Chapter XXII: “The wind of Death’s imperishable wing.”

—ROSSETTI.

“No. 5” was a baby, and he must not be allowed to cry. Nurse Linton’s strong arms grew very weary before morning, and yet she felt strangely proud.

A staff-nurse commiserated her on the case; she said she would rather have a whole ward to see to than one baby. Katherine could not understand this, but it does not do to question a staff-nurse.

The ward at night seemed an unreal place. Katherine watched a delirious woman counting unendingly on her fingers. “2s. 3d.—2s. 4d.—2s. 6d. cash!” she repeated monotonously. “Change for a half-sovereign, change for——” The nurse on duty gave her a drink. She was disturbing the other patients; they did not feel very friendly towards her. She had been very proud when she first came in, and boasted of her salary as a “hand” in one of the big Oxford Street shops. She was not so proud now; her operation had shown her to be riddled with tubercles—abscesses were constantly forming, and she was very feverish every night. “Mr. Delany, _I_ said change for——” she began again.

“I wish to goodness they’d put ’er h’inter another room, that’s what _I_ wish,” grumbled the woman next to her with a broken leg. “_I_ can’t get h’any good h’out of the night with ’er jabberin like mad ’un! Why can’t they put ’er away, that’s what _I_ want to know!”

“You be quiet!” said the nurse briefly. Katherine’s baby woke and she began walking up and down with him.

“Nurse,” whispered a young girl as she passed her, “oh, nurse! do you think they’ll operate on me to-morrow? Oh! I’m so frightened! I can’t sleep! Can’t you come and hold my hand or something?”

Katherine looked at her baby and satisfied herself as to his being asleep again. “Don’t fret,” she said kindly to the girl; “why, you won’t know anything about it—you’ll be put to sleep!”

The staff-nurse came over to her. “Nurse, go back to your place!” she said curtly; “you seem to forget you’re doing special to-night!”

Two women snored on separate notes steadily; this infuriated a third who lay between them, and she whispered terrible language towards the ceiling. As it neared morning the light of the sky made the ward look like a scene in a theatre. One or two of the worst cases had to be rubbed. One woman fainted, and the nurse rushed into the ward kitchen for hot-water bottles. Katherine’s baby became very cold, she gave it stimulants, and she began to be afraid that it was going to die.

The staff-nurse was fighting over the fainting woman. “Put the baby down and come here,” she said to Katherine.

“Let me hold it,” whispered the girl who was afraid of the operation. “I—I know how to hold babies, nurse.” Katherine placed it gently in her arms.

“Put the screens round the bed,” said the staff-nurse, “now the brandy again! You fool, not that bottle!” neither she nor Katherine noticed the expression. The woman’s face became grey. “Well! she won’t have to have her operation to-morrow,” said the staff-nurse, putting back the bottle. “Heart failure. Get some water and a clean sheet, nurse!”

“Oh! but she isn’t dead!” pleaded Katherine, “feel how warm her hands are! Can’t we go on working?”

The staff shook her head. “Not a bit of use!” she said kindly. “It’s your first death, isn’t it? I shall report you to sister as having been very serviceable. Get the things, and then go back to your baby!”

Katherine obeyed. The ward was quite light now, the probationer was putting out the gas. Katherine met the nurse with the hot-water bottles, her eyes filled with tears. “It’s no use now,” she said.

“What? No. 11’s gone? Well, they’ll do for someone else!” said the other nurse.

Katherine went back to the girl who had held her baby. She was afraid it would be dead too, and hugged its little warm body with a sense of passionate possession in her arms.

The girl looked at her hungrily. “I had one like that, nurse,” she said, “but it died.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry!” said Katherine.

“Well, you needn’t be,” said the girl, turning her head away, “it wasn’t wanted.” Katherine saw her hands were bare of rings. The patients were being roused for their breakfasts. No. 10, the one who had been delirious all night and had just dropped off to sleep, was left alone. The woman next to her was very angry.

“Well, h’of h’all the h’injustice,” she exclaimed, “’ere am I, a respectable woman with my leg broke in two places and me situation as charwoman gorne for months, kept h’awake h’all night by this young baggage, and when I just tikes me forty winks h’Im shook up, h’and she’s let to lie peaceful h’as a bibe! Bloomin’ fivorite, that’s what _she_ is. My belief h’is nurse h’is bribed!”

“Here, you take your breakfast,” said the nurse. In the full light of the morning sun the nurses looked tired and white, but their eyes were awake, and their hands seemed unwearied.

The day-nurses came into the ward. One came up to Katherine and relieved her of her baby. “I’m special for No. 5,” she said; “you look as if you needed your dinner.”

The sister swept up the ward to the bed with the screens around. When she came out, she spoke sharply to a new probationer, who nearly dropped a basin; she had been a sister for ten years, but even she was not used to what happened behind the little screens; but now she only showed it by a little extra sharpness. In her morning report she put “No. 11 vacant.”

The next four hours were simply a strenuous fight with time. A noisy chaos of labour with the sharp-tongued sister directing up and down the long wards, and reducing at length all to an order, a cleanliness and a brightness, that looked to the outsider as if anything else was never known, yet the process was gone through every day.

In the dining-room the night nurses were having their dinner. Some of them talked, but most of them hurried through their meal and disappeared.

“It’s a pity you were on night, Nurse Linton,” said Katherine’s next-door neighbour. “Our great consultant goes round this afternoon; we call him the King, you know. He has such fine eyes!”

“And oh! you should see him at the theatre,” said another. “He’s _the_ man on hip disease, you know, and his fingers—well, I never saw such fingers on a man! They say his touch is as quick as lightning, and he can spot a tubercular abscess in half-an-eye!”

“What is his name?” asked Katherine, more for want of something to stem her friend’s details than a desire to know.

“Why, didn’t you know? We have Arthur Field; we’re as proud of it as if we had the House of Parliament, and he’s a great deal more useful.”

“No, I didn’t know,” said Katherine thoughtfully. Daphne was on day duty, she remembered. The Home Sister, glancing down the table, told her to be quick and go to bed. She almost stumbled upstairs fighting against sleep, as against an enemy, but the moment her head touched the pillow, she was conquered. She did not even know that she had been defeated. She was asleep.