Part 65 (1/2)
Marcella came back with the ice, and was able to apply it to the head.
The patient was quieter--was, in fact, now groaning herself into a fresh period of exhaustion.
The doctor's sharp eyes took note of the two figures, the huddled creature on the pillows and the stately head bending over her, with the delicately hollowed cheek, whereon the marks of those mad fingers stood out red and angry. He had already had experience of this girl in one or two other cases.
”Well,” he said, taking up his hat, ”it is no good s.h.i.+lly-shallying. I will go and find Dr. Swift.” Dr. Swift was the parish doctor.
When he had gone, the big husband broke down and cried, with his head against the iron of the bed close to his wife. He put his great hand on hers, and talked to her brokenly in their own patois. They had been eight years married, and she had never had a day's serious illness till now. Marcella's eyes filled with tears as she moved about the room, doing various little tasks.
At last she went up to him.
”Won't you go and have some dinner?” she said to him kindly. ”There's Benjamin calling you,” and she pointed to the door of the back room, where stood Benny, his face puckered with weeping, forlornly holding out a plate of fried fish, in the hope of attracting his father's attention.
The man, who in spite of his size and strength was in truth childishly soft and ductile, went as he was bid, and Marcella and Mrs. Levi set about doing what they could to prepare the wife for her removal.
Presently parish doctor and sanitary inspector appeared, strange and peremptory invaders who did but add to the terror and misery of the husband. Then at last came the ambulance, and Dr. Angus with it. The patient, now once more plunged in narcotic stupor, was carried downstairs by two male nurses, Dr. Angus presiding. Marcella stood in the doorway and watched the scene,--the gradual disappearance of the helpless form on the stretcher, with its fevered face under the dark mat of hair; the figures of the straining men heavily descending step by step, their heads and shoulders thrown out against the dirty drabs and browns of the staircase; the crowd of Jewesses on the stairs and landing, craning their necks, gesticulating and talking, so that Dr.
Angus could hardly make his directions heard, angrily as he bade them stand back; and on the top stair, the big husband, following the form of his departing and unconscious wife with his eyes, his face convulsed with weeping, the whimpering children clinging about his knees.
How hot it was!--how stifling the staircase smelt, and how the sun beat down from that upper window on the towzled unkempt women with their large-eyed children.
CHAPTER IV.
Marcella on her way home turned into a little street leading to a great block of model dwellings, which rose on the right hand side and made everything else, the mews entrance opposite, the lines of squalid shops on either side, look particularly small and dirty. The sun was beating fiercely down, and she was sick and tired.
As she entered the iron gate of the dwellings, and saw before her the large asphalted court round which they ran--blazing heat on one side of it, and on the other some children playing cricket against the wall with chalk marks for wickets--she was seized with depression. The tall yet mean buildings, the smell of dust and heat, the general impression of packed and crowded humanity--these things, instead of offering her rest, only continued and accented the sense of strain, called for more endurance, more making the best of it.
But she found a tired smile for some of the children who ran up to her, and then she climbed the stairs of the E. block, and opened the door of her own tenement, number 10. In number 9 lived Minta Hurd and her children, who had joined Marcella in London some two months before. In sets 7 and 8, on either side of Marcella and the Hurds, lived two widows, each with a family, who were mostly out charing during the day.
Marcella's a.s.sociation allowed its District Nurses to live outside the ”home” of the district on certain conditions, which had been fulfilled in Marcella's case by her settlement next door to her old friends in these buildings which were inhabited by a very respectable though poor cla.s.s. Meanwhile the trustees of the buildings had allowed her to make a temporary communication between her room and the Hurds, so that she could either live her own solitary and independent life, or call for their companions.h.i.+p, as she pleased.
As she shut her door behind her she found herself in a little pa.s.sage or entry. To the left was her bedroom. Straight in front of her was the living room with a small close range in it, and behind it a little back kitchen.
The living room was cheerful and even pretty. Her art-student's training showed itself. The cheap blue and white paper, the couple of oak flap tables from a broker's shop in Marchmont Street, the two or three cane chairs with their bright chintz cus.h.i.+ons, the Indian rug or two on the varnished boards, the photographs and etchings on the walls, the books on the tables--there was not one of these things that was not in its degree a pleasure to her young senses, that did not help her to live her life. This afternoon as she opened the door and looked in, the pretty colours and forms in the tiny room were as water to the thirsty. Her mother had sent her some flowers the day before. There they were on the tables, great bunches of honey-suckles, of blue-bells, and Banksia roses. And over the mantelpiece was a photograph of the place where such flowers as Mellor possessed mostly grew--the unkempt lawn, the old fountain and grey walls of the Cedar Garden.
The green blind over the one window which looked into the court, had been drawn down against the glare of the sun, as though by a careful hand. Beside a light wooden rocking chair, which was Marcella's favourite seat, a tray of tea things had been put out. Marcella drew a long breath of comfort as she put down her bag.
”Now, _can_ I wait for my tea till I have washed and dressed?”
She argued with herself an instant as though she had been a greedy child, then, going swiftly into the back kitchen, she opened the door between her rooms and the Hurds.
”Minta!”
A voice responded.
”Minta, make me some tea and boil an egg! there's a good soul! I will be back directly.”
And in ten minutes or so she came back again into the sitting-room, daintily fresh and clean but very pale. She had taken off her nurse's dress and ap.r.o.n, and had put on something loose and white that hung about her in cool folds.
But Minta Hurd, who had just brought in the tea, looked at her disapprovingly.