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Page 14
Toward morning he remembered that he had promised to write out from
memory one of the Sonnets from the Portuguese for the First
Assistant, and he turned on the light and jotted down two lines of
it. He wrote:
"_For we two look two ways, and cannot shine
With the same sunlight on our brow and hair._"--
And then sat up in bed for half an hour looking at it because he was
so awfully afraid it was true of Jane Brown and himself. Not, of
course, that he wanted to shine at all. It was the looking two ways
that hurt.
The next evening the nurses took their airing on the roof, which was
a sooty place with a parapet, and in the courtyard, which was an
equally sooty place with a wispy fountain. And because the whole
situation was new, they formed in little groups on the wooden
benches and sang, hands folded on white aprons, heads lifted, eyes
upturned to where, above the dimly lighted windows, the stars peered
palely through the smoke.
The S.S.I. sauntered out. He had thought he saw the Probationer from
his window, and in the new relaxation of discipline he saw a chance
to join her. But the figure he had thought he recognised proved to
be some one else, and he fell to wandering alone up and down the
courtyard.
He was trying to work out this problem: would the advantage of
marrying early and thus being considered eligible for certain
cases, offset the disadvantage of the extra expense?
He decided to marry early and hang the expense.
The days went by, three, then four, and a little line of tension
deepened around Jane Brown's mouth. Perhaps it has not been
mentioned that she had a fighting nose, short and straight, and a
wistful mouth. For Johnny Fraser was still lying in a stupor.
Jane Brown felt that something was wrong. Doctor Willie came in once
or twice, making the long trip without complaint and without hope of
payment. All his busy life he had worked for the sake of work, and
not for reward. He called her "Nellie," to the delight of the ward,
which began to love him, and he spent a long hour each time by
Johnny's bed. But the Probationer was quick to realise that the
Senior Surgical Interne disapproved of him.
That young man had developed a tendency to wander into H at odd
hours, and sit on the edge of a table, leaving Jane Brown divided
between proper respect for an _interne_ and fury over the wrinkling
of her table covers. It was during one of these visits that she
spoke of Doctor Willie.
"Because he is a country practitioner," she said, "you--you
patronise him."
"Not at all," said the Senior Surgical Interne. "Personally I like
him immensely."
"Personally!"
The Senior Surgical Interne waved a hand toward Johnny's bed.
"Look there," he said. "You don't think that chap's getting any
better, do you?"
"If," said Jane Brown, with suspicious quiet, "if you think you know
more than a man who has practised for forty years, and saved more
people than you ever saw, why don't you tell him so?"
There is really no defence for this conversation. Discourse between
a probationer and an _interne_ is supposed to be limited to yea,
yea, and nay, nay. But the circumstances were unusual.
"Tell him!" exclaimed the Senior Surgical Interne, "and be called
before the Executive Committee and fired! Dear girl, I am
inexpressibly flattered, but the voice of an _interne_ in a hospital
is the voice of one crying in the wilderness."
Twenty-two, who was out on crutches that day for the first time, and
was looking very big and extremely awkward, Twenty-two looked back
from the elevator shaft and scowled. He seemed always to see a flash
of white duck near the door of H ward.
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