Chapter XXIV

“One has to learn to leave oneself out of account, this hardness
is required of every mountain climber.”

—NIETZSCHE.

There was a perceptible stir down the long ward as the great consultant entered, followed by his train of eager students.

The sister knew that her pulse was beating faster, and the nurses stood at attention, ready for an instant’s flight in any direction. It was Nurse Fordington’s turn to go round with the doctors, and to wait upon the sister. The other nurses did not wonder that she looked rather white. Daphne’s ward was a men’s surgical; at first she had been with Katherine, and the change had only been made two days before. The surgeon did not see her, he bent over the bed of a young fellow in great pain, who was biting his lips to keep the groans back.

“Want another tube,” the surgeon said without turning. The hand that gave it to him trembled. He was a man that noticed everything, and he turned sharply round. It was a moment from which only years of utter self-control could save him. He scowled, and muttered something about, “confounded clumsiness,” and the sister shot Daphne a look which was calculated to make some difference in her manner, but it made none. What the sister’s warning had failed in though, the surgeon’s scowl accomplished. Daphne did not see why he should scowl at her like that, and the next thing she handed to him quite firmly.

“I have half-an-hour to spare, sister, and must operate upon No. 6 to-day. Can’t put it off till to-morrow. Can you get him ready? While you are doing so, I wish to speak to this nurse. I know her in another capacity.” The ward round had been made, and he spoke to the sister alone.

“It’s quite against the rules, sir,” said the sister hesitating.

“I am quite aware of that,” said the surgeon. “I have not much time to spare, where can I see her?”

“In my room, sir,” said the sister. “I will send her to you immediately.”

The surgeon nodded. He did not look like a man who was nervous, but when he got into the sister’s little sitting-room he sat down. When Daphne entered, he rose to his feet and scowled again. “What are you doing here?” he asked, “and why on earth did you come?”

“I am a nurse as you see,” said Daphne, “and I came here because I could not bear my life.”

“Nonsense! We can all bear our lives,” said Arthur Field, “and make other people’s lives unbearable as well! You aren’t strong enough for this work, and this hospital’s mine!”

“I did not know that when I came here,” said Daphne.

“And now you do?” asked he sharply.

“I shall stay here,” said Daphne, “I think.”

He walked up and down the tiny room with impatient strides. He had determined to give her up, and he was a man who generally carried out his determination, but he had not expected to see her, and he found chance a disconcerting adversary, who could not be counted on. Around them both, the life of the great hospital sped on. The time table of the nurse’s hours hung over the sister’s desk. He read it twice through without stopping. Then he turned to Daphne again.

“This is the best managed hospital in London,” he said, “but somebody must always suffer for everything. We keep people alive who would be better out of the world, and we work people to death who would make it a better world! In old days the patients died, and the doctors were saved. Now it’s the other way about. I have barely fifteen years more good work in me, and then I shall die in my tracks! My God! though, but it’s worth it! Daphne, why aren’t you sitting down?”

“You forget I am a nurse, sir.”

He stopped amused, and again his eyes travelled over her in her neat uniform. “Nonsense!” he said, but he did not press the point. They neither of them could forget that they were in the hospital. “I got your letter, Daphne,” he said.

“I—I wrote it,” she murmured, “when I was quite desperate.”

“Yes,” he said, “it was desperate, and it was real. Daphne, you are quite right, it would be impossible for us to live together with such different standards. Once I thought that I could change yours, now I do not know that I have any right to try.”

Daphne looked at him. Was this the man who had demanded love of her, as his due, who had thrust aside her passionate appeals, had over-ridden her new-born principles, had broken her will, as he might straighten out an instrument? Now he was offering her a freedom which struck her as she looked at him, as the emptiest, and coldest thing in the world. Words sprang to her lips which would have changed their lives. Pride, indignation, vanity, surged through her, lit by a passion she could not understand. It did not seem possible that the man before her could be oblivious to this change in her, to the fact that he had only to claim, what he had pleaded for, from the depths of his thirsty heart three months ago. The silence deepened the stress, and movement, of the world beyond the sister’s room. They seemed cast on eternal loneliness and stillness, a void place had been made for them in the universe, and just outside the great hungry stream of life rushed by.

The surgeon looked at his watch. “Do not let me keep you,” said Daphne, “I understand.”

“You have been the dream of my life, Daphne,” he said.

“And now you have found the reality,” said Daphne bitterly.

“No! but I have found that you are not strong enough to do what you do not think is right,” he said; “you would repent, and you are very young, Daphne—I should never forgive myself. You do not realize, and until lately I did not realize myself how little I have to offer you, in return for the most tremendous sacrifice a woman can make.”

“Oh, Arthur!” she cried at last, feeling as if not a single thing in life could make up for the separation from him, “isn’t it worth while to make a sacrifice for love?”

“Not if you are going to be sorry for it afterwards,” he said. “Good-bye. Stick to your work here. I shall never disturb you.”

He held out his hand; for a moment she would not take it, she thought he would never let her go without kissing her, and she knew that if he kissed her, he would never let her go. If he had been a weaker man she would have ruined both their lives.

“Good-bye, Daphne,” he said, and passed by her to the door. He met the sister in the passage.

“No. 6 has gone to the theatre, sir,” she said, “I shall have to let you have Nurse Fordington. I am very sorry but we are under-staffed.”

“It does not matter,” said Arthur Field. And yet it made it very hard. Her presence at his side, the knowledge of her still, white face, the cry in his heart to win her back to him, to ignore the consequences, to prevent the irrevocable, made the operation a time of intense trial. His hand never faltered, a few stern directions shot out, clear and concise as usual. Daphne, watching him, felt quite sure he had ceased to care for her, and she knew that she should have felt relieved. Instead she was hurt beyond the power of words, and smarted under a sense of bitter wrong.

She had pleaded to him to let her go, but she had never meant that he should let her go so easily. She had written to him that though he might force her will the love in her heart was dead to him, but she could not forgive him for not kissing her, she was almost sure he knew, that she wanted him to. Last and worst of all, she had trusted unconsciously, that he would set her free from David, and now she was face to face with the inevitable consequences of her word, and inevitable consequences are not always pleasant facts to deal with.

“Well, nurse!” asked the other probationer on her return, “how did you get through your first operation?”

“Was it my first?” said Daphne.

“Why, of course it was, sister wouldn’t have let you go in, if she could have helped it. The king hates raw nurses.”

“I think I got through all right,” said Daphne, “thank you.”

“And what did you think of the king?” the nurse persisted.

“I don’t quite—know,” said Daphne slowly.

“Of course it takes some time to get used to him, you know,” the nurse continued.

“I should think it would,” said Daphne. Looking up at the clock she saw that it was time for tea.