by E. F. Benson
Helen had sufficient generosity to allow for this nerve-storm, to tell herself that it was not really Aline who spoke, but some tortured semblance of her.
“Well, do something for this friend of yours,” she said, “and don’t speak to me like that. I have no intention of turning my back on you, so long as you want my friendship. But you must be reasonable. I personally should not dream of giving a ball just now. People would be apt to say disagreeable things. And you must remember that they will say disagreeable things about you more readily than they would about me.”
“I do not see why. Has your husband given as generously as mine to English charities? There is a proof of his loyalty. And I am certainly going to do some war-work myself, now I am in town again.”
“It is not a question of money and war-work,” said Helen. “It is a question of your betraying your sympathies at every other sentence you speak. People won’t stand it: they will not come to your house if you talk to others as you have talked to me. Think: if I was to say to you about Germany what you have allowed yourself to say to me about England, you would very rightly deplore my ill manners. Now I hope you will take what I am saying in good part. I am speaking as a friend.”
Aline got up.
“I do not feel that you are being a friend to me,” she said. “You arc not in sympathy with me. You find fault with all I say or do. It is not my fault if the English are not clever enough to make thermometers and dyes, and are cruel enough to read private letters and shoot the writer. Must I suddenly be convinced that the English are absolutely right and wise and perfect in all they do? I can’t do that: I see many faults in them. And it is not friendly of you not to sympathize with me.”
Helen got up also.
“I think you want to quarrel with me,” she said. “I should be very sorry if you did that. But just now I had better go away. Whenever you want to see me, I will always come. I am very sorry for you: I think you are in a cruel position and a difficult one. You must bring all your prudence and wisdom to bear on it.”
Aline hesitated a moment. At all times she considered any criticism of her own conduct that attributed to it the smallest lack in perfection, an unfriendly act, and now her nerves were utterly on edge.
“I’m sure I do not want to quarrel,” she said. “It is you who are quarrelling with me. I am the most generous woman, as Hermann often tells me, and the moment anyone is sorry I forgive her completely.” The egoism of this was nearly incredible. Helen found herself doubting her ears.
“Come, Aline,” she said. “don’t behave like that.” The moment you are sorry it will be all over,” said Aline stupendously.
CHAPTER XII
ROBIN was coming down to Grote to spend with his mother his last day in England, for tomorrow he and Jim were both going out for their first period of active service in France. She had been at her post since the end of October, and had been too busy all day to think of much except the work which so incessantly occupied her, and too tired when that was over to think, with the more conscious part of her brain, of anything at all. She had brought her whole attention and will to performing her duties adequately, and her greatest reward had been that she had been able to forget herself. Next to that ranked the commendation of her most efficient matron. But at present her work had not become for her a labour of love. Her pride was involved in its being well done; apart from that it was still more of an anodyne than a duty or a joy.
She had got up very early on this day after Christmas Day, for Robin would arrive by car in the middle of the morning, and she wanted to get through as much as possible of the day’s work before his advent, so that she should be freer for him. She had already arranged for the catering of the day: she had seen to the giving out of clean linen: she had unpacked a consignment of cigarettes and distributed their allowance to her patients. Just now she was going round the wards to see that the breakfasts were what they should be, and was talking to a man for whom to-day there was no breakfast, as he had to have an operation during the morning. He was a quiet, well-mannered young fellow, no older than Robin, smooth-faced and curly-haired, and he had to lose a leg. But it was the operation itself that he dreaded most.
He looked at her as she said good-morning to him with brown, frightened eyes.
“Can’t they put it off a day or two yet, sister?” he asked. “It seems easier this morning.”
She sat down on the edge of his bed.
“I’m afraid not, Jaye,” she said. “You must make up your mind to it. And they do such wonders now: you’ll be able to walk about as well as any of us, when they’ve given you your new leg.”
“’Tisn’t that, sister,” said he. “It’s the operation itself. I’m frightened of that.”
“But there’s nothing to fear, my boy,” said she. “You’ll go to sleep, nothing more than that, and when you wake you’ll be tucked up again, and as comfortable as possible.”
Somehow those frightened eyes, the white young face, the thin hands smote her with a new and acute compassion, a thing that touched her emotions, not her reasonable self. Often and often she had felt so sorry for these men who had faced peril so gallantly, and pain so bravely, but their peril and pain had never yet penetrated her like this. The boy had been so good, too, uncomplainingly bearing so much. She had a special feeling for him, for the grim matron had relaxed into a joke the other day, as they stood together by his bed, and declared that Jaye was in love with her, an opinion with which the man in the next bed, when appealed to, cordially agreed.
“So you mustn’t be afraid, Jaye,” she said. “You have borne pain so well all these days, and very soon now you will be free from it, and be getting quite strong again.”
He struggled with his reticent shyness a moment.
“I shouldn’t mind if you’d come with me, sister,” he said, “and be there while they’re doing it.”
Helen had never been present at any operation: it was not part of her duties, and the idea of it horrified her. Then she remembered that it would be perfectly possible for her to go with him to the operating-room, and remain there until he was under the anæsthetic. Then she would leave him, and return when he was back in bed again, before he had come round. She would not like going into the operating-room, and seeing the anæsthetic administered; even that would be horrible, but she did not hesitate in her answer.
“Why, of course I will,” she said, “if it would give you any comfort, Jaye. I will go and tell the surgeon I am coming with you.”
The boy’s face brightened.
“Thank you very much, sister,” he said. “I shan’t mind now.”
On her way down to the operating-room, she met the bearers coming up for Jaye, and told them to wait a moment, while she spoke to Mr. Brinton. She arranged this with him in a moment, and went back to the ward.
“Now they’re ready for us, Jaye,” she said, and he was lifted on to the stretcher.
“Got your girl with you, old chap,” said the man in the next bed. “Good luck.”
“Back again soon,” said Jaye cheerfully.
The operating-room was her husband’s sitting-room. The floor had been tiled, and was curved where it joined the walls, so that no angle could harbour dust. The walls had been stripped and covered with a glazed paper; in the corner was a white enamel basin with taps above it, and in the centre of the room a bed of plate-glass. By the window was a table on wheels, covered with a cloth. In front of it was Mr. Brinton, examining something beneath it. As they entered he replaced the cloth. At the head of the bed was the anaesthetist, and by him a cylinder with a pipe attached to it, communicating with a small frame lined with india-rubber. By it stood a bottle and a wire mask. A couple of nurses were in the window, talking to the doctor.
The latter came forward.
“Upon my word, here’s a spoilt fellow,” he said, “getting Lady Grote to sit by him. Now, my boy, this is much the worst moment of all, when you’ve got to lie down on that bed. After that there’s nothing to mind a
t all. Let’s have a feel at your pulse.”
He stood there a moment, and said in a low voice to the anæsthetist:
“A bit nervous. Send him off with gas and give ether afterwards. Now, you’ve passed the worst of it, Jaye.”
The anæsthetist took up the india-rubber mouthpiece, attached to which was a tube with a tap, that hissed as he turned it on for a moment.
“There!” he said, “let me hold that for you, over your nose and mouth.... Yes, just like that.... That’s capital. Now breathe it in” — he turned on the tap again—” breathe it in greedily in long breaths. And when you’ve taken twenty long breaths — mind you count them — just say ‘twenty,’ and we won’t bother you any more.”
The two nurses were still talking to each other in the window. One of them laughed at something the other was saying, and then took a step towards the table covered with a cloth, and stood with it in her hands. Mr. Brinton, meantime, was putting on a sort of white smock-frock over his waistcoat, for he had taken off his coat. Helen remembered having seen that sort of smoke coming from the sterilizing room. But the other nurse still smiled to herself and rubbed the tips of her fingers together, like a girl enjoying something amusing. She was rather a tiresome girl, Helen thought; she had mentioned the other day that she thought it was unladylike for women to smoke, and she had distinctly “bridled” when the joke of Jaye being in love with Lady Grote had been hinted at.
The gas made a slight hissing. Jaye was breathing greedily, as he had been told to do, and the surgeon had not yet buttoned the snow-white cuffs round his wrist, when the doctor took a step forward, and pulled up one of Jaye’s eyelids.
“That’s all right,” he said.
The anaesthetist dropped the india-rubber mouthpiece and took up the wire mask. He sprinkled on it some of the contents of the bottle that stood by it on the floor, and laid it over Jaye’s face.
Mr. Brinton nodded to Lady Grote.
“Thank you very much, Lady Grote,” he said. “I thought we should have some difficulty with him. But he’s gone off now. I’ll send word to you when we shall want you again.”
Quite suddenly, Helen knew that it was not in the power of a decent woman to go away. She had promised Jaye to stop with him, while the operation was going on. She had meant to go away as soon as he was under the anæsthetic, but now she could not. She loathed the thought of what was coming, but she could not cheat that still, unconscious form that lay on the glass bed. She had made a promise.
“I shall stop, please,” she said.
“I would recommend you not to,” said Mr. Brinton. “We shall all be busy: if you faint nobody will be able to attend to you.”
“I shan’t do anything of the sort,” she heard her voice saying.
Instantly the suave, polite Mr. Brinton became a perfectly different person, sharp and peremptory.
“Do as you like,” he said. “Now, then, move the bed up to the window, there’s better light. Are you ready with the sponges, nurse?”
Instantly the whole room sparkled with swift, deft energy, energy quiet and contained and fearfully alert. The doctor stripped off Jaye’s pyjama trousers, and Mr. Brinton looked at him a moment. Then, with forefinger and thumb, he felt his way down the thigh of his right leg till he came to the knee. That was swollen into a monstrous hump, and on the side of it was the gangrenous wound. He felt his way very carefully up again to about the middle of the thigh.
The nurse had already removed the cloth from the covered table, and Mr. Brinton looked at it. He took up a knife with a bulged edge to it, looked once more at the patient, and cut.
“Sponge,” he said sharply, “and be ready with forceps. Fine pair of legs the boy has got.”
“Half-back for Fulham,” said the anæsthetist. “He did good work in the League matches last year. They would never have got into the final otherwise. I was playing on the other side. We should have won except for him.”
“Hopping-race for the future, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Brinton. Pull his jacket up.”
Helen had seen the first incision, and the whole thing seemed to her the most heartless exhibition she had ever witnessed. They were talking about football... when here was this poor boy — And then a sudden illumination came to her. They were not heartless at all; they were simply employed in their work, doing the best they could, making life instead of death. It was natural they should talk about a League match: it was one of those humanities that enabled you to face the grim work of healing.
A button had torn loose as the nurse took the edge of Jaye’s pyjama jacket out of the way, and the whole of his body was exposed, strong and supple and charged with the potentiality of its manhood. Soon he would be a truncated thing, an object of pity. And why? Just because he had faced the peril and the pain. He had been willing, even as Robin had been willing, to fight for the inviolable law. He had done it for her.... Suddenly Jaye began to talk. For a moment Helen almost shrieked at the idea that he had come out of the anæsthetic, and was conscious again with that great gash in his leg, and a half-dozen of forceps clinging like leeches to the severed veins and arteries.
Then she remembered having heard that people under an anæsthetic talked, and listened to a mumble of obscene things. Surely the nurse who had thought it unladylike to smoke, would be paralysed by this....
And then she saw her mistake. Nurse Killick had a bunch of small sponges in her hand, and paid no more attention to what Jaye was saying than she would have given to the whistling of the wind. She was just an operation nurse now: all that she existed for was to have a sponge ready when Mr. Brinton called for it. Close beside her were wads of sterilized cotton-wool, and nothing else except her particular department had the smallest meaning for her. The patient might say what he pleased: it fell on deaf ears. All that Miss Killick had to attend to, and all that would subsequently concern her, was the physical welfare of Jaye, not this farrago of things which his decent responsible self held in check. Then as suddenly as if a tap had been turned off he was silent again.
There was a pause in the surgical work as the patient was turned over on to his right side, and then it began again. The surgeon was standing between Helen and the work on which he was engaged, and she saw nothing now of what was going on. But presently the sound of sawing began, and with a spasm of contempt for herself, she felt her hands growing cold and damp, and a sick, empty feeling rising into her throat. At that she laid hold of her courage and clung to it with clenched fingers, determined not to brand herself in the eyes of those busy, skilful folk as a woman without stability or control. Slowly she regained possession of herself, for presently she must be herself again, when Jaye came round, and before that sawing noise ceased she was mistress of her nerves.
“Take it away,” said the surgeon suddenly, and one of the nurses wrapped up something in a sheet. The ligatures were tied and forceps removed and counted, and the flap of skin bound over the stump. Finally the surgeon turned round, went to the basin by the wall and washed his hands. As he dried them, he turned to her, the suave, polite Mr. Brinton again.
“You seem to have stood that very well for your first operation,” he said. “You’ll be able to stand by with sponges and ligatures next time.”
She went up to the room where they took Jaye, and put him to bed still unconscious. But before long he came round, and she had her reward.
“Hullo, sister,” he said faintly, “when are they going to begin?”
“But it’s all over, Jaye,” she said. “You’re back in bed, and you’ll have no more trouble.”
“And were you there all the time?” he asked.
“Of course. I told you I should be.”
“Thank you, sister,” said the boy.
Robin had arrived some minutes before, and presently she went down to him.
“Ah, my darling,” she said, “I’m late, but I couldn’t help it. Robin, we’re going to have such a nice day. I’ve got nothing more to do in the hospital till this evening. I got up at
six o’clock in order to get through my work before you came.”
He kissed her.
“You are rather a trump,” he said. “Do you know, when you began I wondered whether you would stick to it. You smell of ether, mother.”
“Do I? Give me a cigarette, then. Robin, how very rude of you to wonder if I would stick to it.”
He laughed.
“You didn’t stick to the muffler-knitting very long,” he said.
“No, that’s true. I want to ask you something. Were you ashamed of me last autumn for not working at something?”
“Oh, it wasn’t my business,” said he.
“That’ll do: that’s enough. And how is your Jim?”
“My Jim? I think he’s yours. He told me to give you his love, if I thought you wouldn’t mind. I didn’t think you would.”
“My dear, how kind of him! Why didn’t you bring him down with you?”
“Because I wanted you all to myself, of course.”
She put her arm through his.
“Oh, Robin,” she said, “I should have been so disappointed if you had brought him. But I didn’t want to tell you not to. I thought perhaps you would, and I should have hated you for not wanting me all to yourself. And how is Miss Diphtheria Coombe? Is that her name?”
“Yes. She sent her love to you, too, and asked when you would talk over settlements with Mommer.”
“What a liar you are, darling,” said she. “I don’t know where you get it from. Whom else have you been seeing?”
“I saw Lady Gurtner — oh, I think she’s Gardner now — yesterday: I dined with her. She asked me to dinner nine times, so at last I went. One does go in the end.”
“Dinner-party?” asked his mother.
“Yes: about twenty. Not a single one of them had I ever seen before except that horrid friend of yours, what’s his name?”
It could not be Kuhlmann, so she tried Boyton.
“Yes,” said Robin. “He gave me a bad taste in the mouth. He was making odious insinuations about the Gurtner-Gardners, implying German sympathies. If you go and dine with people you shouldn’t do that. Because if you believe what you say, you’ve got no business to be there.”