Читать книгу Blind Man's Year - Warwick Deeping - Страница 13

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She found herself in conflict with the assumption that death was inevitable for the lad in that other room. Perhaps she had been thrown into conflict with certain figures of symbolism, the Cash creature who had outraged her compassion, the male’s crude acceptance of death as a mere entry on the debit side of the ledger. As a woman who had suffered much in her secret self, her reaction to violence and wounds was quick, poignant and rebellious. Inherent in her was the elemental urge to give life and to preserve it. She may not have been conscious of it as an intimate and personal issue, but she moved to resist man’s more facile fatalism.

As she opened the door of the room in which he lay she was aware of the evening sunlight shining in, and of the blackbird singing, of the joy and the anguish of life woven together in the green world out yonder. The room was very still. The familiar furniture, huddled into corners, seemed to question her and to protest. Why this upheaval, this disorder? She closed the door very gently, and crossed to the bed. Was he breathing? She thought that she could detect a slight movement of the bedclothes. His bare forearm and hand lay in the trough of the supporting pillows. She put out a hand and ran her fingers along his wrist, and the contact seemed to send a tremor through the part of her which resisted. She, too, could feel pulses, try to divine the yea or nay of life. The tips of her fingers throbbed to the heart-beat beneath his skin. He was alive. She found herself looking at his hand. There was a smudge of oil or something on it. She remembered the reek of petrol that had hung about the wrecked machine, and her fear of fire. A quiet lad. Footsteps! She drew back quietly from the bed, almost as though she had been surprised in a moment of foolish tenderness. She saw Dr. Heberden’s head and shoulders pass the window.

She met him in the passage. Was the doctor like those others, so ready to sign some document and surrender life to the official mortuary?

“I’m glad you’ve come. He is still alive.”

Why did he look at her so sharply, as though she had said some unexpected thing?

“Yes, they linger sometimes. I remember a case in the war, an airman who was unconscious for weeks.”

“And died?”

“No, as a matter of fact he recovered.”

She had left the parlour door open, and she stood back to let him pass.

“Why not assume that there may be a chance?”

“Nothing would please me better.”

He had crossed to the bed, and she moved round the foot of it and stood facing him.

“I have had people here.”

“I’m afraid that was inevitable.”

“So were they, and their prepossessions. A horrible little man from the aerodrome. And the police. They offered to relieve me at once of his dead body.”

She seemed to repress herself. She was saying too much. She stood and watched Heberden’s hand fasten on the inert wrist, and then her glance shifted to his face. He appeared to be counting those pulse beats, estimating their strength, rhythm and volume. What a pleasant and intelligent face he had, and the eyes of a man who understood that humanity asks you to be kind rather than clever. He raised his head, and with his fingers still on the pulse, looked across at her.

“He’s got a better pulse, very distinctly better.”

“Then there is a chance?”

“Perhaps a very faint one. It’s so very difficult to say.”

“I know it must be.”

“I am glad we didn’t move him. When a body is badly shocked, life is like a very feeble flame, so easily put out.”

“Is there anything more that we can do?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You say that arm is broken. Oughtn’t something to be done? Supposing he were to recover consciousness? But, forgive me, I am being meddlesome.”

He smiled at her.

“Don’t apologize for that. You see, he might be unconscious for days. You remember the case I was quoting to you. The lad had a broken leg, and the case seemed so hopeless that the German doctors did not bother about the leg, and during those weeks of unconsciousness the bones grew together. Months later the leg had to be rebroken and reset.”

“Couldn’t you put splints to that arm?”

“If it will give you any satisfaction I will.”

“It may sound foolish to you, but it would.”

Again he smiled at her.

“You may be right, you know. I hope you will be.”

Afterwards he walked with Miss Gerard round her garden. He told her that he would look in again about ten o’clock, and function both as nurse and doctor. But what of the night-watch? Oh, she could manage, she and Jane between them. A thrush had taken up the blackbird’s song; they could see the bird on the topmost twig of a cherry tree, and outlined against the afterglow. The tree itself was in full blossom. The light was fading into an April twilight, but the green growth and floweriness of the young year were as poignant as the smell of the wallflowers.

He said to her as they turned back after looking at the daffodils in the orchard: “I can never get used to the death-idea, especially when the earth is green with growth. And especially when the patient is like that lad. One’s gentle agnosticism doesn’t carry one very far.” She repeated those two words of his: “Gentle agnosticism.” As a physician he was familiar with death, but to her, life would still throb somewhere beyond the veil like the voice of that singing bird.

“You will come back about ten? Is there anything I can get ready for you?”

He paused to scribble in his notebook, and tearing at the page he passed it to her.

“Have you any of those things in the house? Just tick them off if you have. Then I can bring what is necessary.”

She took his pencil and marked off one or two of the items.

“No, I’m afraid, only some old linen.”

He took back the list and pencil.

“I shall know what to bring.”

Leaving her by the porch, he was in the act of getting into his car when someone hailed him. Mr. Cash’s car, a speed model in red, was still parked close to a grass verge.

“Hi, one moment; are you the doctor?”

Mr. Cash appeared out of the dusk. He had resumed his leather coat, and his great white face looked like the hairless face of the full moon.

“Yes.”

“My name’s Cash. I’m the Blue Hawk Company. Just been to look at the smash. He did it pretty thoroughly. I suppose you’ll be at the inquest?”

Heberden’s manner became austere.

“Aren’t you being a little previous, sir?”

“Hopelessly smashed up, isn’t he? Have to think of these things, Doctor. There’ll be an inquiry. My machine was O.K. It was just the ruddy fog.”

Heberden got into his car.

“I quite understand your position, Mr. Cash.”

“I was going to say, Doc, that the damage is on me. Send your bill in to us when the whole business is over. We insure, you know.”

The doctor pressed the starter-button.

“I haven’t yet begun to think of my bill, Mr. Cash.”

“Well, I suppose you’ll want your money, anyway. Most people do. My name’s Cash, remember.”

“I think I see the joke, sir. Good night.”