Page 41 of The Summer Country

“Oh.” He looked at it as though he had forgotten he was holding it. “If you’re quite certain?”

“Perhaps that poor man might like it instead?” One of the other doctors was breathing deeply into his handkerchief, looking distinctly green.

“He’s just come from Edinburgh,” said Dr. Braithwaite, stuffing the handkerchief back in his pocket. “It takes a bit for the new arrivals to grow accustomed.”

Emily nodded understandingly. “There was a missionary visited us once who came with my father on his pastoral calls. He fainted and had to be carried back to the rectory. He was terribly apologetic, poor man. If you put a drop of oil of peppermint under your nose, it works wonders,” she said to the Scottish doctor.

“Miss Dawson is visiting the hospital,” explained Dr. Braithwaite. And then, after a moment, “You aren’t what I expected of Jonathan Fenty’s granddaughter.”

“My aunt Millicent feels much the same way,” said Emily, then caught herself and shook her head. “I shouldn’t be unkind about Aunt Millicent. She means well. I’m a great trial to her. My mother always believed that it was more important to do good works in the world than be a lady of quality.”

Her throat stuck. Even now, after all these years, she could hear her mother’s voice, with that peculiar husky quality so her own, saying, “Sensibility? I trust I am more sensible of the suffering of others than my own.”

She and Aunt Millicent had cordially despised each other, although Emily had always rather suspected that each enjoyed their loathing.

“I see,” said Dr. Braithwaite. “Was it your mother who started you nursing?”

“My mother? Oh no, she was too busy fighting for emancipation, always writing letters and holding meetings.”

“The Bristol and Clifton Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, I take it?” said Dr. Braithwaite, and the irony in his voice was unmistakable.

Emily felt her cheeks color. “One does what one can. Even if it’s only in a small way. My mother’s great friend Mrs. More always said, ‘Activity may lead to evil, but inactivity cannot lead to good.’ One must try.”

Dr. Braithwaite was unimpressed. “They also serve who only write letters?”

“If enough letters are written, people take notice.”

“Do they? Or is it merely that circumstances change? Sugar grows less profitable; slavery becomes less attractive.”

“That’s very cynical. Surely moral sentiment has something to do with it.”

“Do you also write letters, Miss Dawson?”

“I?” Emily felt herself floundering. It wasn’t that she had expected plaudits, but people were usually impressed by her mother’s principles, or at least pretended to be. “I would if—”

“If you thought it would do any good?”

Emily frowned at him. “If I had my mother’s eloquence. As it is, I do what I can in a more practical way. We can’t all be Marys; the world needs Marthas too.” That was what her father had always said, placing a hand on her hair in thanks as she set a hot cup of tea in front of him or restored his lost glasses.

“Didn’t the Lord say that Mary had chosen the better?”

Emily folded her arms across her chest. “In that case, oughtn’t you to be a minister rather than a doctor?”

Instead of being put off by her rudeness, Dr. Braithwaite surprised her by smiling. “We’re as bad as each other. I lived with a minister’s family when I first came to England. I much prefer dealing with wounds one can lance and wrap.”

“How old were you when you came to England?”

“Young.” Dr. Braithwaite walked her at a fast clip down the ward. “I’m meant to be showing you the hospital, aren’t I? We have seventy-five beds, all of which are presently filled. We interview patients every Monday at noon for indoor and outdoor relief. The majority are admitted for indoor relief.”

Emily hurried to catch up. “I’m surprised. I should have thought it would have been the other way around.”

“Many of the men here are suffering from little more than malnutrition and exhaustion.”

“You sound as though you don’t approve.”

“They take room that could be devoted to the genuinely ill. This is a hospital, not a poorhouse.”

“Poverty is an illness,” said Emily seriously, walking with him down the ward. The majority of the patients were dark-complexioned, but there were a few fairer-skinned sufferers, their faces a sickly hue beneath the rash of old sunburns, red and yellow hair faded to straw by the sun. “I had thought the hospital was for the benefit of the formerly enslaved.”