The Lost Girl Part 69

She had packed her bag. She had to find new rooms. She bade good-bye to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. Her face was cold and distant, but she smiled slightly as she bade them good-bye.

"And perhaps," said Madame, "per-haps you will come to Wigan tomorrow afternoon--or evening? Yes?"

"Thank you," said Alvina.

She went out and found a little hotel, where she took her room for the night, explaining the cause of her visit to Lancaster. Her heart was hard and burning. A deep, burning, silent anger against everything possessed her, and a profound indifference to mankind.

And therefore, the next day, everything went as if by magic. She had decided that at the least sign of indifference from the medical board people she would walk away, take her bag, and go to Windermere. She had never been to the Lakes. And Windermere was not far off. She would not endure one single hint of contumely from any one else. She would go straight to Windermere, to see the big lake.

Why not do as she wished! She could be quite happy by herself among the lakes. And she would be absolutely free, absolutely free. She rather looked forward to leaving the Town Hall, hurrying to take her bag and off to the station and freedom. Hadn't she still got about a hundred pounds? Why bother for one moment? To be quite alone in the whole world--and quite, quite free, with her hundred pounds--the prospect attracted her sincerely.

And therefore, everything went charmingly at the Town Hall. The medical board were charming to her--charming. There was no hesitation at all. From the first moment she was engaged. And she was given a pleasant room in a hospital in a garden, and the matron was charming to her, and the doctors most courteous.

When could she undertake to commence her duties? When did they want her? The very _moment_ she could come. She could begin tomorrow--but she had no uniform. Oh, the matron would lend her uniform and ap.r.o.ns, till her box arrived.

So there she was--by afternoon installed in her pleasant little room looking on the garden, and dressed in a nurse's uniform. It was all sudden like magic. She had wired to Madame, she had wired for her box. She was another person.

Needless to say, she was glad. Needless to say that, in the morning, when she had thoroughly bathed, and dressed in clean clothes, and put on the white dress, the white ap.r.o.n, and the white cap, she felt another person. So clean, she felt, so thankful! Her skin seemed caressed and live with cleanliness and whiteness, luminous she felt.

It was so different from being with the Natchas.

In the garden the s...o...b..a.l.l.s, guelder-roses, swayed softly among green foliage, there was pink may-blossom, and single scarlet may-blossom, and underneath the young green of the trees, irises rearing purple and moth-white. A young gardener was working--and a convalescent slowly trailed a few paces.

Having ten minutes still, Alvina sat down and wrote to Ciccio: "I am glad I have got this post as nurse here. Every one is most kind, and I feel at home already. I feel quite happy here. I shall think of my days with the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, and of you, who were such a stranger to me. Good-bye.--A. H."

This she addressed and posted. No doubt Madame would find occasion to read it. But let her.

Alvina now settled down to her new work. There was of course a great deal to do, for she had work both in the hospital and out in the town, though chiefly out in the town. She went rapidly from case to case, as she was summoned. And she was summoned at all hours. So that it was tiring work, which left her no time to herself, except just in s.n.a.t.c.hes.

She had no serious acquaintance with anybody, she was too busy. The matron and sisters and doctors and patients were all part of her day's work, and she regarded them as such. The men she chiefly ignored: she felt much more friendly with the matron. She had many a cup of tea and many a chat in the matron's room, in the quiet, sunny afternoons when the work was not pressing. Alvina took her quiet moments when she could: for she never knew when she would be rung up by one or other of the doctors in the town.

And so, from the matron, she learned to crochet. It was work she had never taken to. But now she had her ball of cotton and her hook, and she worked away as she chatted. She was in good health, and she was getting fatter again. With the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, she had improved a good deal, her colour and her strength had returned. But undoubtedly the nursing life, arduous as it was, suited her best.

She became a handsome, reposeful woman, jolly with the other nurses, really happy with her friend the matron, who was well-bred and wise, and never over-intimate.

The doctor with whom Alvina had most to do was a Dr. Mitch.e.l.l, a Scotchman. He had a large practice among the poor, and was an energetic man. He was about fifty-four years old, tall, largely-built, with a good figure, but with extraordinarily large feet and hands. His face was red and clean-shaven, his eyes blue, his teeth very good. He laughed and talked rather mouthingly.

Alvina, who knew what the nurses told her, knew that he had come as a poor boy and bottle-washer to Dr. Robertson, a fellow-Scotchman, and that he had made his way up gradually till he became a doctor himself, and had an independent practice. Now he was quite rich--and a bachelor. But the nurses did not set their bonnets at him very much, because he was rather mouthy and overbearing.

In the houses of the poor he was a great autocrat.

"What is that stuff you've got there!" he inquired largely, seeing a bottle of somebody's Soothing Syrup by a poor woman's bedside. "Take it and throw it down the sink, and the next time you want a soothing syrup put a little boot-blacking in hot water. It'll do you just as much good."

Imagine the slow, pompous, large-mouthed way in which the red-faced, handsomely-built man p.r.o.nounced these words, and you realize why the poor set such store by him.

He was eagle-eyed. Wherever he went, there was a scuffle directly his foot was heard on the stairs. And he knew they were hiding something. He sniffed the air: he glanced round with a sharp eye: and during the course of his visit picked up a blue mug which was pushed behind the looking-gla.s.s. He peered inside--and smelled it.

"Stout?" he said, in a tone of indignant inquiry: G.o.d-Almighty would presumably take on just such a tone, finding the core of an apple flung away among the dead-nettle of paradise: "Stout! Have you been drinking stout?" This as he gazed down on the wan mother in the bed.

"They gave me a drop, doctor. I felt that low."

The doctor marched out of the room, still holding the mug in his hand. The sick woman watched him with haunted eyes. The attendant women threw up their hands and looked at one another. Was he going for ever? There came a sudden smash. The doctor had flung the blue mug downstairs. He returned with a solemn stride.

"There!" he said. "And the next person that gives you stout will be thrown down along with the mug."

"Oh doctor, the bit o' comfort!" wailed the sick woman. "It ud never do me no harm."

"Harm! Harm! With a stomach as weak as yours! Harm! Do you know better than I do? What have I come here for? To be told by _you_ what will do you harm and what won't? It appears to me you need no doctor here, you know everything already--"

"Oh no, doctor. It's not like that. But when you feel as if you'd sink through the bed, an' you don't know what to do with yourself--"

"Take a little beef-tea, or a little rice pudding. Take _nourishment_, don't take that muck. Do you hear--" charging upon the attendant women, who shrank against the wall--"she's to have nothing alcoholic at all, and don't let me catch you giving it her."

"They say there's n.o.bbut fower per cent. i' stout," retorted the daring female.

"Fower per cent.," mimicked the doctor brutally. "Why, what does an ignorant creature like _you_ know about fower per cent."

The woman muttered a little under her breath.

"What? Speak out. Let me hear what you've got to say, my woman. I've no doubt it's something for my benefit--"

But the affronted woman rushed out of the room, and burst into tears on the landing. After which Dr. Mitch.e.l.l, mollified, largely told the patient how she was to behave, concluding:

"Nourishment! Nourishment is what you want. Nonsense, don't tell me you can't take it. Push it down if it won't go down by itself--"

"Oh doctor--"

"Don't say _oh doctor_ to me. Do as I tell you. That's _your_ business." After which he marched out, and the rattle of his motor car was shortly heard.

Alvina got used to scenes like these. She wondered why the people stood it. But soon she realized that they loved it--particularly the women.

"Oh, nurse, stop till Dr. Mitch.e.l.l's been. I'm scared to death of him, for fear he's going to shout at me."

"Why does everybody put up with him?" asked innocent Alvina.

"Oh, he's good-hearted, nurse, he _does_ feel for you."

And everywhere it was the same: "Oh, he's got a heart, you know.

He's rough, but he's got a heart. I'd rather have him than your smarmy slormin sort. Oh, you feel safe with Dr. Mitch.e.l.l, I don't care what you say."

But to Alvina this peculiar form of bl.u.s.tering, bullying heart which had all the women scurrying like chickens was not particularly attractive.

The men did not like Dr. Mitch.e.l.l, and would not have him if possible. Yet since he was club doctor and panel doctor, they had to submit. The first thing he said to a sick or injured labourer, invariably, was:

"And keep off the beer."

"Oh ay!"

"Keep off the beer, or I shan't set foot in this house again."

"Tha's got a red enough face on thee, tha nedna shout."

"My face is red with exposure to all weathers, attending ignorant people like you. I never touch alcohol in any form."