The Lost Girl · Chapter 11 (2/5)

Having ten minutes still, Alvina sat down and wrote to Ciccio: “I am glad I have got this post as nurse here. Everyone 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. Goodbye.⁠—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 snatches.

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. Mitchell, 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 pronounced 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-glass. He peered inside⁠—and smelled it.

“Stout?” he said, in a tone of indignant inquiry: God-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 forever? 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 nobbut fower percent i’ stout,” retorted the daring female.

“Fower percent,” mimicked the doctor brutally. “Why, what does an ignorant creature like you know about fower percent.”

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. Mitchell, 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. Mitchell’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. Mitchell, I don’t care what you say.”

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

The men did not like Dr. Mitchell, 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.”

“No, an’ I dunna. I drink a drop o’ beer, if that’s what you ca’ touchin’ alcohol. An’ I’m none th’ wuss for it, tha sees.”

“You’ve heard what I’ve told you.”

“Ah, I have.”

“And if you go on with the beer, you may go on with curing yourself. I shan’t attend you. You know I mean what I say, Mrs. Larrick”⁠—this to the wife.

“I do, doctor. And I know it’s true what you say. An’ I’m at him night an’ day about it⁠—”

“Oh well, if he will hear no reason, he must suffer for it. He mustn’t think I’m going to be running after him, if he disobeys my orders.” And the doctor stalked off, and the woman began to complain.

None the less the women had their complaints against Dr. Mitchell. If ever Alvina entered a clean house on a wet day, she was sure to hear the housewife chuntering.

“Oh my lawk, come in nurse! What a day! Doctor’s not been yet. And he’s bound to come now I’ve just cleaned up, trapesin’ wi’ his gret feet. He’s got the biggest understandin’s of any man i’ Lancaster. My husband says they’re the best pair o’ pasties i’ th’ kingdom. An’ he does make such a mess, for he never stops to wipe his feet on th’ mat, marches straight up your clean stairs⁠—”

“Why don’t you tell him to wipe his feet?” said Alvina.

“Oh my word! Fancy me telling him! He’d jump down my throat with both feet afore I’d opened my mouth. He’s not to be spoken to, he isn’t. He’s my-lord, he is. You mustn’t look, or you’re done for.”

Alvina laughed. She knew they all liked him for browbeating them, and having a heart over and above.

Sometimes he was given a good hit⁠—though nearly always by a man. It happened he was in a workman’s house when the man was at dinner.

“Canna yer gi’e a man summat better nor this ’ere pap, Missis?” said the hairy husband, turning up his nose at the rice pudding.

“Oh go on,” cried the wife. “I hadna time for owt else.” Dr. Mitchell was just stooping his handsome figure in the doorway.

“Rice pudding!” he exclaimed largely. “You couldn’t have anything more wholesome and nourishing. I have a rice pudding every day of my life⁠—every day of my life, I do.”

The man was eating his pudding and pearling his big moustache copiously with it. He did not answer.

“Do you doctor!” cried the woman. “And never no different.”

“Never,” said the doctor.

“Fancy that! You’re that fond of them?”

“I find they agree with me. They are light and digestible. And my stomach is as weak as a baby’s.”

The labourer wiped his big moustache on his sleeve.

“Mine isna, tha sees,” he said, “so pap’s no use. ’S watter ter me. I want ter feel as I’ve had summat: a bit o’ suetty dumplin’ an’ a pint o’ hale, summat ter fill th’ hole up. An’ tha’d be th’ same if tha did my work.”

“If I did your work,” sneered the doctor. “Why I do ten times the work that any one of you does. It’s just the work that has ruined my digestion, the never getting a quiet meal, and never a whole night’s rest. When do you think I can sit at table and digest my dinner? I have to be off looking after people like you⁠—”

“Eh, tha can ta’e th’ titty-bottle wi’ thee,” said the labourer.

But Dr. Mitchell was furious for weeks over this. It put him in a black rage to have his great manliness insulted. Alvina was quietly amused.

The doctor began by being rather lordly and condescending with her. But luckily she felt she knew her work at least as well as he knew it. She smiled and let him condescend. Certainly she neither feared nor even admired him. To tell the truth, she rather disliked him: the great, red-faced bachelor of fifty-three, with his bald spot and his stomach as weak as a baby’s, and his mouthing imperiousness and his good heart which was as selfish as it could be. Nothing can be more cocksuredly selfish than a good heart which believes in its own beneficence. He was a little too much the teetotaller on the one hand to be so largely manly on the other. Alvina preferred the labourers with their awful long moustaches that got full of food. And he was a little too loud-mouthedly lordly to be in human good taste.

As a matter of fact, he was conscious of the fact that he had risen to be a gentleman. Now if a man is conscious of being a gentleman, he is bound to be a little less than a man. But if he is gnawed with anxiety lest he may not be a gentleman, he is only pitiable. There is a third case, however. If a man must loftily, by his manner, assert that he is now a gentleman, he shows himself a clown. For Alvina, poor Dr. Mitchell fell into this third category, of clowns. She tolerated him good-humouredly, as women so often tolerate ninnies and poseurs. She smiled to herself when she saw his large and important presence on the board. She smiled when she saw him at a sale, buying the grandest pieces of antique furniture. She smiled when he talked of going up to Scotland, for grouse shooting, or of snatching an hour on Sunday morning, for golf. And she talked him over, with quiet, delicate malice, with the matron. He was no favourite at the hospital.

Gradually Dr. Mitchell’s manner changed towards her. From his imperious condescension he took to a tone of uneasy equality. This did not suit him. Dr. Mitchell had no equals: he had only the vast stratum of inferiors, towards whom he exercised his quite profitable beneficence⁠—it brought him in about two thousand a year: and then his superiors, people who had been born with money. It was the tradesmen and professionals who had started at the bottom and clambered to the motorcar footing, who distressed him. And therefore, whilst he treated Alvina on this uneasy tradesman footing, he felt himself in a false position.

She kept her attitude of quiet amusement, and little by little he sank. From being a lofty creature soaring over her head, he was now like a big fish poking its nose above water and making eyes at her. He treated her with rather presuming deference.

“You look tired this morning,” he barked at her one hot day.

“I think it’s thunder,” she said.

“Thunder! Work, you mean,” and he gave a slight smile. “I’m going to drive you back.”

“Oh no, thanks, don’t trouble! I’ve got to call on the way.”

“Where have you got to call?”

She told him.

“Very well. That takes you no more than five minutes. I’ll wait for you. Now take your cloak.”

She was surprised. Yet, like other women, she submitted.

As they drove he saw a man with a barrow of cucumbers. He stopped the car and leaned towards the man.

“Take that barrow-load of poison and bury it!” he shouted, in his strong voice. The busy street hesitated.

“What’s that, mister?” replied the mystified hawker.

Dr. Mitchell pointed to the green pile of cucumbers.

“Take that barrow-load of poison, and bury it,” he called, “before you do anybody any more harm with it.”

“What barrow-load of poison’s that?” asked the hawker, approaching. A crowd began to gather.

“What barrow-load of poison is that!” repeated the doctor. “Why your barrow-load of cucumbers.”

“Oh,” said the man, scrutinizing his cucumbers carefully. To be sure, some were a little yellow at the end. “How’s that? Cumbers is right enough: fresh from market this morning.”

“Fresh or not fresh,” said the doctor, mouthing his words distinctly, “you might as well put poison into your stomach, as those things. Cucumbers are the worst thing you can eat.”

“Oh!” said the man, stuttering. “That’s ’appen for them as doesn’t like them. I niver knowed a cumber do me no harm, an’ I eat ’em like a happle.” Whereupon the hawker took a “cumber” from his barrow, bit off the end, and chewed it till the sap squirted. “What’s wrong with that?” he said, holding up the bitten cucumber.

“I’m not talking about what’s wrong with that,” said the doctor. “My business is what’s wrong with the stomach it goes into. I’m a doctor. And I know that those things cause me half my work. They cause half the internal troubles people suffer from in summertime.”

“Oh ay! That’s no loss to you, is it? Me an’ you’s partners. More cumbers I sell, more graft for you, ’cordin’ to that. What’s wrong then. Cum‑bers! Fine fresh Cum‑berrrs! All fresh and juisty, all cheap and tasty⁠—!” yelled the man.

“I am a doctor not only to cure illness, but to prevent it where I can. And cucumbers are poison to everybody.”

“Cum‑bers! Cum‑bers! Fresh cumbers!” yelled the man.

Dr. Mitchell started his car.

“When will they learn intelligence?” he said to Alvina, smiling and showing his white, even teeth.

“I don’t care, you know, myself,” she said. “I should always let people do what they wanted⁠—”

“Even if you knew it would do them harm?” he queried, smiling with amiable condescension.

“Yes, why not! It’s their own affair. And they’ll do themselves harm one way or another.”

“And you wouldn’t try to prevent it?”

“You might as well try to stop the sea with your fingers.”

“You think so?” smiled the doctor. “I see, you are a pessimist. You are a pessimist with regard to human nature.”