flood of waters--it seized her--instant, insistent, relentless as the sweep of the planets. Thyrsis had been all unprepared for it; he cried out for time to think--to realize it. But there was no time to think or to realize it. The thing was here--now! It glared into his eyes like a fiend of h.e.l.l; it was fiery, sharp as steel--and it had to be seized with the naked hands!

The pangs came, each one worse than the last. They built themselves up in his soul in a symphony of terror; they lifted him out of himself, they swept him away beyond all control, like a leaf in the autumn wind.

He had never known such a sensation before--his soul seemed whirled into pieces. His feeling was apart from his action; he could not control his thoughts; he was going mad! He loved her so--she was so beautiful; and to see her thus, in the grip of horror!

He tried to get hold of himself again--he talked to himself, pinning his attention on the task of his hands. Perhaps maybe it was his fancy--it did not really hurt her so! Maybe--

He spoke to her, calling to her, in between the crises. She turned her eyes upon him, looking unutterable agony; she could not speak. And then again came the spasm, and she reared herself to meet it. She seemed to loom before his eyes; she was no longer human, but in her agony transfigured. She was the suffering of being, made flesh; a figure epic, colossal, worthy of an Angelo; the mighty mother herself, the earth-mother, from whose womb have come the races!

And then--"Perhaps she would be more comfortable with another pillow,"

said the doctor, and the spell was broken.

Corydon shook her head with swift impatience. This was her conflict, the gesture seemed to say. They had only to let her alone--she had no words to spare for them.

"How long does this last?" Thyrsis asked, his voice trembling. The doctor made a motion to him to be silent--evidently he did not wish Corydon to hear the answer to that question.

Section 9. For the girl's soul was rising within her; perhaps from the deeps of things there came comfort to her, from the everlasting, universal motherhood of life. Nature must have told her that this at least was pain to some purpose; something was being accomplished. And she shut her jaws together again, and closed with it--driving, driving, with all the power of her being. A feeling of awe stole over Thyrsis as he watched her--a feeling the like of which he had never known in his life before. She was a creature consecrated, made holy by suffering; she was the sacredness of life incarnate, a thing G.o.dlike, beyond earth. It came as a revelation, changing the whole aspect of life to him. It was hard to realize--that woman, woman who endured this, was the same being that he had met in the world all his life--laughing and talking, careless and commonplace. This--this was woman's _fate_! It was the thing for which woman was made, and the lowest, meanest of them might have to bear it! He swore vows of reverence and knighthood; he fell upon his knees before her, weeping, his soul white-hot with awe. Ah what should he do that he might be worthy to live upon the earth with a woman?

And this was no mere fine emotion; there was no room for imagination in it--the reality exceeded all imagination. Overwhelming it was, furious, relentless; his thoughts strove to roam, but it seized him by the hair and dragged him back. Here--_here!_

She was wrung and shaken with her agony, her eyes shut, her face uplifted, her muscles turned to stone. And the minutes dragged out into hours--there was no end to it--there was no end to it! There was no meaning--it was only naked, staring terror. It beat him up again and again; he would sink back exhausted, thinking that he could feel no more; but it dragged him up once more--to agony without respite! The caverns of horror were rent open; they split before his eyes--deeper, deeper--in vistas and abysses from which he shrunk appalled. Here dwelt the furies, despair and madness--here dwelt the demon-forces of being, grisly phantoms which come not into the light of day. Their hands were upon him, their claws were in his flesh; and over their chasms he shuddered--he scented the smoke of that seething pit of life, whose top the centuries have sealed, and into which no mortal thing may gaze and live.

Life--life--here was life, he felt. What had he known of it before this?--the rest was pageantry and sham. Beauty, pleasure, love--here they were in the making of them--here they were in the real truth of them! Raw, naked, hideous it was; and it was the source of all things else! His being rose in one t.i.tan throb of rebellion. It was monstrous--it was unthinkable! He wanted no such life--he had no right to it! Let there be an end of it! No life that ever was could be worth such a price as this! It was a cheat, a horror--there could be no justice in such a thing! There could be no G.o.d in it--it was oppression, it was wrong! He thought of the millions that swarmed on the earth--they had all come from this! And it was happening every hour--every second!

He saw it, the whole of it--the age-long agony, the universal birth-pang of being. And he hated it, hated it with a wild, raging hatred--he would have annihilated it with one sweep of his arm.

And yet--there was no way to annihilate it! It was here--it was inevitable. And it was everlasting--it was an everlasting delusion, an everlasting madness. It was a Snare!

Yes, he came back to the thought--that was the image for it! It mattered not how much you might cry out, you were in it, and it held you! It held you as it held Corydon, in throb after throb of torment. She moaned, she choked, she tossed from side to side; but it held her. It seemed to him that the storm of her agony beat upon her like the tempest upon a mountain pine-tree.

Section 10. The doctor's hands were red with blood now, like a butcher's. He bent over his work, his lips set. Now and then he would speak to the young nurse, whom he was teaching; and his words would break the spell of Thyrsis' nightmare.

"You can see the head now," he said once, turning to the boy.

And Thyrsis looked; through the horrible gaping showed a little patch, the size of a dollar--purplish black, palpitating, starting forward when the crises shook the mother. "And that is a head!" he whispered, half aloud.

"But how can it ever get out?" he cried suddenly with wildness.

"It will get out," the doctor answered, smiling. "Wait--you will see."

"But the baby will be dead!" he panted.

"It is very much alive," replied the other. "I can hear its heart beating plainly."

All the while Thyrsis had never really believed in the child--it was too strange an idea. He could think only of the woman, and of her endless agony. Every minute seemed a life-time to him--the long morning had come and gone, and still she lay in her torment. He was sick in body, and sick in soul; she had exerted the strength of a dozen men, it seemed to him.

But now her strength was failing her, he was certain; her moans were becoming more frequent, her protests more vehement. The veins stood out on the doctor's forehead as he worked with her--muscular, like a pugilist. Gigantic, he seemed to Thyrsis--terrible as fate. Time and again the girl screamed, in sudden agony; he would toil on, his lips set. Once it was too much even for him--her cries had become incessant, and he nodded to the nurse, who took a bottle from the table, and wetting a cloth with it, held it to Corydon's face. Then she shouted aloud, again and again--wildly, and more wildly, laughing hysterically; she began flinging her arms about--and then calling to Thyrsis, as her eyes closed, murmuring broken sentences of love, "babbling o' green fields." It was too much for the boy--there was a choking in his throat, and he rushed from the room and sank down upon a chair in the hall, crying like a child.