The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (6.1895)

A Letter Home

98
For just one second he was happy. Then his memory returned,
and the nurse saw that he was crying. When he caught the
nurse’s eye he ceased, and looked steadily at the distant ceiling.
“ You’re better ? ”
“Yes.” He tried to speak boldly, decisively, nonchalantly.
He was filled with a sense of physical shame, the shame which
bodily helplessness always experiences in the presence of arrogant,
patronising health. He would have got up and walked briskly
away if he could. He hated to be waited on, to be humoured, to
be examined and theorised about. This woman would be wanting
to feel his pulse. She should not; he would turn cantankerous.
No doubt they had been saying to each other, “ And so young,
too ! How sad ! ” Confound them.
“ Have you any friends that you would like to send for ? ”
“ No, none.”
The girl (she was only a girl) looked at him, and there was that
in her eye which overcame him.
“ None at all ? ”
“ Not that I want to see.”
“ Are your parents alive ? ”
“ My mother is, but she lives away in the North.”
“ You’ve not seen her lately, perhaps ? ”
He did not reply, and the nurse spoke again, but her voice
sounded indistinct and far off.
When he awoke it was night. At the other end of the ward
was a long table covered with a white cloth, and on this table a
lamp.
In the ring of light under the lamp was an open book, an ink-
stand and a pen. A nurse (not his nurse) was standing by the
table, her fingers idly drumming the cloth, and near her a man in
evening dress. Perhaps a doctor. They were conversing in low
tones.