"PEACE BE TO THIS HOUSE"
I can appreciate now what my father and Nurse Bundle must have
suffered during my dangerous illness. It was not a common tie that
bound my father's affections to my life. Not only was I his son, I was
his only son. Moreover, I was the only living child of the beloved
wife of his youth--all that remained to him of my fair mother. Then I
was the heir to his property, the hope of his family, and, without
undue egotism, I may say, from what I have been told, that I was a
quaint, original, and (thanks to Mrs. Bundle) not ill-behaved child,
and that, for a while at least, I should have been much missed in the
daily life of the household.
Mrs. Cadman told me, long afterwards, exactly how many days and nights
Nurse Bundle passed in my sick chamber, "and never had her clothes
off;" and if the wearing of clothes had been one of the sharpest
torments of the Inquisition, Mrs. Cadman could not have spoken in a
hollower tone, or thrown more gloom round the announcement.
That, humanly speaking, my good and loving nurse saved my life, I must
ever remember with deep gratitude. There are stages of fever, when, as
they say, "a nurse is everything;" and a very little laziness,
selfishness, or inattention on Nurse Bundle's part would probably
have been my death-warrant. But night and day she never relaxed her
vigilance for one instant of the crisis of my malady. She took nothing
for granted, would trust no one else, but herself saw every order of
the doctor carried out, and, at a certain stage, fed me every ten
minutes, against my will, coaxing me to obedience, and never losing
heart or temper for one instant. And this although my petulance and
not infrequent assurances that I wished and preferred to die--"I was
so tired"--within the sick room, and my father's despair and bitter
groan that he would sacrifice every earthly possession to keep me
alive, outside it, would have caused many people to lose their heads.
In such an hour many a foolish, gossiping, half-educated woman, by
absolute faithfulness to the small details of her trust, by the
complete laying aside of personal needs and personal feelings, rises
to the sublimity of duty, and, ministering to the wants of another
with an unselfish vigilance almost perfect, earns that meed of praise
from men, which from time to time persists, in grateful hyperbole, to
liken her sex to the angels.
My poor father, whose irrepressible distress led to his being
forbidden to enter my room, powerless to help, and therefore without
alleviation for his anxiety, simply hung upon Nurse Bundle's orders
and reports, and relied utterly on her. Fortunately for his own
health, she gained sufficient influence to insist, almost as
peremptorily as in my case, upon his taking food. Often afterwards did
she describe how he and Rubens sat outside the door they were not
allowed to enter; and she used to declare that when she came out,
Rubens, as well as my father, turned an anxious and expectant
countenance towards her, and that both alike seemed to await and to
understand her report of my condition.
Only once did Nurse Bundle's self-possession threaten to fail her. It
was on my repeated and urgent request to "have the clergyman to pray
with me."
Mrs. Bundle, like most uneducated people, rather regarded the
visitation of the sick by the parish clergyman as a sort of extreme
unction or last sacrament. And to send for the parson seemed to her
tantamount to dismissing the doctor and ringing the passing bell. My
father was equally averse from the idea on other grounds. Moreover,
our old rector had gone, and the lately-appointed one was a stranger,
and rather an eccentric stranger, by all accounts.
For my own part, I had a strong interest in the new rector. His
Christian name was the same as my own, which I felt to constitute a
sort of connection; and the tales I had heard in the village of his
peculiarities had woven a sort of ecclesiastical romance about him in
my mind. He had come from some out-of-the-way parish in the west of
England, where his people, being thoroughly used to his ways, took
them as a matter of course. It was his scrupulous custom to conform as
minutely as possible to the canons of the Church, as well as to the
rubrics of the Prayer Book, and this to the point of wearing shoes
instead of boots. He was a learned man, a naturalist, and an
antiquarian. His appearance was remarkable, his hair being prematurely
white, and yet thick, his eyes grey and expressive, with thick dark
eyebrows, which actually met above them. For the rest, he was tall,
thin, and dressed in obedience to the canons. I had been much
interested in all that I had heard of him, and since my illness I had
often thought of the unqualified note of praise I had heard sounded in
his favour by more than one village matron, "He's beautiful in a
sick-room." It was on one occasion when I heard this that I also heard
that he was accustomed on entering the house to pronounce the
appointed salutation, in the words of the Prayer Book, "Peace be to
this house, and to all that dwell in it." And so it came about that,
when my importunity and anxiety on the subject had overcome the
scruples of my father and nurse, and they had decided to let me have
my way rather than increase my malady by fretting, the new rector came
into my room, and my first eager question was, "Did you say
that--about Peace, you know--when you came in?"
"I did," said the rector; and as he spoke one of his merits became
obvious. He had a most pleasing voice.
"Say it again!" I cried, petulantly.
"Peace be to this house, and to all that dwell in it," he repeated
slowly, and with slightly upraised hand.
"That's Rubens and all," was my comment.
As I wished, the rector prayed by my bedside; and I think he must have
been rather astonished by the fact that at points which struck me I
rather groaned than said, "Amen." The truth is, I had once happened to
go into a cottage where our old rector was praying by the bed of a
sick old man--a Methodist--who groaned "Amen" at certain points in a
manner which greatly impressed me, and I now did likewise, in that
imitativeness of childhood which had helped to lead me to the fancy
for surrounding my own sick bed with all the circumstances I had seen
and heard of in such cases in the village. For this reason I had (to
her hardly concealed distress) given Nurse Bundle, from time to time,
directions as to my wishes in the event of my death. I remember
especially, that I begged she would not fail to cover up all the
furniture with white cloths, and to allow all my friends to come and
see me in my coffin. Thus also I groaned and said "Amen"--"like a poor
person"--at what I deemed suitable points, as the rector prayed.
He was not less wise in a sick room than Mrs. Bundle herself. He
contrived to quieten instead of exciting me, and to the sound of his
melodious voice reading in soothing monotone from my favourite book of
the Bible--the Revelation of St. John the Divine--I finally fell
asleep.
When the inspired description of the New Jerusalem ended, and my own
dream began, I never knew. As I dreamed, it seemed a wonderful and
beautiful vision, though all that I could ever remember of it in
waking hours was the sheerest nonsense.
And this was the beginning of my acquaintance with the Rev. Reginald
Andrewes.