We see many curious phases of humanity--we who administer to the sick
in the great hospitals which are among the boasts of London. The mask
worn by the face of the world is dropped before us. We see men as they
are, and while the sight is often not calculated to enhance our
estimate of human nature, there are occasionally strong reliefs which
stand out from the mass of shadow. There are curious opinions
entertained in the outer world as to the internal economy of hospitals,
not a few "laymen" imagining that the main end of such establishments
is that the doctors may have something to experiment upon for the
advancement of their professional theories--something which, while it
is human, is not very valuable in the social scale and therefore open
to be hacked and hewn and operated upon with a freedom begotten of the
knowledge that the subject is a mere vile corpus.
Nor is this the only delusion. Many people think that the hospital
nurse is but another name for a heartless harpy, brimful of callous
selfishness. Her attentions--kindness is an inadmissible word--are
believed to be purely mercenary. Those who themselves can afford to fee
her or who have friends able and willing to buy her services, may
purchase civil treatment and careful nursing while the poor wretch who
has neither money nor friends may languish unheeded. There is no
greater mistake than this. Year by year the character of hospital
nursing has improved. It is not to be denied that in times gone by
there were nurses the mainsprings of whose actions may be said to have
been money and gin; but these have long since been driven forth with
contumely. I have seen a poor wretch of a discharged soldier without a
single copper to bless himself with, nursed with as much tender
assiduity and real feeling as if he were in a position to pay his
nurses handsomely.
Indeed, in most hospitals now the practice of accepting money presents
is altogether forbidden; and if the prohibition, as in the case of
railway porters and guards, is sometimes looked upon in the light of a
dead letter, there is, I sincerely believe, no such thing as any
grasping after a guerdon nor any neglect in a case where it is evident
no guerdon is to be expected. There is an hospital I could name in
which the nurses are prohibited from accepting from patients any more
substantial recognition of their services than a nosegay of flowers.
The wards of this hospital are always gay with bright, fragrant posies,
most of them the contributions of those who, having been carefully
tended in their need, retain a grateful recollection of the kindness
and now that they are in health again take this simple, pretty way of
showing their gratitude. It is two years ago since a rough bricklayer's
labourer got mended in the accident ward of this hospital of some
curiously complicated injuries he had received by tumbling from the top
of a house. Not a Sunday afternoon has there been since the
house-surgeon told him one morning that he might go out, that he has
not religiously visited the "Albert" ward and brought his
thank-offering in the shape of a cheap but grateful nosegay.
Those nurses who thus devote themselves to the tending of sick have
often curious histories if anybody would be at the trouble of
collecting them. It is by no means always mere regard for the securing
of the necessaries of life which has brought them to the thankless and
toilsome occupation. We have all read of nunneries in which women
immured themselves, anxious to sequester themselves from all
association with the outer world and to devote themselves to a life of
penance and devotion. After all their piety was aimless and of no
utility to humanity. There was a concentrated selfishness in it which
detracted from its ambitious aspiration. But in the modern nuns of our
hospitals methinks we have women who, abnegating with equal solicitude
the pleasures and dissipations of the world, find a more philanthropic
opening for their exertions in their retirement than in sleeping on
hair pallets, and in eating nothing but parched peas.
It was towards the autumn of a recent year that a modest-looking young
woman applied to me for a situation on our nursing staff. She wore a
widow's dress and seemed a self-contained, reserved little woman, with
something weighing very heavily on her mind. Her testimonials of
character were ample and of a very high order but they did not
enlighten me with any great freedom as to her past history, and she for
her part appeared by no means eager to supplement the meagre
information furnished by them. However, people have a right to keep
their own counsel if they please, and there was no sin in the woman's
reticence. We happened to be very short of efficient nurses at the time
and she was at once taken upon trial; her somewhat strange stipulation,
which she made absolute, being agreed to--that she should not be
compelled to reside in the hospital, but merely come in to perform her
turn of nursing, and that over, be at liberty to leave the precincts
when she pleased. I say the stipulation was a strange one, because
attached to it there was a considerable pecuniary sacrifice as well as
a necessity for entering a lower grade.
She made a very excellent nurse, with her quiet, reserved ways and her
manner of moving about a ward as if she studied the lightness of every
footfall. But she had her peculiarities. I have already said that she
was not given to be communicative, and for the first three months she
was in the place I do not believe she uttered a word to any one within
the walls except on subjects connected with the performance of her
duties. Then, too, she manifested a curious fondness for being on duty
in the accident ward. Most nurses have very little liking for this
ward--the work is very heavy and unremitting and frequently the sights
are more than usually repulsive. But she specially made application to
be placed in it, and the more terrible the nature of the accident the
more eager was her zeal to minister to the poor victim. It seemed
almost a morbid fondness which she developed for waiting, in
particular, upon people injured by railway accidents. When some poor
mangled plate-layer or a railway-porter crushed almost out of
resemblance to humanity would be borne in and laid on an empty cot in
the accident ward, this woman was at the bedside with a seemingly
intuitive perception of what would best conduce to soothe and ease the
poor shattered fellow; and she would wait on him "hand and foot" with
an intensity of devotion far in excess of what mere duty, however
conscientiously fulfilled, would have demanded of her. Indeed, her
partiality for railway "cases" was so marked that it appeared to amount
to a passion; and among the other nurses, never slow to fix upon any
peculiarity and base upon it some not unfriendly nickname, our quiet
friend went by the name of "Railway Lizz." Nobody ever got any clue to
the reason, if there was one, for this predilection of hers. Indeed,
nobody ever was favoured with the smallest scrap of her confidence. I
confess to have felt much interest in the sad-eyed young widow and to
have several times given her an opening which she might have availed
herself of for narrating something of her past life; but she always
retired within herself with a sensitiveness which puzzled me not a
little, satisfied as I was that there was nothing in her antecedents of
a character which would not bear the light.
There are few holidays within an hospital. Physical suffering is not to
be mitigated by a gala day; the pressure of disease cannot be lightened
by jollity and merry-making. One New Year's Eve, when the world outside
our walls was glad of heart, a poor shattered form was borne into the
accident ward. It was a railway-porter whom a train had knocked down
and passed over, crushing the young fellow almost out of the shape of
humanity. Railway Lizz was by his side in a moment, wetting the
pain-parched lips and smoothing the pillow of the half-conscious
sufferer. The house-surgeon came and went with that silent shake of the
head we know too surely how to interpret, and the mangled
railway-porter was left in the care of his assiduous nurse. It was
almost midnight when I again entered the accident ward. The night-lamp
was burning feebly, shedding a dull dim light over the great room and
throwing out huge grotesque shadows on the floor and the walls. I
glanced toward the railway-porter's bed, and the tell-tale screen
placed around it told me that all was over and that the life had gone
out of the shattered casket. As I walked down the room toward the
screen I heard a low subdued sound of bitter sobbing behind it; and
when I stepped within it, there was the sad-faced widow-nurse weeping
as if her heart would break. When she saw me she strove hard to repress
her emotion and to resume the quiet, self-possessed demeanour which it
was her wont to wear; but she failed in the attempt and the sobs burst
out in almost convulsive rebellion against the effort to repress them.
I put my arm round the neck of the poor young thing and stooping down
kissed her wet cheek as a tear from my own eye mingled with her profuse
weeping. The evidence of feeling appeared to overpower her utterly; she
buried her head in my lap, and lay long there sobbing like a child.
When the acuteness of the emotion had somewhat spent itself I gently
raised her up, and asked of her what was the cause of a grief so
poignant. I found that I was now at last within the intrenchments of
her reserve; with a deep sigh she said, in her Scottish accent, that it
was "a lang, lang story," but if I cared to hear it she would tell it.
So sitting there, we two together in the dim twilight of the
night-lamp, with the shattered corpse of the railway-porter lying there
"streekit" decently before us, she told the following pathetic tale:--
"I am an Aberdeen girl by birth. My father was the foreman at a
factory, a very stiff, dour man, but a gude father, and an upright,
God-fearing man. When I was about eighteen, I fell acquainted with a
railway-guard, a winsome, manly lad as ever ye would wish to see. If ye
had kent my Alick, ye wadna wonder at me for what I did. My father was
a proud man, and he couldna bear that I should marry a man that he said
wasna my equal in station; and in his firm, masterful way he forbade
Alick from coming about the house, and me from seeing him. It was a
sair trial, and I dinna think ony father has a right to put doon his
foot and mar the happiness of twa young folks in the way mine did. The
struggle was a bitter ane, between a father's commands and the bidding
of true luve; and at last, ae night coming home from a friend's house,
Alick and I forgathered again, and he swore he would not gang till I
had promised I would marry him afore the week was out.
"I'll not trouble ye with lang details of the battle that I fought with
mysel', and how in the end Alick conquered. We were married in the West
Kirk the Sunday after, and we twa set up our simple housekeeping in a
single room in a house by the back of the Infirmary. Oh, mem, we were
happy young things! Alick was the fondest, kindest man ye could ever
think of. Sometimes he wad take me a jaunt the length of Perth in the
van with him, and point out the places of interest on the road as we
went flashing by them. Then on the Sunday, when he was off duty, we
used to take a walk out to the Torry Lighthouse, or down by the auld
brig o' Balgownie, and then hame to an hour's read of the Bible afore I
put down the kebbuck and the bannocks. My father keepit hard and
unforgiving; they tellt me he had sworn an oath I should never darken
his door again, and at times I felt very sairly the bitterness of his
feeling toward me, whan I was sitting up waiting for Alick's
hame-coming whan he was on the night turn; but then he wad come in with
his blithe smile and cheery greeting and every thought but joy at his
presence wad flee awa as if by magic. Some of the friends I had kent
when a lassie at home still keepit up the acquantance, and we used
sometimes to spend an evening at one of their houses. The New Year time
came, and Alick and myself got an invitation to keep our New Year's Eve
at the house of a decent, elderly couple that lived up near the Kitty
Brewster Station--quiet, retired folk that had been in business and
made enough to live comfortable on. It was Alick's night for the late
mail train from Perth, but he would be at Market Street Station in time
to get up among us to see the auld year out and the new ane in; and I
was to spend the evening there and wait for his arrival.
"It was a vera happy time. The auld couple were as kind as kind could
be, and their twa or three young folks keepit up the fun brisk and
lively. I took a hand at the cairts and sang a lilt like the rest; but
I was luiking for Alick's company to fill up my cup of happiness. The
time wore on, and it was getting close to the hour at which he might be
expectit. I kenna what ailed me, but I felt strangely uneasy and
anxious for his coming. 'Here he is at last!' I said to myself, as my
heart gave a jump at the sound of a foot on the gravel walk. As it came
closer, I kent it wasna Alick's step, and a strange, cauld grip of fear
and doubt caught me at the heart. Mr. Thomson, that was the name of our
old friend, was called out, and I overheard the sound of a whispered
conversation in the passage. Then he put his head in and called out his
wife; I could see his face was as white as a sheet, and his voice shook
in spite of himself. The boding of misfortune came upon me with a force
it was in vain to strive against, and I rose up and gaed out into the
passage amang them. The auld man was shakin' like an aspen leaf; the
gudewife had her apron ower her face and was greeting like a bairn, and
in the door stood Tarn Farquharson, a railway-porter frae the station.
I saw it aa' quicker nor I can tell it to you, leddy. I steppit up to
Tarn and charged him simple and straught.
"'Tam, what's happent to my Alick?'
"The wet tears stood in Tarn's e'en as he answered, 'Dinna speer,
Lizzie, my puir lass, dinna speer, whan the answer maun be a waefu'
ane.'
"'Tell me the warst, Tam,' says I; 'let me hear the warst, an' pit me
oot o' my pain!'
"The words are dirlin' and stoonin' in my ears yet--
"'The engine gaed ower him, and he's lyin' dead at Market Street.'
"I didna faint, and I couldna greet. Something gied a crack inside my
head, and my e'en swam for a minute; but the next I was putting on my
bonnet and shawl and saying good-nicht to Mrs. Thomson. They tried to
stop me. I heard Tam whisper to the auld man, 'She maunna see him. He
is mangled oot o' the shape o' man.'
"But I wasna to be gainsaid, and Tam took my airm as we gaed doon
through the toon to Market Street. There they tried hard to keep him
oot frae my sight. They tellt me he wasna fit to be seen, but there's
nae law that can keep a wife frae seeing her husband's corpse. He was
lying in a waiting-room covered up with a sheet, and, oh me, he was
sair, sair mangled--that puir fellow there is naething to him; but the
winsome, manly face, with the sweet, familiar smile on it, was nane
spoiled; and lang, lang, I sat there, us twa alane, with my hand on his
cauld forehead, playing wi' his bonnie waving hair. They left me there,
in their considerate kindliness, till the cauld light o' the New Year's
morning began to break, and syne they came and tellt me I maun go. But
I wadna gang my lane. He was mine, and mine only, sae lang as he was
abune the mools; and I claimed my dead hame wi' me, to that hoose he
had left sae brisk and sprichtly whan he kissed me in the morning. Four
of the railway-porters carried him up to that hame which had lost its
hame-look for me now. I keepit him to mysel' till they took him awa'
frae me and laid him under a saugh tree in the Spittal Kirkyard."
She paused in her story, overcome by the bitter memory of the past, and
I wanted no formal application now to give me the clue to her strange
preference for the accident ward and her hitherto inexplicable fondness
for "railway cases." Poor thing, with what inexpressible vividness must
the circumstances in which this New Year's night was passing with her
have recalled the sad remembrances of that other New Year's night the
narrative of which she had just given me! Presently she recovered her
voice, and briefly concluded the little history.
"Leddy, I was wi' bairn whan my Alick was taken from me. Oh, how I used
to pray that God would be gude to me, and give me a living keepsake of
my dead husband! I troubled naebody. I never speered if my father would
do anything for me; but I got work at the factory, and I lived in
prayerful hope. My hour of trouble came, and a fatherless laddie was
born into this weary world, the very picture o' him that was sleeping
under the tree in the Spittal Kirkyard. I needna tell ye I christened
him Alick, and the bairn has been my joy and comfort ever since God
gifted me with him. I found the sichts and memories of Aberdeen ower
muckle for me, sae I came up to London here, and ye ken the rest about
me. It was because of being with my bairn that I wouldna agree to live
in the hospital here like the rest of the nurses, and whan I gang hame
noo to my little garret, he will waken up out of his saft sleep, rosy
and fresh, and hold up his bonnie mou', sae like his father's, for
'mammie's kiss.'"