more intimate knowledge of human nature than is attained by most. He
gains an undistorted insight into character. He witnesses the display
of elemental passions and emotions. He sees his subject, as it were,
unclothed and in the state of a primitive being. There is no camouflage
of feeling, no assumption of a part, no finesse. There is merely a
man or a woman faced by simple, rudimentary conditions. He notes how
they act under strain and stress, under the threat of danger or when
menaced by death. He observes their behaviour both during suffering and
after relief from pain, the manner in which they bear losses and alarms
and how they express the consciousness of joy. These are the common
emotional experiences of life, common alike to the caveman and the man
of the twentieth century. Among the matters of interest in this purview
is the comparative bearing of men and of women when subject to the
hand of the surgeon. As to which of the two makes the better patient
is a question that cannot be answered in a word. Speaking generally
women bear pain better than men. They endure a long illness better,
both physically and morally. They are more patient and submissive,
less defiant of fate and, I think I may add, more logical. There are
exceptions, of course, but then there are exceptions in all things.
Perhaps what the critic of gold calls the “acid test” is provided by
the test of an operation. Here is something very definite to be faced.
A man is usually credited with more courage than a woman. This is no
doubt a just estimate in situations of panic and violence where less
is expected of a woman; but in the cold, deliberate presence of an
operation she stands out well.
A display of courage in a man is instinctive, a feature of his
upbringing, a matter of tradition. With women is associated a rather
attractive element of timidity. It is considered to be a not indecorous
attribute of her sex. It is apt to be exaggerated and to become often
somewhat of a pose. A woman may be terrified at a mouse in her bedroom
and yet will view the entrance into that room of two white-clad
inquisitors—the anæsthetist and the surgeon—with composure. A woman
will frankly allow, under certain conditions, that she is “frightened
to death”; the man will not permit himself that expression, although he
is none the less alarmed. A woman seldom displays bravado; a man often
does. To sum up the matter—a woman before the tribunal of the operating
theatre is, in my experience, as courageous as a man, although she may
show less resolve in concealing her emotions.
In the determination to live, which plays no little part in the success
of a grave operation, a woman is, I think, the more resolute. Her
powers of endurance are often amazing. Life may hang by a thread,
but to that thread she will cling as if it were a straining rope. I
recall the case of a lady who had undergone an operation of unusual
duration and severity. She was a small, fragile woman, pale and
delicate-looking. The blow she had received would have felled a giant.
I stood by her bedside some hours after the operation. She was a mere
grey shadow of a woman in whom the signs of life seemed to be growing
fainter and fainter. The heat of the body was maintained by artificial
means. She was still pulseless and her breathing but a succession of
low sighs. She evidently read anxiety and alarm in the faces of those
around her, for, by a movement of her lips, she indicated that she
wished to speak to me. I bent down and heard in the faintest whisper
the words, “I am _not_ going to die.” She did not die; yet her recovery
was a thing incredible. Although twenty-eight years have elapsed since
that memorable occasion, I am happy to say that she is still alive and
well.
There are other traits in women that the surgeon comes upon which, if
not actually peculiar to their sex, are at least displayed by them in
the highest degree of perfection. Two of these characteristics—or it
may be that the two are one—are illustrated by the incidents which
follow.
The first episode may appear to be trivial, although an eminent
novelist to whom I told the story thought otherwise and included it,
much modified, in one of his books.
The subject was a woman nearing forty. She was plain to look at,
commonplace and totally uninteresting. Her husband was of the same
pattern and type, a type that embraces the majority of the people in
these islands. He was engaged in some humdrum business in the city of
London. His means were small and his life as monotonous as a downpour
of rain. The couple lived in a small red-brick house in the suburbs.
The house was one of twenty in a row. The twenty were all exactly
alike. Each was marked by a pathetic pretence to be “a place in the
country”; each was occupied by a family of a uniform and wearying
respectability. These houses were like a row of chubby inmates from an
institution, all wearing white cotton gloves and all dressed alike in
their best.
The street in which the houses stood was called “The Avenue,” and the
house occupied by the couple in question was named “The Limes.” It was
difficult to imagine that anything of real interest could ever occur in
“The Avenue.” It was impossible to associate that decorous road with a
murder or even a burglary, much less with an elopement. The only event
that had disturbed its peace for long was an occasion when the husband
of one of the respected residents had returned home at night in a state
of noisy intoxication. For months afterwards the dwellers in “The
Avenue,” as they passed that house, looked at it askance. It may be
said, in brief, that all the villas were “genteel” and that all those
who lived in them were “worthy.”
The plain lady of whom I am speaking had no children. She had been
happy in a stagnant, unambitious way. Everything went well with her and
her household, until one horrifying day when it was discovered that
she had developed a malignant tumour of the breast. The growth was
operated upon by a competent surgeon, and for a while the spectre was
banished. The event, of course, greatly troubled her; but it caused
even more anxiety to her husband. The two were very deeply attached.
Having few outside interests or diversions, their pleasure in life was
bound up with themselves and their small home.
The husband was a nervous and imaginative man. He brooded over the
calamity that had befallen his cherished mate. He was haunted by the
dread that the horrid thing would come back again. When he was busy at
his office he forgot it, and when he was at home and with a wife who
seemed in such beaming health it left his mind. In his leisure moments,
however, in his journeyings to London and back and in sleepless hours
of the night, the terror would come upon him again. It followed him
like a shadow.
Time passed; the overhanging cloud became less black and a hope arose
that it would fade away altogether. This, however, was not to be. The
patient began to be aware of changes at the site of the operation.
Unpleasant nodules appeared. They grew and grew and every day looked
angrier and more vicious. She had little doubt that “it”—the awful
unmentionable thing—had come back. She dared not tell her husband. He
was happy again; the look of anxiety had left his face and everything
was as it had been. To save him from distress she kept the dread secret
and, although the loathsome thing was gnawing at her vitals, she smiled
and maintained her wonted cheerfulness when he and she were together.
She kept the secret too long. In time she began to look ill, to become
pallid and feeble and very thin. She struggled on and laughed and joked
as in the old days. Her husband was soon aware that something was
amiss. Although he dared not express the thought, a presentiment arose
in his mind that the thing of terror was coming back. He suggested that
she should see her surgeon again, but she pooh-poohed the idea. “Why
should a healthy woman see a surgeon?” At last her husband, gravely
alarmed, insisted, and she did as he wished.
The surgeon, of course, saw the position at a glance. The disease
had returned, and during the long weeks of concealment had made such
progress that any operation or indeed any curative measure was entirely
out of the question. Should he tell her? If he told her what would be
gained thereby? Nothing could be done to hinder the progress of the
malady. To tell her would be to plunge her and her husband into the
direst distress. The worry that would be occasioned could only do her
harm. Her days were numbered; why not make what remained of her life as
free from unhappiness as possible? It was sheer cruelty to tell her.
Influenced by these humane arguments he assured her it was all right,
patted her on the back and told her to run away home.
For a while both she and her husband were content. She was ready to
believe that she had deceived herself and regretted the anxiety she had
occasioned; but the unfortunate man did not remain long at ease. His
wife was getting weaker and weaker. He wondered why. The surgeon said
she was all right; she herself maintained that she was well, but why
was she changing so quickly? The doubt and the uncertainty troubled
both of them; so it was resolved that a second opinion should be
obtained, with the result that she came to see me in London.
A mere glimpse was enough to reveal the condition of affairs. The case
was absolutely hopeless as her surgeon, in a letter, had already told
me. I was wondering how I should put the matter to her but she made
the decision herself. She begged me to tell her the absolute truth.
She was not afraid to hear it. She had plans to make. She had already
more than a suspicion in her mind and for every reason she must know,
honestly and openly, the real state of affairs. I felt that matters
were too far gone to justify any further concealment. I told her. She
asked if any treatment was possible. I was obliged to answer “No.” She
asked if she would live six months and again I was compelled to answer
“No.”
What happened when she left my house I learned later. It was on a
Saturday morning in June that she came to see me. For her husband
Saturday was a half-holiday and a day that he looked forward to with
eager anticipation. So anxious was he as to my verdict that he had not
gone to his business on this particular day. He had not the courage to
accompany his wife to London and, indeed, she had begged him not to be
present at the consultation. He had seen his wife into the train and
spent the rest of the morning wandering listlessly about, traversing
every street, road and lane in the neighbourhood in a condition of
misery and apprehension.
He knew by what train she would return, but he had not the courage to
meet it. He would know the verdict as she stepped out of the carriage
and as he caught a glimpse of her face. The platform would be crowded
with City friends of his, and whatever the news—good or bad—he felt
that he would be unable to control himself.
He resolved to wait for her at the top of “The Avenue,” a quiet and
secluded road. He could not, however, stand still. He continued to
roam about aimlessly. He tried to distract his thoughts. He counted
the railings on one side of a street, assuring himself that if the
last railing proved to be an even number his wife would be all right.
It proved to be uneven. He jingled the coins in his pocket and decided
that if the first coin he drew out came up “Heads,” it would be a sign
that his wife was well. It came up “Heads.” Once he found that he had
wandered some way from “The Avenue” and was seized by the panic that he
would not get back there in time. He ran back all the way to find, when
he drew up, breathless, that he had still twenty-five minutes to wait.
He thought the train would never arrive. It seemed hours and hours
late. He looked at his watch a dozen times. At last he heard the train
rumble in and pull up at the station. The moment had come. He paced the
road to and fro like a caged beast. He opened his coat the better to
breathe. He took off his hat to wipe his streaming forehead. He watched
the corner at which she would appear. She came suddenly in sight. He
saw that she was skipping along, that she was waving her hand and that
her face was beaming with smiles. As she approached she called out, “It
is all right!”
He rushed to her, she told me, with a yell, threw his arms round her
and hugged her until she thought she would have fainted. On the way to
the house he almost danced round her. He waved his hat to everybody he
saw and, on entering the house, shook the astonished maid-servant so
violently by the hand that she thought he was mad.
That afternoon he enjoyed himself as he had never done before. The
cloud was removed, his world was a blaze of sunshine again, his wife
was saved. She took him to the golf links and went round with him as
he played, although she was so weak she could hardly crawl along. His
game was a series of ridiculous antics. He used the handle of his club
on the tee, did his putting with a driver and finished up by giving the
caddie half a sovereign. In the evening his wife hurriedly invited a
few of his choicest friends to supper. It was such a supper as never
was known in “The Avenue” either before or since. He laughed and joked,
was generally uproarious, and finished by proposing the health of his
wife in a rapturous speech. It was the day of his life.
Next morning she told him the truth.
I asked her why she had not told him at once. She replied, “It was his
half-holiday and I wished to give him just one more happy day.”
The second episode belongs to the days of my youth when I was a
house-surgeon. The affair was known in the hospital as “The Lamp Murder
Case.” It concerned a family of three—husband, wife and grown-up
daughter. They lived in an ill-smelling slum in the most abject quarter
of Whitechapel. The conditions under which this family existed were
very evil, although not exceptional in the dark places of any town.
The husband was just a drunken loafer, vicious and brutal, and in
his most fitting place when he was lying in the filth of the gutter.
He had probably never done a day’s work in his life. He lived on the
earnings of his wife and daughter. They were seamstresses and those
were the doleful days of “The Song of the Shirt.” As the girl was
delicate most of the work fell upon the mother. This wretched woman
toiled day by day, from year’s end to year’s end, to keep this unholy
family together. She had neither rest nor relaxation, never a gleam of
joy nor a respite from unhappiness. The money gained by fifteen hours’
continuous work with her needle might vanish in one uproarious drinking
bout. Her husband beat her and kicked her as the fancy pleased him. He
did not disable her, since he must have money for drink and she alone
could provide it. She could work just as well with a black eye and a
bruised body as without those marks of her lord’s pleasure.
As she had to work late at night she kept a lamp for her table. One
evening the sodden brute, as he staggered into the room, said that he
also must have a lamp, must have a lamp of his own. What he wanted it
for did not matter. He would have it. He was, as a rule, too muddled to
read even if he had ever learnt to read. Possibly he wanted the lamp
to curse by. Anyhow, if she did not get him a lamp to-morrow he would
“give her hell,” and the poor woman had already seen enough of hell.
Next day she bought a lamp, lit it and placed it on the table with some
hope no doubt in her heart that it would please him and bring a ray of
peace.
He came home at night not only drunk but quarrelsome. The two lamps
were shining together on the table. The room was quite bright and,
indeed, almost cheerful; but the spectacle drove him to fury. He cursed
the shrinking, tired woman. He cursed the room. He cursed the lamp.
It was not the kind of lamp he wanted. It was not so good as her lamp
and it was like her meanness to get it. As she stood up to show him how
nice a lamp it really was he hit her in the face with such violence
that he knocked her into a corner of the room. She was wedged in and
unable to rise. He then took up his lamp and, with a yell of profanity,
threw it at her as she lay on the ground. At once her apron and cotton
dress were ablaze and, as she lay there burning and screaming for
mercy, he hurled the other lamp at her.
The place was now lit only by the horrible, dancing flames that rose
from the burning woman. The daughter was hiding in terror in the
adjoining room. The partition which separated it from her mother’s
was so thin that she had heard everything that passed. She rushed
in and endeavoured to quench the flames; but streams of burning oil
were trickling all over the floor, while the saturated clothes on
her mother’s body flared like a wick. Her father was rolling about,
laughing. He might have been a demon out of the Pit. Neighbours poured
in and, by means of snatched-up fragments of carpet, bits of sacking
and odd clothes, the fire was smothered; but it was too late.
There followed a period of commotion. A crowd gathered in the dingy
lane with faces upturned to the window from the broken panes of which
smoke was escaping. People pressed up the stair, now thick with the
smell of paraffin and of burning flesh. The room, utterly wrecked,
was in darkness, but by the light of an unsteady candle stuck in a
bottle the body of the woman, moaning with pain, was dragged out.
An improvised stretcher was obtained and on it the poor seamstress,
wrapped up in a dirty quilt, was marched off to the hospital, followed
by a mob. The police had appeared early on the scene and, acting on the
evidence of the daughter, had arrested the now terrified drunkard.
When the woman reached the hospital she was still alive but in acute
suffering. She was taken into the female accident ward and placed on a
bed in a corner by the door. The hour was very late and the ward had
been long closed down for the night. It was almost in darkness. The gas
jets were lowered and the little light they shed fell upon the white
figures of alarmed patients sitting up in bed to watch this sudden
company with something dreadful on a stretcher.
A screen was drawn round the burnt woman’s bed, and in this little
enclosure, full of shadow, a strange and moving spectacle came to
pass. The miserable patient was burned to death. Her clothes were
reduced to a dark, adhesive crust. In the layers of cinder that marked
the front of her dress I noticed two needles that had evidently
been stuck there when she ceased her work. Her face was hideously
disfigured, the eyes closed, the lips swollen and bladder-like and the
cheeks charred in patches to a shiny brown. All her hair was burnt off
and was represented by a little greasy ash on the pillow, her eyebrows
were streaks of black, while her eyelashes were marked by a line of
charcoal at the edge of the lids. She might have been burnt at the
stake at Smithfield.
As she was sinking it was necessary that her dying depositions should
be taken. For this purpose a magistrate was summoned. With him came
two policemen, supporting between them the shaking form of the now
partly-sobered husband. The scene was one of the most memorable I have
witnessed. I can still see the darkened ward, the whispering patients
sitting bolt upright in their nightdresses, the darker corner behind
the screen, lit only by the light of a hand lamp, the motionless
figure, the tray of dressings no longer needed, the half-emptied
feeding-cup. I can recall too the ward cat, rudely disturbed, stalking
away with a leisurely air of cynical unconcern.
The patient’s face was in shadow, the nurse and I stood on one side of
the bed, the magistrate was seated on the other. At the foot of the
bed were the two policemen and the prisoner. The man—who was in the
full light of the lamp—was a disgustful object. He could barely stand;
his knees shook under him; his hair was wild; his eyes blood-shot; his
face bloated and bestial. From time to time he blubbered hysterically,
rocking to and fro. Whenever he looked at his wife he blubbered and
seemed in a daze until a tug at his arm by the policeman woke him up.
The magistrate called upon me to inform the woman that she was dying. I
did so. She nodded. The magistrate then said to her—having warned her
of the import of her evidence—“Tell me how this happened.” She replied,
as clearly as her swollen lips would allow, “It was a pure accident.”
These were the last words she uttered, for she soon became unconscious
and in a little while was dead. She died with a lie on her lips to
save the life of the brute who had murdered her, who had burned her
alive. She had lied and yet her words expressed a dominating truth.
They expressed her faithfulness to the man who had called her wife,
her forgiveness for his deeds of fiendish cruelty and a mercy so
magnificent as to be almost divine.
VI
A SEA LOVER
The man I would tell about was a mining engineer some forty and odd
years of age. Most of his active life had been spent in Africa whence
he had returned home to England with some gnawing illness and with the
shadow of death upon him. He was tall and gaunt. The tropical sun had
tanned his face an unwholesome brown, while the fever-laden wind of the
swamp had blanched the colour from his hair. He was a tired-looking man
who gave one the idea that he had been long sleepless. He was taciturn,
for he had lived much alone and, but for a sister, had no relatives
and few friends. For many years he had wandered to and fro surveying
and prospecting, and when he turned to look back upon the trail of his
life there was little to see but the ever-stretching track, the file of
black porters, the solitary camp.
The one thing that struck me most about him was his love of the sea.
If he was ill, he said, it must be by the sea. It was a boyish love
evidently which had never died out of his heart. It seemed to be his
sole fondness and the only thing of which he spoke tenderly.
He was born, I found, at Salcombe, in Devonshire. At that place, as
many know, the sea rushes in between two headlands and, pouring over
rocky terraces and around sandy bays, flows by the little town and
thence away up the estuary. At the last it creeps tamely among meadows
and cornfields to the tottering quay at the foot of Kingsbridge.
On the estuary he had spent his early days, and here he and a boy
after his own heart had made gracious acquaintance with the sea. When
school was done the boys were ever busy among the creeks, playing at
smugglers or at treasure seekers so long as the light lasted. Or they
hung about the wharf, among the boats and the picturesque litter of the
sea, where they recalled in ineffable colours the tales of pirates and
the Spanish Main which they had read by the winter fire. The reality
of the visions was made keener when they strutted about the deck of
the poor semi-domestic coaling brig which leaned wearily against the
harbour side or climbed over the bulwarks of the old schooner, which
had been wrecked on the beach before they were born, with all the dash
of buccaneers.
In their hearts they were both resolved to “follow the sea” but fate
turned their footsteps elsewhere, for one became a mining engineer in
the colonies and the other a clerk in a stockbroker’s office in London.
In spite of years of uncongenial work and of circumstances which took
them far beyond the paradise of tides and salt winds the two boys, as
men, ever kept green the memory of the romance-abounding sea. He who
was to be a clerk became a pale-faced man who wore spectacles and whose
back was bent from much stooping over books. I can think of him at his
desk in the City on some day in June, gazing through a dingy window
at a palisade of walls and roofs. The clerk’s pen is still, for the
light on the chimney-pots has changed to a flood of sun upon the Devon
cliffs, and the noise of the streets to the sound of waves tumbling
among rocks or bubbling over pebbles. There are sea-gulls in the air,
while far away a grey barque is blown along before the freshening
breeze and the only roofs in view belong to the white cottages about
the beach. Then comes the ring of a telephone bell and the dream
vanishes.