Page:Gilbert Parker--The Lane that had No Turning.djvu/289

Rh painfully inquiring. "Can you save him?" she said. "Oh, James, what is the matter? You are trembling."

"It’s just this way, Lesley: my nerve is broken; I can’t perform the operation as I am, and he will die in an hour if I don’t."

She caught him by the arm. "Can you not be strong? You have a will. Will you not try to save my father, James? Is there no way?"

"Yes, there is one way," he said. He opened the pocket-case and took out a phial of laudanum. "This is the way. I can pull myself together with it. It will save his life." There was a dogged look in his face.

"Well? well?" she said. "Oh, my dear father!—will you not keep him here?"

A peculiar cold smile hovered about his lips. "But there is danger to me in this … and remember, he is very old!"

"Oh," she cried, "how can you be so shocking, so cruel!" She rocked herself to and fro. "If it will save him—and you need not take it again, ever!"

"But, I tell you"

"Do you not hear him—he is dying!" She was mad with grief; she hardly knew what she said.

Without a word he dropped the tincture swiftly in a wineglass of water, drank it off, shivered, drew himself up with a start, gave a sigh as if some huge struggle was over, and went in to where the old man was. Three hours after he told his wife that her father was safe.

When, after a hasty kiss, she left him and went into the room of sickness, and the door closed after her, standing where she had left him he laughed a hard crackling laugh, and said between his teeth:

"An upset price!"