John Tugler pushed back his chair, and crossed the room to the corner where Murchison was bending over his open instrument bag. The droop2 of the shoulders, the whole pose of the powerful figure, told of the burden that lay heavy upon the father’s heart.
“Murchison.”
The face that met John Tugler’s was haggard and stupid with two sleepless3 nights.
“Yes.”
“Any news?”
“Oh—worse,” and he snapped the bag to with an irritable4 closure of the hands.
John Tugler looked at him as he might have looked at a refractory5 friend.
“Come now, Murchison, you’re feeling damned bad. Knock off to-day. Stileman and I can manage.”
“Thanks. I must work.”
“Must, eh?”
“It helps.”
“Like punching something when you’re savage. Perhaps you’re right.”
Tugler returned to the girl with the red rash, while Murchison passed on to the surgery, where some half-score patients were waiting to be treated.
“Good-morning,” and he glanced round him like a man in a hurry; “first case. Well, how’s the leg?”
A scraggy, undersized individual with a narrow, swarthy face was pulling up a trousers leg with two dirty, drug-stained hands. He was a worker in a chemical factory, and his ugly, harsh, and suspicious features seemed to have taken the low moral stamp of the place.
“No worse, doct’r.”
“No worse! Well, have you been resting?”
“Half an’ half.”
“I suppose so. You may as well come here and grumble6 for months unless you do what we tell you. It is quite useless continuing like this.”
He bent7 down and began to unwind the dirty bandage from the man’s leg. The chemical worker expanded the broad nostrils8 of his carnivorous nose, sniffed9, and cocked a battered10 bowler11 onto the back of his head. Manners were not mended in Dr. Tugler’s surgery.
“God’s truth, doct’r, easy with it—”
Murchison had stripped a sodden12 pad of lint13 and plaster from the ulcer14 on the man’s leg.
“Nonsense; that didn’t hurt you.”
“Beg to differ, sir.”
“When did you dress this last?”
The patient hesitated, eying Murchison sulkily as though tempted15 to be insolent16.
“Yesterday.”
“Speak the truth and say three days ago. You’re on your ‘club’—of course.”
“Well, what’s the harm?”
“And you don’t trouble much how long you draw club-money, eh?”
“That’s your business, I reckon.”
“My business, is it? Well, my friend, you carry out my instructions or there will be trouble about the certificate. You understand?”
The man cast an evil look at Murchison’s broad back as he turned to spread boracic ointment17 on clean lint.
“I don’t know as how I come here to hear your sauce,” he remarked, curtly18.
Murchison faced him with an irritable glitter of the eyes.
“What do you mean!”
“I suppose some of us poor fellows cost you gentlemen too much in tow and flannel19.”
“There you are just a little at sea, my friend. What we do is to prevent the Friendly Societies being imposed upon by loafers. Dress your leg every day. Rest it, you understand, and keep out of the pubs. You had better come by some manners before next week.”
The chemical worker snarled20 out some vague retort, and then relapsed into silence. Such shufflers had no pity from James Murchison. He was in no mood that morning to bear with the impertinences of malingerers and humbugs21.
The clock struck eleven before the last patient passed out into Wilton High Street with its thundering drays and clanging trams. Murchison had done the work of two men in the surgery that morning, silent, skilful23, and determined24, a man who worked that the savage smart of sorrow might be soothed25 and assuaged26 thereby27. With the women and the children he was very gentle and very patient. His hands were never rough and never clumsy. Perhaps none of the people whose wounds he dressed guessed how bitter a wound was bleeding in the heart of this sad-eyed, patient-faced man.
John Tugler sidled in when Murchison had pinned up the last bandage. He swung the door to gently, sighed, and pretended to examine the entries in the ledger28. Murchison was washing his hands at the sink, staring hard at the water as it splashed from the tap upon his fingers.
“Not much visiting to-day.”
“No.”
“I’ll hire a cab, and drive down to Black End. Most of them seem to lie that way.”
Murchison was looking for a clean place in the roller-towel.
“I can manage the visiting down there,” he said.
John Tugler surveyed him attentively29 over a fat shoulder.
“You’ll knock up, old man,” he remarked, quietly.
Murchison started. The familiarity had a touch of tenderness that lifted it from its vulgar setting.
“Thanks, no.”
“Very bad, is she?”
“Comatose.”
“Oh, damn!”
The little man whipped over the leaves of the ledger, as though looking for something that he could not find.
“It seems a beastly shame,” he said, presently.
“Shame?”
“Yes, this sort of smash-up of a youngster’s life. They call it Providence30, or the Divine Will, or something of that sort, don’t they? Must say I can’t stick that sort of bosh.”
Murchison was wringing31 his hands fiercely in the folds of the rough towel.
“It is a natural judgment32, I suppose,” he said.
“A judgment?”
“It was my fault that the child ever came here. It need not have been so—” and he broke off with a savage twisting of the mouth.
John Tugler ran one finger slowly across a blank space in the ledger.
“Don’t take it that way,” he said, slowly; “it doesn’t help a man to curse himself because a damned bug22 of a bacillus breeds in this holy horror of a town. Curse the British Constitution, the law-mongers, or the local money shufflers who’d rather save three farthings than clean their slums.”
James Murchison was silent. Yet in his heart there burned the fierce conviction that the father’s frailty33 had been visited upon the innocent body of the child.
Four o’clock had struck, and the houses were casting long shadows across the waters of the canal, before Murchison turned in at the gate of Clovelly after three hours visiting in the Wilton slums. He let himself in silently with his latch-key, hung his hat and coat in the hall, and entered the little front room where tea was laid on the imitation walnut34 table. On the sofa by the window he found Catherine asleep, her head resting against the wall. It was as though sheer weariness, the spell of many sleepless nights, had fallen on her, and that but a momentary35 slacking of her self-control had suffered nature to assert her sway.
Murchison stood looking at his wife in silence. Sleep had wiped out much of the sorrow from her face, and she seemed beautiful as Beatrice dreaming strange dreams upon the walls of heaven. A stray strand36 of March sunlight had woven itself into her hair. Her hands lay open beside her on the sofa, open, palms upward, with a quaint37 suggestion of trustfulness and appeal. To Murchison it seemed that if God but saw her thus, such prayers as she had uttered would be answered out of pity for the brave sweetness of her womanhood.
If peace lingered in sleep, there would be sorrow in her waking. Murchison was loath38 to recall her to the world of coarse reality and unpitying truth. A great tenderness, a strong man’s tenderness for a woman and a wife, softened39 his face as he watched the quiet drawing of her breath. And yet what ultimate kindness could there be in such delay? Life and death are but the counterparts of day and night.
Catherine awoke with a touch of her husband’s hand upon her cheek. She sighed, put out her arms to him, a consciousness of pain vivid at once upon her face.
“You here!”
She put her hands up to her forehead.
“I never meant to sleep. What a long day you must have had!”
“It is better that I should work.”
“Yes.”
“How is she?”
“The same; I can see no change.”
Catherine rose with a suggestion of effort, and leaned for a moment on her husband’s arm. The impulse seemed simultaneous with them, the impulse that drew them to the room above. They went up together, hand in hand, silent and restrained, two souls awed40 by the mysteries of death and life.
On the bed by the window lay Gwen, with childishly open yet sightless eyes. A flush of vivid color showed on either cheek, her golden hair falling aside like waves of light about her forehead. Her breathing was tranquil41 and feeble, and spaced out with a peculiar42 rhythm. The pupils of the eyes were markedly unequal; one lid drooped43 slightly, and the right angle of the red mouth was a little drawn44.
It is a certain pitiful semblance45 of health that mocks the heart in many such cases. Children who die thus are often beautiful. They seem to sleep with open eyes. The flush on the cheeks has nothing of the gathering46 grayness of death.
Catherine, bending low, looked at Gwen with the long look of one who will not see the vanishing torch of hope.
“She is still asleep.”
“Yes, asleep.”
The man’s voice was a tearless echo.
“James, it can’t be. Look, what a color! And the eyes—”
Murchison laid a hand gently on her shoulder.
“I know; I have seen such things before.”
“But she will wake presently?”
“Presently.”
“Yes. This long sleep will do her good.”
Murchison sighed.
“She will not wake for us, wife,” he said.
“Not wake!”
Catherine’s eyes were incredulous, full of the intenseness of a mother’s love.
“No, not here.”
“But look—look at her!”
“That is the pity of it.”
“Then I shall not hear her speak again; she will never see me?”
“Never.”
“But why? I cannot believe—”
“Dear, it is death—the way some children die.”
They stood silent, side by side. Then Catherine bent low; child’s mouth and mother’s mouth met in a long dream kiss. There was a sound of broken, troubled whispering in the room, a sound as of inarticulate tenderness and wordless prayer. Murchison’s right hand covered his face. His wife’s eyes and cheeks were wet with tears.
“Kate.”
She bowed herself over the child, and did not stir.
“No, no, these last hours, they are so precious.”
He looked at her mutely, put a hand to his throat, and turned away. It was too solemn, too poignant47 a scene for him to outrage48 it with words. Gwen, dead in life, would see her mother’s face no more.
Murchison was on the stairs when the blare of a tin trumpet49 seemed to hurt the silence of the little house. An impatient fist was beating a tattoo50 on the front door. It was the boy Jack51 come home from school.
Murchison’s mouth quivered, and then hardened. He went to the door, and opened it to a blast of the boy’s trumpet.
“Hallo, I say—”
A strong hand twisted the toy from the boy’s fingers.
“Silence.”
Jack Murchison’s mouth gaped52. He looked at his father’s face, wonderingly, grievedly, and was awed into a frightened silence, child egoist that he was, by the expression in his father’s eyes.
Murchison pointed53 to the sitting-room54 door.
“Go and sit down.”
The boy obeyed, sullen55 and a little stupefied. His father closed and locked the door on him, and then passed out into the space behind the house that they called a garden. A few crocuses were gilding56 the sour, black earth. They were flowers that Gwen had planted before Christmas-time. And Murchison, as he looked at them, thought that she should take them in her little hands to the Great Father of all Children.
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1
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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droop
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| v.低垂，下垂；凋萎，萎靡 | |
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sleepless
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| adj.不睡眠的，睡不著的，不休息的 | |
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irritable
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| adj.急躁的；过敏的；易怒的 | |
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refractory
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| adj.倔强的，难驾驭的 | |
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6
grumble
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| vi.抱怨；咕哝；n.抱怨，牢骚；咕哝，隆隆声 | |
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7
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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8
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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9
sniffed
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| v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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10
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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11
bowler
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| n.打保龄球的人，（板球的）投（球）手 | |
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12
sodden
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| adj.浑身湿透的；v.使浸透；使呆头呆脑 | |
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13
lint
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| n.线头；绷带用麻布，皮棉 | |
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ulcer
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| n.溃疡，腐坏物 | |
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15
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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16
insolent
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| adj.傲慢的，无理的 | |
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17
ointment
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| n.药膏，油膏，软膏 | |
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18
curtly
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| adv.简短地 | |
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flannel
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| n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服 | |
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20
snarled
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的过去式和过去分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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21
humbugs
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| 欺骗( humbug的名词复数 )； 虚伪； 骗子； 薄荷硬糖 | |
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22
bug
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| n.虫子；故障；窃听器；vt.纠缠；装窃听器 | |
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23
skilful
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| (=skillful)adj.灵巧的，熟练的 | |
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24
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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25
soothed
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| v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
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26
assuaged
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| v.减轻( assuage的过去式和过去分词 )；缓和；平息；使安静 | |
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27
thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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ledger
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| n.总帐，分类帐；帐簿 | |
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29
attentively
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| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
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30
providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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31
wringing
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| 淋湿的，湿透的 | |
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32
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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33
frailty
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| n.脆弱；意志薄弱 | |
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34
walnut
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| n.胡桃，胡桃木，胡桃色，茶色 | |
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momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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36
strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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38
loath
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| adj.不愿意的；勉强的 | |
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39
softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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40
awed
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| adj.充满敬畏的，表示敬畏的v.使敬畏，使惊惧( awe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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41
tranquil
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| adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
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42
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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43
drooped
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| 弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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44
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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45
semblance
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| n.外貌，外表 | |
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46
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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47
poignant
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| adj.令人痛苦的，辛酸的，惨痛的 | |
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48
outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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49
trumpet
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| n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘 | |
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50
tattoo
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| n.纹身，(皮肤上的)刺花纹；vt.刺花纹于 | |
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51
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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52
gaped
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| v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的过去式和过去分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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53
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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54
sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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55
sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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56
gilding
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| n.贴金箔，镀金 | |
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