Even the people in the village kept sympathetically in the background, with the same sort of respect one observes when a funeral procession passes; though at the last house in the village one dear kindly soul pulled her little white curtains aside, waving her hand and smiling encouragingly to me as we went by.
XIV
In Mildmay Hospital—An Interlude
I don’t think there is anything worse than the sense of utter desolation that envelops you when the hospital door finally closes on everybody you know, and you are alone with total strangers and unknown terrors ahead. The dreariest moment of my whole life was when I found myself alone in a private ward at Mildmay, with no one whom I knew within call.
Yet was it mere chance, I wonder, that the nurses at their prayers that day sang Matheson’s beautiful hymn—“O Love, that wilt not let me go”?
It came to me along the corridor, as I lay staring at the ceiling. I tried, in my heart, to sing it with them; but I gave it up when they got to the verse—
“O Joy, that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to Thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,