Читать книгу The Sinner - Eliza Margaret Humphreys - Страница 5

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Deborah Gray and Nell were taking an airing on the top of an omnibus that went to Putney. The heat was intense, though the sun was obscured by a thick haze. The roads were dry and dusty, the leaves on the trees were brown and seared, the grass in the parks looked parched; a hot rainless summer had done its best to rob nature of her town attractions. The air bore the echoes of sighs for sea and country and mountainside from the poor and the workers of the Great Babylon. Everywhere was the oppressive sense of stifling heat. The very leaves were still, and the muzzled dogs lay panting on doorstops, and in any chance corner where the shade was to be found.

'It is as hot outside as in,' said Nell, as the omnibus turned into Brampton road. 'Oh for a breath of the sea; a screen of green leaves in a wood. I never thought I loved trees so well as since I left Ireland. No wonder they call it the Emerald Isle. Everywhere green woods, green fields, green hedges, no stunted trees and lopped branches such as here one is always seeing. You have never been there, Debbie, I do wish I could take you straight off with me for a long holiday. How we would enjoy it.'

'You have been just a month at your work,' said Deborah Gray, 'and already talk of a holiday.'

'A day like this would make anyone talk of it,' said the girl. 'You see I have never been cooped up in a city in the summer time till now.'

'It must be a little trying; but this weather won't last much longer. There will be a rattling good thunderstorm to-day, and then we shall have a breathable atmosphere once more.'

'It can't come too soon to please me,' said Nell. 'I feel quite fagged out. I can't sleep, it is so hot. From four o'clock this morning to the time I got up I was sitting at my window trying to get a breath of cool air.'

'And you certainly eat next to nothing. Do you know, Nell, I often fear you won't have strength to go on with this life. It is too hard for you; you haven't the physical strength for it.'

'The doctors said I was organically sound in every respect,' said Nell, indignantly. 'What nonsense. Not strong!—I am as strong as any of you. It is only this hot weather that has knocked me up.' Then she laughed softly. 'It sounds so satisfactory—organically strong. Such nice words, you know.'

'Your constitution had never been taxed when that certificate was given,' said Deborah Gray. 'And besides, you are a fanciful little creature; you think more of your patients as individuals than as cases. However, we shall see. I give you six months, and if you lose your enthusiasm, and cultivate common sense, and don't worry over the sufferings you have to witness, and don't mind a snub from the sisters or a little "cattishness" on the part of the nurses, you may struggle on; but my opinion is you won't. Hospital work is too hard and too trying for you.'

Nell was silent. The little grain of truth in the plain speech hurt her. She hated to think she might be pronounced incompetent; might fail, might really justify the prophetic forebodings that had been her only 'God speed' from friends and relatives.

So she remained silent, and Deborah Gray, looking at the pale little face, found herself tenderly hopeful that something would happen to draw her back from this life. She felt it was not suited to her, nor she to it; but at present there was very little use in saying so. Time would show who was right.

'So you will lose your patient to-morrow,' she said, presently, with a view to changing the subject. 'Have you any idea what he will do when he leaves the hospital?'

'He is going to Dublin,' said Nell, with on odd, little smile.

Deborah Gray looked at her with sudden, sharp attention.

'Do you mean to say you have succeeded?' she asked quickly. 'You never told me.'

'No. I wanted to be quite sure first. I told you I had written to my brother?'

'Yes, the sub-editor of a newspaper, you said.'

'Well, they had a vacancy on their staff. I don't know the technical name, but it has something to do with reviewing, and what they call useful "pars." At all events, it is better than starvation. I worked up Harry's interest on behalf of my unfortunate patient, and he has got the post. He will go straight to Dublin, and Harry will look after him. He is the most good-natured soul in the world, and would do anything for me. So it's all settled.'

'Well, if you are going to start your patients in life as well as nurse them back to it, you will have your hands full,' said Deborah Gray, with a smile at the excited little face. 'You must curb this spirit of philanthropy, my child. No wonder your first case has taken so much out of you.'

'It has taken nothing out of me,' declared Nell, stoutly. 'I am as well as any of you. You will see, when once this heat is over; I shall be quite myself again.'

'We won't argue. It is too hot,' said her friend quietly. 'Even if the subject were worth arguing about. I hope he may prove grateful, and I hope he will repay the loan you are to make him.'

Nell turned a scarlet face to that dark, quiet one by her side.

'How do you know? What do you mean?' she exclaimed.

'I don't know. I only conclude that it will be so,' said Deborah Gray, coolly. 'I am sure he has nothing. He was destitute of anything except pawn-tickets when his clothes were taken off. Well, I naturally suppose he cannot got to Dublin without a ticket, or live on air until his first month's salary is due. You are young and enthusiastic, and you think he is a genius, and there is no nobler task in life than that of assisting genius. I thought so too, once,' she added, with a little touch of bitterness. 'But I have learnt wisdom since those days, Nell. Am I glad? I often wonder. On the whole I think I almost envy you for being able to play fairy godmother. It is more blessed to give than to receive, we are told. I wonder if you will find it so?'

'Whether I do or not,' said Nell, 'it will make no difference. My only difficulty has been in persuading him to take any help, even on the common-sense representation that he could not get to the place where he would be able to earn means of repayment without incurring the obligation of repayment. It is very hard for a woman to persuade a man to let her help him.'

'I have known some men,' said Deborah, 'who needed very little persuasion, or would dispense with it altogether if the woman wished.'

'Ah, that is one of your bitter sarcastic speeches,' said Nell. 'Dick Barrymore is not that sort of man, not at all.'

'So he is Dick now,' said Deborah. 'We are getting on I see.'

Nell laughed, and the laugh was too frank and heart-whole to be misconstrued.

'I knew you would say that,' she said, 'but you are quite wrong. He told me his name casually. Of course, I don't call him by it to his face.'

'There is no reason why you should not,' said Deborah Gray, 'if it pleased you. Drawing-room manners are not absolutely necessary in a hospital ward. I fancy he would not object. His eyes are very eloquent, at times.'

'I would rather you did not talk like that, Debbie,' said the girl earnestly.

'Indeed you are quite wrong in imagining anything of the sort. I have only tried to comfort him—to help him a little bit. Surely, that is not so very extraordinary.'

'You are a good little soul, Nell, and I can't help saying so. But I do hope you won't let your feelings run away with you. Very few men are to be trusted, and you do look so ridiculously young and innocent,' she added, with a faint sigh.

'It seems to me,' said Nell, 'that my appearance is seriously against me. When I was a governess I was always being told the same thing, and Mrs. Martyn, the lady in whose service (I suppose that is the right word) I was, used to be so disagreeable and so patronising, I felt she disliked me.'

'Has she a husband?' inquired Deborah Gray.

'Oh, yes. He was very nice, and much fonder of the children than his wife.'

'Ah,' said Deborah; 'that accounts for her treatment, no doubt.'

'Oh, Debbie, how can you. You don't mean—What a bad opinion of human nature you seem to have!'

'My experience of it has not shown me its best side perhaps,' said Deborah, quietly.

She looked away through the hot haze of sunshine. Fleeting images of half-forgotten scenes crossed and recrossed each other in her mind. A wider gulf than actual years separated her from this girl by her side. Her eyes burnt with a sombre fire. The sharp sting of memory was piercing through her apparent composure and one unhealed wound throbbed painfully. Nell did not interrupt that silence. The golden rule of friendship is the knowledge of when to speak, and when to hold one's tongue. Nell was beginning to know Deborah Gray very well, and to recognise that she had dark moods and moments best left undisturbed. She never dreamt of asking their cause or their meaning. Some instinct told her that she would never hear them, unless some day confession presented itself in the form of relief to the self-controlled woman.

She admired her with enthusiasm. She recognised in her the strength and helpfulness that she herself lacked. The difference between them was in itself an attraction. Nell was inclined to be enthusiastic from impulse, and to endow those she loved with every possible virtue. Deborah Gray recognised this very quickly, and always checked a too-lavish display of feeling. She did not believe very much in the affection or the admiration of one woman for another. All forms of "gush" or emotion were hateful to her. She had trained herself to coolness, and was somewhat scornful of her sex's constant self-betrayal.

The bitterness of an actual experience is yet less bitter than the distrust it has awakened. It hurt Deborah Gray often to check a natural impulse to be generous or trustful, and yet she had checked it again and again. She said sharp little things to herself respecting such impulses; she kept watch and guard over any errant feeling; she prayed for calmness as other women pray for love. Her ideal of happiness was a composure that could not be ruffled by breath of excitement, or disturbed by external influences.

When she turned again to Nell and spoke, they had almost reached their destination. They changed omnibuses and came back by the same route. In those hot summer days it was their favourite way of taking the air. It was cheap and it was restful, and it gave them a wide knowledge of streets and districts throughout London. On the return journey, Deborah skilfully evaded dangerous topics. She encouraged Nell to talk of her home in Ireland, her early girlhood, of the people and their ways. That bright girlish chatter always amused her. It was like a ripple of sunlight on the gloom of their hospital life. Nell had the Irish faculty of seeing the humorous side of things and of people. Her eye was quick to detect comicalities where others swept by in indifference. But to-day she was conscious of a little sense of fatigue as she rattled on. There was more of effort than real amusement in her descriptions. She talked for talking's sake, and because she knew Debbie wished her to talk. It was a curious feeling, and it impressed her. The little stream of light and frivolous words was checked abruptly.

'How I talk,' she exclaimed, with sudden impatience. 'And what nonsense it is! Why do you let me?'

'Nonsense is good for youth and natural to it,' said Deborah.

'Youth, youth! How you do harp on that. I am not young, I tell you. It seems years and years ago since I was a girl—a girl who cared for the fit of her frocks, and to whom a dance meant rapture. I feel now as if I should never dance again.'

'This is hardly the weather, or the place, to make it an attractive prospect,' said Deborah, gravely. 'But I should not like to put you to the test when the surroundings were suitable.'

'You think I am not to be relied on! I know you do, Debbie. I have a humiliating consciousness of the fact. I wonder if you are right. I know I am not a bit the sort of person I meant to be; yet I began well.'

'We all do,' said Deborah Gray. 'Come, let us go in now; our time isn't up, but this heat is cruel. You look quite white and fagged, child.'

They passed up the steps and into the wide, cool hall. A man was there, talking to the house surgeon. An elderly man, with keen, sharp-cut features and iron-gray hair. His clothes had that foreign 'cut' which bespeaks the traveller.

The surgeon turned to the two nurses as they entered.

'Ah,' he said, 'this is the young lady who had charge of the case. Nurse Nugent, this gentleman is a relative of your patient, Barrymore, ward seven. He tells me he has been searching London for trace of him, and only to-day discovered that he had been brought to this hospital.'

Nell turned to the stranger. He lifted his soft felt hat.

'Richard Barrymore is my nephew,' he said. 'I have just returned from Colorado. His mother was my sister. I have lost sight of them for ten years. I came home a month ago, and all this time I've been tracing this nephew of mine. A nice hunt I've had, and in mighty queer places. He's been very ill, I hear.'

'Very ill,' said Nell, gravely. 'But he is better. He is to leave us to-morrow.'

'Could I see him? I know it's not visiting day, and all that, but perhaps you'd make an exception in my favour?'

The stranger spoke with a slight American accent. His manners were somewhat brusque, but Nell liked his face, and his eyes were kind, she thought.

'Oh, of course, of course, under the circumstances,' said the doctor; 'and as the patient has really recovered, we may say. Step into my room, and I will send for your nephew. Nurse, perhaps you'll tell him as you are going up the ward.'

'Shall I mention your name?' asked Nell, turning towards the stranger.

'Yes, there's no objection. He has probably forgotten me. I've not seen him since he was quite a lad. Here's my card,' he added, handing her one, and taking in with keen eyes the grace of the little figure—the beauty of the small delicately coloured face. 'What a child to be a nurse. Looks like a bit of Dresden china,' he said somewhat gruffly, as the two nurses went up the broad staircase.

'She looks young, but she is older than her looks; a clever little thing, too,' said the doctor approvingly.

'She's one of the new-fangled lady nurses, I suppose,' said Geoffrey Masterman. 'I hear there's quite a crank about it. Girls all crazy to be one because the dress is picturesque, and they look like Madonnas. Stuff and nonsense! What are their mothers about, I wonder.'

'The mothers of the present day,' said the doctor, 'have little influence with their children. They are all too enlightened to heed warnings or believe in an older experience.'

'I wonder what this precious nephew of mine has made of his life,' observed Geoffrey Masterman. 'He was always a bit cocksure as a boy, I remember. His mother, poor soul, spoilt him a bit. She thought there had never been a boy so gifted and intelligent, and so morally perfect. It is those wonderful boys who always go to the wall.'

He put his hands in his pockets and strolled up and down the room, waiting for the appearance of the 'wonderful boy,' who had achieved manhood in those years of absence and fortune seeking.

When the door opened, and Dick entered, he stopped and stared as if he had seen a ghost.

'Good heavens, boy! How you've changed,' he exclaimed. 'And how like you are to your poor mother.'

He took the thin, emaciated hands in his own, and wrung them with a force of affection that made his nephew wince. His eyes took in the sharp outlines of the features, the worn, thin frame on which the shabby clothes hung loosely.

A queer, choking sensation rose in his throat. He thought of the dead mother, who had so loved and believed in her son. Perhaps death had been kinder in closing those adoring eyes to a change so heart-breaking.

'I'm very glad to see you, Uncle Geoffrey,' said Dick, presently. 'I know I look an awful scarecrow. Please don't look so distressed; I've been very ill, you know.'

'So I hear,' said Geoffrey Masterman, clearing his throat, and beginning his restless walk once more.

The doctor went out of the room and left the two men together.