Later, I stood down by the hatch waiting for the tray of fish, and as I stood there, the youngest Sister beside me, he came down, for he was up and dressed yesterday, and offered to carry the tray. For he is reckless, too....
She told him to go back, and said to me, looking from her young, condemning eyes, "I suppose he thinks he can make up for being the cause of all the lateness to-night."
"Sister...." and then I stopped short. I hated her. Were we late? I looked at the other trays. We were not late; it was untrue. She had said that because she had had to wrap her barb in something and hadn"t the courage to reprove me officially. I resented that and her air of equality. Since I am under her authority and agree to it, why dare she not use it?
As for me, I dared not speak to her all the evening. She would have no weapons against me. If I am to remember she is my Sister I must hold my hand over my mouth.
She would not speak to me, either. That was wrong of her: she is in authority, not I.
It is difficult for her because she is so young; but I have no room for sympathy.
At moments I forget her position and, burning with resentment, I reflect, " ... this schoolgirl...."
To-day I walked down to the hospital thinking: "I must be stronger. It is I who, in the inverted position of things, should be the stronger. He is being tortured, and he has no release. He cannot even be alone a moment."
But at the hospital gates I thought of nothing but that I should see him.
In the bunk sat the eldest Sister, writing in a book. It pa.s.sed through my head that the two Sisters had probably "sat" on my affairs together.
I wondered without interest what the other had told her. Putting on my cap, I walked into the ward.
Surely his bed had had a pink eiderdown!
I walked up the ward and looked at it; but I knew without need of a second glance what had happened.
His bed was made in the fashion in which we make an empty bed, a bed that waits for a new patient. His locker was empty and stood open, already scrubbed. I smiled as I noticed they hadn"t even left me that to do.
No one volunteered a word of explanation, no one took the trouble to say he had gone.
These women.... I smiled again. Only the comic phrase rang in my head "They"ve properly done me in! Properly done me in...."
I went downstairs and fetched the trays, and all the time the smile was on my lips. These women.... Somehow I had the better of the Sister. It is better to be in the wrong than in the right.
His friends looked at me a little, but apparently he had left no message for me.
Later I learnt that he had been taken to another hospital at two, while I came on at three.
Once during the evening the eldest Sister mentioned vaguely, "So-and-so has gone."
And I said aloud, after a little reflection, "Yes ... in the nick of time, Sister."
During the evening I realized that I should never see him again. It was here in this ward the thing had grown. The hare we had started wouldn"t bear the strain of any other life. He might write, but I shouldn"t go and see him.
"He must be wild," I thought with pity.
The feeling between us would die anyhow; better throw in my strength with the Sister"s and help her hurl it now towards its death. I looked at her bent head with a secret triumph.
Then, slowly: "How ... permanently am I in disgrace?"
And she: "Not at all ... now."
Behind the stone pillar of the gateway is one dirty little patch of snow; I saw it even in the moonless darkness.
The crown of the hill here holds the last snows, but for all that the spring smell is steaming among the trees and up and down the bracken slopes in the garden next door.
There is no moon, there are no stars, no promise to the eye, but in the dense, vapouring darkness the bulbs are moving. I can smell what is not earth or rain or bark.
The curtain has been drawn over No. 11; the Sister holds the corners tightly against the window-frame. He is outside, somewhere in the world, and I am here moving among my thirty friends; and since it isn"t spring yet, the lights are lit to hide the twilight. The Sister"s eyes talk to me again as we make beds--yes, even bed No. 11 with a little jaundice boy in it. They let me make it now!
Last night we had another concert in the ward.
A concert demoralizes me. By reason of sitting on the beds and talking to whom one wills, I regain my old manners, and forget that a patient may be washed, fed, dressed but not talked to. My old manners were more gracious, but less docile.
Afterwards we wheeled the beds back into their positions. I b.u.mped Mr.
Lambert"s as I wheeled it, and apologized.
"I"m not grumbling," he smiled from his pillow.
"You never do," I answered.
"You don"t know me, nurse!"
And I thought as I looked down at him "I shall never know him better or so well again...."
Indeed a Sister is a curious creature. She is like a fortress, una.s.sailable, and whose sleeping guns may fire at any minute.
I was struck with a bit of knowledge last night that will serve me through life, i.e. that to justify oneself is the inexcusable fault. It is better to be in the wrong than in the right.
A Sister has an "intimate life."
It occurs when she goes off duty; that is to say, it lies between 8.45, when she finishes her supper, and 10 o"clock, when she finishes undressing.
That is why one Sister said to me, "If I hadn"t taken up nursing I should have gone in for culture."
I don"t laugh at that.... To have an intimate life one must have a little time.
Who am I that I can step in from outside to criticize? The hospital is not my life. I am expectant....
But for them here and now is the business of life.