CHAPTER XXII.
DR ALICE BATESON.
Glaring lights in the murky darkness, hurrying porters pursuing the train, eager eyes on the platform strained in the direction of the windows, announced the arrival of the Flying Scotchman at King's Cross.
"Are you sure your husband will be here to meet you?" said Doris to her protégée. "I will stay with the children till you find him. Mona, dear, I had better say good night. I will call to-morrow morning to see you and enquire for your friend."
"Is there any one here to meet you?"
"I saw my aunt's footman a minute ago. He will find me presently."
A moment later a beautiful, white-haired old clergyman came up, removing his glove before shaking hands with Mona.
"I scarcely know how to thank you," he said, in a low voice. "You are a friend in need."
"And Lucy?"
"Lucy's temperature, as I expected, has gone down with a run since she heard you were coming. The doctor says all will be well now."
Mona drew a long breath of relief, and looked up in his face with a smile.
He laid his hand on her shoulder. "Where is your luggage?"
"This porter has my valise. That is all."
They got into a hansom, while the tall footman conducted Doris to a neat brougham, and a moment later they rattled away.
If Sir Douglas made Mona "a girl again," Mr Reynolds made her feel herself a child. With him her superficial crust of cynicism vanished like hoar-frost before the sun, and gave place to a gentle deference which had completely won the old man's heart. "The type of woman I admire," he had said with dignity to Lucy, "is the woman of clear intellect;" but it is probable that the woman of clear intellect would have appealed to him less, if she had not looked at him with pathetic revering eyes that seemed to say, "They call me clever and strong, but I am only a fatherless girl after all."
"Will Lucy be settled for the night when we get home?" Mona asked, when she had exhausted her other questions.
"No; she gets a hypodermic injection of morphia when the pain comes on, and that was to be postponed, if possible, till our arrival."
In a few minutes the cab drew up at a dimly lighted door in Bloomsbury. The house was old-fashioned and substantial; but a certain air of squalor is inseparably associated with most London lodgings, and it was not altogether absent here.
"Will you show this lady to her room?" said the clergyman courteously to the maid who opened the door.
"Not yet, thank you," said Mona. "Show me to Miss Reynolds's room, please. I will go there first."
The room was brightly lighted with a pretty lamp, for Lucy could not bear to have anything gloomy about her. She was lying in bed, propped up with pillows, her eyes curiously large and bright, her cheeks thin, her face worn with recent suffering.
Mona bit her lip hard. She had not realised that a few days of fever and pain could work such a change.
Lucy tried to stretch out her arms, and then let them fall with a pitiful little laugh. "I can't hug you yet, Mona," she said, "but oh! it is good to see you," and tears of sheer physical weakness filled her eyes.
"You poor little thing! What a scolding you shall have when you are better! You are not to be trusted out of my sight for a moment."
"I know," said Lucy feebly. "I never should have got ill if you had been here; and now I shall just have one illness after another, till you come back and go on with your work."
She looked so infinitely pathetic and unlike herself that Mona could scarcely find words. Instinctively she took Lucy's wrist in one cool hand, and laid the other on the child's flushed cheek.
"Oh, I am all right now. Of course my heart bounded off when I heard the hansom stop. But here comes my doctor. I scarcely need you to send me to Paradise to-night, doctor; my friend Miss Maclean has come."
Mona held out her hand. "Your name is almost as familiar to me as my own," she said. "It is a great pleasure to meet you."
Dr Alice Bateson took the proffered hand without replying, and the two women exchanged a frank critical survey. Both seemed to be satisfied with the result. Dr Bateson had come in without gloves, and with a shawl thrown carelessly about her girlish figure. Her hat had seen palmier days, but its bent brim shaded a pair of earnest brown eyes and a resolute mouth.
"She means work," thought Mona. "There is no humbug about her."
"The girl has some nous," thought the doctor. "She would keep her head in an emergency."
"Well, and how are you?" she said, turning with brusque kindness to Lucy.
"Oh, I am all right—not beyond the need of your stiletto yet, though," and she held out a pretty white arm.
The medical visit did not last more than three minutes. Dr Bateson took no fees from medical students, and she had too many patients on her books to waste much time over them, unless there seemed to be a chance that she could be of definite use, physical or moral. She had spent hours with Lucy when things were at their worst, but minutes were ample now.
"Oh yes. Miss Reynolds will do famously," she said to Mona, who had left the room with her. "Fortunately I was close at hand, and she sent for me in time. With a temperament like hers, the temperature runs up and down very readily, and it went up so quickly that I was rather uneasy, but it never reached a really alarming height. Good night, Miss Maclean. I hope we shall see you at 'The New' before long."
"Thank you; there is nothing I should like better than to work under you at the Women's Hospital," and Mona ran back to Lucy's room.
"Now, my baby," she said caressingly, "I will arrange your pillows, and you shall go to sleep like a good child."
"Sleep," said Lucy dreamily. "I don't sleep. I go through the looking-glass into the queerest, most fantastic world you can imagine. C'est magnifique—mais—ce n'est pas—le—sommeil." She roused herself with a slight effort. "About three I go to sleep, and don't wake till ten. How good it will be to see you beside me in the morning!"
Mr Reynolds came into the room, kissed the little white hand that lay on the counterpane, and then gave Mona his arm.
"You poor child," he said, as they left the room together, "you must be worn out and faint. That is your room, and the sitting-room is just at the foot of the stair. I will leave the door open. Supper is waiting."
A very pleasant hour the two spent together. Mona was at her best with Mr Reynolds,—simple, earnest, off her guard; and as for the clergyman, he was almost always at his best now.
"I felt quite sure you would come," he said, "but I am ashamed to think of the trouble to which you have been put. I hope you have not had a very tiresome journey?"
"I have had a most pleasant journey from Edinburgh. My friend Doris Colquhoun came with me."
"Was that the fair young lady with the children? I was going to ask if you knew her. She had a very pleasing face."
"Yes; the children don't belong to her, but she has been mothering their weary mother. Doris is such a good woman. She does not care a straw for the petty personal things that most of us are occupied with. Even home comforts are a matter of indifference to her. But for animals, and poor women, and the cause of the oppressed generally, she has the enthusiasm of a martyr."
"She looks a mere girl."
"She is about my age; but she is so much less self-centred than I am, that she has always seemed to me a good deal older. She is my mother-confessor, and far too indulgent for the post."
"'A heart at leisure from itself'?"
"Yes, that is Doris all over. I don't believe she ever passed a sleepless night for sorrows of her own. By the way, Lucy says the morphia does not make her sleep."
"So she says, but it seems difficult to draw the line between sleeping and waking when one is under opium. I shall be thankful when Lucy can dispense with the drug, though I shall never forget my gratitude when I first saw the doctor administer it. It seemed to wipe out the pain as a wet sponge wipes out the marks on a slate."
"I know. There is nothing like it. We had a case in hospital of a man who was stabbed in the body. Modern surgery might have saved him, but he came into hospital too late, and they kept him more or less under morphia till the end. Whenever he began to come out of it, he wailed, 'Give me morphia, give me morphia!' and, oh, how unspeakably thankful one was that there was morphia to give him!"
The old man sighed. "It is a difficult subject, the 'mystery of pain.' We believe in its divine mission, and yet our theories vanish in the actual presence of it. When pain has been brought on by sin and folly, and seems morally to have a distinct remedial value, we should surely be very slow to relieve it; and yet how can we, seeing as we do only one little span of existence, judge of remedial value, except on a very small scale?"
"And therefore," said Mona deprecatingly, "we should surely err on the safe side, and be merciful, except in a case that is absolutely clear even to our finite eyes. At the best, the wear and tear of pain lowers our stamina—makes us less fit for the battle of life, more open to temptation."
He sighed again.
"'So runs my dream, but what am I?
An infant crying in the night!'
Ah, well! if we can say at the last day, 'I was not wise, but I tried to be merciful,' I think we shall find forgiveness: and, if we are to find peace and acceptance, so surely must all those whom we have wittingly or unwittingly wronged."
Pleasant as the evening was, Mr Reynolds insisted on making it a very short one.
"No, no. Indeed you shall not sit up with Lucy to-night. You want rest as much as she does. If she still needs any one to-morrow, we will talk about it, but she is progressing by strides." He kissed Mona on the forehead, and she went to her own room, to sleep a long dreamless sleep, broken only by the entrance of the hot water next morning.