| | 1 | Author: | Phillips, David Graham, 1867-1911 | Add | | | Title: | Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise, Volume I  | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE child's dead," said Nora, the nurse. It was the upstairs sitting-room in one
of the pretentious houses of Sutherland, oldest and most charming of the towns
on the Indiana bank of the Ohio. The two big windows were open; their limp and
listless draperies showed that there was not the least motion in the stifling
humid air of the July afternoon. At the center of the room stood an oblong
table; over it were neatly spread several thicknesses of white cotton cloth;
naked upon them lay the body of a newborn girl baby. At one side of the table
nearer the window stood Nora. Hers were the hard features and corrugated skin
popularly regarded as the result of a life of toil, but in fact the result of a
life of defiance to the laws of health. As additional penalties for that same
self-indulgence she had an enormous bust and hips, thin face and arms, hollow,
sinew-striped neck. The young man, blond and smooth faced, at the other side of
the table and facing the light, was Doctor Stevens, a recently graduated pupil
of the famous Schulze of Saint Christopher who as much as any other one man is
responsible for the rejection of hocus-pocus and the injection of common sense
into American medicine. For upwards of an hour young Stevens, coat off and shirt sleeves rolled to his
shoulders, had been toiling with the lifeless form on the table. He had tried
everything his training, his reading and his experience suggested—all
the more or less familiar devices similar to those indicated for cases of
drowning. Nora had watched him, at first with interest and hope, then with
interest alone, finally with swiftly deepening disapproval, as her compressed
lips and angry eyes plainly revealed. It seemed to her his effort was
degenerating into sacrilege, into defiance of an obvious decree of the Almighty.
However, she had not ventured to speak until the young man, with a muttered
ejaculation suspiciously like an imprecation, straightened his stocky figure and
began to mop the sweat from his face, hands and bared arms. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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