The "touch of pneumonia," prophesied by Dr. Mangan, had proved to be a
sufficiently emphatic one. Larry's recovery was slow, and during his
languid convalescence, he found himself becoming sincerely attached to
the Big Doctor and Mrs. Mangan, and their high place in his affections
was shared by the nurse provided by Miss Coppinger. The bond of a
common faith was one that, at this stage of his development, had but
little appeal to Larry, but he was, at all events, spared any
possibility of suffering from the feelings of sub-friction, if not of
antagonism, that inevitably stirred in his aunt's breast, if she found
herself brought into relation closer than that of employer and
employed with those of the older creed.
His sense of beauty, now beginning to acquire consciousness, and
sorely afflicted by the decorative scheme that had been adopted in
Barty's bedroom, found solace in the faces of these two women. Even
the lazy consideration of the contrast between their types, was a
comfort to Larry, and distracted his mind from the wall-paper (which
suggested the contents of Dr. Mangan's surgery, rhubarb, and
mustard-leaves predominating), and from Barty's taste in art, which in
its sacred and profane aspects was alike deplorable.
Nurse Brennan, slight and fair, with the clearest of blue eyes, and a
Dresden china complexion--Larry was already artist enough to study and
adore the shadow of her white coif, with its subtle, reflected lights,
on her pink, rose-leaf cheek--and Mrs. Mangan, just a little
over-blown, but heavily, darkly handsome, with deep-lidded shadowy
eyes, and--as Master Coppinger pleased himself by discovering--a
slight suggestion of a luxurious Chesterfield sofa, upholstered in
rich cream velvet. When he was getting better, and the rigours of the
sick room were relaxing, these two provided him with interest and
entertainment of which they were delightfully unaware.
"Well, and what will I give him for his dinner to-day,
Norrse?"--(impossible to persuade the English alphabet to disclose
Mrs. Mangan's pronunciation of this word)--his hostess would say,
drifting largely into Larry's room, and seating herself on the side of
his bed.
"Don't be making an invalid of him at all, Mrs. Mangan!" Nurse Brennan
would rejoin briskly; "I'm just telling him I'd be sorry to get a
thump from that old wrist of his, he and the Doctor think so much
about! And he hasn't as much as a point of temperature those three
days!"
"Oh, I say, Nurse!" Larry would protest, "then why won't you let me
get up?"
"Be quite now"--(in Ireland the "e" in "quiet" is not infrequently
thus transposed)--"and don't be bothering me, like a good child!"
Nurse would reply, with a sidelong flash of her charming eyes, a
recognition of Larry's age and sex that atoned for the opprobrious
epithet.
"Would he like a bit of fish now? I'm going down the town, and I might
meet one of the women in from Broadhaven." Thus Mrs. Mangan,
coaxingly.
"Oh, Mrs. Mangan, please don't bother!" says Larry.
"Ah, no bother at all! Sure I was going down anyway to the chapel to
get a sup of holy water. I declare the house is bone dry! Not a drop
in it!"
After dreary winter mornings spent in reading, by the light of a
misplaced window, or age-long afternoons, drowsed through in that
torpor, mental as well as physical, that overwhelms the victim of a
prolonged sojourn in bed, Larry used to find himself looking forward
to the conversations between Nurse Brennan and Mrs. Mangan that arose
at tea-time, and followed, stimulated by the early darkness of
January, in the firelight; the southern voices rising and falling like
the flickering flames, becoming soon self-engrossed, and forgetful of
the silent listener in the bed. Sometimes sleep would lap him in slow,
stealthy peace, and the voices would die away, or come intermittently,
as the sound of a band marching through a town fades and recurs at the
end of a street. But without being aware of it, he was absorbing
knowledge, learning a new point of view, breathing a new atmosphere
that was to influence him more deeply than he could have any
conception was possible.
One evening the talk fell on the congenial topic of illness, doctors
and patients, nurses and nuns, all spinning in the many-coloured
whirlpool of talk, now one and now another cresting the changing wave.
The fact that Larry was of their own religion, counterbalanced his
belonging to an alien class, and if their consciences sometimes hinted
at a lack of discretion, they quieted them with the assurance that
"the poor child was asleep!"
"Ah, the nuns are wonderful!" said Mrs. Mangan, languishingly. "Look
how lovely they have the Workhouse Infirmary! I was taking some
flowers to Reverend Mother, and she was telling me what a beautiful
death old Catherine Macsweeny made. Reverend Mother rained tears when
she told me."
Nurse Brennan sniffed.
"Reverend Mother's a sweet woman, and the nuns are very attentive when
a person'd be dying, but indeed Mrs. Mangan, if you ask _me_, I'd
say 'twas the only time they were much use to their patients! Up at
that infirmary what have patients at night to look after them only an
old inmate, and she 'wanting' maybe!"
Larry began to giggle, and was moved to try his wit.
"Nurse! What's the difference between a stale mate and an old inmate?
And what does it want?"
"It wants the very same as yourself--brains!" returned Nurse, swiftly.
"Now may be!" She wagged her head at him triumphantly, turning aside
to hide the smile of victory, and Larry thought how lovely was her
profile, as the firelight etched it in incandescent lines on the smoky
background.
"Well, indeed, the Poor have a deal to put up with!" said Mrs. Mangan,
lazily, leaning back in her basket-chair, with her big grey cat
purring like an aeroplane engine on her knee. "The Doctor says no one
but himself knows the way he's dragged all over the country, patching
up after some of them young fellows that get dispensaries before
they're fit to doctor the cat!"
The reformer, that underlay the artist in Larry, awoke.
"But, Mrs. Mangan," he said, hotly, sitting up in bed, and glaring
into the gloom at Mrs. Mangan's half-seen face, "why do they give
dispensaries to chaps that can't doctor a cat?"
"Because their fathers can spend four or five hundred pounds to buy
votes!" returned Mrs. Mangan, laughing at him. "Is that news to you?
Lie down child, and don't be looking at me like that! _I_ haven't
a vote to sell!"
Larry subsided with vague splutterings. Nurse came to his bedside and
smoothed the clothes.
"Listen to me now," she said impressively, "and _I'll_ tell you
something to make you angry, if you like!"
She leaned against the foot of the bed, with her hands in the pockets
of her apron, looking down at him. "I was in charge of th' infirmary
at Mellifont one time, and late one evening a young farm-boy was
brought in to me with a dislocated foot and a 'Pott's Fracture'--"
"In the name o' God, what's that?" enquired Mrs. Mangan.
"Fracture of the fibula, but the case I'm speaking of had the two
bones broken at the ankle," explained Nurse Brennan, in her most
professional manner; "sure I thought anyone'd know that! And I can
tell you," she leaned towards Larry, striking the palm of her left
hand with her little clenched right fist, as if to hammer the words
into him, "I can assure _you_, that as bad as you thought you
were, you don't know what pain _is_ beside what that boy
suffered! Well, I sent for the doctor--a young brat of a fella that
hadn't but just left college. 'He'll want an anaesthetic,' says he,
'I'll send down for Doctor ----' (I'll not tell you his name--Smith,
I'll call him!) 'Do you give him some brandy, nurse,' says he, 'Dr.
Smith'll be here soon.' Sure enough he was, and glad I was to see him,
for the patient was suffering greatly, and the leg swelling every
minyute. It was a long ward he was in, and no one at all in it but
himself. At the far end there was a table and a lamp, and down at the
table me gentlemen sat, and commenced to talk."
Nurse Brennan paused, and Mrs. Mangan gave the fire a well-directed
poke, that set the flames branching upwards. The tale was resumed, in
those cool and equable tones that express a more perfected indignation
than any heat or haste could convey.
"Well, that was nine o'clock, and they talked there for two hours, and
I giving the patient brandy, and expecting every minyute he'd
collapse. And what do you suppose they were talking about? Fighting
they were! Disputing which of them would perform the operation, and
which would administer the chloroform!"
Mrs. Mangan laughed lightly, and said: "I wouldn't at all doubt it!"
"Impossible!" exclaimed Larry.
"Not a bit impossible!" said Nurse Brennan, "and how d'ye think they
settled it in the end? They arranged one of them would begin th'
operation and go on for five minutes, and then he should stop and give
the anaesthetic, and the other would go on with the leg! Oh, it's the
case, I assure you! It was twelve o'clock at night before they were
done!"
She paused, laughing a little at the hot questions with which Larry
assailed her, but he could see the unshed tears gleaming in her eyes.
"I was summoned to a private case next day; I don't know what happened
to the unfortunate poor creature of a patient."
"A stiff leg he has, I'll be bound!" said Mrs. Mangan.
Larry lay silent. He saw it all. The long, dark ward, the white angel
figure (he thought, romantically) bending over the tortured creature
on the bed, and, far away, the pool of yellow light and in it those
two--he sought in vain for adjectives to express what he thought of
Dr. I'll-not-tell-you-his-name, and his young colleague.