Читать книгу The Dark House - Warwick Deeping - Страница 3

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Ruggles, the night porter, who went on duty at seven o’clock, and who remained in charge of the college doorway until seven o’clock next morning, occupied a kind of sentry box in the college vestibule. The big, green door opening into Gifford Street, was both Ruggles’s responsibility and his challenge to fate. He was a hairy and a rather surly old beast who wore a dark green frock-coat with brass buttons, unofficial trousers, and a peaked cap which he shed when the official world had gone to bed, and he could doze decently in his corner. As a sergeant in the Coldstream Guards Ruggles had fought in the Crimea, and if his knowledge of life and of London was adequate for the duties he endured, he did, perhaps, discover a sour delight in exercising a cynical authority.

The exercising of authority may be both pleasant and profitable, and though Ruggles was held to be incorruptible, he was not Sea Green to particular persons. Ruggles showed a shrewdness and a knowledge of men and things in the accepting or the refusing of largesse. He was responsible for that door, and for those who might wish to go out, and even more so for those who might wish to sneak in. Young men in general, and medical students in particular, are not gilded saints, and Ruggles had no personal quarrel with wild youth in pursuit of petticoats. He had been wild himself, and could gloat over his adventures, and he had no high opinion of pious young men. He mistrusted them. They were the fellows who would sneak on you, whereas your wild lad was a sportsman and would not give you away.

Ruggles’s other responsibility was the maternity bell, for the maternity clerks lodged in the college, and had to be called when a message came in. Ruggles both loved and loathed that bell. It rang at all hours, and sometimes several times a night, and Ruggles and the bell played a game with each other. The bell-ringers displayed a varying temperament and technique. When the bell rang vigorously and insistently, Ruggles would get out of his box like a fierce dog preparing to enjoy administering a fright. He could tell a dago or a Yid when he heard that bell ring in a particular way.

It rang that evening about three minutes to nine, and Ruggles got out of his box with his teeth showing in his beard. He tiptoed to the door, and opened it suddenly and fiercely. The expected figure stood revealed on the doorstep. It wore a huge bowler hat, a long black overcoat almost down to its feet. It had a sallow face, and a hook nose, and a black retriever beard. It lisped.

“The doctor, pleath, mithter, at once, pleath.”

It tendered a card, but Ruggles did not look at the card. He held a large fist close to the Hebraic nose.

“Here, you foot it, Moses. Shin off, and don’t you show yer ruddy face ’ere for a week, or I’ll smash it. Get out.”

The Jew cringed and whimpered.

“But I vant the doctor, pleath. My wife——”

Ruggles put a large hand on the creature’s chest, and pushed him off the doorstep.

“ ’ook it, and come back in a week, Slimy. This ain’t Jericho. Blow off,” and he slammed the door.

Sentimental people might have been shocked by Ruggles’s seeming brutality, but then Ruggles knew that gentlemen of Hebrew persuasion arrived inconsiderately on that doorstep days before the babe was due. They were prepared to cause you infinite trouble, without paying for it. They were both servile and sedulous. Also, Ruggles knew that the young gentlemen cursed whenever a Jewish card came in. It meant squalor and hysterics, and hours of procrastination, and squeals and old women clawing at you on the stairs. And the young gentlemen were grateful to Ruggles when he drove Israel from the door, or clumbered upstairs and made the happy announcement.

“Case, sir, name of Smith.”

“Good biz. English.”

“Yessir. Not forty ruddy years in the desert!”

Ruggles sat down again in his box, and thought of the pipe he would smoke when the hospital world had gone to bed. Yes, when you arrived at years of discretion, or was it of impotence? a pipe replaced petticoats. By the way, young Mr. Tate was out, treating Florrie the college’s pet waitress to an evening at the Oxford. Young Mr. Tate was a broth of a boy, and needed watching, bless him! He did not ring the maternity bell, but knocked in a particular way upon the Gifford Street door, and Ruggles’s recognition of that knock might be worth half a crown, if Mr. Tate wasn’t stony.

The porter cocked an ear. Deliberate footsteps were descending the college stairs. This would be Dr. Richmond, Sir Humphrey Jolland’s house-surgeon, setting out on his nightly walk. Regular as an officer doing sentry-rounds was Dr. Richmond. He went out at nine each night and returned at ten. He sat up reading till midnight, for, often when going upstairs to call the maternity clerk on duty, Ruggles had seen the light under Dr. Richmond’s door. Dr. Richmond was St. Martha’s admirable Crichton, its multi-medallist and winner of prizes. St. Martha’s said that in ten years’ time young Richmond might be a senior surgeon on the staff, and in twenty years Sir John Corrie Richmond, with a practice second to none, and an income that ran into five figures. Nor was he a mere sallow swat. He had captained St. Martha’s rugger team during his last year as a student, and was very handy with his fists. Wasn’t it young Richmond who had thrown a truculent dago down the stairs when the Italian gentleman had produced a knife and informed the doctor that he would be expected to remain in that Soho house until little Antonio or Maria should be born?

“Evening, sir.”

There were certain people to whom Ruggles gave a military salute, and Dr. Richmond was one of them.

“Evening, Ruggles. Babies booming?”

Ruggles grinned.

“One Shylock, sir.”

“Sent him off with a bee in his beard?”

“That’s about it, sir.”

Ruggles got up to open the door for Dr. Richmond. Yes, Dr. Richmond might be the smartest student St. Martha’s had known for many years, but he wasn’t smug. He had a joke and a smile for you, what’s more he was a comely lad, straight in the back and thick in the shoulders, a little stocky perhaps for his height, which was five feet nine. He was black of hair and fresh of face, clear-cut, and steady and blue of eye, the sort of man who would not flinch in a tight corner. He had a hot temper, but he rode it like a lad who was the master of a mettlesome horse.

“Thanks, Ruggles.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Dr. Richmond stepped out into Gifford Street, and the porter closed the door, and sat down in his box. Yes, Dr. Richmond was a toff, and seriously so, and Ruggles, reflecting upon the adventures of his own hot youth, found himself wondering how Dr. Richmond managed about women. Rumour had it that most of the nurses were sweet on him, and that even that old Gorgon, Sister Sangster of Victoria smothered herself in smiles when Dr. Richmond appeared with his dressers in the ward.

John Richmond turned from Gifford Street into York Place, walking fast, a man out for exercise and fitness, arms swinging, head up. Half-way down York Place a woman loitered under a street lamp, sidled towards him, and looking in his face, dropped words of harlot’s honey.

“Hallo, darling.”

Richmond gave her a blue-eyed stare, and without slackening speed, passed on. He had no words for that sort of woman, and she, sensing his scorn, turned about and cursed him with a kind of husky shrillness. Richmond smiled, for there was a hardness in him that would not pause to consider the soul of some poor Magdalene. He was not that sort of damned fool. He had a future, ambition, a supreme self-confidence which was rare in so young a man. He was not afraid of tackling a tough problem, nor did he mind other men watching him while he worked, for he could lose himself in the craft of his hands, while knowing that his hands were more clever and confident than the hands of other men.

He turned into Oxford Street and went west towards Hyde Park. One could walk fast in London in those more spacious days, without being balked by loitering, idle women. Shop fronts were decently dark, pavements almost empty. Richmond liked to move swiftly, as though letting his strong urge spend itself, but while he walked his brain was active. He thought of his cases, of his future, of the latest things he had read, and of that eternal problem—money.

His immediate future, as he saw it, was a gamble with Time. He had one brother, Lawrence, five years older than himself, and the brothers had been left orphans while at school. Each had inherited about fifteen hundred pounds, trust money, the principal of which had become theirs at the age of twenty-one. Lawrence was married, and a junior partner in a firm of solicitors who functioned in the fashionable world, and Lawrence possessed a house in Kensington and ambitions. John still had a thousand pounds behind him, capital, a war-chest that he guarded with cold ruthlessness. He had lived hard and cleanly, helped by scholarships and prize money. As a house-surgeon he received no salary, but St. Martha’s provided him with food and a bed. That sum of money was being hoarded for the great adventure; in that it would enable him to live during those lean years while he hung on in London waiting for the world to recognize and accept him as a consulting surgeon. He was ready to deny himself most things in order that the greater thing might be his.

Coming to the Marble Arch Richmond turned down Park Lane. The day’s traffic had died away. An occasional hansom-cab or growler or a horse bus cruised by with a clop-clop of hoofs upon the wooden surface. Richmond passed a private carriage standing outside a house; the door was open, emitting a flood of light, and down the steps came a regal young woman in a cloak of Venetian velvet, with a coronet brilliant about her hair. A sedulous footman was carrying the lady’s train. Another footman waited at the carriage door. Richmond paused for a moment, and looked back to watch that figure of serene and lovely opulence sheath itself like a flower in the dark interior. She belonged to a world which he, an obscure young doctor, was determined to conquer. He walked on, head up, smiling to himself, conscious of these great splendid houses, and of the dark Park, mysterious under the stars. He was youth, challenged by romance and its achievements, eager to ride into the lists like some unknown knight, and give blows and receive them. He asked for the flowers that were thrown at prowess and at power. There was nothing in him of the little, predestined underling, nibbling with envy, and ready to chatter like some angry ape when Achilles rode by in splendour. There was too little in him, perhaps, of the sacramental healer, signed with the seal of compassion. Some day he would enter these great houses, be welcomed, appealed to. Supreme skill would be his justification. A brougham and a smart horse would wait here by the kerb, while Sir John Corrie Richmond went up the steps to see a door opened by a flunkey. No suppliant he, but a man whose reputation and whose capacity would put him among the great.

An agitated nurse, whisking her starched skirt in by the courtyard door, was met by the smell of tobacco.

“Ruggles.”

Damn the wench! The porter tucked his pipe away in a corner of his box, and prepared to receive cavalry.

“Ruggles.”

“Yes, nurse.”

“Is Dr. Richmond in?”

“No, he ain’t.”

“Oh, bother! A case of secondary hæmorrhage in Victoria. Who’s in?”

“Mr. Joplin’s upstairs.”

The nurse clicked her tongue contemptuously. Mr. Joplin, that moony, spectacled Simple Simon! Mr. Joplin would be worse than useless in such a crisis. Her starched uniform seemed to squeak, and Ruggles eyed her almost malevolently. Women shouldn’t function dressed up in tin-plate and starched cotton. Something softer and more downy was what unregenerate man asked for. Moreover, this particular nurse was all vinegar and piety, the kind of woman who would sneak on you and report you to the Warden for having three pulls at a pipe.

“Is anybody else in?”

Ruggles produced a silver turnip of a watch and peered at it.

“He’ll be back in three minutes.”

“Who?”

“Dr. Richmond. Always back by ten. Reg’lar as my old watch.”

“Then, for God’s sake send him across. Tell him No. 7 in Victoria is bleeding.”

Ruggles tucked his watch back into its pocket.

“I’ll tell ’im. It’s two minutes to ten. Bet you he’ll be in Victoria pretty well as quick as you, nurse.”

“If he doesn’t come in at ten, send Mr. Joplin.”

“I will.”

“But when Dr. Richmond does come in, tell him.”

“O’ course I will. I’m not loony.”

Ruggles recovered his pipe, but hearing those familiar footsteps passing the vestibule window, he again laid his pipe aside and got up to open the door. That was a quality in Dr. Richmond that Ruggles approved of, a crisp, marching step that did not conceal itself, but gave you frank notice of its advent. The porter swung the door wide with a spacious gesture that was not accorded to lesser mortals.

“You’re wanted, sir. Case of bleeding in Victoria.”

Richmond paused to ask one question.

“When did you get the message?”

“Only about a minute ago, sir.”

The house-surgeon walked straight on and through to the courtyard door, as though he and a human crisis were natural counterparts. He disappeared, and Ruggles lit his pipe, and said to himself that if he was in a tight corner Dr. Richmond was the lad he would choose to pull him out of it. Ruggles stretched himself, and sucking away at his pipe, remembered that Florrie and young Mr. Tate would be due at the door in an hour or so. Then, it might be safe for him to remove his boots and allow himself a snooze.