The mind associates the pronouncing of a verdict and a sentence of death with a court of justice, a solemn judge in his robes, the ministers of the law, the dock, a pallid and almost breathless audience. Such a spectacle, with its elaborate dignity, is impressive enough, but it is hardly less moving when the scene is changed to a plain room, hushed almost to silence and occupied by two persons only, the one who speaks and the one who listens—the latter with bowed head and with knotted hands clenched between his knees.
The manner in which ill-news is received depends upon its gravity, upon the degree to which the announcement is unexpected and upon the emotional bearing of the recipient. There may be an intense outburst of feeling. There may be none. The most pitiable cases are those in which the sentence is received in silence, or when from the trembling lips there merely escapes the words, “It has come.”
The most vivid displays of feeling that occur to my mind have been exhibited by mothers when the fate of a child is concerned. If her child be threatened a mother may become a tigress. I remember one such instance. I was quietly interviewing a patient in my consulting room when the door suddenly flew open and there burst in—as if blown in by a gust of wind—a gasping, wild-eyed woman with a little girl tucked up under her arm like a puppy. Without a word of introduction she exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, “He wants to take her foot off.” This sudden, unexplained lady was a total stranger to me. She had no appointment. I knew nothing of her. She might have dropped from the clouds. However, the elements of violence, confusion and terror that she introduced into my placid room were so explosive and disturbing that I begged my patient to excuse me and conducted, or rather impelled, the distraught lady into another room. Incidentally I may remark that she was young and very pretty; but she was evidently quite oblivious of her looks, her complexion, her dress or her many attractions. I had before noticed that when a good-looking woman is unconscious of being good-looking there is a crisis in progress.
The story, which was told me in gasps and at white heat, was as follow. The child was a little girl of about three, almost as pretty as her mother. She was the only child and had developed tuberculous disease in one foot. The mother had taken the little thing to a young surgeon who appears to have let fall some rash remark as to taking the foot off. This was enough for the mother. She would not listen to another syllable. She, whom I came to know later as one of the sweetest and gentlest of women, changed at the moment to a wild animal—a tigress.