Part 32 (1/2)
”Then I fairly broke down and cried bitterly; and I told the doctor how sore afflicted I was--how G.o.d had taken my husband and babe from me--how all my little means had been consumed in the expenses of nursing--how the little furniture in my rooms would not pay half what I owed to honest folk--and how, even in my unspeakable wretchedness, I could not ask the Almighty to take away my life, for I could not rest in death if I left the world without paying my just debts. Well, sir, the doctor sate down by me, and said, in his softest and simplest way:--
”'Come, come, neighbour, don't you frighten yourself. Be calm, and listen to me. Don't let the thought of debts worry you. What little I have done in the way of business for your poor child and husband I never wish to be paid for--so there's your greatest creditor disposed of. As for the others, they won't trouble you, for I'll undertake to see that none of them shall think that you have wronged 'em. I wish I could do more, neighbor; but I ain't a rich man, and I have got a wife and a regiment of little ones at home, who won't help, in the long run, to make me richer--although I am sure they'll make me happier.
But now for yourself; you must go to the fever-hospital, to have your illness out; the physician who'll take care of you there is the cleverest in all London; and, as he is an old friend of mine, I can ask him to pay especial attention to you. You'll find it a pleasant, cheerful place, much more cool and comfortable than your rooms here; the nurses are all of them good people; and while lying on your bed there you won't have to fret yourself with thinking how you are to pay for the doctors, and medicine, and kitchen physic.'
”I was only too thankful to a.s.sent to all the doctor said; and forthwith he fetched a coach, put me into it, and took me off to the fever-hospital, to which his influence procured me instant admittance. Without delay I was conveyed to a large and comfortable bed, which, with another similar bed parallel to it, was placed against the wall at the end of a long gallery, containing twenty other beds. The first day of my hospital life I spent tranquilly enough; the languor of extreme exhaustion had soothed me, and my malady had not robbed me of my senses. So I lay calmly on my couch and watched all the proceedings and arrangements of the great bed-room. I noticed how clean and white all the beds looked, and what kindly women the nurses were; I remarked what a wide s.p.a.ce there was down the middle of the room between the two rows of beds, and again what large intervals there were between the beds on each side; I observed, too, that over every bed there was a ventilator set in the wall, and beneath the ventilator a board, on which was pinned a paper, bearing, in a filled-up printed form, the number of the bed to which it belonged, the date when the occupant was admitted to the ward, the names of the physician and nurse under whose charge she was, the medicine she was taking, and the diet on which she was put. It made me smile, moreover, to note how the nurses, when giving physic or nourishment, or otherwise attending to their charges, would frequently address them by the numbers on their boards, instead of their names.
”'Nurse, dear,' I asked, with a smile, when my attendant came near me, 'what's my name?'
”'Oh, dear!' said she, looking up at the board which had already been fixed over my head, 'your name is Number Eleven.'
”It would be hard for me to give you, sir, any notion of how these words, _Number Eleven_, took possession of my mind. This was the more strange, because the nurse did not usually call me by them; for she was a motherly creature, and almost always addressed me as 'poor dear,' or 'poor child'; and the doctors who had the charge of me spoke to me as 'friend,' or 'old friend,' or 'neighbor.' But all the same for that, I always thought of myself as Number Eleven; and ere many days, if any one had asked me what my name was, I could not for the life of me have remembered Abigail Mallet, but should have answered Number Eleven. The patient in the next bed to me was Number Twenty-two; she was, like myself, a poor woman who had just lost a husband and child by the fever, and both of us were much struck, and then drawn to each other, by discovering how we had suffered alike. We often interchanged a few words during the sorrowful hours of the long, hot nights, but our whisperings always turned on the same subject.
'Number Eleven,' I used to hear her poor thin lips murmur, 'are you thinking of your baby, dear?' 'To be sure, darling,' I would answer; 'I am awake, and when I am awake, I am always thinking of her.' Then most times she would inquire, 'Number Eleven, dear, which do you think of most--the little one or her father?' Whereto I would reply, 'I think of both alike, dear, for whenever I look at her, a fair young angel in heaven--she seems to be lying in her father's arms.' And after we had conversed so, No. 22 would be quiet for a few minutes; and often, in the silence of the night, I could at such times hear that which informed me the poor woman was weeping to herself--in such a way that she was happier for her tears.
”But my malady progressed unfavourably. Each succeeding night was worse to endure; and the morning light, instead of bringing refreshment and hope, only gave to me a dull, gloomy consciousness that I had pa.s.sed hours in delirium, and that I was weaker and heavier in heart, and more unlikely than ever to hold my head up again. They cut all the hair off my head, and put blisters at the back of my neck; but the awful weight of sorrow and the gnawing heat kept on my brain all the same. I could no longer amuse myself with looking at what went on in the ward; I lost all care for the poor woman who lay in the next bed; and soon I tossed to and fro, and heeded nothing of the outer world except the burning, and aching, and thirst, and sleeplessness that encased me.
”One morning I opened my eyes and saw the doctor standing between me and No. 22, talking to the nurse. A fit of clearness pa.s.sed over my understanding, such as people suffering under fever often experience for a few seconds, and I heard the physician say softly to the nurses, 'We must be careful and do our best, sister, and leave the rest to G.o.d. They are both very ill; this is now the fourth day since either of them recognized me. They must have more wine and brandy to help them through. Here, give me their boards.' On this, the nurse took down the boards, and handed them, one after the other, to the physician, and he, taking a pen from a clerk, who always attended him, wrote his directions on the papers, and handed them back to the nurse.
Having heard and seen all this, I s.h.i.+fted in my bed, and after a few weak efforts to ponder on my terrible condition, and how awful a thing it is to die, I fell back into my former state of delirium and half-consciousness.
”The next distinct memory I have of my illness was when I opened my eyes and beheld a wooden screen standing between me and the next bed.
My head felt as if it had been put into a closely fitting cap of ice; but apart from this strange sensation, I was free from pain. My body was easy, and my mind was tranquil. My nurse was standing at the foot of my bed, looking towards me with an expression of solemn tenderness; and by her side was another woman--as I afterwards found out, a new nurse, unaccustomed to the ways of the hospital.
”'What is that screen there for?' asked the novice.
”My nurse lowered her voice, and answered slowly, 'Number Eleven, poor soul, is dying; she'll be dead in half an hour; and the screen is there so that Number Twenty-Two mayn't see her.'
”'Poor soul!' said the novice, 'may G.o.d have mercy upon her!'
”They spoke scarcely above a whisper, but I heard them distinctly; and a solemn gladness, such as I used to feel, when I was a young girl, at the sound of church music, came over me at learning that I was to die.
Only half an hour, and I should be with baby and Richard in heaven!
Mixed with this thought, too, there was a pleasant memory of those I had loved and who had loved me--of sister Martha and her husband and children, of the doctor who had been so good to me and brought me to the hospital, of my lady in India, of many others; and I silently prayed the Almighty with my dying heart to protect and bless them.
Then pa.s.sed through me a fluttering of strange, soft fancies, and it was revealed to me that I was dead.
”By-and-by the physician came his round of the ward, stepping lightly, pausing at each bed, speaking softly to nurses and patients, and, without knowing it, making many a poor woman entertain kinder thoughts than she had ever meant to cherish of the wealthy and gentle. When he came to the end of the ward, his handsome face wore a pitiful air, and it was more by the movement of his lips than by the sound of his mouth that I knew what pa.s.sed from him to the nurse.
”'Well, sister, well,' he said, 'she sleeps quietly at last. Poor thing! I hope and believe the next life will be a fairer one for her than this has been.'
”'Her sister has been written to,' observed the nurse.
”'Quite right; and how is the other?'
”'Oh, No. 22 is just the same--quite still, not moving at all, scarcely breathing, sir!'
”'Um!--you must persevere. Possibly she'll pull through. Good-bye, sister.'
”Late in the evening my sister Martha came. She was dressed in black, and led with her hand Rhoda, her eldest daughter. Poor Martha was very pale, and worn, and ill; when she approached the bed on which I lay, she seemed as if she would faint, and she trembled so painfully that my kind nurse led her behind the screen, so that she might recover herself out of my sight. After a few seconds--say two minutes--she stood again at the foot of my bed--calmer, but with tears in her eyes, and such a mournful loveliness in her sweet face as I had never seen before.
”'I shouldn't have known her, nurse,' she said, gazing at me for a short s.p.a.ce and then withdrawing her eyes--'she is so much altered.'
”'Ah, dear!' answered the nurse, 'sickness alters people much--and death more.'