Ether

THE most provoking part was that, whatever effort I might make to enlighten the nurse (a kind young creatrue, handsome, like some gracious Ceres in spotless linen), the sound coming from my stiff lips was not rational articulation but a groan, — rhythmic, quite foolish, uncontrollable.

Even after ether one has one’s little vanities. Mine had been to avoid silly noises; nevertheless speech seemed a duty. Not only must any intelligent Ceres feel a natural interest, but it would also be useful for her to know. Nursing — education — literature! Surely these three touch somewhere; but the link? It eluded me. Montessori, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Rousseau. I’d mislaid someone in the sequence, someone important.

‘W-i-n-d-e-r, . . . now go out and wash it’ (or words to the same effect). Who said that? Why of course! Mr. Squeers! Montessori at its most logical. What I wanted to tell the nurse was that a droll essay could be written, with nearly a century’s skip from Dotheboys Hall to a tranquil Roman convent, where the White Sisters govern a houseful of girl orphans. Think if Dickens could only see the plump, self-righteous babies lay their own Lilliput dinner-table, giving a swish and swing of pinafores fairly sinful with pride of accomplishment.

But the essay fell apart. We may n’t do it nowadays, because of those little boys who died in Yorkshire. Dickens might. He could put Wackford and Fanny on one page with those piteous miseries on the next and never offend your taste or feeling; far from it! But by his very intensifying of human sympathies he made it impossible for us to mix humor and agony.

‘How queerly some people seem to snuff out their own candles!’ I tried to say; but Ceres laid a cool something on my forehead. She did n’t understand. To convince her that there was no delirium, I persisted: ‘Think of Richardson. He made people so nice by his gospel of purity that the next generation grew too delicate to read him, and Dickens’s drolleries have taught us to be so tender-hearted that we can’t put much fun into any crusade against cruelty, yet his crusade had more strength than any of ours.’

What had I been reading? Such quaint books follow one to hospitals. Fancy Ellen Key’s Love and Marriage. So remote from any practical issue when you’re lying prone. ‘Sound as a dollar you ’ll be,’ the doctor says. How my mind flutters off! A dollar with a hole in it seems apter, but why argue? And Ellen Key a spinster too, so where does it come in for her and me? True, none but single ladies write these books frankly. The married ones won’t. There’s a freemasonry that prevents them. Even Marcel Prévost knew that. You remember the little bride’s letter ?

Before they whisked me off for another and more odious bout, I meant to collect a fitter library, but somehow Ibsen pursued me; one is always hurried at the last. Then for the tiresome iteration — stretcher, toilette de guillotine, piqûre, the bandage over one’s eyes, the smothering cone, and the queer flight to the verge of eternity, that promise of all knowledge which ether gives, and balks you of. On the actual brink of vibrating with the very rhythm of life, you merely come to, into a blare of pain.

How quiet and kind those dim figures are; considerate, like the saints about an entombment. But this time, instead of discoursing on Montessori, I so wanted to tell Ceres — tender-handed Ceres — that the whole trouble lay with a devil from some primitive painting far away in Umbria. An alert devil, prick-eared, carrying a gallant tail. One! A legion of them tossing my poor body on hot pitchforks. How the stabs hurt! What sin is being punished? Such small sins for such devouring pains.

After many hours Ceres seemed to glance at Ibsen, and I really wanted to explain him. ‘ Better not try to talk,’ she advised. Astonishing how one obeys these young things; they have authority. Yet it seemed so vital for her to hear what the Professor once said, when I took him to see some Italian fantoccini doing Orlando and Bradamante and Carlo Magno and a few more heroes. ‘Why,’ asked the Professor, ‘why are the Marionettes always angry?’ You easily see how illumining that is. But again Ceres convinced me of the wisdom of silence; or was it my voice sounding so high-pitched and affected? Why any one who hates ventriloquists as I do should try to talk as if I were in the next room! Heavens! Can I try anything, with that devil tossing me across a blazing fire till I land on his brother’s trident, redhot and piercing? Is it fair to do that when just out of reach floats a really significant idea, something Georg Brandes would value?

Why is Ibsen always angry? Is it the Scandinavian wesen to rage and be in a frantic state, just because Norah cheated about her macaroons, or old Mr. Alving was n’t quite — quite — The Slavs are not like that. They are as mild as a June day. The Brothers Karamazoff weep in the tenderest fashion while they are thinking murder. The gentlest Russian philanthropists are those shy young girls who throw bombs. They are n’t in the least angry, merely brimful of sheer love and human fellowship.

Ceres raises a blind on the gray light of a winter morning. She looks pale but valiant. She has worked well these long hours — or years — which was it?

Here comes the day nurse, fresh and smiling.

‘All things considered,’ Ceres says, ‘we’ve had a fairish night.’

The two exchange an augur’s glance. Someone whispers, ‘Time for another, she’s stood enough.’

Deft fingers dissolve the tablet, a faint prick — pain and thought slacken. There’s a ray of kind sunlight, — shall I sleep?