It was almost summer.
The sound of much talking had grown fainter in my ears. Between our long
discussions I had found time to stretch out my hands, and to help, in
definite ways, a few of my fellow-beings. The touch of need brought
strength to me, and clearer sight.
The city no longer looked like a visionary background for a fantastic
play. Janet and the Lad and my poor people had made it real to me. It
was sacred now with human interest.
I had learned to take refuge from abstract questions in the details of
my work. It was impossible to speculate while entering the record of one
day’s proceedings, or making memoranda for the next.
But I shrank from the greatness of my task. Each day the cry for help
was louder; each day I knew more fully my powerlessness. Sometimes I
covered my face with my hands and prayed for any one of the old family
ties to shield me from this mass of collective misery. If I could have
again any slightest duty that was all my own! But no; I had gone out to
take care of all the world, and the way was closed behind me.
I found that I depended more and more upon my friends, caring less, as
time went on, about our differences in opinion. As the Doctor once
remarked, we were all much better than our ideas. Even the Altruist,
though it seemed to me that his zeal expressed itself largely in
mistakes, gave me a kind of inspiration. It was better to blunder than
to do nothing at all.
The Doctor was a constant stimulus. She walked unswervingly in the path
that she had chosen, gradually softening a little under the influence of
a physician’s life. Her reputation in surgery, I discovered, was making
her name known beyond our city. I was proud of her.
I never knew all the kindly deeds that she did among the poor. The
record of every one of them is written in her face, behind the
professional mask that refuses to stay on.
Yes, the Doctor’s friendship was an abiding help to me. And sometimes in
my work a single incident would make me feel that for this alone I would
willingly have spent all my effort.
As, for instance, when Miss Hobbs appeared one day in the office, her
face red from hurrying, her eyes shining with delight.
“I’ve got Polly,” she said. “Shall I take her to her father?”