Читать книгу The Sinner - Eliza Margaret Humphreys - Страница 4

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IT seemed very strange to Nell to be called at a quarter to 5, and to find herself with breakfast finished, and the day's work begun, at an hour when she had usually been sound asleep. She swept and dusted her little room, and arranged a few photographs and books and knick-knacks, to give it a more homely appearance. Then came the return to the wards, and the duties necessary before the doctors came round to visit the patients.

Her own 'case' was very bad, and the doctor, after seeing him and giving the necessary instructions, expressed a doubt that he would pull through.

The morning sped rapidly on. At a quarter to 1 she left the ward with the first batch of nurses for dinner. At 1 they had to return to duty again.

Every nurse had two hours off during the day. They were expected to do a little classwork or hear a lecture from the matron, and then take some exercise. Nell would have felt very strange and very puzzled but for Deborah Gray. She took her in hand from the first, and explained and helped her with a ready kindness that touched the warm-hearted Irish girl very deeply.

Shortly after nine o'clock all the day nurses had to leave the ward, and those on night duty came in their place. Supper was served between half-past nine and ten, and Nell found herself absolutely hungry by that time, and able to enjoy the bread and cheese and crisp cool lettuces, as she had never dreamt of doing.

She felt tired and quite ready for bed to-night, and her light was out before the night sister came on her rounds. She slept soundly and dreamlessly. It seemed to her that she had only closed her eyes when the getting-up bell sounded.

The routine of each day was exactly the same, and she soon fell into it. Her time was fully occupied, and the first week glided by with a quickness that surprised her. She liked her work, and did it conscientiously and strictly. Watchful eyes were observing her, but they found no fault save that of inexperience. Meanwhile the fever ran its course, and her patient passed stage after stage to the crisis. Then to the doctor's surprise he rallied and began slowly to mend.

Nell was triumphant. She had hoped even when hope seemed useless. She had dreaded beyond all things that death might claim as his prey this first patient of hers. But now the verdict was given, 'Out of danger,' and she knew that good nursing and regular nourishment were all he required. Her interest in him was purely impersonal, but he had signalised her own entrance into the hospital, and was for ever to be associated with it.

She watched every phase of his recovery with growing interest, from the hour when he struggled back from the topsy-turvy world of delirium to some dim recognition of those about him, until the day when his sunken eyes looked passionate gratitude at her compassionate face, and faltered thanks for her care of him.

Meanwhile the hot August days dragged themselves on, and Nell began to think regretfully of the day when he would be discharged as cured. She almost wished he would not progress so rapidly.

There were only three more patients in the ward now, and one afternoon she and Sister Gray were the only nurses in attendance.

The windows were wide open, the blinds were drawn; most of the patients were slumbering in the drowsy mid-day heat. Nell sat by the side of her special charge with some work in her hand. He was lying back with closed eyes; she fancied he was asleep.

The sound of his voice, subdued by weakness, fell on her ear.

'Have I been long here?' he asked.

She looked at him, and saw he was gazing intently at her. She smiled.

'I can tell you to a day or an hour,' she said. 'For you were brought here the very day I entered on my duties, three weeks ago.'

'Three weeks,' he murmured, 'only three weeks.' There was a long silence. 'You have been very good to me,' he said at last, very good. I—I hope I was not troublesome—or violent?'

'Oh, no,' she said lightly; 'you were much too weak for that.'

'Was I very ill?' he asked, with some hesitation.

'As bad as you could be,' said the girl. 'I often wonder how you could have fallen into such a state. Was there no one to look after you, or care for you in any way?'

A faint touch of colour came into the pallid cheek.

'No,' he said. 'I am only a waif and stray on the roadway of life. A friendless, homeless man, with no friends and no ties. I wonder why death chose to pass me by. I have nothing to look forward to—nothing to care for, or no one to care for me. What can life mean under such circumstances?'

The girl's work had dropped on her lap. Her large soft eyes were fastened on his face with wondering sympathy.

'Is that true, really?' she faltered. 'But you are——'

He smiled bitterly.

'A gentleman, you were going to say. Well, if birth means anything, and education does anything, I may lay claim to that title. But a working man would have a better chance of earning a livelihood than I have. I can only use my brains, and hands are in larger demand, and a thousand times more useful. There is no market price for my wares. I fancy most of them have gone to light fires or line an editor's wastepaper basket.'

'You are a writer?' she said eagerly.

'I am an unsuccessful journalist,' he said. 'Starvation has been my only wage as yet—and then illness overtook me—and harpies preyed on me. Everything went for food or medicine, or rent of that wretched hole where I had found shelter. And that is all I can remember till I seemed to wake from a hell of pain and suffering, and I saw a face tender and full of pity gazing at me. I have often longed to ask how one so young and pretty (I may say that I am so old in years and suffering in comparison to you) came to be a hospital nurse.'

'It was my own wish,' she said. 'I too am adrift on the sea of life with no very certain anchorage. I thought I should like this sort of work, and so I took it up.'

'You are not English?'

'How soon everyone finds that out! The curse of "the brogue" seems to follow an Irish person all the world over.'

'It can be no curse to you,' he said. 'Your voice is so sweet and so full of sympathy. I envy the patients who will succeed me.'

'But you won't go for a long time yet,' she said, quickly. 'You are still very weak. You are not fit to take up work of any sort. You mustn't think of such a thing.'

'God bless your kind heart,' he said, a sort of sob rising in his throat. 'There must be angels still in the world if there are many women like you in it.'

'Oh, nonsense!' said Nell, drawing her pretty arched brows in a slight frown. 'I have done very little. It all came under the head of duty.'

'But duty,' he said, 'does not teach that gentleness of touch and look, that sympathy and patience which you have wasted on such a worthless wretch as I am!'

'Ah, you must be getting better,' said the girl, demurely. 'You are beginning to abuse yourself, and get impatient with things generally. That is always a good sign.'

He sighed heavily. He thought how dreary life had been, how utterly devoid of love or sympathy, or womanly care. He wondered how long it would be before that fair young face would cease to haunt him, as of late it had a trick of doing. The result of weakness, he told himself. Weakness and long absence from all gracious and feminine influences.

There were no conventional barriers here. They were simply nurse and patient. They might talk as they pleased. No one listened to or misjudged them. Idleness and weakness had swept away much of his natural reserve. It was a relief to speak to someone of long-endured trials, of the misery of hopeless hours burdened by mental activity, yet barren of all expected results.

And such had been Dick Barrymore's fate for many a long year. He was but thirty, yet he felt aged and tired and hopeless. The wheel of fortune had turned persistently the wrong way for him. He had tried his best, but it seemed that other men's 'worst' had had a better chance of success. His style was not the catchy, claptrap style that goes down with the public. He was too independent in his views to please editors—always the most intolerant of any species of professional men. He had given up the struggle in despair, writing 'Failure' across each returned MS., where others might have written 'Fame.' And now he woke up once more as the battle cry of life sounded in a hospital ward. Woke up and asked himself the old vain Cui bono as he watched his nurse's busy fingers, and listened to her soft, pretty voice.

A sister, a cousin, a love like that—someone to work for—might have roused his jaded energies, inspired his wearied brain.

But he had no one. No one at all. And he sighed and turned his face to the wall. Away from the golden sunlight filtering through the blinds; away even from the dainty figure in its lilac gown and snowy apron, and prayed for death.

She thought he was tired and had fallen asleep. She went on with her work, and the ward lapsed into its old drowsy calm.

Presently Deborah Gray rose and began to make some tea with her little spirit-stand and kettle. The only chance the day nurses had of securing a cup of their favourite beverage was in some undisturbed half-hour like the present, when the patients needed no special attention.

She made a sign to Nell, and the girl folded up her work and went over to the window seat where the cups and tray were standing.

The two nurses talked in whispers. It was very hot; not a breath of air seemed to stir the blind. The room was intensely quiet; the only sound was the breathing of the patients.

Nell glanced at her own special charge. 'I would give him some tea if he were awake,' she said. 'I am sure he would like it.'

'They always like what is bad for them,' said Deborah Gray. 'You're enough to spoil any patient, Nell.'

She had almost from the first dropped the formal 'Nurse' in addressing her except when they were on duty. Her first interest had developed into a warm friendliness that was infinitely comforting to the pretty Irish girl.

'But it wouldn't hurt him,' pleaded Nell. 'And the poor fellow is so low and dejected.'

'No, no, my dear,' said Deborah Gray firmly. 'The others would want it too, and that would never do. You must learn to curb your sympathies, as I have told you before. It is a good thing this has not been a very bad case. You are much too interested in it as it is.'

'He seems to have been very unfortunate,' said Nell, with a glance at the quiet figure in the distance. 'He tells me he has no relatives or friends, and is in very low water. What will become of him when he leaves here?'

'That, again, is a habit you must get out of,' said Deborah Gray. 'Thinking what becomes of "discharged cases." Once they leave here we rarely ever hear of them again. However grateful they seem, the gratitude rarely outlasts the first day of freedom, the return to life outside the hospital walls.'

She put her cup beside Nell's, on the little tray.

'It is time for your patient's arrowroot,' she said. 'I see he is awake.'

Nell went over to the sick man with the nourishment that had been brought in. He raised himself on his elbow and took a few spoonfuls out of the cup she held. After a moment he sank back on the pillows.

'You are not so strong as you thought,' she said. 'Let me feed you as I used to do.'

He shook his head. 'I can't take any more,' he said, and looking up met the sudden soft anxiety of her eyes. 'Ah, why do you mind; why do you trouble?' he said. 'If you had left me to die it would have been better. There is no one to miss me.'

'You should not talk like that,' she said, gently, as she put down the cup on the table beside him and rearranged the pillow. 'It is ungrateful. Besides it is not for us to say whether we would live or die. That is all directed for us, for the best.'

'You dear little Puritan,' he said, with a faint smile. 'It is easy to see you have not known the full measure of suffering. Yours is the easy faith of women—bred in sentiment and unknowing evil or temptation. A man looks at life and God and hell with different eyes. Think of all the teeming millions in this great city; think of the misery, the poverty, the crime, the vileness that even one street of it—east or west—may hold, and then ask yourself if it is all for the best. But there, do not let us talk of such things. It is not good for you, or wise for me. I have looked at madness too nearly, through the eyes of despair, to dwell upon its manifold causes now.'

Nell was silent. She was wondering how anyone so clever could have fallen into such straits. No one had ever spoken to her like this—had ever hinted that the tree of knowledge held more evil fruit than good—that the pretty platitudes of faith in the higher wisdom were but meaningless things at best; lip utterances that had no root.

The troubled look deepened on her face; it had grown thinner and paler already in this close hospital, in these hot, airless days.

He, lying there and watching her, read her clear soul like an open page. He was skilled in reading men and women—skilled in drawing their portraits with the sharp penmanship of scorn. From youth upwards his soul had been vexed with problems that others had accepted or passed by. He had been unable to do either. The faculty of probing into depths, of sounding alike the shallows or the depths in human souls, had been with him a second nature. It was his manner of using this faculty that had made him unpopular, that had barred every avenue through which he had adventured in search of fame.

And yet, with the feeble pulse of returning health, the old feelings awoke, the old scorn began to throb and quiver in his veins. He found himself studying this weak, girlish creature, with a searching and yet compassionate understanding of her sex and its frailties. He had no belief that anything deeper than a whim of the moment had led her to take her present position. She had probably wearied of ballroom flirtations, or perhaps loved unworthily without return, or quarrelled with her home circle, or craved for notoriety or novelty in the sameness of girlish duties. One or other, or perchance a combination of all those reasons, had no doubt influenced her into accepting this place; and even her interest and sympathy for himself lost something of its sweetness when he remembered that to her he could only present the novelty of a first case.

As she turned silently away, as she moved to and fro in the long, bare room, as he watched the sunbeams falling on her chestnut hair, and wavering ever and again about the slender grace of her dainty figure, he still tried to steel himself against such purely feminine attractiveness.

She was only one in a petticoated crowd; only one of the sex who called themselves 'suppressed' whenever insatiable vanity, or ambition preyed upon their jaded passions. He closed his eyes against the charm of her presence, even as he closed them against the golden light filtering through the closed blinds; the warm sunny afternoon light telling of the world without, of hurrying footsteps and busy crowds, of the race for life and all that makes it precious in the eyes of men.

He must go forth again into that crowd, join in the race, pursue the fleeting phantoms of ambition and success.

The sea of despair had cast him up from its black depths. His pulse beat feebly; but with returning life to the battle strain of necessity. Once more came the cry, 'Gird up thy loins, the day is at hand.'

And yet, like Hezekiah of old, he would fain have turned his face to the wall and wept.