"With heart made empty of delight
And hands that held no more fair things;
I questioned her;--'What shall requite
The savour of my offerings?'"
E. NESBIT.
"You have got your back against the wall, you have got to fight, you
have got to fight, to fight!"
The words pounded across Joan's mind over and over again. She struggled
in obedience to their message against the waves of sleep that lapped her
round. Struggled and fought, till at last, after what seemed like
centuries of darkness, she won back to light and opened her eyes.
She was lying in a long narrow bed, one of many, ranged on both sides
down the hospital walls. Large windows, set very high up, opened on to
grey skies and a flood of rather cold sunshine. At the foot of her bed,
watching her with impartial eyes, stood a man, and beside him two
nurses, their neat pink dresses and starched aprons rustling a little as
they moved.
Joan's eyes, wide and bewildered, met the doctor's, and he leant forward
and smiled.
"That's better," he said, "you have got to make an effort towards living
yourself, young lady." He nodded and turned to the nurse at his right
hand. "How long has she been in now, Nurse?"
"Ten days to-morrow," the woman answered, "and except for the first day,
when she moaned a good deal and talked about having to fight, she has
scarce seemed to be conscious."
Joan's lips, prompted by the insistent voice within her, repeated, "I
have got to fight," stiffly.
The doctor came a little nearer and stooped to hear the words, "Yes," he
agreed, "that is right, you have got to fight. See if you can get her to
talk now and again, Nurse," he added; "she wants rousing, otherwise
there is nothing radically to keep her back."
Joan's face, however, seemed to linger in his mind, for, as he was about
to leave the ward after his tour of inspection, he turned again to the
elder nurse in charge.
"Have you been able to find out anything about bed 14?" he asked.
"No, sir. We have had no inquiries and there was nothing in any of her
pockets except a cloak-room ticket for Victoria Station."
"Humph," he commented, "yet she must have relations. She does not look
the friendless waif type."
Nurse Taylor pursed up her lips. She had her own opinion as to the
patient in bed 14. "There was the unfortunate circumstance of her
condition," she mentioned; "the girl may very well have been desperate
and lonely."
"Anyway, she hasn't any right to be left like this," the doctor
retorted. "If you can get her to talk about relations, find out where
they are and send for them. That is my advice."
Nurse Taylor owned a great many excellent qualities; tact and compassion
were not among them. Long years spent in a profession which brought her
daily into contact with human sin and human suffering had done nothing
to soften her outlook or smooth down the hard, straight lines which she
had laid down for her own and everyone else's guidance. She disapproved
of Joan, but obedience to the doctor's orders was a religion to her;
even where she disapproved she always implicitly carried them out.
Next day, therefore, she stopped for quite a long time at Joan's bed,
talking in her toneless, high voice. Had Joan any people who could be
written to, what was her home address, would they not be worried at
hearing nothing from her?
Joan could only shake her head to all the questions. Very vaguely and in
detached fragments she was beginning to remember the time that had
preceded her accident. The memory of Aunt Janet's face and Uncle John's
parting words was like an open wound, it bled at every touch and she
shrank from Nurse Taylor's pointed questions. She remembered how she had
sat on the top of the bus with the black weight of misery on her heart
and of how the tears had come. She had been looking for rooms; that
recollection followed hard on the heels of the other.
When she was well enough to get about she would have to start looking
for rooms again, for she had quite definitely made up her mind not to be
a burden to Miss Abercrombie. It was her own fight; when she had
gathered her strength about her, she would fight it out alone and make a
success of it. Half wistfully she looked into the future and dreamt
about the baby that was coming into her life. She would have to learn to
live down this feeling of shame that burnt at her heart as she thought
of him. He would be all hers, a small life to make of it what she
pleased. Well, she would have to see that she made it fine and gay and
brave. Shame should not enter into their lives, not if she fought hard
enough.
Nurse Taylor described her to the junior afterwards as a most stubborn
and hardened type of girl.
"The poor thing has hardly got her wits about her yet," the other
answered; "she is very little trouble in the wards, we have had worse."
"Well, the doctor can question her himself next time," Nurse Taylor
snorted. "I am not here to be snubbed by her sort."
She did not, however, let the matter drop entirely. At the end of her
third week Joan was promoted to an armchair in the verandah and there
one afternoon, after the teas had been handed round, Nurse Taylor
brought her a visitor. A tall, sad-faced, elderly woman, who walked
with a curiously deprecating movement, seeming to apologize for every
step she took. Yet kindliness and a certain strength shone at Joan from
behind the large, round-rimmed glasses she wore, and her mouth was clean
cut and sharp.
"This is Mrs. Westwood." Nurse Taylor introduced them briefly. "She
wants to have a little talk with you, Miss Rutherford. If I were you I
should tell her about things," she added pointedly. "I do not know if
you have any plans made, but you are up for discharge next week."
She bustled off and Mrs. Westwood drew up a chair and sat down close to
Joan, staring at the girl with short-sighted, pink-lidded eyes.
"You will wonder who I am," she said at last. "Perhaps you have never
noticed me before, but I am a very frequent visitor. We run a mission in
the South-West of London, with the object of helping young girls. I want
you to talk to me about yourself, to be quite frank with me and to
remember, if I seem to usurp on your privacy, that I am an older woman
and that my only wish is to help you."
"It is very kind of you," began Joan, "but----"
"You may not need material help," the woman put in hastily; "but,
spiritually, who is not in need of help from God."
Joan could think of no suitable reply for this and they sat in silence,
the woman studying her face intently. Then presently, flushing with the
earnestness of her purpose, she put out a cold hand and took Joan's.
"I think they have left it to me to tell you," she said. "The little
life that was within you has been killed by your accident."
The colour flamed to Joan's face. A sense of awe and a feeling of
intense relief surged up in her. "Oh, what a good thing!" she gasped,
almost before she realized what she said.
Mrs. Westwood sat back in her chair, her eyes no longer looked at Joan.
"The child which God had given you even in your sin," she said stiffly.
Joan leaned forward quickly. "I did not mean just that," she said, "and
yet I did. You do not know, you can't guess, how afraid I was getting.
Everyone's hand against me, and even the people who had most loved me
seeming to hate me because of this."
Her voice trailed into silence before the stern disapproval of the other
woman's face. Yet once having started, she was driven on to speak all
the jumble of thoughts that had lain in her mind these last two months.
"I was not ashamed or afraid, to begin with," she hurried the words out.
"It had not seemed to me wrong. I lived with him because I thought I
loved him and we did not want to get married. Then one day he let me
see--oh, no, I am not being quite truthful, for I had seen it
before--that he was in reality ashamed of our life together. He was
acting against his convictions because it amused him. I could not bear
that, it seemed to drag our life together through the mud, and I left
him."
She could see that Mrs. Westwood was not making the slightest attempt to
understand her; still she went wildly on:
"I went home and it seemed all right. My life with him faded away; I
suppose I had never really loved him. Then, then they found out about
what was going to happen and they turned against me, even Aunt Janet;"
her voice broke on the words, she buried her face in her arms, crying
like a child. "Aunt Janet, Aunt Janet," she whispered again and again
through her tears.
Mrs. Westwood waited till the storm had spent itself, there was no sign
of softening upon her face. Remorse and regret she could understand and
condone, but this excusing of self, as she called Joan's explanation,
struck her as being inexcusably bad.
"And do you now congratulate yourself that by this accident," she laid
special stress on the word, "you are to escape the punishment of your
sin?"
Joan raised tear-drowned eyes. "Haven't I been punished enough," she
asked, "for something that I did not think was a sin?"
"We cannot make or unmake God's laws in our thoughts," the other
answered; "you were wilfully blind to the knowledge that was in your
heart."
"Oh, no," Joan began. Mrs. Westwood swept the remark aside and stood up.
"We will not argue about it," she said; "I realize that you are not yet
looking for the comfort or promise of pardon which I could lead you to.
But, my child, do not delude yourself into the belief that thus easily
have you set aside the consequences of your evil. God is not mocked,
neither does He sleep. If you should ever be in any real need of help,"
she ended abruptly, "help which would serve to make you strong in the
face of temptation, come to us, our doors are always open."
She dropped a card bearing the address of the mission on Joan's lap and
turned to go. Joan saw her call Nurse Taylor and say a few words to her
on the way out. For herself she sat on in the dusk. Outside the lamps
had been lit, they shone on wet pavements and huge, lurching omnibuses,
on fast-driven taxis and a policeman standing alone in the middle of the
road. To-morrow she would have to write to Miss Abercrombie and tell her
there was no further need for her very kindly assistance; then she would
have to make new plans and arrangements for herself in the future. She
would try for a room in one of the girls' clubs that Miss Abercrombie
had given her a letter to. She had been shy of going there before, but
it would be different now. She could slip back into life and take up her
share, forgetting, since the fear was past, the nightmare of terror
which had held her heart before. For she had been afraid, what was the
use of trying to blind her eyes to the truth? She had not had the
courage of her convictions, she had not even wanted to carry her banner
through the fight. She was glad, to the very bottom of her heart she was
glad, that there was no more need for fighting.