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Page 59
She was a very pretty Probationer.
"She hasn't much to look forward to, you know."
The Probationer was not accustomed to discussing certain things with
young men, but she had the Avenue Girl on her mind.
"She has a home--she admits it." She coloured bravely. "Why--why
cannot she go back to it, even now?"
The _interne_ poured a little rosewater and glycerine into the palm
of one hand and gave the Probationer the bottle. If his fingers
touched hers, she never knew it.
"Perhaps they'd not want her after--well, they'd never feel the
same, likely. They'd probably prefer to think of her as dead and let
it go at that. There--there doesn't seem to be any way back, you
know."
He was exceedingly self-conscious.
"Then life is very cruel," said the Probationer with rather shaky
lips.
And going back to the Avenue Girl's bed she filled her cup with ice
and straightened her pillows. It was her only way of showing
defiance to a world that mutilated its children and turned them out
to die. The _interne_ watched her as she worked. It rather galled
him to see her touching this patient. He had no particular sympathy
for the Avenue Girl. He was a man, and ruthless, as men are apt to
be in such things.
The Avenue Girl had no visitors. She had had one or two at
first--pretty girls with tired eyes and apologetic glances; a
negress who got by the hall porter with a box of cigarettes, which
the Senior promptly confiscated; and--the Dummy. Morning and evening
came the Dummy and stood by her bed and worshipped. Morning and
evening he brought tribute--a flower from the masses that came in
daily; an orange, got by no one knows what trickery from the
kitchen; a leadpencil; a box of cheap candies. At first the girl had
been embarrassed by his visits. Later, as the unfriendliness of the
ward grew more pronounced, she greeted him with a faint smile. The
first time she smiled he grew quite pale and shuffled out. Late that
night they found him sitting in the chapel looking at the window,
which was only a blur.
For certain small services in the ward the Senior depended on the
convalescents--filling drinking cups; passing milk at eleven and
three; keeping the white bedspreads in geometrical order. But the
Avenue Girl was taboo. The boycott had been instituted by Old
Maggie. The rampant respectability of the ward even went so far as
to refuse to wash her in those early morning hours when the night
nurse, flying about with her cap on one ear, was carrying tin basins
about like a blue-and-white cyclone. The Dummy knew nothing of the
washing; the early morning was the time when he polished the brass
doorplate which said: Hospital and Free Dispensary. But he knew
about the drinking cup and after a time that became his
self-appointed task.
On Sundays he put on his one white shirt and a frayed collar two
sizes too large and went to chapel. At those times he sat with his
prayer book upside down and watched the Probationer who cared for
his lady and who had no cap to hide her shining hair, and the
_interne_, who was glad there was no cap because of the hair. God's
fool he was, indeed, for he liked to look in the _interne's_ eyes,
and did not know an _interne_ cannot marry for years and years, and
that a probationer must not upset discipline by being engaged. God's
fool, indeed, who could see into the hearts of men, but not into
their thoughts or their lives; and who, seeing only thus, on two
dimensions of life and not the third, found the Avenue Girl holy and
worthy of all worship!
* * * * *
The Probationer worried a great deal.
"It must hurt her so!" she said to the Senior. "Did you see them
call that baby away on visiting day for fear she would touch it?"
"None are so good as the untempted," explained the Senior, who had
been beautiful and was now placid and full of good works. "You
cannot remake the world, child. Bodies are our business here--not
souls." But the next moment she called Old Maggie to her.
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