A whirling spin and din of machinery filled the air. All around was
endless revolution, above was the ceaseless, curiously slow
progression of the driving bands, those heavy-footed transmitters of
elusive incomprehensible force, and below, under the great iron
framings which held half a million machines in position, were men and
women, grime-covered, fluff-covered, dust-covered, according to their
trade, all moving about like automata with dead-alive hearts and
hands, attending on some marvellous adaptation of mechanical power
devised by those sane human hearts and hands out of their own powers.
Pulley and lever, and inclined plane, with all their endless
derivatives, were hard at work, for Blackborough was the biggest
manufacturing centre in the kingdom, and Blackborough was in the
middle of its day's work.
And then, suddenly, a clock struck. Another given moment of eternity
had passed, the wheels stopped, the throbbing air grew still. Then
from a thousand wide gateways humanity began to stream forth to flood
the streets. The stream was thinner, less continuous than usual, for
it was Saturday; therefore pay-day, and tallies had to be made up at
the cashier's desk.
So they came out by twos and threes, counting their gold and silver.
For half Blackborough, the past six days had resolved themselves into
pounds, shillings, and pence.
"_She_ won't be 'ere likely, o' Monday," sniggered one of two girls,
their hair already in curling-pins against the evening's outing, as
they passed a weary-looking woman whose thin shawl failed to conceal
her figure, and whose heavy foot dragged over the greasy pavement.
"Wot ever did she go and get married for, an' to sech a drunken fellar
too. She was a good-lookin' gel and 'ad a good time four year back."
"Oh! She'll be at it agin in a month's time none the worse," giggled
the other girl pertly. "She lost 'er two fust, an' this 'un 'ull go
too, you'll see. Just as well, and they comin' so rapid. My! They is
fair beasts, they husbands; but I'd see mine futher fust, I would!"
And then, as they hurried home to dress, they fell to discussing the
new hats which were "to do the real trick with their boys" on Sunday,
when a long cycle ride was to end in a midnight train, a late supper,
and after that bed--if there was time!
Even in their mill garb, they helped to swell the general tendency to
lark and titter in the streets; but in truth those same streets were a
somewhat curious sight on Saturday afternoons, when, with money in its
pocket, humanity was, at last, at leisure to be human; to loiter, to
laugh, and to make love. For the upper crust of Blackborough
society--the old red-sandstone section labelled "Court" in the social
stratification of the postal directory--made a point of rural
week-ends, so leaving the human pie free from any covering of culture.
It was amusing to watch. Advocates of realism would have found
pictures and to spare amid the overdressed girls whose week's wage had
been squandered on their finery, in the undersized boys prematurely
given to ogle who had spent theirs on football, bets, and cheap
cigarettes.
And as the daylight died down the squalor of it all showed still more
clearly beneath the flaring gas-jets. Especially in the market streets
where all the week's refuse of the great city was exposed for sale,
warranted sound, while buyer and seller alike winked over the
warranty!
Purple heaps of fly--blown meat labelled "prime cuts" in the
butcher-shops, battered tomatoes on the barrows with "best home-grown"
flaunting in green and gold lettering above them; "genuine" butter,
"fresh" eggs, and "selected dairy-fed pork," jostling each other in a
booth.
Such is the market which centuries of civilisation have provided for
the poor.
And the endless crowd passed and repassed, with money in its pocket,
lingering in groups about the gin shines at the corners, giggling,
cursing, gossiping, quarrelling; each person treading on the heels of
the next, and leaving no human footfall on the oozy pavement; only
blisters and scars, only the certainty that some living thing had
walked through the mire and carried some of the dirt away with it.
"Fine turbit! fine fresh Grimsby turbit!" shouted a man with a barrow.
As he turned down a darker by-street, a phosphorescent glimmer shone
from his pile of stale plaice as a testimony to eternal truth!
Peter Ramsay, house surgeon to St. Peter's Hospital round the corner,
making his way thither on his bicycle, followed on the glimmer,
vaguely interested as to whether that semi-putrescent fish bought for
Sunday's breakfast would send him a new patient.
"It's fresh, is it?" asked a wistful-looking old woman from a doorway.
"Smell it, laidy! There ain't no extry charge," retorted the coster
surlily.
The old woman shook her head. That test was too stern. "She comes from
Cornwall," she murmured to herself, "so 'twud put her more in mind o'
'ome, nor liver, wouldn't it?"
There was a chink of coppers behind Peter Ramsay as he rode on,
thinking that some folk ought to be punished for trying to
ptomaine-poison the king's lieges.
But his mind was full of something else, and before five minutes were
over, he was looking down on a sleeping boy, and wondering vaguely for
the hundredth time if he or the other doctors were right? Would an
operation--not a known one, of course, but one based on new lines--be
of any use or not? He would dearly have liked to try.
In truth here, in the spick and span ward, amid those who had been
brought in sickened by that outside squalor, it was difficult to
realise any lack of hygiene, any lack of fair dealing. Yet that lack
had left its mark on the sleeping face of the boy. It lay with a
cunning elusive look on its sharp features among the white pillows.
What a shutting of the door when the steed was stolen it all was!
Looking at him critically, preternaturally sharp, preternaturally
diseased in mind and body as he was, it seemed to be a life not much
worth saving; and yet!--if it could be saved!
The upright wrinkles on Peter Ramsay's forehead corrugated the
transverse ones as he told himself it was useless to think of it here;
in Vienna it would have been different. He had already so far as in
him lay encouraged the performance of a critical new operation the
very next week, and one was enough at a time. He was very keen, very
confident, this young surgeon, fresh from his life abroad; ready to
criticise even his superiors if they seemed to him old-fashioned. For
his hands reaching out into the darkness around him had felt the touch
of Something--Something that he would not lose touch of though it
eluded him; so he followed it fast, almost heedlessly.
This boy----? If he had had time or money! Then suddenly he smiled.
The thought of Ned Blackborough's hidden hundred pounds came to him as
it had come more than once during the last few months. Here was a case
for it, only unfortunately he had not the time for private work. Still
it was odd what a backing that hundred pounds had been to all sorts of
day-dreams. Why it should be so, was a psychological problem; since
after all, it was but a paltry sum, and, in all probability, it no
longer existed for him; for there had been distinct greed on at least
two of the faces which had watched its concealment. It had, no doubt,
been appropriated long ago. So the boy must go out, comfortably fitted
with regulation crutches, to live, possibly, two or three years at the
outside. And yet----
He bent regretfully, tracing the twist of the body beneath the
bed-clothes, then looked up at the lingering of a passing footstep.
"Good evening, Mrs. Tressilian. I beg your pardon, Nurse Helen--I am
always forgetting."
"Because you will not remember," she replied with a smile. Then her
eyes grew soft; she bent over the bed in her turn; "Can nothing really
be done for him, doctor? He is so very patient."
There was something about this woman, Peter Ramsay felt, which took
him away, as it were, into a desert place apart with nothing in it
save himself, truth, and a listener. He had felt it from the moment he
had first seen her; and he had told her the truth even then. It was
another curious psycho-physiological problem which evaded dissection
and analysis; so he had evaded her, ever since--carrying out her
promise to herself--she had appeared as a nurse in the hospital now
nearly five months ago. But the spell remained.
"Nothing," he replied, half-speaking to himself, and following up his
own train of thought; "Nothing at least that will be done--and it
would be but an off chance anyhow."
She caught him up swiftly. "Then there is a chance?"
Peter Ramsay's face became a study in cynical reserve; he turned away.
"My dear lady," he said, "haven't you been a nurse long enough to know
a doctor's convenient formula, 'While there's life, there's hope.'"
To his annoyance as he moved on to the door, she moved also. "I am off
duty," she remarked, as if she had not appreciated his slamming of the
door in her face, "so it is no breach of rules to tell you that I have
had a letter from Ned Blackborough. He is coming back from the
Mountains of the Moon--that was about his last address, I believe--but
his arm is still troublesome. I should like to show you what he says."
They were in the vestibule now, and Dr. Ramsay paused. He rather
admired her pertinacity, and matched her coolness with his own.
"Certainly. May I come in now--or stay! You will want to go out, I
expect. Will you look in at my diggings after dinner? I might be able
to give you a cup of coffee, if you will?"
"I have no doubt the matron will allow me," she laughed. "Good-bye for
the present, Dr. Ramsay."
As he sat waiting for her in a room which beggared description by its
untidiness, he felt distinctly nervous; but he was becoming accustomed
to the fact that she had a disturbing or rather an exhilarating effect
on his nerves. He was a trifle irritated at the fact, a trifle
irritated with her because she had fulfilled his predictions.
She was quite normal, and she made an excellent nurse. He had had to
admit so much. But it was not her natural metier--that was--something
very different.
Possibly he was right. At any rate Helen, entering the room, stood
absolutely aghast at its utter lack of comfort. She had been learning
much about Peter Ramsay of which she had had no idea, when she came
into touch with him in the hospital. To begin with, he was much
younger than she had guessed him. She doubted if he was much older,
perhaps not quite as old as she was herself. Clever as he was, he had
most of the doctor's battle for name and fame before him; and there
was a carelessness of public opinion, a certain roughness of very
solid truth about him, joined to an utter disregard of his own comfort
or that of any one else, except a patient's, which made her feel that
here was a man who, above most men, needed a strong, capable, tactful
woman to look after him privately, if he was to succeed publicly.
And, though the sick adored him, and every one admitted his skill, he
was not one of those men who appeal to the world at large. He was too
swift, too incisive. No young woman would darn his stockings because
he was a dear; the very maid-servants could leave his room like this!
"I don't expect it's good," he said ruefully, pouring her out a cup of
coffee, "but I'm not up to these things. My mother spoilt me. She died
three years ago. She was a widow, and I was her only son."
Helen, sipping at her coffee, told herself that explained a good deal.
He was capable enough professionally, but--the coffee was execrable!
"It isn't very nice," she admitted, "and why doesn't the
housemaid----"
"Oh! I can't have my things touched," he interrupted with a frown;
adding as if to change an unwelcome subject, "So the arm is stiff. I'm
sorry. We shall have to try electricity. There's a place in
London----"
He was off on some new cure, his red bronze eyes shining, his whole
bearing full of confidence and vitality. She waited till the subject
was exhausted, and then put down her cup, fixing her eyes humorously
on his face.
"And now, please, about that boy--No. 36 in the Queen's ward--I came
to speak of him, you know."
Peter Ramsay faced her half angrily; then he smiled. "Of course I
knew, though I don't see why you wish to find out my opinion."
"Possibly because I have an idea that your opinion may be right," she
replied coolly. "What is it you wish to do? Something quite new, I
expect."
He frowned. "There you are mistaken. It--or something like it--has
been done at Vienna."
"By Pagenheim?"
"What do you know of Pagenheim? I beg your pardon! I was forgetting
that women know everything nowadays. Yes, Mrs. Tressilian, by
Pagenheim. He was my master."
She knew that; knew also that the great surgeon had sent him back to
England as his best pupil.
"Well," she said after a time, "If you won't tell me I will order the
_Wiener Hospital Blatt_; I shall see all about it there I suppose."
This time he laughed out loud. "You are very persistent, so I will
save you the trouble of finding out in which number it is reported."
When he had finished, she sat looking at him for a moment, feeling a
sudden motherly desire to help this curiously capable, curiously inept
man, whose strong white surgeon's hands showed themselves firmly
gripping each other beyond frail, frayed wristbands.
"But surely if you hold that there is a chance of life for him----"
she began.
He rose, and resting his arm on the mantelpiece, looked down on her
mentally and physically.
"Life!" he echoed. "What is life worth to him? and how do you know
that what we call death ends it? Mind you, I'm not speaking from my
own beliefs--they are--well! not much! Belief is positive--I'm not.
But you, Mrs. Tressilian. Why do you and your sort hold this life so
dear, and why are you all at the same time in such a blessed hurry to
get another hour or two of it in which to do something when you
believe in a fuller, better life beyond death? It isn't logical. My
mother used to say that when she taught me, a three-year-old, about
Cain and Abel, I refused to give blame to the former on the ground
that he had only sent Abel to heaven. That should be your position."
"And yours?"
"Oh! mine is simple. To a doctor life is merely the converse of death,
and death is the devil! We cannot prescribe for a corpse--or for the
matter of that levy a fee for so doing--and that is the end and aim of
doctoring."
"Why should you say those things, Dr. Ramsay?" she asked quietly. "You
know you never take one--at least you would take none from me."
He flushed slightly. "Because I did nothing--and you were an
interesting case. I levy a big fee of experience, Mrs. Tressilian. But
concerning this boy--my colleagues are against me, and----" He
shrugged his shoulders. "I don't think the world will come to an end
if No. 36 goes out of it. I shouldn't mind if it did--it isn't worth
much."
"But are you not bound?" she persisted. "You have no right to judge
what his life might be. A doctor's duty is to save life and defy death
at all costs."
His face softened immensely.
"You have got it quite pat, Mrs. Tressilian. That is my duty
undoubtedly; but--but I can't afford to do it--as yet--and after all,
there is plenty of time--we have a few centuries of evolution before
us yet."
"But you--you yourself?" she asked, scanning his face eagerly.
"I," he answered. "I am a temporary aggregation of molecules, or, let
us say, electrons. By and by we shall find another word to express the
infinitely little--or the infinitely great----"
Here a shrill whistle from the speaking-tube made Helen start and
Peter Ramsay smile. "That, I'll bet, will be the infinitely little."
He leant over to listen, and his face hardened. "I must go--an old
man, apparently in a fit, brought in from the street. Good-bye, Mrs.
Tressilian. I'll try and save _his_ life anyhow."
She lingered on in the room for a while after he had left it, laying
an orderly hand almost unconsciously here and there, and feeling that,
had she dared, she would like to have gone into his bedroom beyond,
and seen if there were any buttons on the back of his shirts. She
remembered having heard him ask the matron for the loan of a
safety--pin; that looked ominous.
He, meanwhile, going hastily into the surgery, saw a white-haired
figure lying flat on the table, and, having the gift of swift
diagnosis, called as he entered,
"Prop him up, please--and--dresser--amyl, sharp."
Held back thus by swift help from sinking down to perfect rest, the
weary heart rallied, and after a time the old man's set face wavered,
he opened his large, pale-blue eyes, and looked about him.
Then the doctor looked about him also. "Hullo! Cruttenden," he said,
"you here?"
"I brought him in," replied Ted Cruttenden; "he was speaking to some
work-people in the street when he collapsed."
"If you know his friends, you had better send for them to take him
home--he ought not to go alone."
The patient was by this time able to smile. Lying back on the pillow,
he looked extraordinarily frail and refined, and his voice, urbane to
a degree, matched his appearance.
"Friends!" he echoed. "I have none. I left friendship behind me--with
other things--years ago."
"Then, if you know no one, you'd better stop here," suggested Peter
Ramsay brusquely.
"I said nothing of knowledge, sir," replied the old man; "I know many,
and every one knows me. I am Sylvanus Smith."
Dr. Ramsay glanced swiftly at Ted Cruttenden, as if to refresh a
casual memory. "Sylvanus Smith," he echoed. "Oh yes! I remember. Then
you live near Dinas, and have a beautiful granddaughter--and--and you
know Cruttenden?"
Mr. Sylvanus Smith sat up, and flushed a delicate pink. "Excuse me;
neither of those qualifications have any bearing on the question. I am
President of the Social Congress, and I do happen to have a slight
acquaintance with this gentleman. I have to thank you, sir. I saw you
amongst my audience, and I presume----"
"Not at all--not at all," interrupted Ted. "If you like, Dr. Ramsay, I
will see him home."
As he said the words, he knew that here was a stroke of luck. Without
in any way infringing on his compact with Ned Blackborough, here was
an opportunity of ingratiating himself with Aura's legal guardian. He
would be a fool not to take it, a fool not to make the very most of
it.
And yet when, a whole week afterwards, the old man, leaning out of the
through carriage to Wales, in which Ted had placed him duly fortified
with papers and egg sandwiches, shook him warmly by the hand, saying,
"Then you will come to Cwmfairnog at Christmas." The words brought a
distinct feeling of meanness to the hearer. Ned Blackborough would
have to go alone to the inn. That was not what had been intended; but
then the whole business was absurd. He had a great mind to back out of
it altogether. And here the swift thought came, that from what he had
seen of Mr. Sylvanus Smith, a lordling would have scantier grace than
a commoner; so that it might be as well if Ned----
A twinge of remorse had to be stilled by the recollection that
everything was fair in love and war, and by heaven--no one could love
Aura better than he did. No! no one!
Of course, he would have been a fool not to take the luck sent him,
and he was a still greater fool to feel that there was in it any
stealing of a march on Ned Blackborough.
What would Hirsch say? For, ever since he had given himself up soul
and body to that great man, he had formed a habit of referring to him
as his standard of conduct. The result here was that Ted positively
blushed at his own scruples.
No, if--there was any unpleasantness--it would be better to end the
compact, and let them each do their best on their own footing.
His was very different to what it had been five months ago. There was
nothing now to prevent his being as rich as Ned Blackborough; or, in
the future, having such a title as his. For at bottom, all things were
a question of money. That he had learnt from Mr. Hirsch. A quick wave
of eager ambition sent the young blood tingling to the finger-tips. He
felt glad he might have to fight fair for the girl he loved. Besides,
it would be so much fairer on her. She ought not to be deceived. This
highly moral thought brought with it such a sense of conscious virtue
as sent him back to his office thinking deliberately how Hirsch would
admire Aura when he saw her--in pink satin and diamonds of course.