The Storyteller.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2431, 20 February 1909, Page 11 (Supplement)

The Storyteller.

THE INTERNE. (By Cyrus Townsend Brady.)

Illingworth stood staring through the closed window of the operatingroom. He gazed fascinated, charmed as it had been by a serpent’s eye, at what lay before him. All his faculties were concentrated in vision. The dull roar outside, punctuated by the deeper detonations of the dynamite, fell unresponsive upon his ear. Alike was he unconscious of the subdued noise from the wards behind him, not less ominous in its infrequency than the hideous diapason of portentous sound that came to him from the city beyond. The patients in those, wards usually said nothing. Many of them were beyond speech, and others saved their energies to meet the inexorable, demands of anguish in silence; but today a confused murmur came from them, with now and then a muffled cry—a shriek, if there had been back of it the power for such a sound, one would have said. Duty the most- terrible ever laid upon the soul of man called Illingworth back to the wards of the great hospital; .a duty he. had realised from the beginning, although its demand had burst upon him with the suddenness of the catastrophe itself. That duty he meant to perform—ay, though it killed him.; though his heart broke under the strain ; though he damned his soul in the doing of it. It wa to be done. It should be done. Ye; he lingered. To the reluctance inevitable from, tlie horror of what lay before wars super-added a strained attractiveness.. ghastly yet real, in the .present situation. It was as if from some point of impersonal detachment he were witnessing the end of the world. Indeed, in the hushed still faces of the dawn of the day before that same idea had been legibly written. The time was at hand. ' Everything had conspired to bring about the destruction —the earthquake shock, the strong wind, the total lack of water, the seething sea of fire. And, now, as of old to the prophet, after these tilings there spoke to him a “still, small voice.’’ Tie was not quite sure whether it was God’s voice or some other that pierced his inner consciousness with stern precision. The habit of the age, the world-wide desire to save and not t destroy, the physician's training in the art to heal, cried clamorously against his conclusion. There warstrife in 'his soul. He had made his decision promptly enough, for ho knew that it was the only determination to which lie could come. Reason told him that at which lie had arrived was a righteous conclusion. And yet, every voice of heart and life and day spoke against it. The trembling of' the earth had ceased. The air was vibrant, but it was with the fire. Yet the man shook and quivered as if the. very foundations of his being were uprooted. The noise in the nearest ward grew louder. What he was to do, he must do quickly. He tore' himself desperately from the window and put hie hands up to his face not pale, but red and flaming with the heat.

As he moved toward the door of the room, it was suddenly flung back with a crash. In the way stood a hopeless figure, a woman. Blood soaked the white robe, she wore; her eyes 'were blazing with fever. Her voice, thin ■and shrill with terror, cut sharply athwart the flesh of his hesitancy like a sword’s blade. It pierced to the core of liis decision. “What are you going to do?” cried the woman, tearing at her breast with thin hands. “The fire’s all around us. We can’t get out. My God” —-the old, old 'appeal that conies to human lips, alas! when all else has been tried; oftenest an appeal of despair, without trust, without faith, without hope, and yet an appeal which somewhere and somehow ■invariably meets with a response. “Lord, here am I,” 'said tho old prophet, whose, lips, like Illingworth’s, were touched as with coals of fire, “send me.”

Illingworth stepped swiftly forward. The woman sank in a crumpled mass. She collapsed at his feet, her face whiter than the; gown she wore. He bent over her quickly, laid his hand upon her heart, and rose with a sigh of relief. Here was one disposed of, and by that unit the problem less complicated. The woman ligxl been a hopeless invalid two days before, dying of an incurable disease, the nature of which had been revealed by a major operation undertaken in the desperate hope of saving her life. The mad terror of the hour had raised her to her feet' and brought her there. With superhuman force, she had thrust aside the detaining hands of the frightened nurse. Leaving her where she lay, for he realised that he had no time to waste upon the dead, he stepped across her lifeless body and entered the ward. A faint, feeble cry coming from lips and hearts to whom only the extrm most terror lent strength to give a sound, hurst upon his ear.

i ( ‘Doctor, for God’s sake. . . “For the love of Christ . ,

r “Don’t let us burn!” “Pity !” “Mercy!” rose the cries, dying away in dull murmurs of hopeless ex- ! pectancy. As he faced them, stern, unsmiling, his voice broke harshly—and he was a tender-hearted man —across their futile murmur. “The fire,” he said, “is all around us.. It has come with «• swiftness unci roamed of. There is no water, dynamite has failed to check it. We can’t get you out of the. hospital.” A woman in the nearest bed shrieked pitifully in a way that set his teeth on edge. He went on controlling himself by a great effort, clenching his jaws and .choking the. words out as iif each one cost him a blood pang, a birth throe. “Wo can’t take you out. There s nowhere to take you if we could. There’s nobody to carry yoii out, if there was a place.” He stopped. . “Blessed Mother of Heaven,” cried one, “have pity on us and help us!” “What will you do?” asked another. “T . . . we . . . there’s . . . chloroform,” he gasped out. “I can give ... I can put you to . . . sleep . . . You . . . won’t suffer.” “Then it’s that or burn,” whispered one woman faintly —it was singular how the sounds of these low, sibilant whispers were heard by every one in that long room. “Give me the chloroform,” she added. “And me.” “And me,” came from the different beds.

He was practically alone in the hospital. There 'were three or four faithful nurses in the other wards, bui no other physician. •'Tn a moment,” he said, starting towards the door that led to the dispensary.

There he met Alden, grimy with smoke, singed with fire, ghastly, with bloodshot eyes. “I came down to help,” he said, “through the fire. What must I do?” “There’s only one thing,” returned Illingworth. “Get the chloroform.” “My God! You don’t mean. . .”

“Yes. "We’ll take the women’s ward first, and then the children, and then the men.”. “Are there any nurses in the build-

iug?” ‘•Three. . . I believe.’ 1 “And the rest?” “Gone with such patients as we could get out this morning.” Alclen hung in the air, as it were. He had not had time to realise the necessity. The- only thing present to him was the horror. “The head nurse might.take care of the children,” he said, finally. “Iso, we must do -it, Aldcn. This is no woman’s work. They can lieip. Come.” The two turned and went swiftly along the corridor. In a moment — which seemed like an age to the waiting patients in the ward —they were hack again. There is a kind of courage which comes to the most timid when the inevitable is at hand. It was a band of heroes that lay stretched out upon the narrow beds beforeIllingworth and his young assistant. “The weakest first, doctor,” cried one woman. The doctor nodded and stepped to a bedside. Ho lifted his hands up before he did a thing. “May God,” he cried hoarsely, “have mercy' 7 on your souls-—and on mine!” “Amen!. Good-by!” whispered the pale-lipped iwoman nearest him. “Good-bv,” returned the doctor, simply, administering the chloroform. Back and forth through that ward nurses and doctors went. Then upstairs to the- little children, and finally down-stairs to the men. The - little folk, realising little, whimpered pitifully, but they were small, and with them it was the sooner over. Thank God for that 1 The men patients, less accustomed to the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,”- fought hard, but the flame was around them now like a wall; the hospital itself was on fire. Illingworth paused at last. - “You must go now, Alden. I can do the rest.” “T can’t leave you. I won’t.” “These women here,” returned Illingworth, pointing to the nurses, who, with heroism as great as his own, had remained faithful to the solemn obligations of their calling—“they must be taken care of. You have time yet to escape.” He glanced out of the main door, fortunately opening away from, the fiercest of the fire, although to escape, if hardly that were possible, the fugitives would have to run a furious gauntlet of leaping flame. “You have time. For God’s sake,

go!” “And you?” “My duty is to the women.” Aldon turned. There was no question as to'His courage, but wliat Illingworth said was plain. “We’ll stay with. . •” cried the brave head-nurse. “Useless. Go!” , “For God’s sake, hurry,” cried a feeble voice from the nearest bed,

111 ingworth stretched out his hand and Alden wrung it, a great sol •choking his throat. The three women 'approached him. The tall .white-cap-ped head-nurse, old enough •to he hit mother, kissed him on the forehead. The others clung to his hands. “WeTl be burned to death while you stand there talking.” “If we are to go at all,” said Alden, hoarsely, “we must go now.” They turned and wont out of the door. For a few seconds Illingworth watched their blanket-shrouded figures stumbling blindly through the wall of flame. Whether they made it or not, he could not tell. It was a last chance., as he had said. No other could pass that barrier of fire now. Above his head, the upper wards were blazing; the glass in the windows had cracked and broken; tongues of flame were licking at the wooden sashes. The room was filled with blasting heat and blinding smoke .which choked and tore him. Feeble cries, hideous appeals, came from the few who still remained alive. ’He groped his way from bed to bed and did his office. The last mail whispered to him, “You’ve left some for yourself, doctor, after you’ve finished me ?” Illingworth nodded. Anti presently lie alone was alive in that great building. There was some left for himself. He lifted it distinctively to his face, and then tore it away and dashed it down and trampled it upon the floor. Ho stood upright with his hands lifted, his face to the flame, a man erect and free, made in the image of his God. Life had been given to him by his Creator, and lie would keep it until it were required of him, in whatsoever way and shape and form it might he. ITe could take it, but he would not. He had so ministered to those poor people under his care that they had died easily, painlessly, peacefully —if death can ever be any of those things. He had faced and he had conquered the heaviest problem that could have fallen to mortal man. and in that great moment of self-immolation, when he put respite behind him and chose agony amt death, it seemed to him that if he had done wrong, there was a sort of dim expiation in it all. He knelt down in the long still ward, murmuring: “Christ have pity ! Lord have mercy!” By and by he fell prone upon his face, his hands outstretched, a dark cross upon the white floor, and lay there, as still and as quiet as the rest. The flames roared about him, the smoke blew over him, he moved not nor stirred. Christ had heard that prayer, and there was peace in his heart that .passed all understanding. The flames bit into him, the smoke enshrouded him. the walls overwhelmed him. In days to come they found not one vestige that bespoke him. But the memory of his deed lived and will live. Alden knew, the women knew, the world knew, God knew, and he himself realised it

in tho light of another country—a heavenly one.