"My husband is ill and suffering. Doctor Moffat says you are the only one who can help him. Will you do it? Oh please, will you?"
"I am a doctor." Robyn gently twisted her fingers out of the other woman's painful grip, but it was not that which troubled her, there was something too intense, too passionate about her. "I am a doctor, and I could never refuse to help anyone who is suffering. Of course, I shall do whatever I can."
"Do you promise that?" the woman insisted, and Robyn nodded slightly.
"I have said I will help, there is no need to promise."
"Oh, thank you." The woman smiled with relief.
"Where is your husband?"
"Not far behind. I rode ahead to warn you, and to make sure that you would help us."
"What is it that ails your husband?"
"Doctor Moffat has explained it all in a letter. He sent gifts for you also." The woman was evasive, turning away from Robyn's scrutiny and running back to the mule.
From the saddle-bags she lifted down two packages, wrapped in oilskin to protect them against the elements and bound up with rawhide thongs. They were so heavy and bulky that Clinton took them from her and carried them into the church.
"You are tired," Robyn said. "I am sorry I cannot offer you coffee, we used the last a month ago, but a glass of lemonade?"
"No." The woman shook her head decidedly. "I shall go back immediately, to be with my husband, but we shall arrive before nightfall."
She ran back, and vaulted lightly to the mule's back.
None of them had ever seen a woman do that.
"Thank you," she repeated, and then trotted out of the yard, back down the hill.
Clinton came out of the church and put one arm around Robyn's shoulders.
"What a very beautiful and unusual woman," he said, and Robyn nodded. That was one of the things that had troubled her. Robyn mistrusted beautiful women.
"What is her name. she asked.
"I didn't have a chance to ask."
"You-were too busy looking, perhaps," Robyn suggested tartly, and wriggled out from under his arm and went back into the church, while Clinton stared after her with a rueful expression.
After a moment he made a move as if to follow her but then sighed and shook his head. It was always as well to let Robyn come round on her own, coaxing only angered her even more unreasonably.
In the quiet of the church Robyn untied the first package, and unpacked the contents onto the table.
There were five heavy bottles with glass stoppers, and she read the labels as she lifted out each one.
"Carbolic Acid."
Alum."
$Quicksilver."
"Iodine."
And then the fifth bottle was labelled: "Trichloromethane."
"Bless you, Grandfather." She smiled delightedly, but still she unstoppered the last bottle and sniffed cautiously at the mouth to confirm her good fortune.
The pungent sweet odour was unmistakable. Chloroform was to her more precious than her own life's blood; she would gladly have exchanged drop for drop.
Her own last supply had been exhausted months before and the London Missionary Society was as parsimonious as ever with its stores. She wished she had retained just a few hundred guineas of her enormous book royalties to enable her to purchase her own medicines rather than having to plead for them with the secretary in London by a correspondence which often took twelve months each way.
sometimes, in a flagrantly unchristian manner, she wished she could have that bloodless myopic little man at her side when she removed an eye damaged by a blow with a knobkerrie and hanging out of its socket onto a black cheek, or when she went for a Caesarian section all without anaesthetic.
She hugged the bottle to her chest for a moment.
"Darling Grandfather," she repeated, then as reverently as if it were the fabulous Kohinoor diamond, she set the bottle of colourless but precious fluid aside, and turned to the second package.
A roll of newspapers, The Cape Times and The Diamond Fields Advertiser. In the weeks ahead every column would be read and re-read, down to the announcements of auction sales and the legal notices; then the newsprint itself would be used for a dozen domestic chores. Under the newspaper, books, wonderful fat leather-bound books.
"Bless you, Robert Moffat."
She lifted out a translation of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. She admired the Norwegian for his insight into the human mind, and the muted poetry of his prose.
Robert Louis Stevenson's Virginibus Puerisque'; the title made her pause. She had four virgins in her household, and she intended maintaining that happy condition without allowing any inflammatory literature to thwart her.
She flipped through the book. Despite the dubious title, it was merely a collection of essays, and the man was a good Calvinistic Scot.
It might just do to let the girls read it, but she would read it first.
Then there was Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer. Here she was less sanguine. She had heard of this American's frivolous and irreverent attitude towards adolescence, industry and filial duty. She would read it carefully before letting it anywhere near Salina or Catherine. Reluctantly she left the other books for future study and turned to her grandfather's letter.
There were many pages, written with sooty homemade ink, and the script was shaky and wavering. She skimmed swiftly through the salutations and the personal news until she reached the middle of the second page: Robyn, they say a doctor buries his mistakes: blatantly untrue. I send mine to you. The patient who delivers this letter should long ago have sought the sanctuary of a modern hospital, such as that at Kimberley.
This he has steadfastly refused to do. His reasons are his own, and I have not pried. However, the fact that for over a year now he has had a pistol ball lodged in his body may point to his motives.
Twice I have cut for this foreign body, but at 87 years of age my eyes are not as bright nor my hand as steady as yours. Each time I have failed and I fear that I have done more harm than good.
I know that you have interest and skill in treatment of this type of injury, as so you should, for you have been provided by young Lobengula's warriors with endless opportunity to practise your technique. I recall with admiration your inspired reintroduction of the spoon of Diokles, after nearly 2,000 years, which you designed from the contemporary description by Ceisus , and your successful removal of barbed arrowheads with it.
Thus I send you one more subject on which to demonstrate your art, and with him my last bottle of Chloroform; for the poor fellow, whatever his sins has suffered enough under my knife.
The letter left her with a sense of foreboding, as did the woman who had delivered it. She folded the letter and thrust it into the pocket of her skirt as she left the church and hurried across the yard.
"Cathy," she called. "Where is that girl! She must set the guesthouse to rights."
"She's gone to it already, Mama." Salina looked up as she stormed into the kitchen.
Then where is your father?"
Within an hour the mission station was prepared to receive guests, and buzzing with anticipation; but they had to wait until midafternoon before a two-wheeled cart of unusually high and heavy construction appeared over the rise before the river. It was drawn by a pair of mules.
The entire family assembled on the front porch of the main building, and all of them had changed their clothing, while the girls had also brushed and dressed their hair with ribbons. A dozen times the twins had to be cautioned for improper comments and unrestrained behaviour, but finally the cart wheeled into the yard.
The woman had put her mule into the traces and now she walked beside the wheel of the cart, which reached almost as high as her head.
There was a coloured servant in ragged cast-off clothes leading the mules, and over the body of the cart was rigged a makeshift sunshade of saplings and stained canvas.