The battle was joined. Dr. Raste, in addition to being exasperated, had been piqued by the reports of his patient’s singular obstinacy; he had now positively determined to get him into the hospital, and it was this resolve that had prompted him to give special attention to Mr. Earlforward’s case, disorganizing all his general work in favour of it. He could not allow himself to be beaten by the inexplicable caprice of a patient who in all other respects had struck him as a man of more than ordinary sound sagacity, though of a somewhat miserly disposition; and the caprice was the more enigmatic in that to enter the hospital would be by far the cheapest way of treating the illness.
Mr. Earlforward’s obstinacy, on the other hand, was exasperated and strengthened by the disdainful reception given to his marvellous, his perfectly reckless suggestion about having a private nurse. These people were ridiculously concerned about his health. They had their own ideas. He had his. He had offered an extremely generous compromise—a compromise which would cost him a pot of money—and it had not even been discussed; the wonder of it had in no way been recognized. Well, on the whole he was glad that the suggestion had not been approved. He withdrew it. He had only made it because he felt—doubtless in undue apprehension—that he was not yet beginning to progress towards recovery. He admitted to himself, for example, that whereas on the previous day he had been interested in his business, today his business was a matter of indifference to him. That, he knew, was not a good sign. But, then, tomorrow would certainly show some improvement. Indigestion—and he was suffering from nothing but acute indigestion—invariably did yield to a policy of starvation. As for hospitals, he had always had a horror of hospitals since once, in his insurance days, he had paid a visit to a fellow-clerk confined in a fever-ward. The vision of the huge, long, bare room, with its rows of beds and serried pain and distress, the draughts through the open windows, the rise and fall of the thunder of traffic outside, the semi-military bearing of the nurses, the wholesaleness of the affair, the absence of privacy, the complete subjection of the helpless patients, the inelasticity of regulations, the crushing of individuality: this dreadful vision had ineffaceably impressed itself on his imagination—the imagination of an extreme individualist with a passion for living his own life free of the obligation to justify it or explain it. He had recalled the vision hundreds of times—and never mentioned it to a soul. He did not intend to die of his illness; he knew that he would not die of it, but he convinced himself that he would prefer anything, even death, to incarceration in a great hospital. Were he wrenched by force out of his bed, he would kick and struggle to the very last, and his captors should be stricken with the fear of killing him while trying in their misguided zeal to save him. He read correctly the pertinacity in the doctor’s face. But he had never encountered a pertinacity stronger than his own, and illness had not weakened it, rather the reverse; his pertinacity had become morbid.
“I don’t think I’ll go into a hospital, doctor,” he said quietly, turning his face away. The words were mild, the resolution invincible. The doctor crossed over to look him in the face. Their eyes met in fierce hostility. The doctor was beaten.
“Very well,” said he, with bitter calm. “If you won’t, you won’t. There is nothing else for me to do here. I must ask you to be good enough to get another adviser. And”—he transfixed Elsie with a censorious gaze, as though Elsie was to blame—“and, please remember that if the worst comes to the worst, I shall certainly refuse to give a certificate.”
“A certificate, sir?” Elsie faltered.
“Yes. A certificate of the cause of death. There would have to be an inquest,” he explained, with implacable and calculated cruelty.
But Mr. Earlforward only laughed—a short, dry, sardonic laugh. The sun shone into the silent room and upon the tumbled bed and the sick, triumphant man, and made them more terrible than midnight could have made them. The doctor, with the pompous solemnity of a little man conscious of rectitude, slowly picked up his hat from the chest of drawers.
“But what am I to do?” Elsie appealed.
“My good woman, I don’t know. I wish I did. All I know is, I’ve done what I could; and I can’t take the private affairs of all Clerkenwell on my shoulders. I’ve other urgent cases to attend to.” A faint snigger, which his will was too late to suppress!
“Elsie’ll be all right,” muttered Mr. Earlforward. “Elsie’ll never desert me, Elsie won’t. She promised me.”
The doctor walked majestically out of the room, followed by Elsie.
VII
Malaria
“I suppose I must just do the best I can, sir,” said Elsie on the landing outside the bedroom. She smiled timidly, cheerfully and benevolently.
The doctor looked at her, startled. It seemed to him that in some magic way she had vanquished the difficulties of a most formidable situation by merely accepting and facing them. She did not argue about them, complain about them, nor expatiate upon their enormity. She was ready to go on living and working without any fuss from one almost impossible moment to the next. During his career in Clerkenwell Dr. Raste had become a connoisseur of choice examples of practical philosophy, and none better than he could appreciate Elsie’s attitude. That it should have startled him was a genuine tribute to her.
“Yes, that’s about it,” he said nonchalantly, with the cunning of an expert
