A Book About Doctors

by John Cordy Jeaffreson

"'Then it is she who is dead, nurse; and all the rest was a dream? It is she who is dead?'

"'Hush, hush, dear! she has gone to rest—'

"Yes! it was all clear to me. Not I but my unfortunate companion had died; and in my delirious fancy I had regarded the friends who came to see her, and convey her to the grave, as my sister Martha and her little daughter Rhoda. I did not impart to the nurse the delusion of which I had been the victim; for, as is often the case with the sick, I was sensitive with regard to the extreme mental sickness into which I had fallen, and the vagaries of my reason. So I kept my secret to the best of my power; and having recognised how much better I was, how the fever had quitted my veins and the weight had left my head, I thanked God in my heart for all his mercies, and once more cherished a hope that he might see fit to restore me to health.

"My recovery was rapid. At the end of a fortnight I was moved into the convalescents' ward, and was fed up with wine and meat in abundance. I had every reason to be thankful for all the kindness bestowed on me in the hospital, and all the good effect God permitted that kindness to have. But one thing troubled me very much and cut me to the quick. Ever since I had been in the hospital my sister had neither been to see me, nor sent to inquire after me. It was no very difficult business to account for her neglect of me. She had her good qualities (even in the height of my anger I could not deny that), but she was of a very proud high temper. She could sacrifice anything but her pride for love of me. I had gone into an hospital, had received public charity, and she hadn't courage to acknowledge a sister who had sunk so low as that! But if she was proud so was I; I could be as high and haughty as she; and, what was more, I would show her that I could be so! What, to leave her own sister—her only sister—who had worked for her when she was little, and who had loved her as her own heart! I would resent it! Perhaps fortune might yet have a turn to make in my favour; and if so I would in my prosperity remember how I had been treated in my adversity. I am filled with shame now, when I think on the revengeful imaginations which followed each other through my breast. I am thankful that when my animosity was at its height my sister did not present herself before me; for had she done so, I fear that, without waiting for an explanation from her, I should have spoken hasty words that (however much I might have afterwards repented them, and she forgiven them) would have rendered it impossible for us to be again the same as we were before. I never mentioned to any one—nurse or patient—in the convalescent ward, the secret of my clouded brows, or let out that I had a friend in the world to think of me or to neglect me. Hour after hour I listened to women and girls and young children, talking of home pleasures and longing to be quite well, and dismissed from the confinement of the hospital, and anticipating the pleasure which their husbands, or mothers, or sisters, or children, would express at welcoming them again; but I never gave a word of such gossip; I only hearkened, and compared their hopes with my desolation, morosely and vindictively. Before I was declared perfectly restored I got very tired of my imprisonment; indeed the whole time I was in the convalescent ward my life was wearisome, and without any of the pleasures which the first days of my sickness had had. There was only one inmate of the ward to which I was at first admitted, as yet, amongst the convalescents; none of them knew me, unless it was by my number—a new one now, for on changing my ward I had changed my number also. The nurses I didn't like so well as my first kind attendant; and I couldn't feel charitably, or in any way as a Christian ought to feel, to the poor people by whom I was surrounded.

"At length the day came for my discharge. The matron inquired of me where I was going; but I would not tell her; I would not acknowledge that I had a sister—partly out of mere perverseness, and partly out of an angry sense of honour; for I was a country-bred woman, and attached to the thought of 'going into a hospital' a certain idea of shame and degradation, such as country people attach to 'going on the parish', and I was too proud to let folk know that my sister had a sister in an hospital, when she clearly flinched from having as much said of her.

"Well, finding I was not in a communicative humour, the matron asked no more questions; but, giving me a bundle containing a few articles of wearing apparel, and a small donation of money, bade me farewell; and without saying half as much in the way of gratitude as I ought to have said, I walked out from the hospital garden into the wide streets of London. I did not go straight to my old lodgings, or to the house of the doctor who had been so kind to me; but I directed my steps to an inn in Holborn, and took a place in the stage-cart for Stratford. As I rode slowly to my sister's town I thought within myself how I should treat her. Somehow my heart had softened a great deal towards her during the few last days; a good spirit within me had set me thinking of how she had helped me to nurse my husband and baby—how she had accompanied me when I followed them to their graves—how she and her husband had sacrificed themselves so much to assist me in my trial; and the recollection of these kindnesses and proofs of sisterly love, I am thankful to know, made me judge Martha much less harshly. Yes! yes! I would forgive her! She had never offended me before! She had not wronged me seven times, or seventy times seven, but only once! After all, how much she had done for me! Who was I, that I should forget all that she had done, and judge her only by what she had left undone?

"The stage-cart reached Stratford as the afternoon began to close into evening; and when I alighted from it, I started off at a brisk pace, and walked to my sister's cottage that stood on the outskirts of the town. Strange to say, as I got nearer and nearer to her door my angry feelings became fainter and fainter, and all my loving memories of her strong affection for me worked so in me that my knees trembled beneath me, and my eyes were blinded with tears—though, if I had trusted my deceitful, wicked, malicious tongue to speak, I should still have declared she was a bad, heartless, worthless, sister.

"I reached the threshold, and paused on the step before it, just to get my breath and to collect as much courage and presence of mind as would let Martha know that, though I forgave her, I still was fully aware she might have acted more nobly. When I knocked, after a few seconds, little Rhoda's steps pattered down the passage, and opened the door. Why, the child was in black! What did that mean? Had anything happened to Martha or her husband, or little Tommy? But before I could put the question Rhoda turned deadly white, and ran back into the living-room. In another instant I heard Tommy screaming at the top of his voice; and in a trice I was in the room, with Martha's arms flung round my neck, and her dear blessed eyes covering me with tears.

"She was very ill in appearance; white and haggard, and, like Rhoda and Tommy, she too was dressed in black. For some minutes she could not speak a word for sobbing hysterically; but when at last I had quieted her and kissed Rhoda, and cossetted Tommy till he had left off screaming, I learnt that the mourning Martha and her children wore was in my honour. Sure enough Martha had received a notice from the hospital of my death; and she and Rhoda had not only presented themselves at the hospital, and seen there a dead body which they believed to be mine, but they had also, with considerable expense, and much more loving care, had it interred in the Stratford churchyard, under the impression that in so doing they were offering me the last respect which it would be in their power to render me. The worst of it was that poor Martha had pined and sorrowed so for me that she seemed likely to fall into some severe illness.

"On inquiry it appeared that the morning when I and No. 22 were so much worse, and the doctor altered the directions of our boards, the nurse by mistake put the No. 22 board over my bed, and my board (No. 11) over the bed of the poor woman who had died. The consequence was that, when the hospital clerk was informed that No. 11 had died, he wrote to the doctor who placed me in the hospital, informing him of my death, and the doctor communicated the sad intelligence to my sister.