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"A primitive gentleman, if you like," Lincott will say, "not above tearing his meat with his fingers or wearing the same shirt night and day for a couple of months on end, but still a gentleman." As one of the innumerable instances which had built up his conviction, Lincott will offer you the twenty-kroner story.
"You should have come here before," the surgeon was moved to say. "No," answered Helling. "I couldn't come before, sir. You see, I had no ship. But I found one this morning, and I start to-morrow." "But for these three weeks? You have been starving." Lincott slipped his hand into his pocket.
He was a Norseman from Finland, fifty-three years old, and he had worked all his life on English ships. He had risen from "decky" to mate. Then he had injured himself, and since he could work no more he had come into the hospital to be cured. Lincott examined him, found that a slight operation was all the man needed, and performed it himself.
In six weeks time Helling, as the sailor was named, was discharged. He made a simple and dignified little speech of thanks to the nurses for their attention, and another to the surgeon for saving his life. "Nonsense!" said Lincott, as he held out his hand. "Any medical student could have performed that operation." "Then I have another reason to thank you," answered Helling.
"Do you know what that's worth in England?" "Yes, I do," answered Helling with some trepidation. "Fifteen shillings," said Lincott. "Think of it, fifteen shillings, perhaps sixteen." "I know," interrupted Helling quickly, mistaking the surgeon's meaning. "But please, please, you mustn't think I value what you have done for me at that.
But he sank into a coma with the usual suddenness common to such cases, and in the pause which followed Lincott heard a gentle voice a few beds away earnestly apologising to a nurse for the trouble she was put to. "Why," she replied with a laugh, "I am here to be troubled." Apologies of the kind are not so frequently heard in the wards of an East End hospital.
Three weeks later Helling called at Lincott's house in Harley Street. Now, when hospital patients take the trouble, after they have been discharged, to find out the doctor's private address and call, it generally means they have come to beg. Lincott, remembering how Helling's simple courtesies had impressed him, experienced an actual disappointment.
"On benches along the Embankment, once or twice in the parks. But that's all over now," he said earnestly. "I'm all right. I've got my ship. I couldn't part with that before, because it was the only thing I had to hang on to the world with. But I'm all right now." Lincott took up the coin and turned it over in the palm of his hand. "Twenty kroners," he said.
"The nurses have told me about you, sir, and I'm grateful you spared the time to perform it yourself." "What are you going to do?" asked Lincott. "Find a ship, sir," answered Helling. Then he hesitated, and slowly slipped his finger and thumb along the waist-band of his trousers. But he only repeated, "I must find a ship," and so left the hospital.
Helling, afraid to speak lest his coin should be refused, walked noiselessly to the door and noiselessly unlatched it. "Wait a bit!" said Lincott. Helling stopped anxiously in the doorway. "Where have you slept" Lincott paused to steady his voice "for the last three weeks?" he continued. "Under arches by the river, sir," replied Helling.
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