nurse.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“No doubt,” he returned with that cool and cutting irony. “But you are no more sorry than I. Your predilection for the dramatic has effectively ruined any chance I ever had of achieving my clinic in Manchester. I have to thank you for a very pretty piece of bungling.”
She could not speak. Fighting back her tears, she could merely hang her head. There was a pause.
He still did not look at her. Then he concluded: “I don’t know what your plans are. Indeed, I have no wish to know. But I imagine that, leaving the Hepperton like this, you may have some difficulty in finding an adequate position. I have no wish, in fairness, that your actual nursing service here should pass unrecognized. If you take this letter to the matron of the London Trafalgar Hospital, she will look after you suitably. Good-bye, Nurse Lee.”
Brokenly she accepted the unsealed envelope he held out to her. He did not offer to shake hands. There was nothing that she could say. And so she turned and, with an agonizing sense of defeat, walked slowly from the room.
CHAPTER 34
As she made her way toward Ward C, the theatre sister stopped her.
“What’s the matter, Lee?” Sister Carr’s question held a natural yet not ill-natured curiosity. “Has Prescott been scolding you?”
Anne shook her head.
“Well,” said the Sister, “you look as if he had! He certainly was cross this afternoon. It’s not to be wondered at, either. Say what he likes, he must be pretty cut up about leaving.”
“Leaving!” exclaimed Anne in a startled voice.
“Didn’t you know? I had it a couple of hours ago. Heard Prescott and old Sinclair talking before they started operating. Bowley has definitely refused to cough up the money. ‘I’m sick of this obstruction,’ says Prescott to Sinclair. ‘If I live to be a hundred, I shall never get my chance here. I shall carry the fight on to another front.’ ”
Anne stared at Sister Carr dumbly. She could not yet fully comprehend the motive behind Prescott’s decision to abandon his work in Manchester. Yet vaguely, instinctively, she felt her misguided interference to be at least in part responsible. Without a word she turned and moved blindly away.
Back in Ward C she sought the privacy of the ward kitchen, and here she found herself gazing at the letter he had given her. Unconsciously she read it. It was a splendid testimonial recommending her for a sister’s post now vacant at the Trafalgar Hospital in London.
Anne could contain her tortured sensibilities no longer. Feeling that her life was raveled into an inextricable skein, she broke down and sobbed as if her heart would break.
CHAPTER 35
A sharp winter day in London. Gray skies overhanging the teeming city, the traffic roaring and surging, buses charging, taxis racing, millions of human beings hurrying. For Anne, setting out from the Trafalgar Hospital to meet Lucy, the huge metropolis had not yet lost its wonder, its potency, its compelling sense of being a battlefield where she, a nursing sister, must play her appointed part.
Her transference to the Trafalgar was now an accomplished fact. Matron Melville, a tall, aristocratic woman, had been a close friend of Dr. Prescott’s mother. Anne’s acceptance, from the moment when Alice Melville focused her horn-rimmed glasses upon Prescott’s letter, had been a foregone conclusion.
It was a modern hospital, the Trafalgar, an enormous scientific machine for dealing with the casualties, the sick and the maimed, of the city’s strife. Anne had not yet attuned herself to the beat of the machine, nor fully adjusted herself to her changed environment. Since her heart was set so passionately upon surgery, it was something of a disappointment to find that her ward, the Bolingbroke, was a medical one. Still, her chief, Dr. Verney, was appreciative, her staff willing, and the hurt of her departure from
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“No doubt,” he returned with that cool and cutting irony. “But you are no more sorry than I. Your predilection for the dramatic has effectively ruined any chance I ever had of achieving my clinic in Manchester. I have to thank you for a very pretty piece of bungling.”
She could not speak. Fighting back her tears, she could merely hang her head. There was a pause.
He still did not look at her. Then he concluded: “I don’t know what your plans are. Indeed, I have no wish to know. But I imagine that, leaving the Hepperton like this, you may have some difficulty in finding an adequate position. I have no wish, in fairness, that your actual nursing service here should pass unrecognized. If you take this letter to the matron of the London Trafalgar Hospital, she will look after you suitably. Good-bye, Nurse Lee.”
Brokenly she accepted the unsealed envelope he held out to her. He did not offer to shake hands. There was nothing that she could say. And so she turned and, with an agonizing sense of defeat, walked slowly from the room.
CHAPTER 34
As she made her way toward Ward C, the theatre sister stopped her.
“What’s the matter, Lee?” Sister Carr’s question held a natural yet not ill-natured curiosity. “Has Prescott been scolding you?”
Anne shook her head.
“Well,” said the Sister, “you look as if he had! He certainly was cross this afternoon. It’s not to be wondered at, either. Say what he likes, he must be pretty cut up about leaving.”
“Leaving!” exclaimed Anne in a startled voice.
“Didn’t you know? I had it a couple of hours ago. Heard Prescott and old Sinclair talking before they started operating. Bowley has definitely refused to cough up the money. ‘I’m sick of this obstruction,’ says Prescott to Sinclair. ‘If I live to be a hundred, I shall never get my chance here. I shall carry the fight on to another front.’ ”
Anne stared at Sister Carr dumbly. She could not yet fully comprehend the motive behind Prescott’s decision to abandon his work in Manchester. Yet vaguely, instinctively, she felt her misguided interference to be at least in part responsible. Without a word she turned and moved blindly away.
Back in Ward C she sought the privacy of the ward kitchen, and here she found herself gazing at the letter he had given her. Unconsciously she read it. It was a splendid testimonial recommending her for a sister’s post now vacant at the Trafalgar Hospital in London.
Anne could contain her tortured sensibilities no longer. Feeling that her life was raveled into an inextricable skein, she broke down and sobbed as if her heart would break.
CHAPTER 35
A sharp winter day in London. Gray skies overhanging the teeming city, the traffic roaring and surging, buses charging, taxis racing, millions of human beings hurrying. For Anne, setting out from the Trafalgar Hospital to meet Lucy, the huge metropolis had not yet lost its wonder, its potency, its compelling sense of being a battlefield where she, a nursing sister, must play her appointed part.
Her transference to the Trafalgar was now an accomplished fact. Matron Melville, a tall, aristocratic woman, had been a close friend of Dr. Prescott’s mother. Anne’s acceptance, from the moment when Alice Melville focused her horn-rimmed glasses upon Prescott’s letter, had been a foregone conclusion.
It was a modern hospital, the Trafalgar, an enormous scientific machine for dealing with the casualties, the sick and the maimed, of the city’s strife. Anne had not yet attuned herself to the beat of the machine, nor fully adjusted herself to her changed environment. Since her heart was set so passionately upon surgery, it was something of a disappointment to find that her ward, the Bolingbroke, was a medical one. Still, her chief, Dr. Verney, was appreciative, her staff willing, and the hurt of her departure from
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