This Golden Land

by Wood, Barbara

  Giving her a brief, puzzled look, he nodded, sharing her concern over this unexpected turn. The patient had been healthy the day before. What had happened since then?

  To the ward attendant, he said, "Instruct Mrs. Butterfield to prepare chlorine sheets and arrange to have bellows brought in and a boy to operate them."

  Hannah knew that hanging sheets soaked in chlorine around an infected patient, and filling the air with pungent fumigating smoke, were the standard practice for fighting infectious fevers. Nonetheless, she reached into her bag and brought out a small bottle of her iodine preparation. "Dr. Iverson, might I ask you to instruct your doctors to wash their hands in this before they examine the other patients? Especially if they see to Nellie first."

  "Why?"

  "As an extra precaution, in case the fever is not spread through the air but on human hands."

  He looked at the small bottle, finding himself more aware of the slender hand that held it than the medicine itself, taking note that there was no wedding band. "What is it?"

  "An iodine solution that I have made myself. It is a mild antiseptic." Strange talk from such a lovely young lady, Iverson thought. "I am not convinced that hand washing has any significant impact, negative or positive, on a person's health," he said. "But I have read the recent literature from Europe, and some put forth a good argument for the so-called germ theory. And as you say, extra precaution cannot hurt. However, I cannot subject my staff to an unknown formula that, for all I know, will cause the flesh to fall off their fingers. But I will order a basin of chlorinated water to be placed at the entry of the ward."

  He paused, giving Hannah a frank study, suddenly realizing that she seemed familiar to him, as if they had met before, then he said, "I am curious. Might I ask how you know about childbed fever?"

  Hannah handed him her card. He lifted an eyebrow as he read it. "Health practitioner? What exactly does a 'health practitioner' do, Miss Conroy?"

  Hannah thought Sir Marcus handsome in a severe way—patrician was the word that came to mind—and when he lifted his eyebrow in that manner, he reminded her of Lord Falconbridge. "I deliver babies," she said, "but I also manage wounds, dispense medicines, give advice on health and hygiene, and instruct families in how to take care of their loved ones who are sick."

  His dark eyes scrutinized her. There was that nagging feeling again that they had met before. "And what is your training?"

  Hannah had learned how to offer a professional presentation of herself. Whereas she would have once said, "My father was a doctor," she now replied, "I apprenticed with my father, who was a medical doctor. I trained at a London Hospital. I assisted a ship's surgeon for six months. And in Adelaide, I was a medical assistant to a prominent physician."

  Iverson gave her a thoughtful look. Miss Conroy did not look like a flimflam artist or a charlatan. She had seemed to know how to properly use a binaural stethoscope, and she had correctly diagnosed childbed fever.

  He didn't know what to make of her. Sir Marcus was fifty-two years old and considered himself a man of the world. And yet never in all his experience had an unescorted lady boldly introduced herself to him, offering her card! But, according to her curriculum vitae, for want of a better term, she was a professional woman, in a league by herself, and he was both baffled and intrigued. Miss Conroy was attractive, in her mid-twenties, and unmarried. Calling herself a health practitioner, showing resourcefulness and courage. A young lady with a head on her shoulders. And who was somehow familiar to him. "I beg your pardon," he said, "but have we met?"

  "We have. It was at the home of Blanche Sinclair, last year, a fête that she held for a charitable cause."

  "Yes, I remember now. Forgive me." Sir Marcus was astonished with himself. When he had decided to put Blanche Sinclair out of his mind, apparently he had put her friends out of his mind as well. But that meeting, last year, at Blanche's residence came back to him now, and his first impressions of Miss Conroy as being an attractive young lady, friendly but reserved, and that he had sensed a curious sadness about her, as if she had just lost something or someone dear to her.

  "Will you be attending the charity ball tonight, Dr. Iverson, at Addison's Hotel?" Hannah asked.

  Sir Marcus had received Blanche's invitation and had immediately thrown it away, having no intention of attending her charity ball tonight, or any other event that Mrs. Sinclair might put on. Not after what happened a year ago. But now, with the charming Miss Conroy smiling at him in what looked like such an inviting way. . .

  "If my schedule allows," he said, recalling the old expression about cutting one's nose off to spite one's face. It would be foolish to deny himself the pleasure of this young lady's friendship because of his ill feelings toward Blanche Sinclair.

  Sir Marcus found himself, in the next moment, thinking of the amateur rowing competition that was going to take place on the Yarra River next month. It would be Melbourne's first sweep-oared regatta and was to be modeled after the Henley Regatta held annually on the Thames. He wondered if Miss Conroy would like to accompany him and share a picnic lunch on the river's bank.

  As he slipped her card into his pocket, Sir Marcus said, "You understand, Miss Conroy, that Nellie is now a patient of this hospital. She is no longer your charge, so I will have to ask you not to disturb her or interfere with my staff in any way."

  "May I ask where the baby is?"

  "Nellie was unable to nurse last night, so her neighbor, who was visiting, took the baby to be wetnursed by her daughter. I bid you a good day, Miss Conroy," he said, and could not help watch as she walked down the length of the noisy ward, could not help thinking what a fine figure she cut. . .

  Outside on the wooden sidewalk, Hannah paused to collect herself beneath the spring sunshine. It was November, flowers were in bloom, and summer was coming. But now a dark cloud hung over her. How on earth had poor Nellie contracted the deadly childbed fever?

  Hannah had left her small carriage in front of the hospital, the horse tethered to a hitching post. She paused to look back at Victoria Hospital as horses clip-clopped past in the dusty street.

  The hospital was really just a substantial stone house with two wards: male and female. There was no surgical theater, just a bench kept out of sight and out of hearing of the wards. The kitchen and laundry were outbuildings. There was a downstairs room for treating walk-in patients, an office where records were kept, and Dr. Iverson's office. Lighting was by candles and oil lamps, water was drawn from a well, solid waste was deposited in an open cess-pit in the rear.

  The building stood in the middle of vacant land covered in brush and tree stumps, but the government had recently increased the land grant so that the scrubby grounds stretched through to Russell Street, and now the vacant lot was being leveled for landscaping, with plans for the building of a bathhouse for the patients. There was even talk of installing gas lighting by 1856.

  Although having a hospital for the poor was a noble achievement—all credit to Sir Marcus Iverson—it still wasn't the answer to the many ills that plagued crowded Melbourne. In the sixteen months since the discovery of gold in the north, the city had been inundated by a massive influx of immigrants from all over the world, all coming to seek their fortune. The result of such uncontrolled overcrowding was outbreaks of disease.

  The little statue of Hygeia that Dr. Davenport had given Hannah stood prominently on her fireplace mantel, a reminder that the daughter of the god Aesculapius was the goddess of hygiene, and therefore the goddess who prevented disease. It was Hannah's dream to write and publish a comprehensive home health manual and educate people in hygiene, nutrition, safety, proper nursing care. She had collected an impressive body of her own learning, and wanted to share it with others. All the things she had learned from Dr. Applewhite, Dr. Davenport—even Lulu Forchette ("For chronic abdominal gas, a daily cup of buttermilk does the trick.")—and in her travels around the countryside, would go into the book. But so far Hannah had not found the time to even begin suc
h a major undertaking. Along with her demanding practice, she was still searching for the answer to the mystery of her father's dying words. Hannah had assumed he had meant the iodine preparation was a universal cure-all. But in the past four years, she had discovered that it was not so.

  She looked up and down the street, congested with carriages and men on horseback, the stage coach from Sydney, the overland postal coach from Adelaide. The day was warm. Reaching into her bag, she brought out a folded handkerchief with which to pat her forehead, but when she saw the initials, she stopped. This was not a handkerchief to be used but carried as a cherished memento.

  "Don't you get lonely?" her friend Blanche had once asked, and Hannah knew she was referring to male companionship. But Hannah wasn't interested in a man, not with the loss of Neal still felt too sharply.

  The day of the headline about the expedition perishing in the desert, Hannah had gone around to newspaper offices for further details. But they only knew the sketchy story that had arrived via travelers from Western Australia. Hannah had then written to the colonial authorities in Perth, to receive the insupportable response that Sir Reginald and his entire company had been slaughtered by hostile Aborigines. "A lone survivor," the report had said, "made it to Perth, one Archie Tice, a surveyor with the expedition. He took a horse when hostilities broke out and, galloping away, had looked back and seen horrific fiery explosions, killing all. Mr. Tice barely made it to a Christian mission in the Outback to report on what happened, and then he himself succumbed to the extreme exposure he had suffered."

  "There you are!"

  Hannah turned to see her friend, Blanche Sinclair, draw up in an elegant barouche pulled by two horses. A groom sat next to the liveried driver, and a young lady in a maid's costume sat opposite Mrs. Sinclair as they rode with the top down. A little on the plump side, with shiny red-brown hair swept up under the latest style bonnet, Blanche was thirty but her deeply dimpled cheeks and a chin that narrowed to a point made her look younger. Blanche was immensely rich, her husband having made smart investments in copper and silver, shipping and wool. His death from a fall had left her well provided for. Blanche managed her inheritance with fine business acumen, knew how to spot fortune hunters, and had more friends, Hannah often thought, than Australia had gum trees.

  "I've just been to your house," Blanche said from beneath the shade of her pink parasol. "Mrs. Sparrow said you came in from the country this morning and that you went straight out again. I thought you didn't like to put your patients in the hospital."

  "I don't. Her friends brought her here."

  "You look worried, Hannah. Is your patient going to be all right?"

  "I suspect she has childbed fever, and yes, I am very worried. But Dr. Iverson is taking the proper precautions. I pray it doesn't spread."

  Blanche's eyes flew open. "You spoke with Marcus?"

  Hannah caught the look of sudden hope in Blanche's eyes and, knowing how her friend felt about the distinguished doctor, wished she had something more positive to report. "He didn't recognize me at first. Of course, this is the first time I've spoken with Dr. Iverson since he and I met at your house last year. When I reminded him of that meeting, he remembered me."

  Color rose in Blanche's cheeks. "Did he say anything about tonight's ball?" In the past year, Blanche had sent Marcus Iverson invitations to several events she had organized, and he had responded with regrets to each. She was beginning to despair of ever mending the rift she had unwittingly caused in their friendship, for she still had very deep feelings for Sir Marcus.

  Blanche glanced toward the hospital entrance and Hannah saw both fear and longing in her eyes. Then Blanche brightened her smile and said, "The tickets to tonight's gala are sold out. Thanks to dear Alice. Everyone wants to hear her sing."

  "She is more than happy to put on a private performance. It is for a good cause after all."

  Four years ago, after receiving the news of Neal's death, Hannah had thrown herself into her work, finding solace and escape in studying medical texts. When she had exhausted Adelaide's limited resources, she had made the decision to leave that small city and move to Sydney. At the same time, Alice had begun to feel the limitations of Mr. Glass's music hall, finding in herself the need to share her music and joy with larger audiences. And so together the two friends had decided to make new lives for themselves elsewhere (and as luck would have it, Sam Glass was happy to let Alice out of her contract as he was having an affair with a trapeze artist who performed on stage in little more than tights and a ruffled corset, and who had declared that there could only be one star performer at the Elysium). And so together Alice and Hannah had left Adelaide in search of bigger dreams, but when they had fallen in love with Melbourne during their ship's one-day layover, they had decided to stay.

  Alice now sang for packed audiences at the Queen's Theatre on the south-west corner of Queen and Little Bourke Streets. Her nickname, "Australian Songbird," earned in Adelaide, had followed her to Melbourne, where she was the toast of the town.

  "Will you be escorted tonight, Hannah?"

  "I will be coming alone."

  Blanche shook her head in friendly exasperation. "Only you, darling, could pull it off. A lady going about on her own!" But Blanche was secretly impressed, and proud of her friend's accomplishments.

  When Hannah first arrived in Melbourne, she had put notices in newspapers and on public boards all around town, had given her card to doctors and chemists, but patients had been slow to come. And then she had thought: women spread information through word of mouth rather than the printed word. And so she had gone out and introduced herself to seamstresses, hairdressers, hat makers, handing them her card and informing them of her services. Blanche Sinclair had learned about Hannah from the woman who monogrammed her handkerchiefs. And she had come to Hannah's office trembling, frightened, with no where else to turn—one of the wealthiest women in the colonies, turning in desperation to a stranger who called herself a health practitioner.

  Blanche had been bathing one morning and discovered a lump in her right breast. She had gone at once to her regular doctor, a man who didn't even touch her but had asked her to describe the lump to him. After she had done so, he had gravely pronounced that the breast must be amputated. Two more doctors delivered the same diagnosis and bad news, once again without touching her for that would have been highly improper. And then Blanche had heard of a lady practitioner who specialized in women's problems, and was surprised when Miss Conroy had said, "We must determine what the lump consists of."

  Disrobing to her camisole, Blanche had reclined on an examining table. Hannah had first delicately probed the lump with her fingertips, rolling it around, saying, "Does this hurt? How about now?" Finally she had said, "I do not believe it is cancer. Freely mobile lumps like this are usually benign. Those that are fixed and ill-defined tend to be malignant. However, there is a further test, to make sure."

  Using a thin metal tube sharpened at one end, which Hannah called a trocar, and attached to a slender rubber hose, she had gently inserted it into the skin. Although it had been painful, Blanche had borne the discomfort because the test hadn't lasted long. A dose of laudanum first, and then brief insertion. Almost at once Miss Conroy had said, "It is not cancer. It is a cyst. This straw-colored fluid that I removed from the lump is proof." After the cyst was drained and the wound bandaged, Blanche dressed while Hannah gave her a prescription for laudanum and explained, "Please keep an eye for infection, although I disinfected my instruments."

  That was three years ago and they had been friends since.

  Blanche's endless praise of Melbourne's new "doctress" resulted in more patients than Hannah could handle. And she had learned that it wasn't just healing skills they sought. There was the fact that she was a woman with none of the mortifying embarrassment one had with a male doctor. Hannah's touch was light and gentle, they all declared, unlike some male physicians who could be quite ham-fisted.

  "By the way," Blanche said n
ow, "there's been a last minute addition to our showing tonight. Cecily has discovered another artist."

  Hannah smiled. Cecily Aldridge collected artists the way other people collected art.

  "This one is a photographer. An American. Newly arrived in Melbourne and Cecily persuaded him to exhibit ten of his pieces tonight. She says his work is absolutely brilliant and that we should raise considerable funds through sales of his works."

  "American?" Hannah said, suddenly hearing a pounding in her ears. "Do . . ." she struggled for breath, "do you know his name?"

  "I met him just now, hanging his pictures at Addison's. His name is Neal Scott, and he is new to Melbourne as he has just recently arrived from Sydney with his fiancée."

  40

  B

  LANCHE SINCLAIR WRUNG HER HANDS NERVOUSLY, PRAYING that her charity ball went successfully. Praying also that Dr. Marcus Iverson decided to come.

  The gala event took place at the new Addison's Hotel on Collins Street, a four-story building of local bluestone, with a façl;ade of columns and arches and large plate glass windows. Addison's boasted two hundred rooms, a ballroom, a barbershop and four restaurants, and tonight was its official opening. Blanche had approached the wealthy owner with an intriguing proposal: that he celebrate the launch of his grand establishment—the biggest hostelry in Melbourne—with a social event put on for raising funds for an orphanage. The best and richest of Melbourne society would attend, Blanche had assured him, and think of the poor motherless children.

  Suspecting that giving her rich friends a glimpse into the new hotel might not be enough, she hit upon the idea of an art show, featuring Melbourne's established and promising artists. With the addition of champagne, a string quartet and a solo performance by Alice Star, Blanche was certain they would raise enough funds to begin construction on a new orphanage.

  Up and down the street, lamplighters with their familiar long poles were going about the business of lighting the candles in street lamps, each glass globe giving off a comfortable glow against the night. The front of Addison's had been decorated with additional lanterns, and bright light spilled from the large plate glass windows as elegantly dressed people arrived in fancy carriages and walked two by two through the brightly lit entrance of the hotel. Although a few gentlemen arrived alone, and some ladies arrived in pairs or groups, only one lady stepped down from her carriage and walked along the red carpet unescorted. But everyone knew Hannah Conroy and so they were not surprised.