WATTLES.
As soon as she could get away from Newnham the next morning, Lucy went
to Addenbroke's to see Nurse Brannan. She couldn't get away very early;
there was a mathematical lecture at nine o'clock that wasn't over till
eleven, and she had to plod, plod through those weary diagrams while
her mind was far away. Oh, how she hated those problems and riders,
and all the dreary, dreary round! She made one or two futile little
diagrams on her paper, and then she rubbed them out again, and sat
staring at the blackboard, and watching the perplexing white lines come
and go while her mind was far away. She was calculating what would
happen if the man had died in the night.
'What would they do with the body? Would Eric Gwatkin expect her to
keep the secret, and assist, perhaps, at some mysterious obsequies?' It
was with a distinct feeling of relief she saw the duster sweep over the
blackboard and wipe all those cabalistic characters away. It was like
wiping out the record of her guilt.
Lucy shook off the dust and gloom of the lecture-room and ran off to
Addenbroke's. She really could run a good part of the way. She went
across the Fens, as less frequented, and giving her space to breathe
and think. It was such a blue day, and the fresh green of the year was
over the low-lying fields, and the chestnut-tree by the bridge was
budding, and the pollard willows that marked the winding course of the
river were sallow-gray in the sunshine, and the daisies were in bloom.
Lucy walked over quite a carpet of flowers; she crushed the little
tender pink buds remorselessly under her feet in her hurry to get to
Addenbroke's.
She had never been to the hospital before, and she was rather afraid
to go in when she got there. There were a lot of people coming out with
newly-bandaged limbs and white faces, and some children were carried
in in their mothers' arms. There were people of all ages, men and
women, and little children all with that sad patience on their faces
which is born of suffering. Lucy was so sorry for the people. She had
no idea her heart was still tender; she had rather prided herself on
its growing cold and hard like Maria Stubbs and the rest of the Stoics
of Newnham. There was a tired-looking woman coming up the path with a
puny little creature in her arms, with, oh! such a white, white face.
Its eyes were open, and it was smiling a wan little smile up into the
mother's face, and she was crooning over it; she was a poor, weakly
thing, and she carried it as if even its light weight were too much for
her. Lucy turned to look after the sickly mother and the sickly child,
and she noticed the child's arm--a lean, puny little arm--had escaped
from the shawl in which it was wrapped, and was feebly embracing the
mother's waist.
The sight of that small clinging hand brought a rush of tears to her
eyes. There was compensation even here; there was something here
between that sickly mother and child--there wasn't much to show for
it, only a crooning voice and a wan smile and a little wasted clinging
hand--that would last longer than the Stoics, that would last 'to and
through the Doomsday fire.'
Strangely softened by this every-day sight, Lucy crept up the wide
stone staircase to find Nurse Brannan. She looked so lost that a man
going up, a medical student, asked her where she was going, and took
her to the ward where Miss Brannan was nurse.
'I am afraid the doctors are going their rounds,' he said, as he looked
in at the door, 'but I will take you into Miss Brannan's room, and you
can wait there.'
He led Lucy through the ward--a large, delightful chamber, well lighted
and cheerful, and with quite a bank of tall palms and ferns on a table
near the door, an oasis of verdure for tired eyes to feast upon.
Lucy saw all this at a glance, and she saw also a group of men round
a bed, and the nurses standing near, and she crept softly into Nurse
Brannan's room.
She had time before the nurse came to her to see what a nurse's room
was like. It was a tiny bit of a room partitioned off the ward, and it
seemed all walls and ceiling. There was a little floor room, however,
and a big window that went nearly up to the ceiling.
It was not unlike a room in a woman's college, only that there were
texts on the walls, and there are no texts on the walls of the Stoics.
The occupant of the room must have understood Latin and Greek, for
there were texts in both these languages. There was one text only in
our common tongue, and that was over the mantelpiece. It was not an
illuminated text, and it had no lovely floral border. It was written in
plain, bold characters in black and white: 'Inasmuch as ye do it unto
the least of these My brethren, ye do it unto Me.'
Lucy couldn't keep her eyes off those familiar words which she read now
in a new light. There wasn't much else in the room to look at. There
was a bed that was a couch by day; it was a bed still, though it was
past eleven o'clock; Nurse Brannan had evidently not long risen from
it. The room was in the disorder of the early morning, and the day
arrangements did not yet prevail. It was as untidy as a nurse's room
well could be: the breakfast things were still on the table, and the
demure little bonnet and cloak looked as if they had hastily been taken
off and thrown on the bed, and a pair of outdoor shoes were lying in
the middle of the floor.
While Lucy was still noticing these details Nurse Brannan came in.
She was a little bit of a nurse, with pink cheeks and steady blue eyes
and fluffy hair. She was not at all a formidable person.
Lucy ran up to her when she came in, and took both her hands. She
couldn't ask the question that was on her lips, she was moved out of
all sense and reason. The anxieties of the night and the mathematics
of the morning, and the lean little encircling arm had moved her
strangely, and now she was hardly master of herself.
Nurse Brannan shook her head.
'He is no better,' she said.
She didn't say it at all sadly. She was so used to such things--to
sickness and suffering and death--it didn't move her in the least.
'I have just come back from St. Benedict's, and there is no
improvement. He has had a dreadful night. They thought at one time of
calling up the Tutor.'
'And they have not told him yet?' Lucy asked, pale to the lips. 'Are
they going to let him die?'
'They have not told him; they have not told anyone in the college; but
I don't know about letting him die.'
'You think he'll get over it? Oh, do you really think it possible with
that--that dreadful wound he can get better?'
Only talking about the wound made Lucy sick and faint. She was made of
very poor stuff. She would have been no good at Addenbroke's.
Nurse Brannan smiled.
'The wound is nothing,' she said: 'it is not at all serious. He will
get better if he is well watched, and they protect him from himself.
When the attack passes off he will not be much the worse--only it may
occur again at any time.'
'The attack?' Lucy said feebly; she was quite at sea as to Nurse
Brannan's meaning.
'Oh, you didn't know he did it in a fit of delirium tremens. This is
the second time he has had an attack, and he has attempted his life
both times. His friends ought to take him away and put him under
restraint.'
Lucy didn't know what delirium tremens meant; happily she had been
spared all her life from such miserable knowledge. She vaguely knew it
was a 'possession' of some kind, an awful 'possession' like that which
used to seize the men of old.
'You think the fit will pass?' she said.
'Oh yes; there is no reason why it shouldn't pass, and then the less
they say to him about it the better. It would be well if he never knew;
but the scar will remain, they cannot cover up that. There is no reason
why he shouldn't be well enough to take his Tripos and go "down." The
best thing that can happen to him will be to "go down."'
'Go down'--he looked very much more like going 'up,' Lucy thought,
as she recalled the white face on the pillow; but she was immensely
relieved by the nurse's assurance.
'And you have seen him this morning?' she said.
'Yes; I ran over for a minute directly I got up. I was not up till
late. A woman was dying in the ward, and I stayed with her till she
died. She did not die till daylight, and then I lay down for a few
hours; and I had just time to snatch some breakfast and run over to St.
Benedict's before the doctors came their rounds. I was only just back
in time. I had to throw my things down and put on my slippers--I hadn't
even time to put my cap straight. They were waiting for me in the ward
when I came back. Oh dear! what a mess I left my room in!'
Her pretty plaited nurse's cap, that ought to be worn in the most
demure fashion, that ought to be as straight as those lines of that
detestable blackboard, was all awry, was positively jaunty, and her
fluffy hair was quite outrageous. She didn't look the least like a
real, staid nurse who is called upon to face death at any moment, and
is always doing dreadful disagreeable things. She might have been
playing at nursing, only her eyes were steady, and her lips had a great
calm about them; they didn't quiver, and tremble, and curl, and ripple
with laughter, like other girls.
Lucy was almost angry with her for the cool, not to say unfeeling, way
in which she spoke of these dread realities--death and suffering. 'She
has no heart!' she said to herself as she went back over the Fens to
Newnham. 'Nurses are so used to pain that they have no sympathy. I
wouldn't be a nurse for the world!' Then she remembered the words over
the mantelpiece: 'Inasmuch----.' Was this the secret of that little
fluffy, girlish nurse's hardness and endurance?
They don't do very much for other people at Newnham; and they do
nothing for each other. They positively ignore each other. Perhaps
this is owing to culture--the higher culture--and it hadn't reached
Addenbroke's yet.
Lucy had written to the Tutor of St. Benedict's when she got back the
previous day, excusing herself, in an incoherent fashion, for not
keeping her appointment, and promising to come to his rooms at the same
hour the next day.
She knew her way quite well this time, and she was five minutes before
the hour she had appointed. The Senior Tutor's door was closed, and the
way was quite clear. There was not a soul on the staircase; there was
not a soul in the passage. Lucy could not resist the desire to knock at
that closed door at the end of the passage, and find out for herself
how the man was. She hadn't much faith in that thick-skinned little
nurse; she would see for herself.
She knocked at the door at the end of the passage in her futile way,
but of course nobody answered. If she had wasted all her strength
upon it, it would have been the same thing, as the inmates of that
mysterious room only gave admittance to privileged individuals upon
preconcerted signals.
Lucy hadn't got the secret of that 'Open sesame,' and she was turning
away. She hadn't got to the end of the passage, when the door really
did open and someone came out. It was the bed-maker with a tray.
Somebody had been having a meal, and she was carrying the débris away.
Lucy stopped her at the end of the passage, and the two women stood
looking at each other--the bed-maker suspiciously, and Lucy eagerly.
There was no mistaking the anxious eagerness in Lucy's eyes.
'How is he?' she asked, more with her eyes than her lips, and she
laid her detaining hand on the woman's arm. There must have been some
Freemasonry in the touch, for the bed-maker softened, and the look of
suspicion gave place to one of pity.
'He's quieter,' she said in a whisper, drawing Lucy back into the
passage, out of sight of the Tutor's door; 'but he's been orful bad all
the morning. As much as two of 'em could do to keep him in bed. It's a
sad pity, miss, and such a nice gentleman--there isn't his fellow in
the college!'
The bed-maker sniffed; she would have wept, no doubt, but she held a
tray, and it would have been inconvenient, so she sniffed instead, and
regarded Lucy with a watery eye. She evidently thought Lucy was his
sweetheart.
Lucy took a coin from her slender purse and laid it on the tray. She
didn't give it to anybody in particular, she only laid it on the tray,
and the bed-maker curtsied.
'Will you ask Mr. Gwatkin if I may come in?' she said--'the lady who
was with him yesterday.'
She didn't give her name, but the woman knew her quite well--every
bed-maker in St. Benedict's knew her. She wasn't the least surprised
at the Master's niece taking an interest in one of her gentlemen--the
nicest gentleman in the college. She had a tender spot in her withered
bosom, under that rusty old shawl, and she was quite flustered at an
_affaire de coeur_ on her staircase.
She toddled back, tray and all, and by a preconcerted signal the door
was opened, and she said a few words to someone inside, and then Eric
Gwatkin came out into the passage and led Lucy in and closed the doors
behind her.
He was looking dreadfully tired, she thought, and there were quite deep
lines on his face; he seemed to have aged since yesterday. Perhaps it
was with want of sleep, but Lucy put it down at once to his guilty
conscience. She was feeling old herself, years older than yesterday.
'He has had a very bad night,' Eric Gwatkin said, speaking in a low
voice and with his lips twitching, 'such a night as I pray God I may
never witness again. You were not praying for us last night. You did
not pray for him--for me--when you went away.'
Lucy bowed her head; she remembered she had not prayed for these men.
What were they to her that she should pray for them?
She had been walking about the passages and frightening Pamela out of
her wits instead, when she ought to have been on her knees.
The screen had been moved since yesterday; it had been drawn nearer the
bed, so that the middle of the room where they were standing was left
clear.
'He does not like to see anyone whispering,' Eric explained; 'he is
very suspicious, and the least thing excites him.'
'You were alone with him all night?' Lucy asked, with a perceptible
quiver in her voice; 'you have been up two nights.'
'That doesn't matter,' he said, 'I shall have all the strength I need;
but last night he was very violent, and--and I thought I should have to
call Mr. Colville. It was a great temptation--I could hardly resist
it.'
'Oh, why didn't you?' said Lucy. 'Why do you take all this
responsibility upon yourself?'
Eric Gwatkin smiled. His smile was not the least like Pamela's. Lucy
couldn't help thinking, as she stood there, how it would change
Pamela's face and take the weariness out of it if she had that smile.
'I don't mind the responsibility,' he said, 'or the anxiety, if I can
save him. It would be worse than death to him to have it known. Oh, I
think you must go home and pray that he may be brought through this,
and may be kept for the future. He will need all our prayers.'
'What on earth are you whispering about, Wattles? I wish you would
speak so that a fellow can hear what you are saying.'
The voice came from behind the screen--an impatient voice, not weak by
any means.
'All right, old man; Miss Rae has come to ask how you are. He saw you
yesterday,' he said, turning to Lucy and speaking in a lower voice;
'he remembered you quite well.'
'It's awfully good of you,' Wyatt Edgell said as Lucy came from behind
the screen; 'I'm afraid we don't look like receiving visitors. Old
Wattles here insists upon making a mess.'
He was lying back on the pillow with a wet bandage round his head, and
a basin of lotion and some rags on a chair beside the bed. His shirt
was torn open as if in a struggle, and his chest was bare. There was
a scarf round his throat, a large silk scarf striped with the colours
of his college that concealed whatever was beneath. Lying there with
his head thrown back and those wet bandages, and his chest open--his
splendid manly chest with all the muscles exposed--he looked like a
man stricken down with fever, or some head trouble; no one would have
guessed what the scarf thrown so loosely around his neck concealed.
'I am so glad you are better,' said Lucy softly, coming over to the bed
and bending over him; 'you ought to get well soon, you have got such a
good nurse.'
'Old Wattles, yes; he's very well, only he persists in keeping me in
such a mess.'
He took the bandages off his head as he spoke, and rolled them up into
a ball, and flung them to the other end of the room, where they rolled
under a heavy piece of furniture, and Wattles, or Gwatkin rather, had
to go on his knees and fish them out.
'There!' he said, 'that will give Wattles an excuse for going on his
knees. He has been going on his knees all night. He would be a good
fellow if he weren't always preaching and praying.'
He rolled his head impatiently on one side, and flung the pillow after
the bandages, and Lucy, looking down upon him, saw a dark light in his
eyes she had never seen in any eyes before. It wasn't exactly terror,
but it was disgust and loathing and impatience.
'I beg your pardon,' he said, 'but there was a creature on that--a
toad. I hate toads!' He shuddered as he spoke, and his eyes followed
the direction of the pillow. 'It's there now! I wish Wattles would put
it outside. It's been here all night.'
Gwatkin took up the pillow and shook it, and appeared to take something
off it, and opened the window and made a gesture as if he had thrown
the thing into the court below.
'There, old man,' he said reassuringly, 'it's gone now. It can't
trouble you any more.'
And then he brought back the pillow, and Lucy put it under the poor
fellow's head while he supported it, and she arranged it and smoothed
it as only a woman's hand can arrange a pillow.
When she had done this, she put on the wet bandages afresh and bathed
his head, and as she bathed it the dark light seemed to fade out of his
eyes.
'You are very good,' he said with a sigh; 'you have exorcised that
hideous little beast. It is gone now'--and he looked round the room
fearfully--'quite gone.'
'Thank God!' said Gwatkin. 'Your visit has done some good, Miss Rae, if
it has dispelled that hideous nightmare that has been pursuing him all
night. I think he will sleep now.'
'I'm sure you ought to sleep yourself,' Lucy said, as she suddenly
remembered the time and began dragging on her gloves. 'It is quite
gone,' she said to Edgell, bending down over the bed; 'I am going to
pick it up as I go out and carry it away.'
Having told this little fib, she went out, and Gwatkin closed the two
doors after her.
She had to tell another fib or two when she went into the Tutor's room.
He had been waiting for her exactly fifteen minutes, and he had waited
an hour the day before.
She was absent and distrait all through the lesson; she was thinking
about the man in the next room, and the creature she had promised to
pick up in the court.
The Senior Tutor had never coached such an unpromising pupil. She would
never get through her Little-go, he told himself--never, never. She
would get plucked to a certainty.
Oh, it would never do for the future Mistress of St. Benedict's to be
plucked!
He debated with himself while he was bending over her, and remarking
what a dainty little profile it was, and how the little rings of
chestnut hair clustered on her forehead, and how clear, how deliciously
transparent, was the carnation tint of her cheek, and the shapely curve
of her throat--such a little throat he could clasp it with his hand--he
debated with himself, as he remarked these quite every-day things that
no man in his senses except an old bachelor Fellow of a college would
have noticed, whether it would not be better to settle the thing at
once, and stop all this unprofitable work.
If Lucy knew what was before her, she would have other opportunities of
fitting herself for her high position besides poring over mathematics,
for which she clearly had no vocation.
'I'm afraid you find the work rather hard,' he said with a preliminary
'H'm' and 'Ah' to clear his throat. He didn't know exactly how to
begin. What comes by nature at thirty is uncommonly hard at sixty. It
is like going in again for a hurdle-race, or taking the high jump. He
could have done it easily years ago, but he couldn't do it now. He
stopped with that preliminary 'Ah.'
'Yes,' said Lucy, 'it is not very easy, but I am going to work eight
hours a day. It is more than a month to the exam.; if I work very hard
eight hours every day, I think I may manage it.'
Eight hours a day for a whole month! She was so much in earnest; and
when she lifted her little pale drooping face to his, with just a
suspicion of a tear on her eyelashes, he was really sorry for her. He
was very near taking her in his arms and kissing away that fugitive
tear and settling the matter--he was never nearer in his life.
Perhaps it was the best thing he could have done, but he missed the
chance, and Lucy picked up her books and began to talk about the work
she was to prepare for the next lesson.
'I wouldn't work eight hours a day,' he said; 'you will get through
easier than that. I would give an extra two hours to tennis.'
He had never given a man this advice--perhaps it was not needed. He
watched her, out of his window, cross the court. She did not happen to
pick up the thing by the way as she had promised. Her step was less
elastic, he noticed, than it used to be, and her face was paler--paler
and thinner. She would never, never be young again, and life would
never open afresh. There is only one young life, one time of roses, one
sweet blossoming time, and it was just a question in the Tutor's mind,
as he watched Lucy cross the court, whether the loss of this were worth
all the mathematics in the world.