'Well, well, we will see about it,' humouring her as though she were a child. 'Will you not speak to this lady, Phoebe? She has come down here to help us all,—sick people, and unhappy people, and every one that wants help.'
'She can't do anything for me,' muttered Phoebe restlessly; 'no one—not even you, doctor, can do anything for me. I am doomed,—doomed before my time.'
Mr. Hamilton looked at me meaningly, as though to say, 'Now you see what you have to do: this is more your work than mine.' I obeyed the hint, and accosted the sick woman as cheerfully as though her dismal speech had not curdled my blood.
'I hope I shall be some comfort to you; it is hard indeed if no one can help you, when you have so much to bear!'
'To bear!' repeating my words as though they stung her. 'I have lain here for three years—three years come Christmas Eve, doctor—between these four walls, summer and winter, winter and summer, and never knew except by heat or cold what season of the year it was. And I am young,—just turned four-and-thirty,—and I may lie here thirty years more, unless I die or go mad.'
'Now, Phoebe,' remonstrated Mr. Hamilton,—and how gently he spoke!—'have I not told you over and over that things may mend yet if you will only be patient and good? You are just making things worse by bearing them so badly. Why, a friend of mine has been seven years on her back like you, and she is the happiest, cheeriest body: it is quite a pleasure to go into her room.'
'Maybe she is good, and I am wicked,' returned Phoebe sullenly. 'I cannot help it, doctor: it is one of my bad days, and nothing but wicked words come uppermost. The devil has a deal of power when a woman is chained as I am.'
'Don't you think you could exorcise the demon by a song, Miss Garston?' observed Mr. Hamilton, in an undertone. 'This is just the case where music may be a soothing influence; something must be tried for the poor creature.'
The proposition almost took away my breath. Sing now! before Mr. Hamilton! And yet how in sheer humanity could I refuse? I had often sung before to my patients, and had never minded it in the least; but before Mr. Hamilton!
'You need not think of me,' he continued provokingly,—for of course I was thinking of him: 'I am no critic in the musical line. Just try how it answers, will you?' And he walked away and turned his back to us, and seemed absorbed in the sampler.