Chapter Nineteen.
Life Work.
After the first few weeks were over Jean recovered her strength more quickly than had been expected, and by the end of the second month was able to take her usual place in the household.
One of the first things which she had done after being pronounced convalescent was to fold away with her own hands all the tiny garments which had been prepared with such joy, and to cover the dainty new furnishings of the nursery with careful wrappings. This done, the key was turned in the lock, and henceforward there was a ghost-chamber in the house—a chamber haunted by the ghost of a dead hope.
Jean spoke but little of her loss—the wound went too deep for words; and as time went on some of the old interest in life began to revive, aided by the joys of recovered health, and of Robert’s devotion, if possible more ardent than before. Nevertheless no one could look upon her without realising the change wrought by the last few months. She had been a merry, thoughtless girl, to whom grief and pain were but abstract words conveying no definite impression: now the great revelation had come, anguish of body, anguish of soul, and she emerged from the shadows, sobered and thoughtful.
“What women have to suffer! The thought of it haunts me. I can’t get away from it,” she said to Vanna one afternoon as they sat together in the autumn gloaming, enjoying that quiet tête-à-tête which was the most intimate moment of the day. “I walk along the streets staring at the women I meet, and marvel! There they are—thousands of them, British matrons, plain, ordinary, commonplace creatures with dolmans, and bonnets far back on their heads, each with a family of—what? four, six, eight, sometimes ten children! For years and years of their lives they have been chronic invalids, goaded on by the precepts that it is ‘only natural,’ and that they have no right to shirk their work on that account. The courage of them, and the patience, and the humility! They never seem to consider that they deserve any praise. If they read in the newspaper of a soldier who saved a life in the rush and excitement of battle, and was wounded in the act, they rave of him by the hour together; but if you offered them the Victoria Cross, they would think you were mad! Yet every life given to the world means nearly a year of suffering for some poor mother!”
Vanna was silent. It was inevitable that in her position she should see the other side of the question, and feel that a year would be a light price to pay for the joy of holding Piers’s son in her arms; but Jean had lost that great recompense which wipes away the remembrance of the anguish. Her heart was still hungry and sore. Having no words of comfort to offer, Vanna deftly turned the conversation to a safer channel.
“Apropos of suffering, Jean, I have been waiting to talk to you about my own plans. I’ve been here over four months, dear, and it’s time I moved on. I told you I had a plan in my head which was slowly working itself out. Well! at last, I think I can see daylight. I have my life to live, and I can’t be content just to fritter it away. I must find something that is worth doing, and which will justify my existence. I’ve thought of many things, but it always comes back to nursing as the likeliest and most suitable. For the last four years that’s been my work, and I know I did it well. Every doctor I have met told me I was a born nurse. One Sunday when you were ill I went to Dr Greatman, and had a long talk. He had asked me to go. I told him what I wanted—technical training to add to what I had learnt by experience, and then when I was properly equipped to give my services to poor gentlewomen who could not afford to pay to be properly cared for.”
“A nurse! A hospital nurse! You!” Jean’s tone was eloquent with dismay. The day of lady nurses was but in its dawn, and public opinion had yet to be reconciled to the thought. “Vanna, you could not stand the everlasting strain. And you spoke of a home, a house of your own! If you were at the hospital—”
“Let me finish my story, dear. Don’t interrupt half through. Dr Greatman was most kind and understanding. I think in a kind of way he feels that he owes me some compensation, as it was he who laid the bar on my life. I took him letters from the doctors who know me, giving my character as professional nurse. They were rather nice, Jean. I was proud of them, and Dr Greatman said he wished he could speak as highly of many of his certificated nurses. He advises me to take a two years’ course of training at a hospital. I should have to ‘live in,’ and give up all my time; but as soon as the two years are over I will look out for a house and a sheep dog, and gather together my treasures to make a real little home of my own. You shall help me to arrange it, Jean! It shall be in town, as near to you as rents will allow, in a quiet street, with at least two spare rooms facing south. Then I shall be ready for work as it comes along. Sometimes I shall go to a patient’s house, and nurse her there; sometimes—if her own house is unsuitable, or if she is a poor governess, or a worker who hasn’t got a home—I’ll take her in, and look after her in my own rooms. At other times I’ll have convalescents who want kitchen food and kindness. Sometimes I’ll have guests—poor, dull drones who are suffering from all work and no play, and dose them with kindness and amusement. Then I shall fed of some use, and that my house is doing good to other people besides myself.”
“They’ll sponge upon you, and tire you out, and take everything they can get, and then go away, and slander you behind your back.”
“Tant pis! Let’s hope they’ll do it sufficiently far away to let me continue in my blissful delusion that I’ve done some good.”
“You’ll get sick of it. It’s no use pretending; you were as fond of gaiety and amusement as I was myself. You’ll get sick of everlasting invalids.”
“Then I’ll take a spell off, and do nothing, and be as selfish as I please. I’m not bound. If a roving fit seizes me I can shut up house and go off on my travels. I don’t intend to spend all my life in a rut. I’m a poor gentlewoman myself, and need my own medicine. Don’t imagine that I’m tying myself down to continual drudgery, for I’m not; but I must, I must have an object in life!”
“And for two whole years you propose to shut yourself up in a hospital?”
“I do; with the exception of an afternoon a week, a day a fortnight, and three weeks’ annual holiday.”
“May I ask what Piers has to say?”
Vanna’s smile was both whimsical and pathetic.
“You may; but I shan’t answer. Several volumes of very strong language, poor dear man; but he knows—at the bottom of his heart he knows that I am right!”
Not even to Jean could Vanna confess that her plans for the future had a nearer and more personal object than mere philanthropy. The conservation of love! This was the great problem with which she struggled in secret. Her clear, far-sighted brain realised the truth, despised by most lovers, that love is a plant which needs careful and assiduous tending if it is to live and retain its bloom. Kindred interests, kindred hopes, kindred efforts and aims—these are the foods by which it is nourished in happy home-life; but if these be wanting—if instead of the hill tops there stretches ahead a long flat plain, what then can nourish the plant and guard it from decay? Piers had sworn that his troth should not bind him if his heart grew tired; but, having received that promise, Vanna never again allowed herself to allude to the subject. Her woman’s instinct taught her that no good could come of continually putting such a possibility into words. She must write, act, speak, as if the eternity of the love between them was beyond doubt—fixed as the hills. What precautions seemed advisable to keep it so she must take upon herself, and with as slight an appearance of intention as might be. Piers might rage and fume at the prospect of her years in hospital, but she knew that the scarcity of their meetings would be a gain rather than a loss. Once a week they would meet for a few hours; once a fortnight there would come a long happy day, which would make an epoch to be anticipated and remembered with tenderest thought. Better so than to run the risk of satiety, and the hastening of that day when the dread question might arise: “What next?”
This conviction, deeply rooted in Vanna’s mind, made her strong to resist all arguments and reproaches, and the end of the year found her established as a nurse at one of the largest and most advanced of the great London hospitals.