As I sang, a voice from the further end of the room took it up, and bore me company in a somewhat rough but true and manly chorus, to the end of the singing. It rang sweet round the room; it fell sweet on many ears, I know. And so I gave my Lord's message.
I sang no more that night. The poor man for whose sake I had begun the singing, rapidly grew worse. I could not leave him; for ever and again, in the pauses of suffering, his eyes sought mine. I answered the mute appeal as I best could, with a word now and a word then. Towards morning the struggle ceased. He spoke no more to me; but the last look was to my eyes, and in his, it seemed to me, the shadow had cleared away. That was all I could know.
CHAPTER XXII.
ORDERS
I slept longer than I had meant to do, the next morning; but I rose with a happy feeling of being in my place; where I wanted to be. That is, to be sure, not always the criterion by which to know the place where one ought to be; yet where it is a qualification it is also in some sense a token. The ministry of the hours preceding swept over me while I was dressing, with something of the grand swell and cadence of the notes of a great organ; grand and solemn and sweet. I entered the ward, ready for the day's work, with a glad readiness.
So I felt, as I stepped in and went down the space between the rows of beds. Miss Yates nodded to me.
"Here you are!" she said. "Fresh as the morning. Well I don't know why we shouldn't have pleasant things in such a place as this, if we can get them; there's enough that ain't pleasant, and folks forget there is anything else in the world. Now you'll be better than breakfast, to some of them; and here's breakfast, my dear. You know how to manage that."
I knew very well how to manage that; and I knew too, as I went on with my ministrations, that Miss Yates was not altogether wrong. My ministry did give pleasure; and I could not help enjoying the knowledge. This was not the enjoyment of flattering crowds, waiting round me with homage in their eyes and on their tongues. I had known that too, and felt the foolish flutter of gratified vanity for a moment, to be ashamed of it the next. This was the brightening eye, the relaxing lip, the tone of gratification, from those whose days and hours were a weary struggle with pain and disease; to bring a moment's refreshment to them was a great joy, which gives me no shame now in the remembrance. Even if it was only the refreshment of memory and fancy, that was something; and I gave thanks in my heart, as I went from one sufferer to another, that I had been made pleasant to look at. Preston himself smiled at me this morning, which I thought a great gain.
"Well, you do know how to sing!" he said softly, as I was giving him his tea and toast.
"I am glad you think so."