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When Mildred returned to England, she found amongst her correspondence a prospectus of the new hospital and nursing home, with a note from Sister Agnes, asking her to visit the little colony and hospital on her return. Mildred seemed to see in all this the hand of Providence pointing her future course. Was it not strange that her meeting with Elsworth, and the history of his work, should have aroused her interest in, and awakened a desire to promote a similar scheme on a large scale, and immediately on her return to find that the same idea had occurred to her good friend, Sister Agnes? The prospectus declared that the new hospital scheme had proved perfectly feasible, all that was wanting was the necessary money to develop and extend it. For this object a drawing-room meeting was to be held in Kensington Gore in a few days, and Sister Agnes earnestly besought her presence. Mildred was not long in finding her way down to the East End, and assuring her friends at Nightingale Home of her interest in the good work they had so well begun. She paid such frequent visits that at last Aunt Janet jokingly remarked that she fully expected soon to see her don the habit of a sisterhood, unless perchance anybody should come along to forbid the sacrifice.
As she said this, she held up a letter which she had received that morning from Elsworth, announcing his intention to return at once to England, inasmuch as the news had reached him from his men of business, that his father, Major Elsworth, was dead, he having been seized with a fit of apoplexy while engaged at a meeting of the Theosophical Society of Benares.
When Elsworth received the news of his father’s death, he felt that he could no longer remain in Spain. Apart from the necessity of visiting England on business, he yearned to be nearer his newly found friends. Poor fellow, he felt the need of “congenial sympathy”—at least, so he said to himself. The death of his father and the thoughts of Mildred (and Aunt Janet) combined to make him think that gipsies and cholera patients did not completely fill the void in his heart. Aunt Janet had corresponded with him, and spoke in such terms of Mildred that he would have been foolish not to take encouragement from her tone and follow up his advantage. Aunt Janet was evidently developing into a match-maker. She was, in fact, so impressed with Elsworth that, highly as she valued Mildred, she did not consider her a whit too good for such a man. A girl’s women-folk usually think no man is good enough to marry her. Very likely they are right; still, there are some Elsworths yet in the world.
Six months after Mildred’s visit to Granada, Elsworth, the exile, returned to London. His first visit was to St. Bernard’s. Having entered as a perpetual student, he had the right to all the advantages of the hospital for life. He saw the warden and several of the staff, explained the reasons of his absence, and requested that his name might at once be put down for the appointments he had the right to hold. As it happened, there was a vacant house-physicianship just then at his service, and, as he was very popular at the place, he went into residence almost at once.
It was not long before he looked up Aunt Janet and Mildred. That was the arrangement on his surface mind—his deeper soul said “Mildred and Aunt Janet,” but he did not permit this to be audible to his own ears. He feared she was too high for him; her wealth had placed a barrier between her and his striving. Still, he could call upon Aunt Janet, and that would be something towards keeping up the acquaintance with Mildred.
As soon as it became known that Elsworth had turned up again, he had visits from many old friends. Alas! some of his former acquaintances were dead; others had gone hopelessly to the dogs. Many were in good practice—some in London, others in the country. A few had spent the interval in going backwards and forward as surgeons in ships trading to the Antipodes: but there were at least a dozen fellows who, having failed to pass any of their examinations, were still hanging about the hospital, which was heartily ashamed of them, while they divided their time impartially between the dissecting-room and the neighbouring taverns. Of course, it was not to many of these Elsworth told the story of his going, but it soon oozed out. Was he chaffed? Not the least. The lowest mind, the most besotted intellect admires and respects the genuine conversion of a sinner, even as the angels rejoice at the fact. Not that Elsworth would now, in the strength he had imbibed from his long communion with God, have cared in the least for the jeers of these men. He was quite strong enough now to
“Take temptation by the head and hair.”
He was very popular with all the staff, but still more with the patients and the nurses; not quite so popular with the students. They might tax his energies to the utmost; he never tired of helping them to learn all they could learn honestly and fairly, but with him it was patient first and pupils next; no tricks were played upon the occupants of any beds in his wards. He had been just two months in his post as resident physician, when the secretary of the hospital sent for him to his office, to ask him if he would like to take a rather valuable appointment as resident surgeon to the Nightingale Hospital. He had been told by Miss Mildred Lee that he was just the man they wanted for their new charity.
The secretary was compelled to give the invitation himself, as the staff would not even recognise the place. When the doctors heard of the new hospital, they poured their scorn and contempt upon it. “The newest fad of the faddists;” “the humanitarian craze of the shrieking sisterhood;” “the college of all the antis,” and the like complimentary epithets were bestowed upon it.