"I had a noble purpose and the strength
To compass it; but I have stopped half-way,
And wrongly given the first-fruits of my toil
To objects little worthy of the gift."
_Browning._
"Sister!"
The urgent word pierced the thick cloak of sleep and scattered fair
dreams of the home of her childhood.
"Sister!"
She started into a sitting posture, and in another moment was out of
bed, for Margaret Carden was saying--
"Mr. H---- has just brought us a croup case, Sister, and a very bad
one, I am afraid."
As the nurse hurried away the great hospital clock boomed out the
hour--two--and almost immediately the Sister had joined a sad little
group in front of the fire that, even during the summer, often was
lighted in the huge open grate at night.
Nurse Carden had taken, into her arms a poor little child of three, who
was fighting and beating the air for the struggling breaths that the
tortured throat was strangling.
It was a pitiful sight. The poor young father and mother--scarcely more
than boy and girl--stood by, the former uttering sharp clicks with his
tongue against his teeth as he watched and was tortured too in the
sufferings of "the little chap," the latter literally wringing her
hands and moaning with the agony of her mother's heart.
They were trying every remedy without avail. There was only tracheotomy
left for them to do. But the father refused his consent.
Cut the fair skin of his boy? No, that they shouldn't!
He was obdurate in his ignorance.
Mr. H---- urged the otherwise hopelessness of the case. His words were
impatient, almost angry. But still the man said, "No!"
Sister Warwick drew him aside, and, taking a candle, led him along
the ward to the side of a little cot where a smiling, rosy child lay
sleeping sweetly. She pulled away the sheet and showed him the little
silver tube in her neck.
"She would not have been alive without it," she said. "She was at
death's door, like your little one. It saved her life. She is going
to be bonny and strong. Let Mr. H---- do what he wants. You must; you
cannot say no now!"
They hurried back.
Was the poor little face changing?
"There, do it, doctor, do it! Have your way!"
The reluctant words were scarcely uttered before the clever strong
hands were at work.
There was immediate relief, and for a moment they believed that the
little life, hanging trembling on such a tiny thread, was to be given
back. But suddenly the baby hands dropped, and the little head fell
back.
Even then the skilful hands would not yield the battle. They persevered
with artificial respiration. They tried every means, until the truth
had to be faced. There was nothing more they could do. They must lay
down the poor little buffeted body and let it sleep.
This is always a terrible moment for doctors and nurses, and it was
with a face quivering with emotion that Sister Warwick left Margaret
Carden to the sacred work of tending the little lifeless form, and,
leading the poor young mother to her room, took up the harder task of
trying to help her in the first bitterness of her grief.
Half-stunned with what had happened, the man sat in the shadows beyond
the range of the light from the fire and lamp, and followed with his
eyes the movements of the nurse as she went to and fro.
Let us hope that he was not realising the fact that his tardy consent
had perhaps cost the child its life.
Mr. H---- laid a kind hand on his shoulder once, with a hearty--
"I am awfully sorry for you;" and he murmured something by way of
answer. Then he rose--still half-dazed--to meet his wife who was coming
out of Sister's room.
They stood side by side, holding each other's hands--like the children
they almost were--and looked long at the sleeping baby.
Nurse Carden had taken the buttercups and grasses from one of the vases
on the ward table, and the little fingers were folded round the stalks.
The inexplicable peace of the presence of death stole into the hearts
of the poor young parents, and they went quietly away with bowed
heads, sharing and bearing together their first real grief.
"Good night, Sister!"
The house physician was going back to his quarters and to the rest that
was so often broken.
"Good night," she added, and then, with a half smile, she added: "Don't
bring me a case like that again for a long time, please! And yesterday
was his birthday too, they tell me--poor mite!"
The doctor's reply to this was a happy one. He said--
"Then we must wish him many happy returns of to-day instead!"
* * * * *
Sister Warwick could sleep no more that night--or early morning rather.
She tried, with a conscientious remembrance of the day's work to come.
But such episodes tore her tenderest sympathies in a way that the
nurses, who thought her hard and cold, would never have credited.
She lay on her couch, not thinking so much in detail of the scene of
conflict she had just been through, as of the ever-recurring wonder
that such things had to be. These sudden, dashing, jangling chords
in life seemed so inexplicable; and for children to suffer so, and
for peaceful lives to have such dark passages! And then some lines of
Browning flashed into her mind, and she repeated them to herself over
and over again, till the meaning sank in and soothed her.
"Why rush the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear!
Each sufferer says his say, his end of the weal and woe;
But God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear;
The rest may reason and welcome, 'tis we musicians know."
The quiet of the night was broken by a sudden trampling of feet in the
hospital square. Sister Warwick guessed what it meant--an operation
in the theatre. She could hear the even tread of the porters as they
carried the stretcher and the clank as it rested on the stone floor.
Now a messenger was running round to the college and stopping beneath
the students' windows. His voice reached her ears--
"Operation! Operation!"
Coming in the darkness and shrouded by night, it would all have seemed
weird and uncanny if custom had not reconciled her to the strangeness
of the sounds. As it was, the discordant noises only served--by some
connection of ideas--to turn her thoughts to another anxiety--the
special "crook in her lot" just now. She lay and tried to put the
matter clearly before her mind.
There was no doubt that in spite of the fact that Nurse Hudson had
passed her exams and won the nurse's buckle, she was not trustworthy.
Something was probably exerting a wrong influence over her. It was
sadly evident that, as a nurse, she was deteriorating, and Sister
Warwick acknowledged bitterly that she herself had failed to arrest
that course.
What could she do now? There were too many lives at stake to allow
to remain unnoticed these recurring acts of carelessness, and, worse
still, these signs of hardness and want of tenderness in her dealings
with the patients.
Yet how her kind heart shrank from the strong measure of a complaint
to the matron! She had spoken a few decided, and she hoped calm and
"Sisterly" words of warning to her that very evening as she was leaving
the ward. Should she now wait and see if they took effect? Surely it
would be only fair to give her one more trial? Meanwhile she herself
could use greater diligence in overlooking the work done in the ward.
After much thought she settled it so, and then tried to put the anxious
matter aside. Did she err in her judgment? If so, it was on the side of
mercy--the way we women would all prefer to lean.
(_To be continued._)
THREE GIRL-CHUMS, AND THEIR LIFE IN LONDON ROOMS.
BY FLORENCE SOPHIE DAVSON.