After a time he had often found himself after some painful episode at a patient’s bedside, wondering why Nurse Elisia was there. Everything about her betokened the lady, and no ordinary lady, and Neil unconsciously began building up romantic stories about her previous life, in most of which he painted her as a woman who had passed through some terrible ordeal, become disgusted with the world in which she had lived, and had determined to devote herself to the duty of assuaging the pangs of her suffering fellow-creatures.
Once he had turned the conversation in her direction when dining with Sir Denton, but the old surgeon had quietly parried all inquiries, and at the same time let him see that he was touching on delicate ground in connection with one who was evidently his protégée. Naturally this increased the interest as time went on, and he found himself taking note of the bearing of the old man toward the nurse.
But he learned nothing by this. Perhaps there was a quiet, paternal manner visible at times on Sir Denton’s part, but on Nurse Elisia’s nothing but an intense look and a display of eagerness to grasp fully his instructions in regard to some dying creature whose life they were trying to save. Nothing more; and her bearing was the same to him, always calm and distant. If ever she was eager, it was in respect to a patient, and, his wishes carried out, she was either watching at some bedside or gliding patiently about the ward to smooth and turn a hot pillow here, gently move an aching head or injured limb there; and after many months Neil Elthorne found, to the disturbance of his mental balance, that he was constantly thinking of Nurse Elisia, while, save in connection with her duties and his instructions, she apparently never gave him a thought.
All these memories came back to Neil Elthorne as he sat that night by his father’s couch. They troubled and annoyed him, and he moved feverishly from time to time in his chair.
“It is absurd,” he said to himself. “One would think I was some romantic boy, ready to be attracted by the first beautiful face I see— Yes; she is beautiful, after all, and that simple white cap and plain black dress only enhance instead of hiding it. And she is a lady, I am sure. But what does it mean? A nurse; devoting herself to all those repulsive cases as if she were seeking by self-denial and punishment to make a kind of atonement for something which has gone before. What can have gone before? Who is she? Why is she there?”
His questioning thoughts became so unbearable that he rose from his seat, thrust off the soft slippers he was wearing, and began to pace the room.
“It was quite time I left the hospital,” he thought. “The work there has weakened my nerves, and made me ready to think like this—caused this susceptible state. Quite time I left. It is a kind of disease, and I am glad I am away before I committed myself to some folly. I should look well—I, a man with an advancing reputation—if I were to be questioned by Sir Denton upon what I meant by forgetting myself, and degrading myself by making advances toward one of the nurses. It would come before the governors of the hospital, and I should be asked to resign. I must be worse than I thought. Too much strain. Incipient nerve attacks previous to something more terrible. There,” he muttered, as he returned to and resumed his seat, “one never knows what is best for one’s self. It was right that I should come away from the hospital, and I am here. Bah! ready in my selfishness to think I am of so much consequence that my poor father was called upon to suffer like this to save me from a folly. Yes; there is no doubt about it,” he added, after a pause, during which he sat in the semi-darkness of the bedroom gazing straight before him into the gloom; “I have been too much on the strain. A month or two in this pure air will set me up again, and I shall go back ready to look her calmly in the face as of old, and treat her as what she is—a hospital nurse. You shall not have cause to blush for your son, father,” he said in a low whisper as he leaned toward the bed and gently took the old man’s hand. “You will have enough to bear without meeting with rebellion against your wishes.”
He raised the hand to his lips, and then tenderly laid it back on the coverlet, bent over the sufferer, and drew back with a sigh.
“It will be a question of time and careful nursing,” he said, softly. “There must be no mental trouble to hinder his progress. We must not let him feel his weakness and want of power, or he will suffer horribly. Only a few hours since, and so strong and well; but by management we can keep off a good deal, and we will. My poor old dad!”