CHAPTER V.
Eighteen months have passed away since my story began; and it is no longer dull, foggy, November, but May, beautiful even in London, where the squares and parks are green and fresh, and the lilacs and laburnums in bloom, and the girls sell lilies-of-the-valley and wall flowers in the streets, and trucks with double stocks and narcissus "all a-growing and a-blowing" pass along, leaving a sweet, reviving scent behind them. The sky is blue, with great soft masses of cotton-wool cloud; and the air is balmy and pure in spite of smoke and dirt; and sweet spring is making his power felt, even in the very midst of London. It is blossoming time in the heart as well as in the Kentish apple orchards; and the heart cannot help feeling gay and singing its happy little song even though its cares, like the poor larks in the Seven Dial's bird shops, ruffling their soft breasts and knocking their poor brown heads against their cages in their ecstacy of song.
(Dr. Carter and Violet)
Dr. Carter had good cause for happiness that day, though, indeed, he was moving among sickness and suffering in a great London hospital. He had some lilies in his coat that Violet fastened there with her own hands; and as she did so he had whispered, "Only another week, Violet;" for their wedding day was fixed in the next week. And was not that a thought that suited well with the lovely May weather, to make him carry a glad heart under the lilies? The wedding had been long delayed from one cause and another, but principally because the search for the old mother had been altogether fruitless, in spite of the confidence of the police.
"We will find her first," Violet would say; "we must find her, Laddie." She adopted the old name quite naturally. "And then we will talk of the wedding."
But the time rolled on, days, weeks, and months, till at last it was more than a year ago that she had gone; and though they never gave up the hope of finding her, or their efforts to do so, still it no longer seemed to stand between them and give a reason for putting off the marriage, but rather to draw them nearer together, and give a reason for marrying at once. But on Dr. Carter's writing table always stood the pair of pattens, much to the surprise of patients; but he would not have them moved, and in his heart lay the pain of regret, side by side with his love and happiness.
The doctors were making their rounds in the hospital, with a crowd of students about them. There was a very interesting case in the accident ward, over which much time was spent, and much attention paid. I am not doctor enough to describe what the nature of the case was; and if I were, I daresay you would not care to hear; but it was a very interesting case to the doctors and nurses; and that means that life and death were fighting over that bed, and science bringing every re-enforcement in its power in aid of the poor battered fortress that the grim king was attacking so severely. An easy victory on either one side or the other is very uninteresting to lookers-on, though of deepest moment to the patient. And so the doctors passed on with hardly a word by the two next beds, in one of which life was the conqueror, hanging out his flags of triumph in a tinge of color on the cheeks, brightness in the eyes, and vigor in the limbs; in the other, death was as plainly to be seen in the still form and white, drawn face.
After the doctors and students had passed by, and finished their round, Dr. Carter came back alone to No. 20. He had taken deep interest in the case, and had something to say further about it to the nurse. He was a great favorite with the nurses, from his courteous, gentle manners; so they were not disposed to regard his second visit as a troublesome, fidgety intrusion, as they might have done with some. He had not been quite pleased with the way in which a dresser had placed a bandage, and he altered it himself with those strong, tender fingers of his, and was just going off better satisfied, when he found the flowers had dropped from his coat. If they had not been Violet's gift it would not have mattered; but he did not like to lose what she had given, and he looked for them. They had fallen, by some quick movement of his, on the next bed, where death was having an easy victory.
The old woman's arms were stretched outside the bed clothes, and one of her hands, hardworked hands, with the veins standing up on the backs like cord, had closed, perhaps involuntarily, on the flowers, the lilies and the dainty green leaf.
"Here they are, sir," said the nurse; "they must have dropped as you turned round." And she tried to draw them from the woman's hand, but it only closed the tighter. "She doesn't know a bit what she's about. Leave go of the flowers, there's a good woman," she said close to her ear; "the gentleman wants them."
But the hand still held them.
"Well, never mind!" Dr. Carter said, with just a shade of vexation; "let her keep them. It does not matter, and you will only break them if you try to get them away."
"She's not been conscious since they brought her in," the nurse said; "it's a street accident; knocked down by an omnibus. We don't know her name, or nothing, and no one's been to ask about her."
The doctor still stopped, looking at the lilies in the old hand.
"She is badly hurt," he said.
The nurse explained what the house surgeon had said: "Another day will see an end of it. I thought she would have died this morning when I first came on; she was restless then, and talked a little. I fancy she's Scotch, for I heard her say, 'Laddie' several times."
The word seemed to catch the otherwise unconscious ear, for the old woman turned her head on the pillow, and said feebly, "Laddie."
And then, all at once, the doctor gave a cry that startled all the patients in the ward, and made many a one lift up her head to see the cause of such a cry.
"Mother!" he cried, "mother, is it you?"
Dr. Carter was kneeling by the bed, looking eagerly, wildly, at the wan white face. Was he mad? The nurse thought he must be, and this sudden frenzy. And then he called again.—-
"Mother, mother, speak to me!"
A childless mother near said afterwards she thought such a cry would have called her back from the dead, and it almost seemed to do so in this case, for the closed lids trembled and raised themselves a very little, and the drawn mouth moved into the ghost of a smile, and she said,—
"Eh, Laddie, here I be."
And then the nurse came nearer to reason with the madman.
"There is some mistake," she said; "this is quite a poor old woman."
And then he got up and looked at her, she said afterwards, "like my lord duke, as proud as anything."
"Yes," he said, "and she is my mother. I will make arrangements at once for her removal to my house if she can bear it."
Ah! that was the question, and it wanted little examination or experience to tell that the old woman was past moving. The nurse, bewildered and still incredulous, persuaded him not to attempt it; and, instead, her bed was moved into a small ward off the large one, where she could be left alone.
Love is stronger than death; many waters cannot drown it. Yes, but it cannot turn back those cold waters of death, when the soul has once entered them; and so Dr. Carter found that with all his love and with all his skill, he could only smooth, and that but a very little, the steep, stony road down into Jordan.
He got a nurse to attend specially upon her, but he would not leave her; and the nurse said it was not much good her being there, for he smoothed her pillows, and raised her head, and damped her lips, and fanned her with untiring patience and tenderness. Once when he had his arm under her head, raising it, she opened her eyes wide and looked at him.
"Ah, Laddie," she said, "I'm a bit tired with my journey. It's a longish way from Sunnybrook."
"Did you come from there?"
"Yes, sure; I've never been such a long way before and I'm tired out."
"Why didn't you write?" he asked presently, when she opened her eyes again.
"I wanted to give you a surprise," she said; "and I knew as you'd be glad to see me at any time as I liked to come."
And then it dawned on him that the past eighteen months had been blotted clean out of her memory, and that she thought she had just arrived. Then she dozed and then again spoke, "And so this is your house, Laddie? And mighty fine it be!" looking round on the bare hospital room; "and I'm that comfortable if I wasn't so tired, but I'll be getting up when I'm rested a bit. But it do me good to see you when I opens my eyes. I've been thinking all the way how pleased you'd be." All this she said a word or two at a time, and very low and weakly, so that only a son's ear could have heard.
As the evening came on she fell asleep very quietly, such a sleep as, if hope had been possible, might have given hope. Dr. Carter left the nurse watching her and went away, got a hansom and offered the man double fare to take him to Harley Street as fast as possible. Violet had just come in from a flower show, and looker a flower herself, with her sweet face and dainty dress.
"I have found her," Laddie said. "Come." And she came without asking a question, only knowing from Laddie's face that there was sorrow as well as joy in the finding.
"She is dying," he said, as they went up the hospital stairs together. "Can you bear it?"
She only answered by a pressure of her hand on his arm, and they went on to the quiet room. There was a shaded light burning, and the nurse sitting by the bedside.
"She has not stirred, sir, since you left."
But even as she spoke, the old woman moved and opened her eyes, looking first at Laddie and then on Violet.
"Who is it?" she asked.
And then Violet knelt down with her sweet face close to the old woman's, and said very softly, "Mother, I am Laddie's sweetheart."
"Laddie's sweetheart;" she echoed; "he's over-young to be wed—but there! I forgot. He's been a good son, my dear, always good to his old mother, and he'll be a good husband. And you'll make him a good wife, my dear, won't you? God bless you."
And then her trembling hand was feeling for something, and Laddie guessed her wish, and put his own hand and Violet's into it; two young hands, full of life and health and pulsation, under the old, worn, hard worked hand, growing cold and weak with death.
"God bless you, dears, Laddie and his sweetheart. But I'm a bit tired just now."
And then she dozed again, and the two sat by in the dim, quiet room, drawn closer together and dearer to each other than they ever had been before, in the presence of the Great Angel of Death who was so near the old mother now. And very tenderly he did his work that night! Only a sigh and then a sudden hush, during which the listeners' pulses throbbed in their ears, as they listened for the next long-drawn, painful, difficult breath that did not come; and then the weary limbs relaxed into the utter repose and stillness of rest after labor, for the night had come when no man can work,—the holy starlit night of death, with the silver streaks of the great dawn of the Resurrection shining in the east.
For a moment they sat spell-bound; and then it was Laddie, he had so often seen death face to face, who gave way, throwing himself on the bed with an exceeding bitter cry, "O mother, mother, say you forgive me!"
What need for words? Did he not know that she forgave him? If indeed she knew she had anything to forgive. But she was "a bit tired."
Don't you know when bedtime comes, and the nurse calls the children, how sometimes they leave their toys, which a few minutes before seemed all in all to them, without a look, and the cake unfinished, and are carried off with their heads bent down, and their eyes heavy with sleep, too tired even to say good night, or speak a pretty, lisping word of the play-time past, or the pleasures coming in the morning? And so it is often with us bigger children; when the nurse Death calls us at our bedtime, we are "a bit tired," and glad to go, too sleepy even for thought or farewell.
They laid her by the old master in Sunnybrook churchyard; and the village folks talked long afterwards of the funeral, and how Dr. Carter, "he as used to be called Laddie," followed her to the grave, "along with the pretty young lady as he was going to marry; and, bless my heart! wouldn't the poor old soul have felt proud if she could have seen 'em? But she's better where she is, where there ain't no buryin' and no pride neither."
MISS TOOSEY'S MISSION.