And so, against common sense, against my pride, against everything, I got up, went slowly to the telephone and, after a final moment of hesitation, called up the cottage hospital at Dalnair.
It was a toll call and I had to wait some time, but at last I succeeded in getting through. My voice sounded harsh and forced.
“I’d like to speak to Dr. Law, please.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, sir, you can’t.”
The abrupt refusal surprised and disconcerted me.
“Isn’t she in?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, sir, she’s in.”
“You mean she’s on duty?”
“Oh, no, sir, not on duty.”
“Then what do you mean? Please go to her room and tell her I’m here.”
“She’s not in her room, sir. She’s in the wards.”
Who was at the other end? I tried to recognize the voice, but could not. In addition, the country exchange was acting in its usual fashion and the wire began to sing and crackle loudly. Restraining my impatience, I changed the receiver to my other ear.
“Hello, hello … Who is that talking?”
“It’s the maid, sir.”
“Katie?”
“No, sir, the under-maid. I’m new, sir.”
My nerves were now so taut I had to shut my eyes.
“Please fetch the matron. Tell her Dr. Shannon wishes to speak to her.”
“Very good, sir, will you hold on, please?”
I hung on, with increasing vexation and anxiety, for what seemed an interminable period. But finally, with relief, I heard a sharp step, followed by Miss Trudgeon’s unmistakable tones.
“Yes, Dr. Shannon?”
“Matron,” I exclaimed. “ I’m sorry to trouble you, but I did want to have a word with Dr. Law. Could you reach her for me?”
“I’m afraid you can’t speak with her, Doctor. You haven’t heard our news?”
“No.”
There was an appreciable pause. Then:
“Dr. Law has been ill, quite ill, for the past three weeks.”
As my heart turned over in my breast, there came a crackle in the instrument which cut off further speech. But I had already heard enough to turn my swift suspicion into certainty. I hung up the receiver. It was always my failing to leap impetuously to a premature conclusion, and that, precisely, was what I did just now.
Chapter Eight
Next morning I went early to the laboratory, then across to Dr. Goodall’s house. He had not risen, but when I sent in word that I was obliged to take the day off, he gave me his permission.
The sky was still grey as I walked down the drive and through the big gates. After my long and unbroken sojourn within the high walls it was painful to make this journey to Dalnair. I reached Winton at ten o’clock. The city lay damp and warm beneath a low smoke pall. The noise and bustle of the streets, the crowds pushing with luggage towards the barrier at the Central Station, were strangely jarring after the order and tranquillity of Eastershaws. But I had to see Jean—yes, at whatever cost, I must see her.
Yet, as I sat brooding in the swaying train, while the sooty fields and sidings drifted past, my feeling was less pity than a slow and smouldering anger. More and more I was obsessed by the vision of her fingers—touching the cultures … crumbling the biscuit to her lips.
At Dalnair Station I couldn’t get a cab, so, under the grey and humid sky, I walked to the hospital by the steep path which I used to race up at top speed. But now I climbed slowly, wishing I had stopped at the Railway Tavern for a drink. I was out of breath as I reached the crest of the hill, entered the drive, and rang the front door bell.
There was no delay. It was Katie who answered my ring. I had not told them I was coming, and she gave me a queer look. But she had always liked me and, with a restrained air of welcome, she admitted me to the reception-room. A moment later Miss Trudgeon appeared.
“Well,” she exclaimed, bustling in with her brisk and energetic smile. “This is a surprise. I’m very glad to see you again.”
Gazing at her heavily, I saw that she had spoken quite sincerely; yet, while I felt grateful for her friendly reception, I was not deceived by the specious brightness of her manner, which I recognized at once as a mere professional disguise, a cloak that I had often seen her adopt when interviewing anxious relatives.
“But I must say,” she went on with a sideways glance, “you don’t flatter your new job. You’re thin as a rake. What have they been doing to you? You look as though they’d put you through a mangle.”
“Oh, I’m all right.”
“Don’t they feed you out there?”
“Yes … the food’s excellent.”
She shook her head slightly, as though doubting the truth of my words.
“You need a course of my good nourishing curries.”
There was an awkward pause during which, as she hadn’t asked me to sit down, we both remained standing. The cheerful, rather encouraging smile, which from long practice her tough facial muscles seemed capable of sustaining endlessly, had lost a little of its glitter.
I moistened my lips.
“How is she?”
“As well as can be expected. She’s been ill three weeks now.” The matron hesitated; then, observing that I was waiting for further information, she proceeded on that same note of optimism, choosing her words so as not to commit herself. “At first she seemed to be holding her own. But these last few days there’s been a slight loss of ground.”
I felt my heart contract. I knew that phrase so well.
“Who’s looking after her?”
“Dr. Fraser, the Medical Officer of Health.”
I had a vision of this middle-aged man, with thinning sandy hair, thick fair eyebrows, and a plain, square, lined face made coarsely ruddy by a reticulation of red veins upon the cheeks.
“He’s a good man.”
“Excellent.”
“Tell me the truth. What does he say?”
The matron was silent. She shrugged her shoulders slightly.
“She’s quite ill. If only she’d gone down with it at once, she’d have had a better chance. She went on for a week with persistent headache and temperature, before she collapsed. But that often happens with scarlet fever.”
“Scarlet fever!” I exclaimed, in an indescribable tone.
“Yes, of course,” Matron said, surprised. “I told you on the phone last night.”
A rending silence. I drew a quick sharp breath, which seemed to burn to my finger-tips. So rooted was my idea I could not bring myself to surrender it.
“I’d like to see her,” I said.
Miss Trudgeon’s gaze slid over my head.
“She’s not altogether conscious.”
“All the same, I would like to.”
“What good can it possibly do?”
“All the same …” I said.
The matron now looked thoroughly embarrassed. She spoke directly.
“Her parents and her brother are here … in the sitting-room. And her fiancé. Unless they were willing, Doctor, I couldn’t take the responsibility.”
I felt a sinking of dismay. This was something unthought of, a difficulty to be overcome, a penance to be endured. Yet for nothing, nothing must I abandon the purpose which had brought me here. I sighed.
“I’ll go in and see them.”
Once again she shrugged.
“Very well. You know your own business best. If you want me, I’ll be in the ward.”
Without further comment Miss Trudgeon briefly nodded, spun round and moved off, leaving me to make my way, as best I could, along the corridor to my old sitting-room. Outside the door I stood for a full minute, hearing the sound of a deep voice within, then summoning all my courage I turned the handle and went in.
Daniel Law was at the table, reading aloud from a Bible, with Luke, in the next chair, close beside him. Seated in the window embrasure and facing in my direction were Mrs. Law and Malcolm Hodden. I stood there in hangdog fashi
on, holding my breath until the recital finished.
There was a momentous silence. Daniel removed his glasses and, with his handkerchief, dried them openly, then half-turned in his chair. Although his attitude was fixed, his grave, anxious countenance gave no sign of anger or accusation. He simply gazed at me with silent dignity.
Malcolm, however, had risen. He came towards me. His undertone was audible in the silent room.
“How can you intrude at a time like this?” His full eyes, near to me, were veined. “Can’t you respect our privacy … forcing yourself…”
“No, Malcolm,” Jean’s mother interposed in a low tone.
I kept my gaze on the floor, all that I had meant to say congealed upon my lips.
“He has no right to be here!” Hodden cried, suddenly, in a racked voice.
“Oh, be quiet,” Luke muttered.
“Hush, son,” whispered Mrs. Law. With a steady glance towards me, she stood up. “ I am going to see our daughter now. Will you come with me to the ward?”
Speechless, not having spoken a word, I accompanied her from the room, across the driveway, to the side room of the little pavilion. Waves of light rippled across the clean gravel yard, a young nurse crossed before us, under a veranda a group of children, convalescent, in red coats, were throwing a rubber ball.
My heart was hammering unbearably in my side as Matron opened the door and we joined her in the white-painted room. Only one of the three beds was occupied, half-surrounded by a screen, with a white enamel chair at one side. Upon this chair, leaning forward in an attitude of watching, was Sister Peek. As I followed Matron slowly round the edge of the screen and stood at the foot of the bed, I dared not raise my eyes. Only by the greatest exercise of will did I succeed in lifting my head, inch by inch, until my gaze, travelling along the white counterpane, came to rest on Jean.
She lay upon her back, her eyes wide open, constantly muttering, with tremulous movements of her dry lips and tongue, her thin hands all the while plucking at the bedclothes. Against the low white pillow, beneath her tied-back hair, her facial bones were sharp and fine. Her cheeks showed, not the usual bright patches of fever, but a dull and heavy flush, while a crop of reddish points, some of which had already faded, leaving brownish stains, disfigured her drawn brow … the typical rash of toxic scarlatina.
Already, amidst the rushing in my ears, I felt myself slipping down the slope.
Above the bed, beyond reach of those plucking fingers and twitching wrists, there hung the chart upon which was traced the sharp ridges, the depths and hilly contours, of the fever. My eyes went straining towards it. Yes, I thought, after a long moment, there is no doubt at all. What a fool I had been, what a fool I always was.… It was, with certainty, scarlet fever.
In muted voices Mrs. Law and Matron began to talk together. I was not there. Useless as a piece of unwanted furniture, I was ignored. I did not exist. My eyes fell, in anguished confusion, wandering amongst the paraphernalia of sickness which neatly covered the bedside table, medicine bottles, feeding cup, a hypodermic, ether, and camphor in oil. If it had reached that stage it was bad enough.
The scene hung, suspended, from a remorseless thread of time which swung slightly from side to side, and slowly attenuated, became more fragile as seconds were stripped away and cast one by one into an unknown void. You could not bear this indefinitely. I went out, crossed the narrow passage to the opposite side room, which was quite empty, and there sat down upon the edge of a bed, staring at the blank yellow distempered wall with direct and haggard eyes. I had hoped to do so much, and now I could do nothing … no dramatic and impassioned act to prove myself, to establish a reason for existing … nothing. Filled, more and more, with self-contempt, denying myself all value, I took from my pocket the large ampule I had wrapped in cotton wool that morning and, under the unconscious pressure of my fingers, the brittle snap of the glass was magnified to a high resonance, ringing in my ears like bells. Shreds of damp wool stuck to my fingers. Impossible to describe the white heat burning in my mind, my sense of distressed ineptitude, the burden, without feeling, which bore upon me, the string of mocking echoes in the silence which encircled me.
Still, time kept swinging, the seconds falling, feathersoft. How had this come upon her? Ah, if one were tired, or wrapped, despite oneself, in some melancholy dream, might it not then be easy to forget those simple precautions which make the difference between health and sickness? Voices fell upon my ear through the frozen emptiness of thought. I heard Mrs. Law and Matron come out of the sick-room and move along the passage. Miss Trudgeon was trying to soothe the troubled mother.
“Rest assured, everything is being done. We should know in twenty-four hours. Dr. Fraser is giving every attention. As for Sister Peek, nothing could surpass her devotion to this case. She’s been specialling on it for over three weeks, and has often taken double duty. I’ve never known such self-sacrifice.”
So I had been wrong there also. It was like me to think the worst of eyeryone. I’d misjudged the matron, too, fought with her, distrusted her. That was my special quality, getting on the wrong side of people, acting against convention and the grain of decency, standing against the universe, belonging to no place, and to no one, but myself.
A gong vibrated in the far main building, sounding for the nurses’ luncheon, a sign of normal life which deepened the hollow present. The two women had passed through the outer door now, their voices, faint and sad, dwindled away to nothing. I stood up, automatically, and, like a figure moved by strings, went out of the pavilion. No one was in sight. As though wearing shackles, I started down the hill towards the station. Huddled in an empty compartment of the returning train I was still in the ward, up there, on the darkening hill.
Chapter Nine
When I got back to Eastershaws I found a note saying that Professor Usher had telephoned me twice, leaving word that I should call him when I came in. I hesitated, then told myself I would put it off till later. I had a splitting headache; I wanted to be let alone, to cut myself off, to nurse my sadness, and my fears, in secret.
At five o’clock I drank a cup of tea. I was glad of it. All my faculties seemed numbed. On the tray was another slip.
“Mr. Smith of the Pathology Department telephoned you at 3 p.m. Urgent.”
Vaguely, through the weight that was myself, I felt annoyed by this persistence, and puzzled, until I remembered that Usher had hinted at sending a reporter from the Herald. Smith must have been deputed to arrange that interview. I could not bear that just now. Time enough at the dinner on Monday. I rolled up the slip and dropped it in the fire.
Goodall had given me the whole day off. There was no need for me to leave my room. I sat, in a heavy daze, counting the hours, until nine o’clock; then, rousing myself, I telephoned the hospital at Dalnair. There was no change in Jean’s condition. They could tell me nothing more.
Dead tired, throbbing with anxiety, I supposed I had better turn in, my neuralgia was so bad I knew I would not sleep. The aspirin bottle in my bathroom cabinet was empty. I went downstairs and, as I was in the dispensary, took some pyramidon. Then, on my way back, in the central subway, I saw one of the nurses approaching. It was Stanway.
She was alone, walking slowly towards the hostel. When she noticed me, she stopped, leaned back casually against the wall of the passage until I came near.
“Where have you been?”
“Nowhere in particular.”
“You’re quite a stranger.”
Although she spoke with an assumption of indifference, she was studying me closely. She added:
“I hope you don’t think I missed you.”
“No,” I said.
“There are lots of others I can go out with.”
“Yes.”
There was a pause. I looked at her, and looked away, overcome by a revulsion of feeling which turned me sick and cold. There is a penalty for everything, I thought, bitterly regretting those many dreary nights when, skirting the walls like
a thief, I had gone to her room. Promiscuous and cheap … all without meaning … or a single tender thought. The frosted lights crackled overhead, artificial and unreal. She cared nothing for me and I, oh God, how tired I was of her.
“What’s the matter?” She spoke sharply, still watching the changes in my face.
Still I didn’t answer. And, mistaking my hesitation, a slow provocative smile touched her lips.
“I’m going off duty now.” She glanced at me indolently. “If you want to come along.”
“No,” I said heavily, gazing straight ahead.
Quite taken aback, she stiffened, from wounded vanity, and, for once, her pale skin reddened, an angry and unexpected stain. There was a pause.
“All right.” She shrugged. “Don’t think I care. But don’t come round, disturbing me, when you happen to change your mind.”
She stared at me, with open contempt, her small head silhouetted like a skull against the light, then she spun round and went off, along the subway, her heels clicking on the concrete, clicking away to silence.
Well, that was the end, thank God. I turned and went back to my room and flung myself upon my bed. After a while the pyramidon took effect. I slept heavily.
But next morning, when I awoke, I felt worse than ever. My sleep had merely prepared me for the day to come.
During the forenoon, I got through my work somehow, and without meeting Maitland or Palfrey—lately, I had become adept at avoiding the other members of the staff.
After one o’clock, with a deep foreboding, having forced delay upon myself until I could no longer bear it, I telephoned Dalnair again. Sister Cameron spoke to me. Her voice sounded cheerful, but she was always cheerful. And the answer which she gave me was the same. No change. Holding her own. No change at all.
In a burst of good intention she tried to help me.
“At any rate, the worst hasn’t happened yet. While there’s life there’s hope.”