THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN
Yet long ago it was promised by Someone,
Who lovingly help for the children implored,
That if only you gave one a cup of cold water,
You surely in no wise should lose your reward!
—_John Sandes._
“I’VE an idea,” Mr. Linton said, putting down his morning paper.
Four faces gave him instant attention. It was breakfast time, and plans
for the day were being discussed, a trifle lazily, as befitted people
unused to over-night dissipation.
“We—ell,” said the squatter, and hesitated.
“You have lovely ideas, always, Dad,” Norah told him, kindly. “Tell us.”
“I don’t know that you’ll regard this one as lovely,” said her father.
“Still, I’d like to do it.”
“Well, then, it’ll be done,” said Jim, with finality. “What is it, Dad?”
“If you keep up this mystery any longer, I won’t be able to bear it, Mr.
Linton,” said Wally, much moved. “Prithee, sir——”
David Linton smiled.
“The mystery’s a tame one, you’ll think,” he said. “I thought of my plan
before I left home—old Brownie has been knitting a big bundle for the
Children’s Hospital, and she gave me the things to bring down. Then
there’s a letter in this paper about the hospital. It’s getting near
Christmas, you see; and I don’t suppose those little sick youngsters
have much of a good time. Would you all think it a very slow sort of
entertainment if we went to see them?” He looked round the four young
faces—a little afraid of seeing their eagerness die out.
But Wally smiled broadly, leaning forward.
“I think it’s a ripping idea, sir,” he said. “I guess we all like kids,
don’t we, chaps?”
The “chaps,” who evidently included the ladies of the party, assented
with enthusiasm.
“Tell us more, Dad,” Norah said, “I know you’ve more plan.”
“Well—I’m open to suggestions,” her father answered. “We won’t go
empty-handed; we can take up toys and books and things. It isn’t
visiting day at the hospital. In any case, I think it would be better
not to go at a crowded time. If I telephone to the Matron, I fancy she
will let us come; and she can tell me something about the number of
children. I—I’m a shocking bad hand at preaching, you know”—he
hesitated, gaining encouragement from their friendly faces—“but—well,
we’re looking out for a pretty good time ourselves, and it wouldn’t hurt
us to share some of it.”
“But I think it will be tremendous fun, won’t it, Jean?” Norah said. To
which Jean nodded vigorous acquiescence.
“Then we’ll get it done at once,” said Mr. Linton. “You can put your
four wise heads together, and consult as to what we’re to take up—I
don’t know what sick youngsters like.”
“That’s half the fun,” said Norah, happily. “Isn’t it, Jean?” And Jean
nodded.
“Then I’ll go and telephone,” said the squatter; “by which time you
hungry people may have finished breakfast—unless you mean to make this
meal run into lunch, as doesn’t seem unlikely!” He made his escape,
Norah regretting deeply that hotel etiquette prevented her from
reprisals.
He joined them, a little later, in the lounge, where big leather-covered
chairs and tall palms made a cool retreat in the hottest days.
“If there’s a more exasperating institution than the Melbourne
telephone, I have yet to find it out,” said he. “I’ve been standing in
that small Black Hole of Calcutta that they call a telephone box until I
nearly died of asphyxiation, and all the response I could elicit was
from a frenzied person who sounded like a dressmaker, and wanted to know
desperately if I would have tucks on the bodice! However, I got the
hospital at last, and we can go up when we like. So that means a busy
morning. How soon can you girls be ready?”
“Three minutes, Dad!”
“Amazing women!” said Mr. Linton, regarding them with much respect. “I
suppose, in a year or two, Norah, you’ll keep me waiting while you put
on your hat; but at present you’re certainly an ornament to your sex in
that respect. The car will be here in a few moments, so hurry up!”
The motor hummed up to the gate of the hospital a little later—a heavy
gate, set in a high stone wall, behind which towered grim buildings. A
neat maid admitted them to a wide corridor, with white walls and shining
floor, where the Matron, white-gowned and gentle, welcomed them.
“No sweets, of course?” she queried, glancing at their parcels.
“No; we were afraid to bring them.”
The Matron nodded approval.
“Some children can have them,” she said. “But very many cannot, and
there is no use in causing disappointments by making any difference. If
you only knew how hard it is to make the mothers understand!”
“Poor souls!” said Mr. Linton. “I suppose they are keen to bring them
something of a treat.”
“Yes—and one is sorry for them. But the risk to the children is very
great—only they won’t believe it, and many of them think we are
hard-hearted monsters. We always question the mothers as to what they
are bringing the children, and watch them carefully; but even so, they
manage to smuggle things past us. We had a dear little boy here in the
winter—a typhoid patient, just pulling round after a very bad time. Of
course he was on strict liquid diet, and equally, of course, he was very
hungry.”
“Poor kid!” said Jim, sympathetically.
“That’s what his mother thought. So she smuggled him in two large jam
tarts in her muff, and bent over him so as to hide him while he ate
them.”
“And did they hurt him?”
“They would have killed him. Luckily Nurse became suspicious, and caught
him, as she said, ‘on the first bite.’ She rescued every crumb from his
mouth, and nearly choked him in the process. But if she had not we
couldn’t have saved him.”
“And what did the mother say?”
“The mother? Oh, she said that Nurse was ’an in’uman brute,’ and nearly
fell on her, tooth and nail. You can’t teach them. Many of them are
terribly poor—but they will spend a few pence on some cheap and
dreadful sweetmeat, or a cake that looks—and often is—absolutely
poisonous, and expect to be allowed to watch a sick baby eat it.
Visiting day has many anxieties!”
Something called the busy Matron away as they reached the first ward,
and they hesitated in the doorway. It was a long, bright room, cheery
with sunlight and gay with flowers and plants, while the red bed jackets
made bright notes of colour against the white quilts. Many of the boys
were sitting up, working or playing at boards that fitted across their
cots to serve as tables. Others were lying quietly, and very often could
be seen the structure beneath the bedclothes that speaks mutely of hip
disease. There were framed placards over many cots, stating whose gift
they had been; perhaps raised by the efforts of children, or given by
some sad mother in memory of a little child. Looking down the long rows
of bright faces it was hard to realize that they were all sick
boys—that Pain lived in the ward night and day.
In one cot a little lad was crying softly—a tired cry, as if afraid of
disturbing others. The nurse bending over him straightened up, patted
his shoulder, said, “Be a good boy, now, Tommy!” and came to greet the
visitors.
“You mustn’t mind the little chap who cries,” she told them. “His leg is
hurting, poor man. He won’t speak to any one.”
The eyes that were buried deep in the pillow were the only pair that
were not turned upon the group in the doorway. The hospital children
knew nothing about the Billabong invasion; only the nurses had been told
of the unusual offer that had come over the telephone that morning. It
seemed to the Matron a little uncertain, peculiar; better, perhaps, not
to excite the children by anticipation.
But the first glimpse of the newcomers was sufficient—the children of
the very poor are not slow brained. Something like a thrill of delight
ran through the ward. There was no mistaking these people—happy-faced
and well-dressed, and laden with fascinating parcels that could only
mean one kind of thing. The eyes were very bright, watching from the
cots.
It was a surgical ward, and most of the inmates looked happy. Life is
not at all unbearable when you are a surgical case. To be a “medical”
means headaches, and fevers, and soaring temperatures, and other
unpleasant things. You are not allowed to eat anything interesting, and
you frequently desire only to keep extremely quiet. But the “surgicals”
know fairly well what to expect. Pain comes, of course—plenty of it;
and the daily visits of the doctors are apt to leave you a bit short of
self-control, even if you bite the pillow extremely hard in your efforts
to show that there is decent pluck in you. But after a time you forget
that. The ache in your leg, or your back, or your hip, or perhaps all
over you, becomes part of the programme, and you learn to put up with
it; and there is much of interest with other “cases” to talk to, songs
to sing, and games that the sick can play—and nurses who are often very
jolly and delightful. The nurse in this ward was little and dark and
merry, and the boys called her “Brown Eyes.” She had a knack of helping
you through almost any pain.
She welcomed the newcomers cheerily now, though her eyes were a little
tired. Behind her the faces were alight with silent eagerness.
“Can we talk to them?” Norah asked, shyly.
“Why, of course!” said the nurse. “You’ll find most of them great
chatterboxes—except little Tommy there. His pain is bad to-day.”
The boys were quite ready to talk. They told all about themselves
glibly, with a full appreciating of their value as “cases.”
“I had a daisy of a temp’rature, I had!” said a cheerful soul of nine.
“Doctor he came three times a day. Better now.”
“Mine’s a leg,” volunteered another. “Broke—a cart runned over me. They
brought me up from South Gippsland—sledge first, and then in the
guard’s van.” He shivered—a reminiscent shudder. “Sledge was a fair
cow!—bumped till I went an’ fainted with the pain.” He gave other
details that set Jean and Norah shuddering, too. “But the guard’s van
wasn’t half bad fun—y’see, I hadn’t never been in a train before. My
word, that guard was a kind man! Went an’ bought me oranges with his own
money!”
“Oh, I’m near right again,” a merry-faced little Jewish lad told them.
“Had me stitches taken out this morning—an’ I never howled!”
“Well, I did then,” said his neighbour, sturdily, “I don’t think getting
unpicked is any fun. But it don’t take long, that’s one thing.” The
other boy grinned at him in an understanding fashion. “Y’see, he’s two
years younger’n me,” he told Norah. “He’s only a bit of a nipper!”
Tommy alone declined to make friends. He burrowed into his pillow when
they came to him, and refused to show so much as the tip of his nose.
The sound of his sorry little wail followed them over the ward.
“Don’t mind him,” the nurse told the girls, as they turned away from the
cot, with downcast faces. “He’ll be better after a while, and then he’ll
be delighted with his presents. He’s homesick, poor mite.” They went on
down the ward.
Jim turned back presently. He sat down near Tommy’s cot and took out a
toy watch that had beautiful qualities in the way of winding. But he did
not offer it to Tommy. Instead he sat still, dangling it from his
fingers.
“Had a sick leg myself, once,” he remarked casually, apparently to the
watch. As might have been expected, the watch made no response; neither
did the black head burrowed in the pillow turn at all.
“Hurt it falling off a horse,” Jim went on. “At least, the horse fell
too. Tried to jump a log on him—and he shied at a snake lying on the
top of the log.”
The boy in the next cot was listening with all his ears. Tommy’s low
crying had stopped.
“Big black snake,” said Jim. “Must have scared him a bit when he saw the
horse rising. At any rate he slid off like fun—and my old horse shied
badly, and went over the log in a somersault. Landed on his head, and
pitched me about fifteen yards away!”
“Was you much hurt?” The boy in the next cot shot out an irrepressible
question.
Jim was not in a hurry to answer. The black head was turning ever so
little towards him, but he did not seem to see. He played with the watch
in an absent-minded fashion.
“Hurt my leg,” he said at length. “I managed to catch the old horse,
because he put his foot through the bridle, and hobbled himself; and I
got on by a log and rode home. Didn’t jump any more fences though. And
when I got home I couldn’t stand on that leg. Had to be lifted off.
Makes you feel an ass, doesn’t it?”
The question was for the now visible Tommy, but Jim did not wait for an
answer.
“Then I had to lie still for days,” he said. “My word, I did hate it! I
feel sorry for any chap with a sick leg. It’s so jolly hard to keep
still when you don’t feel like it.”
Something in the low, deep voice helped the little lad in the cot, with
sore mind and body. This very large brown person understood exceedingly
well.
“But legs get better,” said Jim. “After a while you forget all about
them, and play cricket again, and go in for no end of larks.”
He shifted his position, still fingering the watch.
“The man that sold me this said it would go,” he said. “It’s got works
all right, and I know it can tick, because he made it. But I’m blessed
if I can get the hang of it!” For the first time he looked squarely at
Tommy. “I suppose you couldn’t give me a hand with it?” he asked,
casually. He held out the watch.
A small finger advanced about an inch, and the watch came nearer until
it was within touching distance.
“Thanks, awfully,” Jim said. “I ought to be able to get it going now.”
He fumbled with the stem Tommy had indicated. “No—I can’t! I don’t know
what’s the matter with the silly thing.”
“Me!” said Tommy, with a great effort. It was hard to speak; but harder
to lie silent, knowing quite well that you could extricate this other
fellow from his difficulties. And so well Tommy knew where that watch
ought to be wound.
“Well, perhaps you’d better,” said Jim, with relief. He handed over the
offending watch. “I suppose it’s because mine’s a different make,” he
said, drawing out his own. “See—mine winds so-fashion. I wouldn’t mind
betting you can’t get a tick out of that one of yours.”
“Mine?” said an infinitesimal voice.
“Yes—it’s yours, of course. A pity you can’t make it go. Oh, by Jove,
you have!” He bent over the cot, his brown face alight with interest.
“However did you do it?”
Five minutes later, when the Billabong party were ready to leave the
ward, Jim and his patient were deep in a discussion of watches. Once a
weak little laugh rang out from the cot, and the nurse looked round
quickly.
“That’s the first time that poor little chap has laughed,” she said.
Jim stood up, at last, and held out his hand.
“They’re waiting for me,” he said. “Well, so long, old chap. Buck up!”
Tommy shook the big hand solemnly.
“So long,” he said. He made a great effort to speak. “Is—is you’ leg
quite well?”
“Quite well, old man. So will yours be if you keep your pecker up.
Promise!”
Tommy nodded. His eyes followed the tall lad out of the room. Then he
slipped his hand under his pillow for his watch, and lo, there was a
pocket knife as well. And the boy in the next cot had one, too—so that
presently they were friends. And something had taken the worst of the
ache away from his leg.
It was Wally’s voice that guided Jim to the next ward.
Wally had been entrusted with a number of toy balloons, and in detaching
one for an enthusiastic person of three with a broken ankle, he had let
it slip through his fingers. A draught of wind took it down the
ward—and Wally, hastily thrusting the others upon Mr. Linton, had
pursued it frantically, his feet sliding on the smooth boards. The ward
broke into a sudden shout of laughter.
Luckily, the string was long. It kept the balloon from rising quite to
the ceiling; and just at the end of the room, Wally gave a wild leap
into the air and caught the dangling end, uttering a school war cry as
he did so. He brought it back in triumph, laughing; and the patients,
evidently considering him a kind of circus let loose for their especial
entertainment, shrieked with joy. The nurses were laughing as well, with
an eye on the door lest an inquiring matron should appear. Hospital
decorum was at a low ebb.
“I really don’t think you’re the kind of visitor to bring to a place
like this,” laughed Mr. Linton. “Will you ever have sense, Wally?”
“Don’t know,” said the culprit, sadly. “It doesn’t look very like it,
does it? But aren’t they a jolly set of kids!” He broke into smiles
again. “Takes such a little to make ’em happy, doesn’t it?”
It did not seem to take much. All the watching faces were smiling and
eager; if some were white and lined with suffering they hid it bravely
with smiles. These were girls, short cropped, occasionally, and looking
just like the boys; or with long hair carefully braided to be out of the
way. There were little touches of adornment here and there—a bright
ribbon in the hair, a flower pinned to the red bed jacket; and dolls
were visible on many beds.
But when she talked to them, Norah found that these small people were
not as care-free as the boys. They brought their worries with them to
the hospital.
“I simply got to get home soon,” one little girl told her. She was ten,
with an old, worn face. “Daddy was here yes’day, an’ he says me mother’s
sick—an’ there’s only me to look after the kids!”
“How many?” asked Norah.
“Four. The youngest’s not a year old yet, an’ he’s a reg’lar handful.”
“But you can’t look after them!” Jean protested.
The child stared.
“Well, I done it nearly all me life,” she said. “Mother, she goes out
washin’, an’ I run the house—y’see, I got a doctor’s c’tificate that I
needn’t go to school, ’cause of me hip, so that leaves me plenty of
time. An’ then me jolly old hip must go an’ get worse on me! An’ now
Mum’s sick.” Her lip quivered. “I don’t see how on earth they’re goin’
to get on if I don’t go home!” she said anxiously. “Do you think you
could say somethin’ to Matron? An’ then, perhaps, she could put in a
word for me with Doctor!”
Norah promised; it was hard to deny the pleading of the great brown
eyes. But when, later on, she found her opportunity, the Matron shook
her head.
“Poor little soul!” she said, sadly. “She does not know that she will
never go out.”
“Not go out?” Norah stared.
“No; she has been here five months, and it is quite hopeless. And it is
better so—she could never be strong.” The Matron patted Norah’s
shoulder, looking gently at her aghast face. “You don’t know how many
there are for whose sake we are glad when the end comes,” she said.
Out on the broad balconies many children were lying—there seemed no
corner in all the great building that was not full of patients. One
verandah had babies’ cradles only—such weary, old-looking babies that
Norah could scarcely bear to look at them; it was so altogether
extraordinary and terrible to her, that a baby could possibly look as
did these mites from the slums. That was the saddest part of all the
hospital.
Then there were medical wards, into some of which they could not go;
they left their parcels with the nurses, since David Linton had planned
that every child in the hospital should have a gift from his children.
Some of these small patients were too ill to be disturbed. There were
one or two beds round which a screen was drawn significantly, and the
children near the screens were very quiet. But even where sickness or
pain was hardest, there was but little complaining, and very seldom did
a child cry. The children of the poor soon learn to suffer in silence.
“But they don’t all suffer,” said the nurse the boys called “Brown
Eyes.” “Most of them are happy—and it hurts, sometimes, to see how many
hate to go home. You see, many of the homes are so poor and
comfortless—not even a decent bed. They dread going back, after having
been cared for here—they know their mothers haven’t time or money to
look after them properly. But there are always more waiting to come
in—we have to send them out as soon as possible.”
The Billabong children were very silent as the motor whirred through the
busy streets, and back to the hotel. Even Wally was quiet; he stared
before him, whistling under his breath, in an absent-minded fashion. And
Norah looked at Jim’s long legs, thinking of the crippled limbs that
were so ordinary in the hospital day’s work.
But back in the hospital the tongues wagged freely. It would be very
long before the Billabong visit was forgotten.
“Weren’t they jolly—just!”
“Didn’t they speak nice!”
“That long feller with the thin face—wasn’t he a hard case?”
“Them little girls wasn’t dressed a bit swell—they was only in print
frocks. My best dress ain’t print—it’s Jap. silk!”
“They lef’ us lovely things. An’ the man said they was our very own. I’m
goin’ to take my doll home to Myrtle when I go out!”
“They left brightness wherever they went,” said little “Brown Eyes”—who
was not usually poetical. “I’m not even tired to-night!”
In the boys’ surgical ward, after the lights were out, there was still
talking—it had been a great day, and excitement yet seethed. Little
Tommy was silent. He had fallen asleep, one hand thrust beneath his
pillow, where the watch had gone to sleep, too. The other hand held his
new knife in a tight, hot clasp. There was the shadow of a smile on his
thin little face. One might fancy that he had found his way to a Dream
Country, where there were no crippled boys any more.