Vigil in the Night

by A. J. Cronin

  There came a lull in the traffic in the street outside. The cafe was suddenly very still. It seemed as though Lucy’s future, her spiritual welfare, the whole balance of her life were poised acutely in the balance.

  Then, with a gesture of resolution that made her more like Anne than ever, she answered, “I want to go to Bryngower. I want to go at once.”

  CHAPTER 50

  Prescott awoke next morning with a mingled sense of achievement and relief. Whatever it might have cost him professionally, he had done what he had set out to do. Now he felt that he must reap the personal reward that was his due. He proposed to tell Anne that he loved her. He was on his way to breakfast when the telephone rang. It was Lowe.

  “Good morning.” Lowe’s tone was brief. “How do you feel? Any regrets?”

  “None whatever.”

  “Not even after this morning’s papers?”

  “I haven’t looked at them.”

  “Well!” Lowe spoke with gentle irony. “That’s one way of dodging the brickbats. He paused, then added bluntly, “I’m afraid I was right, Prescott. I saw Ogilvy last night. The clinic is off the government menu.”

  Strangely, Lowe’s news did not dismay Prescott. He answered, “It can’t be helped, my dear fellow. In fact, you prepared me for it. And it doesn’t alter my indebtedness to you.”

  Prescott’s spirits were undamped. He breakfasted with more appetite than he had shown for weeks. Then he went into his consulting room to await his first case. Almost immediately the bell rang. But it was not his case. It was Anne.

  Taken unawares, he started forward to greet her. She was radiant. She took his hand and began to thank him.

  “It isn’t just that you’ve helped Lucy out of this dreadful business. You’ve helped her to a new enthusiasm, a new beginning. This idea that she should go to Wales—why, it was an inspiration!”

  “I’m glad.” Prescott straightened some papers on his desk. The beauty of her smile, the sweetness of her unexpected presence made him unaccountably nervous. “It’ll be hard work, of course. And dangerous. She must be careful. Cerebro-spinal fever is no joke.”

  “Nurses don’t expect it to be a joke.” Anne laughed outright, so filled was she with happiness, with burning enthusiasm.

  A silence fell, then, glancing at her sideways, he said, in a voice that was formal because of his embarrassment, “I wonder if you would care to lunch with me today? It would give me great pleasure. And there is—there is so much I want to say to you.”

  Her face altered, and a shade of disappointment came upon it. She answered, “I’m so sorry. But the train leaves for Cardiff at half-past one.”

  “That isn’t too late. We can lunch together when your sister has gone.”

  “But don’t you understand, Dr. Prescott? I’m going, too.”

  “You, too?” he gasped, taken aback.

  She made a firm, happy gesture of concurrence. “Miss Melville has given me permission—what a dear she has been!”

  “But—” He could not speak.

  “I wouldn’t have dreamed of letting Lucy go alone. It’s just at this point that she needs someone near her, someone to encourage her when she gets tired and depressed. Besides,” she smiled again, “as you said yourself, there’s danger. What kind of sister would I be to stay here and let her face it by herself?”

  His expression was really serious now. He confronted her earnestly. “Please don’t go. I have a very special reason for asking you not to go.”

  “But I don’t understand.” Her tone was puzzled and upset. “What possible objection can you have?”

  How could he tell her outright? Her very unawareness made it difficult. “I don’t care to think of you nursing these fever cases,” he muttered.

  “It’s my work,” she answered. “It’s what I want to do, with all my heart and soul. There’s nothing I wish to do more.”

  He stared at her with a drawn and furrowed brow. “Nothing you wish to do more than nurse?”

  “Of course. It’s my career. It’s my life. Don’t you see how happy it makes me? It’s wonderful to be going with Lucy to Bryngower. And all of it due to you!”

  A heavy bar of silence fell within the room. He felt a pressure on his temples, a weight upon his heart. In one swift moment all the reckless joy of his awakening was gone.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “I can see it makes you happy. I didn’t quite realize at first. But now I understand.” He added heavily, almost with a note of bitterness, “At least you’ll let me see you to the station.”

  CHAPTER 51

  About six o’clock that evening Anne and Lucy reached Bryngower and stepped out of the train onto the little windswept platform. It was a strange, neglected township, lying midway between the mountains, in the narrow valley of the Gower, a dirty, yellow stream. Remote and desolate, surrounded by bleak uplands and the scarred workings of the mines, with rows and rows of workers’ houses huddled beneath the smoke and shadow of the belching blast furnaces, it seemed the last place that God had made.

  This, indeed, was Anne’s impression as she set out from the station with Lucy in the decrepit gig which they had found awaiting them. While they drove along, she essayed to get some information from their driver.

  “Is it far to the hospital?” she asked.

  “About two mile. But it ain’t a hospital.”

  “Not a hospital?” Anne stared at him in surprise.

  He chuckled grimly. “’Tis the old smallpox infirmary. Built fifty years back. ’Tis all we’ve got, and us has to make it do.”

  The first view Anne and Lucy had of this makeshift edifice was far from reassuring. Squat and darkly roofed, it lay upon a dismal stretch of muddy ground like a crouching beast. A newer erection of asbestos and wood flanked the main building—it was the nurses’ home. Toward this ramshackle hut they made their way.

  This was far beyond their wildest expectation. The narrow cubicle they were called upon to share had walls of matchboard, a tin roof upon which the rain now drummed heavily, and a window with a broken pane. Mildewed patches on the floor and walls indicated the dampness.

  CHAPTER 52

  As the two sisters silently took stock of their quarters, steps echoed in the corridor and a dark-haired, elderly woman appeared. Harassed and heavy-eyed, her gray uniform bunched about her drooping figure, she conveyed the impression of being at the end of her resources. She gave them a pale smile of welcome.

  “Glad to see you both. I am Miss James—in charge here. Did you have a good journey? I am afraid your room is not very comfortable. But we are so pushed—so dreadfully, dreadfully pushed.” Her disjointed remarks tailed off; she moved her hands jerkily. Anne could see the nerve twitching under her left eye. “You’ll find supper in the living room. Anyhow, some kind of meal. I’m afraid it will be cold, though. We’re so dreadfully, dreadfully pushed. You’ll find the duty sheet in there, also. I’m sorry to ask you to take over tonight, but I must. We’re so dreadfully, dreadfully—”

  Anne felt the dreary, mechanical phrase coming even before it left the tired matron’s lips. There was a pause. Then, with another wan smile, Miss James went out.

  Lucy turned to Anne, and said, with her newfound soberness, “She’s at her wit’s end, poor creature.”

  The two girls washed as best they could in the enamel basin provided. Then, having changed into uniforms, they marched along to the living room for supper.

  One glance revealed to them how drab and meager was the repast. They sat down at the table and began. A few minutes later sounds reverberated in the matchboard corridor, and a batch of five nurses entered. They came in without speech, tired out from their protracted duty, and addressed themselves without comment to the stale, tinned food. Their uniforms, of varying pattern, indicated that they had come from different hospitals.

  Anne was not deterred by the indifference of their reception. Seated next to her was an old nurse with an open, human face. Anne smiled at her.

  The o
ther woman, whose name was Davies, at first seemed uncommunicative. But she thawed under Anne’s advances. Soon, in an undertone, she was presenting a short yet illuminating review of the situation at Bryngower.

  There were fifty-four cases of cerebro-spinal fever in this travesty of a hospital, and the numbers were increasing daily. The disease, of a virulent type, had been brought to the vicinity by a seaman from the Cardiff docks. On his arrival he had promptly sickened and died of it. Since then they had buried another forty cases.

  Lately an appeal had been made to the central health authority, who had sent down from London a medical commissioner, Doctor Hespley. This office boy, as Nurse Davies contemptuously called him, was proving to be no more than a tintype bureaucrat, whose chief idea—a departmental instruction—was to prevent publicity’s being given to the epidemic.

  The local practitioners, though badly handicapped, were doing their part nobly—especially old Dr. Forrest, a rough yet priceless diamond, who, despite Hespley’s attempted intervention, was virtually in charge of the medical services. It was he who had diagnosed the first case, he who had originally sent for serum. If only Miss James had shown something of his stamina and courage, signs of a limitation of the epidemic might be in sight. But she was now confronted by a task far beyond her resources. And she was, alas, rapidly going to pieces under the strain.

  Anne and Lucy listened to Nurse Davies’ recital with tense interest. It was Lucy who spoke first.

  “I think the sooner we get into the ward and make a start, the better.”

  It was a long, low ward, poorly lit by three shaded oil lamps. So closely packed were the beds their red blanket covers made a double continuous line. It bore that air of chaos, of indescribable confusion, induced by a desperate and hasty battle against death. Ice packs dripped on the center table, bottles stood uncorked in disarray, charts were askew.

  Anne’s practised eye compassed the scene in one comprehensive glance. She knew the difficulties, the emergencies involved; but no difficulty and no emergency should have left the ward like this. She made no comment to the nurse they were relieving. Nor did she give any command to Lucy. They simply started, by common consent, to restore order.

  By ten o’clock, after two hours’ constant labor, they had effected a striking change in the appearance of the ward. Then, just as Anne was about to signal Lucy to take a breathing spell, the door flew open and a man strode into the ward. He was a great, lumbering figure, with shaggy gray hair that badly needed cutting, a rough, ill-fitting brown tweed suit, and a veined, much-wrinkled, heavy-browed face, out of which glinted wise old eyes. From Nurse Davies’ description Anne knew him at once as Dr. Forrest.

  Forrest’s entry had been abrupt. But at the sight of the ward, so different now in its tranquility and order, the old doctor drew up short. He glanced around, missing nothing in that choleric, intensive scrutiny. Finally his gaze came to rest on Anne and Lucy. He made no remark on the improvement in the ward’s condition. His eyes bored into them in silence.

  Then he barked, “You’ve just come. Where are ye from?”

  “London.” Anne was as laconic as he.

  And for this she won a grudging nod.

  “Come around with me,” he grunted. “The pair of ye. There’s work here for a couple of real nurses. And, by the grace of God, ye look as though ye were something more than dummies.”

  CHAPTER 53

  Neither Anne nor Lucy had nursed cerebro-spinal fever before; but now they experienced the devastating force of an infection far surpassing, in terror and malignancy, the worst form of tropic plague. Many of the cases at Bryngower were of the apoplectic type. The unhappy individual, apparently quite well, would be stricken with violent shivering, headache, and frightful spasms. Then would come stupor. Within twenty hours the doomed patient would be dead.

  Anne worried so intensely that she could not sleep at night. She knew only too well the root cause of the infirmary’s inefficiency. Miss James was a well-intentioned woman, but she was utterly and hopelessly unfitted to command the present crisis. Only the stickling authority of Dr. Hespley kept her in Bryngower. Miss James, like himself, was an official of the Health Ministry. No matter that Dr. Forrest raved and stormed. To a mind that moved in terms of pensions, promotion, and the neat initialing of departmental returns, to displace her was unthinkable.

  Then, about twelve days after the arrival of Lucy and Anne, Providence quietly intervened. Miss James broke down.

  “I’ll notify my department immediately,” said Hespley. He was long, dry, and precise, with gold-rimmed pince-nez on his high-bridged nose. “We’ll get a replacement by the end of the week.”

  “We’ve got one now,” Forrest declared bluntly. “We’re making Sister Lee head of the nursing staff.”

  CHAPTER 54

  Forrest did not await the other doctor’s answer. He walked out to break the news to Anne. He found her, as usual, in her ward. “Well!” he declared grimly. “I want to be the first to congratulate our new matron.”

  She stood very still, her eyes remote, a spot of color on either cheek, strangely moved by the knowledge of what lay before her. At last she was in charge of a community of nurses; at last she could put into practice what she had longed and hoped for all her life. Rapidly she outlined her program. She had thought of it so often during the long watches of the night that it was perfect and complete.

  “I must have more nurses, Doctor. I know where to get them. You see, I’m going to put our nurses on eight-hour-duty stretches instead of the eleven hours they’re doing now. Also, I want to send some out on house-to-house visiting. Then we simply must have better accommodation for them. And better food. Everything depends on the nursing in these fever cases. You can’t have superlative nursing from tired-out, underfed, badly housed nurses. We’ve been living on cold scraps for the past fortnight. It’s beyond all sense and reason. Why should nurses be treated worse than scullery maids? I want hot soups and good hot meats for them. I’ll find a cook somewhere. I’ll reorganize the kitchen. And I want outside living accommodation. Some of the nurses must still live in that abominable hut, I suppose. But I’ve got to have a better place for the others. There’s a small temperance hotel just outside the town. It’s practically empty at the moment, and though it’s old-fashioned, it’s solid and comfortable. I want to commandeer that hotel, Doctor. I want a free hand with the grocer, the butcher, the milkman, and the chemist. I promise you I’ll waste nothing. I’m thinking only of the essentials, supplies of war—only this war is to save life, not destroy it!”

  She broke off, quite out of breath, afraid that she had offended him by saying too much. He did not speak for a full minute, his small eyes drilling her with their penetrating regard. Then he held out his hand, gave hers a long, firm clasp.

  My dear,” he said, in a curiously gentle voice, “we’re together in this—till the end.”

  She hurried to the town. Her first visit was to the post office. Here she sent off two wires. One was to Susan Gladstone, secretary of the Union, asking for six specially selected nurses. The other she sent jointly to Nora and Glennie, in Manchester, asking them to move heaven and earth to join her.

  Next evening six new nurses arrived from the Union. Anne herself showed them to their comfortable quarters in the temperance hotel. And straightaway she set her eight-hour shift in action. The reaction to the innovation was incredible. At the end of a few days Anne heaved a great sigh of thanksgiving. Her team was working marvelously, no longer a group of apathetic individuals, but a welded, fighting unit.

  On the following Monday Nora and Glennie arrived. Somehow they had obtained permission, by a miracle persuaded the Bruiser to relent. Anne stole a precious half-hour and, taking Lucy with her, went to meet them at Bryngower station.

  It was a reunion such as none of them had ever visioned, on the gusty platform against the background of the gloomy, frightened town; yet it lost nothing in affection because of that.

  Laughing and talk
ing, the four nurses left the station. Though the thought never crossed their minds, they paid resounding tribute to their own profession. They were going, at the risk of their lives, to nurse a deadly disease. Yet they did so with gaiety, with bright, unflinching courage.

  Later, Anne said to Lucy, hesitantly, “I’m so glad you and Nora and Glennie have taken to each other. I’ve got a marvelous big room for the three of you at the hotel. I’ve really been worried about your room here. It’s damp and horrible.”

  “And what about you? Are you going to the hotel?”

  “Oh, no, I must stay here.”

  Lucy smiled quietly. “Then I’m staying, too. You don’t think that I’m going to let you stop in this dump while I wallow in comfort. No thank you, darling. I’m not running myself that way, now. Besides, if you did send me to the hotel, they’d all say you were favoring me because I am your sister. And finally, if you must know the truth, I want to stick beside you.”

  Anne’s eyes misted. Deeply touched, she did not press the point. She said instead, “There’s another matter. And here you can’t argue. Here I must have my way. It isn’t favoritism. It isn’t anything but real and solid merit, Lucy. You’ve worked wonderfully since we came here. In my opinion you’re the best nurse in the house. I’ve spoken to Dr. Forrest about it, and he agrees. Lucy, we’re starting another ward on the first floor—for the children. We want you, I want you, to be the new ward sister.”

  Lucy clasped her hands together. Overcome, she could not, for a moment, speak. Then she said in a low voice, “Thank you, Anne. That’s the best news of my whole life.”

  CHAPTER 55

  The new children’s ward was opened, the new sister was in charge. It gave Anne a warm expansion of her heart to see Lucy in her fresh uniform, so serious and intent, so conscious of her responsibility, and so eager to fulfill it.