Love Stories Part 23

She was a resourceful person, however, and by pointing to the Avenue Girl and then nodding rea.s.suringly she got her message of cheer over the gulf of his understanding. In return the Dummy told her by gestures how he knew the girl and how she had bound up the leg of the superintendent's dog. The Senior was a literal person and not occult; and she was very busy. When the Dummy stooped to indicate the dog, a foot or so from the ground, she seized that as the key of the situation.

"He's trying to let me know that he knew her when she was a baby,"

she observed generally. "All right, if that's the case. Come in and see her when you want to. And now get out, for goodness' sake!"

The Dummy, with his patient shamble, made his way out of the ward and stored his polishes for the night in the corner of a scrub-closet. Then, ignoring supper, he went down the stairs, flight after flight, to the chapel. The late autumn sun had set behind the buildings across the courtyard and the lower part of the silent room was in shadow; but the afterglow came palely through the stained-gla.s.s window, with the young John and tall stalks of white lilies, and "To the Memory of My Daughter Elizabeth" beneath.

It was only a coincidence--and not even that to the Dummy--but Elizabeth had been the Avenue Girl's name not so long ago.

The Dummy sat down near the door very humbly and gazed at the memorial window.

II

Time may be measured in different ways--by joys; by throbs of pain; by instants; by centuries. In a hospital it is marked by night nurses and day nurses; by rounds of the Staff; by visiting days; by medicines and temperatures and milk diets and fever baths; by the distant singing in the chapel on Sundays; by the shift of the morning sun on the east beds to the evening sun on the beds along the west windows.

The Avenue Girl lay alone most of the time. The friendly offices of the ward were not for her. Private curiosity and possible kindliness were over-shadowed by a general arrogance of goodness. The ward flung its virtue at her like a weapon and she raised no defence. In the first days things were not so bad. She lay in shock for a time, and there were not wanting hands during the bad hours to lift a cup of water to her lips; but after that came the tedious time when death no longer hovered overhead and life was there for the asking.

The curious thing was that the Avenue Girl did not ask. She lay for hours without moving, with eyes that seemed tired with looking into the dregs of life. The Probationer was in despair.

"She could get better if she would," she said to the _interne_ one day. The Senior was off duty and they had done the dressing together. "She just won't try."

"Perhaps she thinks it isn't worth while," replied the _interne_, who was drying his hands carefully while the Probationer waited for the towel.

She was a very pretty Probationer.

"She hasn't much to look forward to, you know."

The Probationer was not accustomed to discussing certain things with young men, but she had the Avenue Girl on her mind.

"She has a home--she admits it." She coloured bravely. "Why--why cannot she go back to it, even now?"

The _interne_ poured a little rosewater and glycerine into the palm of one hand and gave the Probationer the bottle. If his fingers touched hers, she never knew it.

"Perhaps they'd not want her after--well, they'd never feel the same, likely. They'd probably prefer to think of her as dead and let it go at that. There--there doesn't seem to be any way back, you know."

He was exceedingly self-conscious.

"Then life is very cruel," said the Probationer with rather shaky lips.

And going back to the Avenue Girl's bed she filled her cup with ice and straightened her pillows. It was her only way of showing defiance to a world that mutilated its children and turned them out to die. The _interne_ watched her as she worked. It rather galled him to see her touching this patient. He had no particular sympathy for the Avenue Girl. He was a man, and ruthless, as men are apt to be in such things.

The Avenue Girl had no visitors. She had had one or two at first--pretty girls with tired eyes and apologetic glances; a negress who got by the hall porter with a box of cigarettes, which the Senior promptly confiscated; and--the Dummy. Morning and evening came the Dummy and stood by her bed and worshipped. Morning and evening he brought tribute--a flower from the ma.s.ses that came in daily; an orange, got by no one knows what trickery from the kitchen; a leadpencil; a box of cheap candies. At first the girl had been embarra.s.sed by his visits. Later, as the unfriendliness of the ward grew more p.r.o.nounced, she greeted him with a faint smile. The first time she smiled he grew quite pale and shuffled out. Late that night they found him sitting in the chapel looking at the window, which was only a blur.

For certain small services in the ward the Senior depended on the convalescents--filling drinking cups; pa.s.sing milk at eleven and three; keeping the white bedspreads in geometrical order. But the Avenue Girl was taboo. The boycott had been inst.i.tuted by Old Maggie. The rampant respectability of the ward even went so far as to refuse to wash her in those early morning hours when the night nurse, flying about with her cap on one ear, was carrying tin basins about like a blue-and-white cyclone. The Dummy knew nothing of the washing; the early morning was the time when he polished the bra.s.s doorplate which said: Hospital and Free Dispensary. But he knew about the drinking cup and after a time that became his self-appointed task.

On Sundays he put on his one white shirt and a frayed collar two sizes too large and went to chapel. At those times he sat with his prayer book upside down and watched the Probationer who cared for his lady and who had no cap to hide her shining hair, and the _interne_, who was glad there was no cap because of the hair. G.o.d's fool he was, indeed, for he liked to look in the _interne's_ eyes, and did not know an _interne_ cannot marry for years and years, and that a probationer must not upset discipline by being engaged. G.o.d's fool, indeed, who could see into the hearts of men, but not into their thoughts or their lives; and who, seeing only thus, on two dimensions of life and not the third, found the Avenue Girl holy and worthy of all worship!

The Probationer worried a great deal.

"It must hurt her so!" she said to the Senior. "Did you see them call that baby away on visiting day for fear she would touch it?"

"None are so good as the untempted," explained the Senior, who had been beautiful and was now placid and full of good works. "You cannot remake the world, child. Bodies are our business here--not souls." But the next moment she called Old Maggie to her.

"I've been pretty patient, Maggie," she said. "You know what I mean.

You're the ringleader. Now things are going to change, or--you'll go back on codliver oil to-night."

"Yes'm," said Old Maggie meekly, with hate in her heart. She loathed the codliver oil.

"Go back and straighten her bed!" commanded the Senior sternly.

"Now?"

"Now!"

"It hurts my back to stoop over," whined Old Maggie, with the ward watching. "The doctor said that I----"

The Senior made a move for the medicine closet and the bottles labelled C.

"I'm going," whimpered Old Maggie. "Can't you give a body time?"

And she went down to defeat, with the laughter of the ward in her ears--down to defeat, for the Avenue Girl would have none of her.

"You get out of here!" she said fiercely as Old Maggie set to work at the draw sheet. "Get out quick--or I'll throw this cup in your face!"

The Senior was watching. Old Maggie put on an air of benevolence and called the Avenue Girl an unlovely name under her breath while she smoothed her pillow. She did not get the cup, but the water out of it, in her hard old face, and matters were as they had been.

The Girl did not improve as she should. The _interne_ did the dressing day after day, while the Probationer helped him--the Senior disliked burned cases--and talked of skin grafting if a new powder he had discovered did no good. _Internes_ are always trying out new things, looking for the great discovery.

The powder did no good. The day came when, the dressing over and the white coverings drawn up smoothly again over her slender body, the Avenue Girl voiced the question that her eyes had asked each time.

"Am I going to lie in this hole all my life?" she demanded.

The _interne_ considered.

"It isn't healing--not very fast anyhow," he said. "If we could get a little skin to graft on you'd be all right in a jiffy. Can't you get some friends to come in? It isn't painful and it's over in a minute."

"Friends? Where would I get friends of that sort?"

"Well, relatives then--some of your own people?"

The Avenue Girl shut her eyes as she did when the dressing hurt her.

"None that I'd care to see," she said. And the Probationer knew she lied. The _interne_ shrugged his shoulders.

"If you think of any let me know. We'll get them here," he said briskly, and turned to see the Probationer rolling up her sleeve.

"Please!" she said, and held out a bare white arm. The _interne_ stared at it stupefied. It was very lovely.