So Lucy left the wearying work-room and the dangerous recreations of the Sunday, to sit and watch by the bed-side of a peevish, uncomfortable sort of an old woman, who was perpetually making demands upon her patience and good-nature, but who really suffered so greatly from her accident, that Lucy's pity and kindness were proof against every thing. The young surgeon went and came—went and came—and every time he came, this angel of beauty and goodness was ministering by the old woman's bed. And those eyes of his—eyes of such prevailing power in their almost enthusiastic expression of serious earnestness—were bent upon her; and sometimes her eyes, soft and melting as those of the dove, or bright and lustrous as twin stars, met his.
He could not but linger in the sick woman's room a little longer than was necessary, and the sick woman unwittingly favored this, for she took a great liking to him, and nothing seemed to refresh and amuse her amid her pains like a little chat with this nice young man. And then the young surgeon remarked that at such times Lucy was allowed to sit quietly down and amuse herself with a little needlework, and he thought this an excellent reason for making his visits as as long as he decently could.
The young nurse and the young doctor all this while had conversed very little with each other; but she listened and she gazed, and that was quite enough. The case proved a very serious one. Poor Mrs. Saunders, superintendent as she was, and not workwoman-driver, not slave—yet could no more than the rest escape the deleterious effects of the close work room. Her constitution was much impaired. The wines and cordials she had accustomed herself to take to support nature, as she thought, under these fatigues, had increased the mischief the wounds would not heal as they ought; contusions would not disperse; the internal injury in the chest began to assume a very threatening appearance. Mr. L. came to the assistance of the young surgeon repeatedly—all that human skill could do was done, but Mrs. Saunders grew alarmingly worse.
For a long time she resisted the evidence which her own sensations might have afforded her and avoided asking any questions which might enlighten her. She was determined not to die, and, even in a case so awfully serious and real as this, people seem to cling to the persuasion so prevailing in lighter circumstances, that because a thing shan't be, it won't be, and because they are determined it is not, it is not. So, for many days, Mrs. Saunders went on, exceedingly angry if every body did not say she was getting better, and half inclined to dismiss her young surgeon, much as she liked him, because he looked grave after he had visited her injuries.
He did look grave, very grave. He was exceedingly perplexed in his mind as to what he ought to do: young surgeon as he was, fresh from those schools which, alas! so many who are acquainted with them represent as the very nurseries of infidelity and license both in speech and action, he was a deeply, seriously pious man. Such young men there are, who, like those three, walking unscathed through the furnace of fire in the faith of the Lord their God, walk through a more terribly destructive furnace—the furnace of temptation—in the same faith, and "upon their bodies the fire hath no power, neither is a hair of the head singed."
In what tears, in what prayers, in what anguished hope, what fervent aspiration, this sole treasure of a widowed mother, steeped in poverty to the very lips, had been reared, it would be long to tell; but she had committed him to one never found faithless, and under that blessing she had found in her pure and disinterested love for the being intrusted to her charge, that which had given her an eloquence, and a power, and a strength, which had told upon the boy.
He proved one of those rare creatures who pass through every stage of existence, as child, as schoolboy, as youth; through nursery, school, college, marked as some bright peculiar being—peculiar only in this one thing, sincere unaffected goodness. His religion had been, indeed, with him a thing little professed, and rarely talked about, but it had been a holy panoply about his heart—a bright shield, which had quenched all the darts of evil: it shone around him like something of the radiance from a higher world. There was a sort of a glory round the young saint's head.
Such being the man, you will not be surprised to hear that his practice called forth most serious reflections—most melancholy and sad thoughts—and in no sick room where he had ever attended more than in the present one.
He could not frequent the house as much as his attendance rendered necessary without being pretty well aware of the spirit of the place; and while he grieved over the ruinous waste of health to which these young creatures were exposed, he was struck to the heart with horror at the idea of their moral ruin.
Mrs. Saunders talked openly and unreservedly, and betrayed the state of mind she was in: so completely, so entirely devoted to, wrapt up in, buried fathoms and fathoms deep in the things of this world: so totally lost to—so entirely to seek in every thing connected with another: that the large, mournful, serious eye, as it turned to the sweet young creature sitting beside her, and passing her daily life in an element such as this, gazed with an expression of sad and tender pity such as the minister of heaven might cast upon a perishing soul.