Chapter 37

When Ida came to she found the sister of the ward and a young nurse bending over her with placid and smiling faces. Why a hospital nurse should under any and every circumstance be invariably cheerful is one of those mysteries worthy to rank with the problem contained in the fact that an undertaker is nearly always of a merry disposition.

Of course Ida asked the usual questions:

"Where am I?" and "How long have I been here?" and the sister told her that she was in the Alexandria ward of the London Hospital, and that she had been there, unconscious, for ten days.

The nurse smiled as if it were the best joke, in a mild way, in the world, and answered Ida's further questions while she administered beef tea with an air of pride and satisfaction which made her plain and homely face seem angelic to Ida.

"You were knocked down by a cart, you know," said Nurse Brown. "You weren't badly injured, that is, no bones were broken, as is very often the case--that girl there in the next bed but two had one arm, one leg, and two ribs broken: mail cart; and that poor woman opposite, got both arms and a collar-bone broken--But I mustn't harrow you with our bad cases," she said, quickly, as Ida seemed to wince. "Of course you feel very strange--I suppose this is the first time you have been in a hospital ward?"

"Yes," replied Ida, glancing round timidly.

"Ah, yes, of course," said Nurse Brown, nodding and smiling encouragingly. "And you feel shy and nervous; but, if you only knew it, you are better off here than you would be anywhere else; you have the very best surgeons in the world--we are awfully proud of them; and, though I ought not to say it, the best of nursing. You are watched night and day, and you get the least wee little thing you want if it's good for you. I daresay you won't care to stay here, but will like to be taken away as soon as you are well enough to be moved; for, of course, we all know that you are a lady. Oh, it isn't the first time we have had a lady in the ward. A great many of them come down here 'slumming,' and sometimes they get run over, as you have been, or they fall down some of the dark and rickety stairs, or hurt themselves in some other way--it's wonderful what a choice of accidents you can have in this busy and crowded part of London."

After a pause she went on:

"Of course you will go away as soon as you can; but it's a pity, it really is; you're ever so much better off here, and you'd soon get used to the other people in the ward, though they are of a different class to yourself. But though most of them are very poor and some of them are usually rough when they are at home, it is wonderfully how patient they are--you will scarcely ever hear a murmur; only a sigh now and again--and they are so grateful that sometimes they bring the tears to your eyes, and it's quite hard to part from them when they get well and are discharged. But I really mustn't talk to you any more," she murmured, penitently, and the soft, placid voice ceased.

Ida looked round the ward, her heart beating as fast as her condition would allow. As Nurse Brown had said, she felt terribly strange and nervous in the long, whitewashed ward which, however, was rendered cheerful enough by the dozens of pictures from illustrated papers, which had been fastened to the walls, and by the vases and great bowls of flowers which seemed to occupy every suitable spot.

She closed her eyes and tried to think; but she fell asleep instead and dreamt that she had fallen off Rupert and was lying on the moss beside the river, quite comfortable and most absurdly content. When she woke the sister was standing beside her, and nodded with cheerful approval.

"That's better, Miss Heron," she said. "It is quite pleasant to watch you asleep and not to hear you rambling."

Ida's face flushed.

"Have I been rambling?" she asked. "What have I said? You know my name!"

The nurse smiled.

"Your things are marked," she explained. "But there was no address, nothing which could help us to communicate with your friends, or we would have done so. You will tell us where to send now, will you not?"

Ida blushed again and felt troubled. Why should she annoy and worry the Herons? She shuddered slightly as she pictured her cousin John standing beside the bed where the sweet and pleasant-faced sister now stood, and preaching at her. They would want to take her back to Loburnum Villa; and Ida regarded the prospect of return to that cheerful abode of the Christian virtues as a prisoner might regard the prospect of returning to his gaol. The sister regarded her keenly without appearing to do so.

"Perhaps you would rather remain quietly for a few days, Miss Heron?" she suggested, sweetly.

Ida's eyes--they looked preternaturally large, violet orbs in her white face--beamed gratefully.

"Oh, yes, yes! if I may. Shall I be ill long?--how soon will it be before I can go?"

It is about as difficult to get a definite answer from a nurse as from a doctor.

"Oh, some days yet," replied the sister, cheerfully. "You must not go until you are quite strong; in fact, we should not let you. Now you lie quite still and try and sleep again if you can; and you can think over whether you would like to communicate with your friends or not. If you ask my advice, I shall say, like Mr. Punch, 'Don't!'"

"I won't," said Ida, with her rare smile.

The sister nodded and left her, and Ida closed her eyes again: but not to sleep. She recalled her flight from Laburnum Villa, her wandering through the streets, the crowded and noisy quay, and the strange hallucination, the vision of Stafford standing on the stern of the vessel. Of course, it was only a vision, an hallucination; but how real it had seemed! So real that it was almost difficult to believe that it was not he himself. She smiled sadly at the thought of Stafford, the son of the great Sir Stephen Orme, sailing in a cattle-ship!

The hours passed in a kind of peaceful monotony, broken by the frequent visits of Nurse Brown and the house surgeon, with his grave face and preoccupied air; and for some time Ida lay in a kind of semi-torpor, feeling that everything that was going on around her were the unreal actions in a dream; but as she grew stronger she began to take an interest in the life of the great ward and her fellow-patients; and on the second day after her return to consciousness, began a conversation with her next-door neighbour, a pleasant-looking woman who had eyed her wistfully several times, but who had been too shy to address "the young lady." She was a country woman from Dorsetshire--up to London on a visit "to my daughter, miss, which is married to a man as keeps a dairy." It was her first visit to London; she had wandered from her daughter's lost her, and, in her confusion, tumbled down the cellar of a beer-shop. She told Ida the history of some of the other cases, and Ida found herself listening with an interest which astonished her.

Nurse Brown, seeing the two talking, nodded approvingly.

"That's right," she said, with a smile. "You keep each other company. It passes the time away."

Very soon, Ida found herself taking an interest in everything that went on, in the noiseless movements of the nurses, in the arrival of a new case, in the visit of the doctors and the chaplain, and the friends of the other patients. Let the pessimists say what they may, there is a lot of good in human nature; and it comes out quite startlingly in the ward of a hospital. Ida was amazed at the care and attention, the patience and the devotion which were lavished on herself and her fellow-sufferers; a devotion which no money can buy, and which could not have been exceeded if they had one and all been princesses of the blood royal.

One instance of this whole-souled devotion and unstinting charity occurred on the third day and brought the tears to her eyes, not only then but whenever she thought of it in the after years. A tiny mite of a baby, only a few weeks old was brought into the ward and laid in a cot not very far from Ida's bed. The nurses and the doctors crowded round it with eager attention. It was watched day and night; if it cried, at the first note of the feeble wail, a couple of nurses flew to the cot, and, if necessary, a famous physician was telephoned for: and came promptly and cheerfully. The whole ward was wrapped up in the tiny mite, and Ida leant on her elbow and craned forward to get a glimpse of it; and felt towards it as she would have felt if it had been a little sick or wounded lamb in Herondale.

"What is the matter with it, poor little thing?" she asked the sister.

"The spine," replied the sister, bending tenderly over the cot and taking the emaciated little paw in her comforting, ministering hand.

"Will it get well?" asked Ida, quite anxiously.

The sister shook her head.

"Lor' bless me!" said Ida's neighbour, pityingly. "It 'ud be almost better if the pore little thing died!"

The sister looked up with mild surprise.

"Oh, yes; it can't live longer than three weeks," she said, as sadly as if she had not seen a score of similar cases.

Ida lay down, her eyes filled with tears, her heart filled with awe and wonder. Perhaps for the first time in her life she understood what charity meant. Here was a waif of the slums, doomed to die in so many weeks, and yet it was the object of the loving devotion of every nurse in the ward, with every comfort and luxury which an age of civilisation could supply, and the recipient of the enthusiastic attention of a great surgeon whose name was famous throughout the world.

The woman in the next bed was crying too.

"It makes you think of 'eaven, don't it, miss," she said, with a sniff. "If I was rich I'd leave all my money to a 'orspital; that I would!"

The speech suddenly reminded Ida of her own poverty, of which she had not thought very much, for the need of money is not very keenly felt in a hospital ward, where everything is "free, gratis, for nothing." The time came when she was permitted to get up, and nothing could exceed her amazement on finding herself so weak that her legs trembled under her, and the walls and the floor seemed to rock and heave; but in a day or two she was able to walk a little, and she at once begged permission to help nurse the baby. It was against the rules, but it was very difficult for anyone to resist Ida when she turned those great violet eyes upon them imploringly: and much to her delight she was permitted to hover about the cot and assist in an unofficial way. When the baby was asleep, which was not particularly often, Ida was permitted to read to some of the other patients; and, in fact, make herself generally useful in an unobtrusive fashion.

This was all very well, but the day arrived when she was strong enough to leave the hospital and once more face that world which has been described as the best of all possible worlds, and no doubt is for those who have plenty of money and friends, but which is not far from being the worst of all possible worlds for those who have not. She took five pounds from her little store and went to the sister.

"I am rather poor," she said, with a smile, "and I cannot afford more than this. I wish it were a hundred times as much; indeed, no money could repay your goodness and kindness to me, the wonder of which I shall never cease to feel."

The sister looked at her keenly, but said very gently:

"You can put it in the box in the hall when you go out; but you will not go to-day. I will arrange for you to stop until to-morrow; in fact, the baby--none of us--could spare you. I want you to have some ten with me in my room to-night and a little talk, Miss Heron."

So Ida turned away quickly, that the sister might not see her tears, and accepted the reprieve.