The master of St. Benedict's, Vol. 1 (of 2)St. Aubyn, Alan
General
The master of St. Benedict's, Vol. 1 (of 2)
St. Aubyn, Alan
Cambridge (England) -- Fiction; School principals -- Fiction; Students -- Fiction
'You know something about medicine?' she said.
'I have been a doctor. I have spent seven years in acquiring a
knowledge of surgery--seven years out of my life--but it has not been
wasted if I have been the means of saving him;' and he nodded towards
the bed.
'And you think you have saved him?'
Where had she heard this man's voice before, and where had she seen his
eyes? She was asking herself this question as she was speaking to him.
'Yes, I think he is saved. He will do very well with careful nursing.
One of the men has a sister at Addenbroke's, and he has gone to fetch
her. I thought she had come when I saw you standing there. She will
certainly be here presently. I don't think we need detain you.'
'I shall not go till she comes,' Lucy said with such decision that she
quite frightened herself. 'I shall certainly stay here as long as I can
be of any use.'
She had been of a good deal of use already. She had removed all traces
of the dreadful deed; she had washed up every stain that could be
washed away, and she had covered up the rest. She had fetched a pillow
and some coverings from the adjoining room, and straightened the
couch, and anyone coming into the room and seeing the man lying there
with a white handkerchief over his throat, and the quilt drawn up over
his chest, would not have dreamed of the ghastly sight beneath.
He looked as he lay there as if he had broken down in the middle of
his work, and had thrown himself down there in a sudden attack of
faintness. His face was dreadfully white, as white as the coverlet, and
he was breathing hard, and there was a strange faint odour Lucy noticed
as she bent over him. He was not sensible, but once he opened his eyes
and looked at her with a strange, far-away look in them that haunted
her for days.
They were beautiful eyes, tender and dreamy as a woman's, with a depth
in them Lucy had never seen in any eyes before. But then she had not
been accustomed to look into young men's eyes. She could not remember
bending over a man before and seeing herself reflected in his eyes.
Perhaps it was the novelty of the situation that moved her. Having done
all, everything she could do, she settled herself down in a chair by
the head of the bed and began to weep.
The man was nothing to her, she had never heard his name till
yesterday, and here she was sitting by his side weeping for him as if
she had known him all her life.
The man who stood by let her tears fall unchecked.
'I don't think you will disturb him,' he said with a smile; 'I have
given him an anodyne. Nobody could tell what he would do if he were
left to himself, so I have made things sure by quieting him for a time.
Pray have your cry out if it does you any good.'
He evidently knew something of girls. There is nothing like a little
weep for soothing the nerves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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