Chapter Nine.
Off to Hightoft.
“There, you are better now.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, indeed you are. This has nothing to do with the operation, I assure you.”
“Then, pray, what is it?” This question very sharply, and the patient moved in her bed in a way that showed very little feebleness.
“Simply hysteria.”
“What! Sterricks?”
“Yes, a form of hysterics.”
“There!” cried the patient, with a triumphant tone in her voice. “I knew you didn’t know nothing about it. I never had sterricks in my life.”
“Because you have always been a woman in a vigorous state of health. Latterly you have been brought down rather low.”
“’Taint that,” said the woman sharply, “it’s what’s done to me here, and the shameful neglect. It’s horrid; I’m half killed, and then Mr Neil goes away and leaves me to that horrible old man, and as soon as Mr Neil’s gone, the other leaves me to die.”
“I am afraid you are a very foolish woman,” said the nurse quietly. “I can assure you that you are getting well fast.”
“Oh, yes, I know. And you are as bad as they are. It’s shameful!”
“You have been working yourself up to think you are being neglected, but your troubles are imaginary.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” cried the woman angrily.
“Pray try and be reasonable,” said the nurse, speaking in a voice full of patient resignation.
“Go on, pray, ma’am. You’ve all got me down here and are trampling on me. I’m unreasonable now, am I?”
“I am afraid you are a little,” said the nurse, smiling as she rearranged the bedclothes. “Mr Elthorne went away because he was worn out with attending the poor people here, and Sir Denton was telegraphed for to attend some unfortunate gentleman who had met with an accident.”
“Then he oughtn’t to have gone,” cried the woman loudly.
“Pray, hush,” said the nurse. “You are hurting yourself and upsetting the other patients.”
“And I say he’d no right to go. My life’s as much consequence as anybody else’s life, and it’s a shameful piece of neglect. Oh, if I do live to get away from this ’ateful place, I’ll let some of you know. I’m to be left to die because the doctors are too idle to come and see me. If I’d only known, you’d never caught me here.”
“Hush, hush! Pray be quiet, dear. You are making yourself hot and feverish.”
The nurse laid her cool white hand upon the patient’s brow, but she resented it and thrust it away. “Let me be. I don’t want holding down. It’s shameful. It’s cruel. Oh, why did I come to this dreadful place? As for that Sir Denton, or whatever his name is—”
“What about him? Do you want me?” said the gentleman in question, who had come into the ward and up to the bed unnoticed. “How are you this morning?—Ah, better.”
“No, I’m not, I’m worse, and it’s shameful.”
“What is?” said the surgeon, smiling.
“For me to be neglected by the doctors and nurses as I am. It’s too bad, it is; and I might have died—no doctor, no nurse.”
“Ah, yes; it is very cruel,” said Sir Denton. “I have shamefully neglected my patients here, and as for the conduct of Nurse Elisia to you, it is almost criminal. You will have to go back home to your own people and be properly treated. Dreadful places, these hospitals are.”
Nurse Elisia looked up at the old surgeon with wondering eyes, as he took the woman’s own tone, but he smiled at her sadly.
“Come with me, I want to talk to you. Poor thing,” he said, as they walked away, “she is in the irritable, weary state of the convalescent. She is not answerable for what she says. Sorry I was obliged to go, but the case was urgent. Mr Elthorne’s father. A terrible accident. The spine injured, and paralysis of the lower part of the body.”
“Mr Elthorne’s father!” cried the nurse, turning pale. “How shocking!”
“Terrible. Mr Elthorne telegraphed for me. It was not necessary, for he was doing everything possible, and now it is a case of careful nursing to save the poor fellow’s life.”
“Nursing?”
“Yes. I have promised Mr Elthorne to send him down the most helpful, trustworthy nurse I knew, at once.”
“Sir Denton,” faltered the nurse, with a faint colour rising in her cheeks.
“It is an exceptional ease, my child, one which calls for all a nurse’s skill and tenderness with, perhaps, as much patience as I have seen you exercise toward that foolish woman. I am going to ask you to start at once for Hightoft, and take up this case.”
“Sir Denton!” she cried. “Oh! it is impossible.”
“Why?”
“My patients here.”
“Your place can be filled, just as it would be necessary to fill it if you were taken ill.”
“But I am not ill, Sir Denton, and I am needed here.”
“But you are needed there—at this gentleman’s house, where the services of a patient lady like yourself would be invaluable.”
“I could not go, Sir Denton; I beg you will not send me.”
“It is in a lovely part of the country. It is a charming place, and I can guarantee for you that the ladies will receive you as their equal—perhaps as their superior,” he added with a meaning smile, which made her look slightly resentful.
“Really, Sir Denton,” she began.
“Forgive me,” he said. “It was a slip. I have no wish to pry into your private life, Nurse Elisia. I am only thankful to have the help and co-operation of a refined woman in my sad cases here.”
“Thank you, Sir Denton, but you must excuse me from this.”
“I cannot,” he said firmly, “for I feel that it is your duty to go. I have no hesitation in saying that it is absolutely necessary for you to have a change, even if you do not have rest, but you will be able to combine both there.”
“Pray send someone else, Sir Denton.”
“I know nobody whom I could trust as I would you, Nurse Elisia,” he replied quietly, “and I am quite sure that there is no one in whom Mr Elthorne would have so much confidence.”
He noted the change in the nurse’s mobile countenance as he went on speaking in his quiet way, for she was evidently agitated and trying hard to conceal it.
“You see it would be so advantageous,” he continued. “After a few days you could set Mr Elthorne at liberty to come back here. Of course, as you know, the case is one which needs almost wholly a careful nurse’s skill. How soon will you be free to go?”
Like lightning the thoughts flashed through her brain of the position she would occupy. It was like throwing her constantly in Neil Elthorne’s society, and she shrank from the position almost with horror. For, of late there had been no disguising from herself the fact that the young surgeon had, in his quiet way, been more than courteous to her, and that his manner betokened a something, which on his side was fast ripening into admiration.
“It is impossible,” she thought. “It would be cruelty to him, for he is sincere and manly. No, I cannot go. It would be a crime. Sir Denton,” she said hastily, aloud. “You must excuse me from this duty. I cannot go.”
“No,” he said firmly, and he took her hand. “I cannot, I will not excuse you. Once more I tell you that you ought to go; it is your duty.”
“But why?” she cried, rather excitedly.
“Because you—evidently a lady of gentle birth—have set yourself the task of toiling for your suffering fellow-creatures. Here is one who may die if you do not go to his help.”
“But another would be as efficient.”
“I do not know one at the present moment whom I would trust as I would you; and in addition, the call comes at a time when it is imperative that you should have rest and change.”
“But,” she said, with a smile full of perplexity, “that would not be rest and change.”
“Can you not trust me to advise you for your good?” said Sir Denton gravely.
“Oh, yes, but—”
“That ‘but’ again. Come, nurse, I think you believe that I take great interest in you.”
“Oh, yes, Sir Denton,” she said eagerly.
“Then trust me in this. Take my advice. More—oblige me by going. I am surgeon here, and you are nurse, but it has seemed to me, for some time past, that we have had a closer intimacy—that of friends. Come, you will oblige me?”
“It is your wish then, that I should go?”
“Indeed, yes. When will you be ready to start?”
“At once.”
“That is good. Then I will telegraph down, so that a carriage may be in waiting for you at the station. I am sure that Mr Elthorne will see that you have every comfort and attention. Good-morning. Thanks.”
Nurse Elisia stood by the door of the ward, watching the retiring figure of the old surgeon as he passed down the corridor.
“Is it not weak to have given way?” she said to herself. “Perhaps not in such a case as this. Mr Elthorne will see that I have every comfort and attention,” she said softly. “Mr Elthorne must be taught that I am the hospital nurse, sent down there for a special purpose. Mr Elthorne is weak, and given to follies such as I should not have suspected in so wise and able a man.”
She stood hesitating for a few moments looking toward where Maria Bell lay, evidently watching her attentively, and her first impulse was to cross to the woman and to tell her that she would be handed over now to the charge of another nurse; but, reconsidering the matter, she decided merely to tell the next nurse in authority that she must take full charge of the ward, and going down to the matron, she stated that she would be absent for a time. That evening she was being hurried down by a fast train, to reach the station within a few minutes of the appointed time, and she had scarcely stepped on to the platform when a man’s voice made her start with dread lest it should be Neil.
“The nurse for Hightoft?” said the voice; and as she turned she found that it was only a servant.
“Yes, I am the nurse,” she replied.
“Well, here’s a carriage for you. Any luggage?”
The man’s voice was sharp, and wanting in respect, the ordering of the carriage for a long night drive having found little favour with coachman and footman.
“That little black bag, that is all,” said the nurse quietly.
“Don’t mean to stay long, then,” said the man with a laugh, as he took the little travelling bag, and swung it up on to the foot-board, while the nurse stood patiently waiting, and without resenting the man’s insolence and indifference as he entered into a conversation with the coachman before turning and, stepping back, stared hard at the calm, refined face dimly seen by the feeble station lamps.
“Will you have the goodness to open the carriage door?”
“Eh? Open the door? Of course. Just going to,” said the footman cavalierly, as he snatched open the door and rattled down the steps.
He held out his hand, but she stepped in without his assistance, the door was banged sharply to, and the handle took some time to turn, as the man stared in at the visitor, who quietly drew up the window and sank back in her seat.
“Gives herself airs, does she!” said the footman to himself. “How fond people who have never been in a carriage before are of making believe they are used to one. Can’t cheat me, my lady. Bet a shilling she has never been in anything better than a cab or a station-fly before in her life.”
“What are you grumbling about?” said the coachman, as his fellow-servant climbed up to his side.
“Nothing, only thinking aloud about her ladyship inside. Got in with a reg’lar toss of her head. There, hit ’em up, Tom, and let’s get back. I don’t want to be on this job all night.”
“Regular nurse, arn’t she?” said the coachman. “Horspittle?”
“Yes, I suppose so. Dressed up like a nun out for a holiday. Why couldn’t they have had a nurse out of the village, or your wife?”
“Ah! Why indeed?” said the coachman sourly. “’Fraid poor people should make a few shillings too much, I suppose. It’s just the same if one of the horses is bad; we must have the vet to see him, when I could put him right in a week. It’s having the name does it with some people. Horspittle nurse! A deal, I dare say, she knows.”
The ill-usage to which he and his fellow-servants were called upon to submit claimed both their tongues during the long, dark drive to Hightoft, while Nurse Elisia sat back in the carriage, dreamy and thoughtful, watching the lights of the lamps thrown upon hedgerow and tree as the good pair of horses trotted swiftly back.
It seemed a strange contrast to the glaring, shop-filled streets of sooty London, this long winding lane with only a long, low whitewashed cottage seen at intervals. So quiet and calm was it all that there appeared to be no reason for the rapid action of the nurse’s pulses as they sped onward. But the action was going on, and the occupant of the carriage felt a strange longing more than once to pull the check string, and bid the coachman stop and turn back. But she refrained and grew cooler as they progressed, forcing herself to keep on trying to make out the landscape, till, in due time, the lodge gates were passed, and the carriage drawn up at the entrance, where Nurse Elisia descended and stood beside her little bag till Neil descended and uttered the words expressing his astonishment at her presence there.