An Act in a Backwater

by E. F. Benson

“But I’m no better?” she asked again.

“That was one of the questions which we settled not to ask,” said Jeannie. “When you are quite well you will get up. Till then, nothing, nothing.”

Half an hour more sufficed to finish the round, and she went into the next ward to watch the man who was so restless. For nearly an hour she had to sit close by his bedside, with her hands continually pressing on his shoulders to prevent his getting up. He was more than half unconscious and wandering in his talk, saying things now and then which ten days ago would have made Jeannie turn from him in horror and disgust. But now she had nothing of that left, only pure pity and the one great end in view to let none of these poor people die.

Then when Nurse James had finished her round she came back to her, and by then it was time to get the patients’ food. Some of the more advanced and progressing cases were already allowed Mellin’s Food, but for the most it was still only milk and beef-tea.

At mid-day she had a couple of hours’ interval, usually returned home to lunch, and went afterward for a walk. But to-day she felt too fagged and too sick at heart to do more than sit in the garden and beneath the pitiless leaden cowl of the sky. The effort of appearing cheerful and remaining cheering was too great, and when alone she abandoned herself to a sort of resigned hopelessness. Just before leaving the ward she had seen the terrible screen put up round the bed of the girl who was dying. That was all the privacy that could be given her. She almost hoped that when she got back the end would have come; only two days before she had sat in the still and awe-struck ward while a woman passed through her last hours. She had heard the wandering, inarticulate cries; she had counted her breaths through the long, pitiless silences; she had shut her teeth hard to bear, without screaming audibly, that one last exclamation in which the spirit clutches with unavailing hands not to be torn away from the inert body, the one last convulsive breath in which the body tries to retain it, and she thought she could hardly bear it again. Then she cudgelled and contemned herself for her paltry, selfish cowardice. Was there ever, she thought, a girl so puny-spirited?

During these ten days in which she had been nursing the epidemic had showed no signs of abatement. Sometimes for a couple of days the return of the fresh cases was suddenly diminished, and once when Jeannie went to the hospital at eight in the morning to take up her duties they told her that there had been no fresh cases reported since the night before. But on all these occasions the lull was only temporary, and in the next twelve hours there would perhaps be seventy more reported. She pictured the disease to herself like some hideous monster which would lie down to sleep for a few hours after one of its gigantic meals, and then, when the victims were digested, would rise up again and clutch at them with his hot hands. Once as she was leaving the hospital Dr. Maitland had called her into his consulting-room to ask her a question about one of her patients, and as she rose to go he had said:

“Would you like to see what is the matter with all these people?”

He pointed to a microscope which stood on the table, and Jeannie looked through it at the drop of water which was beneath the lenses.

“There are a quantity of typhoid bacilli in that,” he said; “they are long and black, with one pointed end, rather like pencils.”

He adjusted the light for her, and among the infinitesimal denizens of the water she saw five or six little dark lines seemingly as lifeless as the rest. She drew back with a shudder.