The Battle to the Weak by Hilda Vaughan

Author:Hilda Vaughan [Hilda Vaughan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908069269
Publisher: Parthian Books
Published: 2011-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

The silence of a sunny afternoon brooded over Pengarreg, and a thick scent of dry rot, stored grain and wool came from the loft.

When the doctor came out of the room in which Gladys lay, his brows were contracted into a scowl above his sunken eyes. He had been a good-looking man once, but the sickness, poverty and suffering with which he had struggled daily for forty years on the farms about Llangantyn had left their mark upon him. His mind had grown rough with his body. He had acquired a reputation for being at once kindly and callous, and his attitude of dogged devotion to what he believed to be a duty, but could no longer find a source of sympathy or inspiration, showed itself in his whole bearing. ‘No good to worry oneself to death over the poor devil,’ he was wont to say of the saddest case, but today he found no solace in that practical reflection. He was worried, moved, in spite of himself, to pity and rebellion of spirit.

The sound of his step on the landing brought Mrs Bevan to the foot of the stairs. She had been crying not so much from sorrow as from fear, for Esther, on whom she had learned to lean more and more during the past two weeks, had gone to market.

‘Was you tellin’ her?’ she asked the doctor.

He descended slowly into the kitchen before answering ‘Yes.’

Mrs Bevan burst out crying afresh. ‘Oh dear, oh dear! Is there nothing whatever to be done? ’On’t nothin’ as you can do to save her? Is she to lie on her back – allus a burden to herself and to us all?’

He turned and regarded her with severity. Her weak complaining and her easy flow of tears clashed with the agonised silence in which the girl upstairs had received the news.

‘Can’t you do nothin’ to cure her?’ Mrs Bevan repeated, laying one of her frail hands on his arm.

He shook it off impatiently.

‘Good God, woman! D’you think I’d have left anything undone after seeing the child’s face when I told her she’d never walk again? D’you think I wouldn’t get a specialist down from town – if I had to pay his fees myself?’ He broke off, irrationally angry with her. ‘There’s nothing to do. I’ve told you that a hundred times. Her spine is fatally injured. That’s the end of it.’ And he walked out of the house.

‘I’m sure he needn’t be so sharp with me,’ Mrs Bevan thought as she stood alone in the desolate room, leaning against the table for support and crying from mere force of habit.

Then in one of her ill-timed efforts at conciliation, she hurried out of the house and encountered the doctor as he was in the act of mounting his cob.

‘I’m afeard as I was makin’ you angry now just, doctor,’ she whined, detaining him with that limp hand, the touch of which upon his arm he had grown to detest. ‘I’m sure

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