Chapter XXI

“Put pain from out the world, what room were left,
For thanks to God, for love to man?”

ROBERT BROWNING.

There were not many passers-by in the street, though it led from one of the principal thoroughfares of London. Bareheaded students strolled by, and nurses hurried nervously towards the great iron gates. It seemed a borderland between the place inside them, and the fierce clamour of the open road, where the ’busses caught one up, and landed one later on in Oxford Street, or Piccadilly, or anywhere in the world beyond, if anyone wanted a world beyond! As a matter of fact many of the neatly dressed women passing so swiftly through this borderland would have given much, that they did not possess, to pocket this freedom.

They came to the iron gates and gave up a “pass” into the hands of a venerable porter, who might have been a St. Peter without h’s, so grave and reverent was his bearing.

Even in this simple operation they betrayed the secret of their characters. Some passed by him, self-engrossed, and unthinkingly, others with an increased rigidity to show their superior caste, some with a flippant and familiar remark, and one with a greeting of real friendship, and an enquiry about his wife. There are not many people who remember that porters have wives.

“She’s goin’ in to-morrow, Miss!” he said.

“What ward?” his friend asked.

“Yours isn’t Luke, Miss, by h’any chance?” he asked anxiously.

“By the happiest chance in the world—it is!” she told him; “you must let me know her number, John,” she added.

“Twenty I think it be, Miss, but you’ll know her for sure, she’s to ’ave so much took away.”

The nurse nodded sympathetically. There were many others who were in the same case, but she did not say so. To-morrow the great visiting surgeon was to go through the ward, with his little sentences that had such strangely wide and deep effects upon the listeners. “I’ll look out for her, John,” she said. “Keep a good heart, why they pull you through anything, these doctors!”

His face brightened. “H’and I should say, Miss,” he said with a slow compliment, “the nurses ’ave an ’and!”

“Thank you, John,” the girl laughed, “good-night.” She passed swiftly through the large court. It was a still, shut-in place, in spite of rows of students on seats by a fountain, and nurses passing from one wide open door to another. The steps and the lifts were seldom empty, but the same people so rarely seemed to come out. After awhile the feeling that inside there was some great, silent call, that drew first one and then another from the outer world within, became a superstition and a fear. You could go up the steps too, and look into the hall, no one stopped you. An occasional staff-nurse or sister cast you a quick, withering glance, but left you undisturbed. Certain doors that closed quickly after these figures had the names of the wards written above them, and these doors you could not pass through. Then one knew that from behind them the call came. The great, terrible call of those who have been caught under the wheel of life. The cry of children born with death fighting in them, and against them, the appeal of the down-trodden who, through no fault of their own, face the battle-field of the world, and find themselves carried to the rear before the fight begins. The diseased, the intemperate, the broken, those placed for awhile in the back-water, those for ever stagnant and counted out. Oh, the hundreds of the counted out! Surely the cry of them was in itself enough to draw, with unremitting impulse, the brave, strong ones of the earth, into a desperate attempt to save, and a powerful purpose to assist them? And through the cry of those who suffer comes the whisper of those who die. That seemed the answer to the ordered stillness and the hurrying quiet of the place. One felt that the issues of life demanded the very atmosphere that reigned. One understood why all the workers seemed absorbed, tired, and quick. They were the hand-maidens of a tremendous struggle, these quiet-voiced, pleasant-faced women. Outside, in the world, or in the hours off duty, many of them were impatient, cross, small-minded, and they would not have known what was meant by the soul of their work. Only when the iron gates clanged behind them, and the call of the door drew them within, every feature and muscle and feeling became unconsciously at one. A stern harmony of mercy, at war with pain.

“You are two minutes late, Miss Linton,” said the sister. “Kindly take No. 10’s temperature—pulse—and respiration. I shall require you as special for No. 5 to-night.”

Katherine was not changed, but she had softened, she had lost her bitterness and gained a sense of toleration which she had never known before. There is nothing like realizing pain to soften one’s heart towards sinners. One is brought face to face with consequences, and when from wronged and exhausted nature the uttermost farthing is wrung, there is nothing left but pity. Katherine had become very sorry instead of very angry, and it had done her good.

Daphne, in a sudden impulse, partly of friendship, partly of remorse, and partly perhaps from a desire to put off her marriage, had joined her friend and shared a room with her.

She was not in the least changed, and one student dreamed about her at night. Katherine said by day too, for he was always stupid over the dressings.

Daphne spent much of her time off with David, and could not make up her mind whether to sign on at the end of her probation, or to marry David. If Katherine was very upset, she supposed she would sign on, and if David was very angry, she might (she supposed) have to give in to him. What she should do if both these things were to happen she had not yet fully considered. The shocks and changes of the last few months had left her strangely indifferent to her own future, and for Daphne indifference meant indecision. It was only when she wanted a thing that she grew determined.

Meanwhile she had grasped at the novelty and picturesqueness of Katherine’s choice, and entered into hospital life with an even keener interest and enthusiasm than her friend. The staff-nurse liked her because she was good at her work. The patients adored her because she was so sorry for them, but they preferred Katherine to do things for them; she seemed to have more useful hands.