The bedroom was bright with flowers and the many touches given by a
thoughtful woman's hand, to which was due the sweet fragrance in the
air.
"But you are better to-day, sir?"
"No, nurse, no. Perhaps better in body, but not in spirit. You cannot
understand it. I seem to be a prisoner chained down. My body is here,
and my mind is everywhere about the place with my old projects."
"Shall I read to you, sir?"
"Read? Yes; I like to hear you read. You are a strange nurse, to be
able to read with so much feeling. Get a book. Something good."
"What would you like to-day?"
"Anything. Who's that? Go and see. So tiresome, disturbing me like
this."
Nurse Elisia went to answer the light tap at the door, and as she opened
it Aunt Anne appeared, and was sweeping by her, when her brother cried,
"Stop!"
"But I have some business to transact with you, Ralph," said the lady
pleadingly.
"I cannot help it. Go away now. I cannot be disturbed."
"Oh, very well, Ralph. I will come up again," said Aunt Anne in an
ill-used tone.
"Wait till I send for you," said her brother sourly.
"It's all that woman's doing," said Aunt Anne to herself, as she swept
down the corridor. "Oh, if I could find some means of sending her
away."
"It seems as if it were my fate to make enemies here," said Nurse Elisia
to herself, as she stood waiting with a book in her hand. "It is time I
left, and yet life seems to have been growing sweeter in this quiet
country home."
Her eyes were directed toward the window, by which a little bookcase had
been placed; and, as she looked out on the beautiful garden, there was
the faint dawn of a smile upon her lip, but it passed away directly,
leaving the lips white and pinched, while a curiously haggard and
strange look came into her face. She craned forward and gazed out
intently; there was a cold dew upon her forehead, and the hand which
took out her kerchief trembled violently.
She drew back from the window, but, as if compelled by some emotion she
still gazed out. Ralph Elthorne did not notice the change in the
nurse's aspect, but illness had made his hearing keen, and he said
sharply:
"Who is that coming up to the front?"
"Miss Elthorne, sir."
"But I can hear two people."
"A gentleman is with her."
"What gentleman? what is he like?"
There was a strange singing in Nurse Elisia's ears, as, with her voice
now perfectly calm, and her emotion nearly mastered, she described the
appearance of the visitor so vividly that Elthorne said at once:
"Oh, it's Burwood."
She looked at him quickly, to see that he lay back with his eyes half
closed, musing, with a satisfied expression upon his face, while her own
grew wondering of aspect and strange.
For her life at Hightoft had been so much confined to the sick chamber,
that she knew very little of the neighbours. The Lydons had often been
mentioned in her presence, and, from a hint or two let fall, she had
gathered that Isabel was engaged to some baronet in the neighbourhood;
but she had not heard his name, which came to her now as a surprise,
while the fact of his being in company with the daughter of the house,
and the satisfied look upon the father's countenance, left no doubt in
her mind that this was the suitor of his choice.
The current of her thoughts was broken by her patient, who seemed to
wake up from a doze.
"Ah, you are there?" he said. "I must have dropped asleep, and was
dreaming that you had gone out for your walk, and I could not make
anybody hear. Have I been asleep long?"
"Very few minutes, sir. In fact, I did not know you were asleep."
"Ah, one dreams a great deal in a very short time. You were going to
read to me, weren't you?"
"Yes, sir. Shall I begin?"
"You may as well, though I would as soon think." There was a gentle tap
at the door.
"Come in. No; see who that is, nurse. Why am I to be so worried! I'm
not ill now," he cried peevishly.
She crossed to the door and opened it, to find Isabel standing there,
flushed and evidently agitated.
"May I come in and sit with you a little while, papa?" she said.
Elthorne shook his head.
"No," he cried shortly, "and I will not be interrupted so. Your aunt
was here just now. Pray do not be so tiresome, my dear child. I will
send for you if I want you. Why have you left Burwood?"
A sob rose to Isabel's throat, and as she saw the nurse standing there,
book in hand, a feeling of dislike began to grow within her breast.
For why should not this be her task? Why was this strange woman to be
always preferred to her? It should have been her office to read to the
sick man, and she would gladly have undertaken the duty.
"I am very sorry I came, papa, but I see you so seldom," she said
softly. "Papa, dear, let me come and read to you."
"No, no," cried Elthorne peevishly. "Nurse is going to read. Besides,
you have company downstairs. Burwood has not gone?"
"No, papa."
"And you come away and leave him? There, go down again, and do, pray,
help your aunt to keep up some of the old traditions of the place. What
will Burwood think?"
Isabel gave a kind of gasp, her forehead wrinkled up, and the tears rose
to her eyes, but at that moment she saw those of the nurse fixed upon
her inquiringly, and in an instant she flushed up and darted a look full
of resentment at "this woman," who appeared to be gratifying a vulgar
curiosity at her expense.
"Did you hear me, Isabel?" cried her father, querulously. "Pray, go
down. You fidget me. Go down to Burwood, and if he asks, tell him I am
very much better, and that I shall be glad to see him soon."
"Yes, papa," she said faintly; and turning back to the door, she had her
hand upon it, when, moved by an affectionate impulse, she ran back
quickly, bent down and kissed him.
"Good girl!" he said. "Good girl! Now make haste down."
She glanced quickly at the nurse, and the resentful flush once more
suffused her cheeks, for those eyes were still watching her, and this
time there was a smile upon the slightly parted lips.
The girl's eyelids dropped a little and she replied with a fixed stare
before once more reaching the door and passing out.
"How dare she!" thought Isabel, trembling now with indignation. "She
quite triumphs over one. Aunt is right; she is not nice. She seems to
contrive to stand between me and papa. It is not prejudice, and I shall
be very, very glad when she is gone." The door had hardly closed upon
her, when, in a fretful way, Ralph Elthorne exclaimed:
"Now, go on; go on!"
The nurse began reading directly, an Old World poem of chivalry, honour,
and self-denial; and as the soft, rich, deep tones of her voice floated
through the room, Ralph Elthorne's head sank back, his eyes closed, and
his breath came slowly and regularly.
But the reader had grown interested in the words she read. The story of
the poem seemed to fit with her own life of patient long-suffering and
self-denial, and she read on, throwing more and more feeling into the
writer's lines. At last, in the culminating point of the story, her
voice began to tremble, her eyes became dim, the book dropped into her
lap, and a low faint sob escaped from her lips, as the pent up, long
suppressed agony of her heart now broke its bounds, and, as her face
went down into her hands, she had to fight hard to keep from bursting
into a fit of hysterical weeping.
For, only a short hour before, the deep wound of the past had suddenly
been torn open, and memory had come with a rush of incidents to torture
her with the recollections of the bygone, of the rude awakening from the
golden dream of her girlhood's first love to the fact that the man who
had first made her heart increase its pulsations, the man she had
believed in her bright, young imagination to be the soul of chivalrous
honour, was a contemptible, low-minded _roue_. How she had refused to
believe it at first, and insisted to herself that all she had heard was
base calumny; and she had gone on defending him with indignation till
the cruel facts were forced upon her, and in one short minute she had
turned from a trustful, passionate, loving girl, to the disillusioned
woman, with no hope but to find some occupation which would deaden the
misery of her heart.
Since then her life had been one of patient self-denial, at first in
toiling among the suffering in the sordid homes of misery in one of the
worst parts of London. Here, while tending a woman dying of neglect and
injuries inflicted by some inhuman brute, it had struck her that she
might enlist the sympathies of the great surgeon whose name had long
been familiar, and ask him to come and try to save the woman's life.
To think with her was to act, and she waited on him humbly and
patiently, all the time trembling for the consequence to the injured
woman left almost alone. But at last her turn came, and she was ushered
into Sir Denton's presence.
He heard her patiently, and shook his head.
"It is impossible, my dear young lady," he said sharply. "I can but
battle with a few of the atoms of misery in the vast sands of troubled
life. From your description of the case, I fear I can do no good, and
my time for seeing patients here at home is over, while a score of poor
creatures are lying in agony at my hospital waiting their turn."
She looked at him despairingly, and he spoke more gently.
"I admire and respect the grand self-denial of such ladies as yourself
who devote themselves to these tasks, so do not think me unfeeling. It
is that I can only attend a certain number of cases every day."
"But you would go to some wealthy patient," she cried imploringly, "and
I will pay you whatever fee you ask."
"You wrong me, my dear young lady," he said gravely. "I would not go
to-day to any wealthy or great patient for any sum that could be offered
me. I take fees, but I hope my life is not so sordid as that."
"Forgive me," she said hastily. "I beg your pardon."
"Yes," he said, taking her hand to raise it reverently to his lips, "I
forgive you, my child, and I will prove it by seeing the poor woman of
whom you speak. Come."
He led her out to the carriage waiting to take him to the hospital, and
a group of the wretched dwellers in the foul street soon after stood
watching the great surgeon's carriage, while he was in the bare upstairs
room of the crowded house. He stayed an hour, and came again and again,
till the day came when another carriage stopped at that door, and a
hushed crowd of neighbours stood around, to see Nurse Elisia's patient
carried out, asleep.
"If I only had come to you sooner!" she said.
"I could have done no more," replied Sir Denton. "Believe me, it is the
simple truth. We can both honestly say that we have done everything
that human brain and hands could do."
They were walking slowly away from the house where the woman had died.
"And now I must speak to you about yourself."
"About myself?" she said wonderingly.
"Yes; I ask you no questions about your friends, or your reasons for
taking up the life to which you have devoted yourself; but I am
interested in you and your future. Do you intend to go on attending the
sick and suffering?"
"Yes," she said simply.
"Good; but not like this. You are young and beautiful, and at all hours
you are going about here alone."
"I have no fear," she said, smiling. "The poor people here respect me."
"Yes; and, to the honour of rough manhood, I believe, my child, that
there are hundreds who would raise a hand for your protection; but the
time will come when you will meet with insult from some drink-maddened
brute. You must give it up. Your presence is so much light in these
homes of darkness, but--you have interested me, as I tell you."
She looked at him searchingly.
He read her thoughts and smiled.
"I am speaking as your grandfather might. Let me advise you, my child.
This must not go on."
"I thank you," she replied; "but I have devoted myself to this life, and
I cannot turn back."
"I do not ask you to turn back," he said. "You have devoted yourself to
the sick and suffering. The duties can be as well performed where you
will be safe, and treated with respect."
She looked at him doubtingly.
"Let me counsel you," he said. "Come."
"Where?" she asked, and he held out his hand. "You can trust me," he
said; and he led her to his carriage, and then through the ward of the
hospital where he reigned supreme.
It was a few days after a terrible accident at one of the hives of
industry, and among other sufferers, some ten or a dozen poor work-girls
lay, burned, maimed, and in agony, longingly gazing at the door to see
the face of the grey-haired man on whose words they hung for life and
strength.
That day he came accompanied by his pale, sweet-faced young friend, in
whose beautiful eyes the tears gathered as she went round with him from
bed to bed, appalled by the amount of bodily and mental suffering
gathered in that one narrow space.
"Well?" he said, a couple of hours later. "Is it too dreadful, or will
you help me here?"
"Can I?" she said simply. "I am so ignorant and young."
"You possess that," he said gravely, "which no education can impart.
Your presence here will be sunshine through the clouds. I should shrink
from asking you to come among these horrors, but you have, for some
reasons of your own, taken up this self-denying life, and I tell you
that you can do far more good to your suffering fellow-creatures here
than by seeking out cases in those vile streets. You will be safe from
insult and from imposition. We have no impostors here. What do you
say?"
She gave him her hand, and the next day Nurse Elisia came from her
home--somewhere west, the other nurses said--and returned at night
unquestioned, and after a week or two of jealousy and avoidance, as one
different to themselves, the attendants one and all were won to respect
and deference by acts, not words.