A Sovereign Remedy Part 22

There was a c.h.i.n.k of coppers behind Peter Ramsay as he rode on, thinking that some folk ought to be punished for trying to ptomaine-poison the king's lieges.

But his mind was full of something else, and before five minutes were over, he was looking down on a sleeping boy, and wondering vaguely for the hundredth time if he or the other doctors were right? Would an operation--not a known one, of course, but one based on new lines--be of any use or not? He would dearly have liked to try.

In truth here, in the spick and span ward, amid those who had been brought in sickened by that outside squalor, it was difficult to realise any lack of hygiene, any lack of fair dealing. Yet that lack had left its mark on the sleeping face of the boy. It lay with a cunning elusive look on its sharp features among the white pillows.

What a shutting of the door when the steed was stolen it all was!

Looking at him critically, preternaturally sharp, preternaturally diseased in mind and body as he was, it seemed to be a life not much worth saving; and yet!--if it could be saved!

The upright wrinkles on Peter Ramsay's forehead corrugated the transverse ones as he told himself it was useless to think of it here; in Vienna it would have been different. He had already so far as in him lay encouraged the performance of a critical new operation the very next week, and one was enough at a time. He was very keen, very confident, this young surgeon, fresh from his life abroad; ready to criticise even his superiors if they seemed to him old-fas.h.i.+oned. For his hands reaching out into the darkness around him had felt the touch of Something--Something that he would not lose touch of though it eluded him; so he followed it fast, almost heedlessly.

This boy----? If he had had time or money! Then suddenly he smiled.

The thought of Ned Blackborough's hidden hundred pounds came to him as it had come more than once during the last few months. Here was a case for it, only unfortunately he had not the time for private work. Still it was odd what a backing that hundred pounds had been to all sorts of day-dreams. Why it should be so, was a psychological problem; since after all, it was but a paltry sum, and, in all probability, it no longer existed for him; for there had been distinct greed on at least two of the faces which had watched its concealment. It had, no doubt, been appropriated long ago. So the boy must go out, comfortably fitted with regulation crutches, to live, possibly, two or three years at the outside. And yet----

He bent regretfully, tracing the twist of the body beneath the bed-clothes, then looked up at the lingering of a pa.s.sing footstep.

"Good evening, Mrs. Tressilian. I beg your pardon, Nurse Helen--I am always forgetting."

"Because you will not remember," she replied with a smile. Then her eyes grew soft; she bent over the bed in her turn; "Can nothing really be done for him, doctor? He is so very patient."

There was something about this woman, Peter Ramsay felt, which took him away, as it were, into a desert place apart with nothing in it save himself, truth, and a listener. He had felt it from the moment he had first seen her; and he had told her the truth even then. It was another curious psycho-physiological problem which evaded dissection and a.n.a.lysis; so he had evaded her, ever since--carrying out her promise to herself--she had appeared as a nurse in the hospital now nearly five months ago. But the spell remained.

"Nothing," he replied, half-speaking to himself, and following up his own train of thought; "Nothing at least that will be done--and it would be but an off chance anyhow."

She caught him up swiftly. "Then there is a chance?"

Peter Ramsay's face became a study in cynical reserve; he turned away.

"My dear lady," he said, "haven't you been a nurse long enough to know a doctor's convenient formula, 'While there's life, there's hope.'"

To his annoyance as he moved on to the door, she moved also. "I am off duty," she remarked, as if she had not appreciated his slamming of the door in her face, "so it is no breach of rules to tell you that I have had a letter from Ned Blackborough. He is coming back from the Mountains of the Moon--that was about his last address, I believe--but his arm is still troublesome. I should like to show you what he says."

They were in the vestibule now, and Dr. Ramsay paused. He rather admired her pertinacity, and matched her coolness with his own.

"Certainly. May I come in now--or stay! You will want to go out, I expect. Will you look in at my diggings after dinner? I might be able to give you a cup of coffee, if you will?"

"I have no doubt the matron will allow me," she laughed. "Good-bye for the present, Dr. Ramsay."

As he sat waiting for her in a room which beggared description by its untidiness, he felt distinctly nervous; but he was becoming accustomed to the fact that she had a disturbing or rather an exhilarating effect on his nerves. He was a trifle irritated at the fact, a trifle irritated with her because she had fulfilled his predictions.

She was quite normal, and she made an excellent nurse. He had had to admit so much. But it was not her natural metier--that was--something very different.

Possibly he was right. At any rate Helen, entering the room, stood absolutely aghast at its utter lack of comfort. She had been learning much about Peter Ramsay of which she had had no idea, when she came into touch with him in the hospital. To begin with, he was much younger than she had guessed him. She doubted if he was much older, perhaps not quite as old as she was herself. Clever as he was, he had most of the doctor's battle for name and fame before him; and there was a carelessness of public opinion, a certain roughness of very solid truth about him, joined to an utter disregard of his own comfort or that of any one else, except a patient's, which made her feel that here was a man who, above most men, needed a strong, capable, tactful woman to look after him privately, if he was to succeed publicly.

And, though the sick adored him, and every one admitted his skill, he was not one of those men who appeal to the world at large. He was too swift, too incisive. No young woman would darn his stockings because he was a dear; the very maid-servants could leave his room like this!

"I don't expect it's good," he said ruefully, pouring her out a cup of coffee, "but I'm not up to these things. My mother spoilt me. She died three years ago. She was a widow, and I was her only son."

Helen, sipping at her coffee, told herself that explained a good deal.

He was capable enough professionally, but--the coffee was execrable!

"It isn't very nice," she admitted, "and why doesn't the housemaid----"

"Oh! I can't have my things touched," he interrupted with a frown; adding as if to change an unwelcome subject, "So the arm is stiff. I'm sorry. We shall have to try electricity. There's a place in London----"

He was off on some new cure, his red bronze eyes s.h.i.+ning, his whole bearing full of confidence and vitality. She waited till the subject was exhausted, and then put down her cup, fixing her eyes humorously on his face.

"And now, please, about that boy--No. 36 in the Queen's ward--I came to speak of him, you know."

Peter Ramsay faced her half angrily; then he smiled. "Of course I knew, though I don't see why you wish to find out my opinion."

"Possibly because I have an idea that your opinion may be right," she replied coolly. "What is it you wish to do? Something quite new, I expect."

He frowned. "There you are mistaken. It--or something like it--has been done at Vienna."

"By Pagenheim?"

"What do you know of Pagenheim? I beg your pardon! I was forgetting that women know everything nowadays. Yes, Mrs. Tressilian, by Pagenheim. He was my master."

She knew that; knew also that the great surgeon had sent him back to England as his best pupil.

"Well," she said after a time, "If you won't tell me I will order the _Wiener Hospital Blatt_; I shall see all about it there I suppose."

This time he laughed out loud. "You are very persistent, so I will save you the trouble of finding out in which number it is reported."

When he had finished, she sat looking at him for a moment, feeling a sudden motherly desire to help this curiously capable, curiously inept man, whose strong white surgeon's hands showed themselves firmly gripping each other beyond frail, frayed wristbands.

"But surely if you hold that there is a chance of life for him----"

she began.

He rose, and resting his arm on the mantelpiece, looked down on her mentally and physically.

"Life!" he echoed. "What is life worth to him? and how do you know that what we call death ends it? Mind you, I'm not speaking from my own beliefs--they are--well! not much! Belief is positive--I'm not.

But you, Mrs. Tressilian. Why do you and your sort hold this life so dear, and why are you all at the same time in such a blessed hurry to get another hour or two of it in which to do something when you believe in a fuller, better life beyond death? It isn't logical. My mother used to say that when she taught me, a three-year-old, about Cain and Abel, I refused to give blame to the former on the ground that he had only sent Abel to heaven. That should be your position."

"And yours?"

"Oh! mine is simple. To a doctor life is merely the converse of death, and death is the devil! We cannot prescribe for a corpse--or for the matter of that levy a fee for so doing--and that is the end and aim of doctoring."

"Why should you say those things, Dr. Ramsay?" she asked quietly. "You know you never take one--at least you would take none from me."

He flushed slightly. "Because I did nothing--and you were an interesting case. I levy a big fee of experience, Mrs. Tressilian. But concerning this boy--my colleagues are against me, and----" He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't think the world will come to an end if No. 36 goes out of it. I shouldn't mind if it did--it isn't worth much."

"But are you not bound?" she persisted. "You have no right to judge what his life might be. A doctor's duty is to save life and defy death at all costs."

His face softened immensely.

"You have got it quite pat, Mrs. Tressilian. That is my duty undoubtedly; but--but I can't afford to do it--as yet--and after all, there is plenty of time--we have a few centuries of evolution before us yet."

"But you--you yourself?" she asked, scanning his face eagerly.