In six months
his face had grown stiff in the struggle with them. It was making his
voice stern and his eyes hard, so that they could see nothing round
him but stupidity and distrust and an obstinacy even greater than his
own.
Nothing in his previous experience had prepared him for it. In his
big provincial hospital he had had it practically his own way. He had
faced a thousand horrible and intractable diseases with a thousand
appliances and with an army of assistants and trained nurses under
him. And if in his five years' private practice in Leeds he had come
to grips with human nature, it had been at any rate a fair fight. If
his work was harder his responsibility was less. He still had trained
nurses under him; and if a case was beyond him there were specialists
with whom he could consult.
Here he was single-handed. He was physician and surgeon and specialist
and nurse in one. He had few appliances and no assistant beside naked
and primeval nature, the vast high spaces, the clean waters and clean
air of the moors.
Yet it was precisely these things that his romantic youth had cried
for--that solitary combat and communion, that holy and solitary aid.
At thirty Rowcliffe was still in his romantic youth.
He had all its appearances about him. A life of continual labor
and discomfort had kept his body slender; and all the edges of
his face--clean-shaven except for its little dark moustache--were
incomparably firm and clear.
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