The Goddess and the Gaiety Girl

Chapter One-2

She paused before she explained,

“It was a Saturday night and I’d had a long week. There had also been a matinee that day. I was so tired, and the Duke plied me with champagne. Although I wasn’t ‘tiddly’ I had had enough not to be as sharp-witted as I’d been at other times. Then the head waiter comes to our table to say ‘Lady Constance’s compliments, and she would be delighted if Your Grace and the young lady who is having supper with you would join her party upstairs. Her Ladyship is sure you will find it enjoyable, and there are several famous ladies and gentlemen from the theatre present’

“The Duke turns to me and says, ‘It will be amusing, and we need not stay long and it might prove a stepping-stone in your career.’

“I thought it sounded exciting as I’d always wanted to meet some of the leads who were playing in other theatres, so I agreed to go.

“‘Will you thank Lady Constance,’ the Duke says to the head waiter, ‘and tell Her Ladyship that Miss King and I will join her as soon as we have finished supper.’

“I see the man going up the stairs and it never struck me for one moment, that it was anything but a genuine invitation.”

“You mean it was just a ruse for enticing you into a private room?” Harry asked, outraged.

“That’s right,” Katie replied. “About ten minutes later we goes up the stairs and the waiter leads us down a dark passage. I could hear people talking and laughing in the rooms we passed, then he opens a door.”

There was a sharp note now in Katie’s voice, which was unmistakable as she continued,

“I walked past him into the room where the lights were low and – it’s empty! Being innocent and a bit befuddled with drink, I looks around, and I thought it was an anteroom for where the party was taking place. Then I looked back and see the Duke locking the door and putting the key in his pocket. I knew then I’d been tricked!”

“Was there nothing you could do?” Harry asked.

“I screamed and he hit me!” Katie said simply. “Then the more I struggled the more he seemed to enjoy it. He was very strong and because I’m a coward I didn’t put up much resistance after the first frantic efforts of trying to escape.”

“Poor Katie!”

“I learned later that half the girls in the theatre had the same kind of tale to tell. Never trust a toff, and never drink if you want to get the better of him! That’s my motto for a country girl who goes on the stage!”

“I have always heard the Duke is a swine!” Harry said. “What did he give you?”

“Fifty pounds – and there were no more flowers and no more invitations to supper.”

“Do you mean that?” Harry asked in surprise.

“There were plenty of people to tell me afterwards that all he wanted was to be the first with someone young, innocent and untouched, and that’s what he got with me! And cheap at the price!”

Katie’s voice was hard.

“He made me loathe all men until you came along, but you were different. Oh, Harry, I love you!”

“We have had happy times together,” Harry said, “and we will have lots more, you see. When the doctor tells you the good news, you’ll be back on the stage and before you know where you are Hollingshead will make you his leading lady.”

“That’s what I want,” Katie said. “The lead at the Gaiety – ‘Miss Katie King appears in The Princess of Trebizond!’ – in big letters!”

“That is what you shall have, you mark my words!” Harry said. “You’ve got another month to get well. They tell me this show he has brought over from Paris is going to be the finest we’ve ever seen. And I have always liked Offenbach’s music.”

“I have to be in it, I have to be!” Katie cried.

“You will be,” Harry said confidently.

Almost as though he was arriving on cue, they heard a rap at the door that meant the doctor was outside.

Harry was standing out on the landing when Dr. Medwin came out of Katie’s room.

A middle-aged man with hair beginning to go grey and lines on his face, the pallor of his skin proclaimed that the doctor was both over-worked and under-fed.

However, beneath his careworn exterior he was not only a good doctor, he was a good judge of character. Although he knew Harry Carrington for what he was, a man who lived off the earnings of the women to whom he made love, he still liked him.

Harry was a ne’er-do-well, a man who had never done a day’s work in his life, but he was a gentleman by birth and he had a charm that for women was inescapable.

He also, Dr. Medwin thought, had the decency to stand by Katie King at this moment in her life when, if she had been left alone with her own fears, she might easily have killed herself.

The Thames that formed the northern boundary of Dr. Medwin’s large practice in Lambeth had received several of his patients who could not face life after they knew the truth about their health.

Harry was leaning over the rickety banisters as Dr. Medwin came out of Katie’s room, shutting the door firmly behind him.

“What is the verdict?” Harry asked tensely.

“Bad!”

“That is what I expected.”

“So did I, but I had to have it confirmed. The tests show undoubtedly a cancerous growth.”

“What can you do about it?”

“Very little, I am afraid.” Dr. Medwin sighed.

“It seems terrible to say that of a woman who is not much over twenty-three years of age and who is as lovely as Katie King.”

“Surely there must be something you can do?”

“I can make sure she does not suffer too much, but I will not pretend to you that the pains will not grow more and more acute and only drugs will keep her from experiencing the full agony of them.”

“Is that all?” Harry asked in a dull voice.

“If you were rich I could give you a different answer,” Dr. Medwin said. “There is new hope for those who undergo surgery which was raised about five years ago, by the revolutionary ideas of a man called Joseph Lister.”

“I believe I have read about him.”

“He has written a paper on his belief that antiseptics can prevent putrefaction in surgical wounds and his theories are borne out by what a man called Louis Pasteur is saying in France.”

“And yet this does not apply in Katie’s case?”

“Where Miss King is concerned,” Dr. Medwin said, “the only thing I can do is to send her to one of our local hospitals, where there is a bed available.”

He paused before he went on,

“They admit that the chance of coming out alive after any operation is not more than 50/50, but I can assure you, from my personal experience, it is far less.”

“That is what I have heard,” Harry said savagely, “and I wouldn’t let an animal endure the conditions to be found in those hospitals.”

“Exactly!” Dr. Medwin agreed.

Both men were silent and Dr. Medwin was thinking about sepsis and how often he had to watch the skin and flesh round a wound become red, hot and swollen.

Gradually it would turn black with gangrene, foul-smelling fluid and pus would seep out and the patient would shiver, run a high fever, and it would all end in death.

It was as if Harry had followed his thoughts, for he asked,

“You say there is an alternative?”

“There is one surgeon at the moment who is working on Lister’s methods and he has his own private nursing home.”

“What is his name?”

“Sheldon Curtis, and he is not only a first class surgeon but by using carbolic acid as an antiseptic, during and after surgery, I am told that he has cut the deaths that occur of those in his hands, to fewer than five per cent.”

There was silence, then Harry asked tersely

“How much does he charge?”

“With his Nursing Home fees he would not consider a patient at under £200.”

Harry gave a short laugh with no humour in it.

“At the moment I hardly have that amount in shillings.”

“Then as I have said,” Dr. Medwin remarked, “I will do my best to keep Miss King from suffering.”

“And what is she to do in the meantime?”

“Anything she likes, but she will not feel like moving about very much, and certainly not dancing. I am sorry, Carrington, but I knew you would prefer to know the truth.”

“Yes, of course.”

“It is no consolation,” Dr. Medwin added, “but I am about to have this same conversation with another patient whose condition I had tested at the same time as Miss King’s. I expect you have heard of him – he lives a little way up the road – Professor Braintree.”

“I seem to have read about him somewhere,” Harry remarked.

“A brilliant man, admired as an authority on 13th century literature by everybody in the intellectual world, which unfortunately does not make them buy his books.”

Dr. Medwin picked up his black bag, which he had put down on the floor while he was talking to Harry.

“Strangely enough, his daughter has hair of the same colour as Miss King’s. I think it is an extraordinary coincidence that I should have two patients with hair that is almost unique. To be honest, I can never remember seeing a woman with anything like that shade it until now.”

“It does seem strange,” Harry agreed. “In fact like you, until I met Katie, I didn’t know such a colour existed except on the canvas of some old master.”

“It is beautiful, absolutely beautiful,” Dr. Medwin said with a note of enthusiasm in his tired voice. “It is a pity, a great pity we cannot do more for Miss King, or for Miss Braintree’s father.”

He started to walk down the stairs and Harry followed him.

“What you are saying,” he said, “is that if Professor Braintree had the money, he could be operated on by this man Curtis and he could be saved, as Katie could.”

‘There is always a chance of course, that the cancer may have gone too far,” Dr. Medwin answered cautiously, “but if you want my professional opinion, both Miss King and the Professor could be saved if they could be operated on immediately, and by Sheldon Curtis.”

He had reached the narrow, rather dirty hall and paused before he opened the front door.

“I already know the answer,” he said, “but I have to ask you whether, after all I have said, you would like to take the risk of sending Miss King to hospital.”

“You know my reply to that,” Harry said. “If I thought she had the slightest chance I would jump at it, but I have heard of too many people dying in hospital after they have been butchered. If she has to die, let her die cleanly.”

“I thought you would say that,” Dr. Medwin answered. “Goodbye, Carrington, I wish I could have brought you better news. I will call in a day or so. Send for me if she is in any great pain.”

“Yes, of course,” Harry replied, “and thank you.”

The Doctor lifted his hand in acknowledgement, walked down the broken steps and turned towards another part of the neighbourhood where the houses were a little better than the one in which Katie lodged.

Harry walked very slowly back up the stairs to the second floor.

Outside Katie’s door he paused before he opened it and with a considerable effort before he went in, forced a smile to his lips.

“What did he say? He wouldn’t tell me. He said he’d tell you,” Katie said.

She was sitting up higher on her pillows, and with her red-gold hair falling below her waist she looked so lovely that for a moment Harry could only stare at her and wonder if it was possible that he had just heard her sentenced to death.

Then with a smile he said,

“The Doctor was very encouraging. Things are not as bad as he thought and he is coming again in a few days. He says by that time he is sure you will feel better.”

“Did he really say that? Really and truly?” Katie asked.

Harry sat down on the bed and put his arms around her.

“Do you think I would tell you a lie,” he asked. “You have to get well, darling, and quickly, or we are going to be very hungry, you and I!”

“Oh, Harry, once I am back on the stage I will work so hard that we’ll soon be living in luxury, and you can have that new suit you need.”

Katie could say no more because Harry was kissing her.

Then as he felt her go limp in his arms he knew he had excited her and said,

“I am not going to tire you, darling, not tonight, at any rate. I am happy just to look at you. The Doctor said just now how lovely you are.”