Part 16

I missed her very much. She was only a very ordinary tabby, but she was a large, comfortable, homely sort of a cat; and she had made it part of her daily programme to come upstairs and jump softly on my bed with a pleased little mew, and then settle herself down beside me, where I could reach out my hand to stroke her, while she purred soothingly the whole time. The little dog was too boisterously demonstrative, in his joy at seeing me, to be allowed in the room; but the more sedate and gentle Angelina helped me to pass many a weary hour.

When all search for her proved fruitless, the kindly village people didn’t dismiss the matter as done with. Forthwith there started a procession from the village to my house, and about every hour someone arrived with an offering. I could hear their voices at the door below, through the open bedroom window.

First it was a labouring man with a big hamper: “My missus is so worrit about the poor young lady losing her cat, so I’ve brought up our Tom, if she’d care to accept him. He’s a fust-class ratter—killed a big ’un in our barn yesterday,” etc.

Then it was the piping voice of a small girl, accompanied by two smaller: “Please, we’re so sorry about the lady not having a pussy when she’s poorly, and we’ve brought her our two little kitties, an’ one has six toes!”

Next a bigger girl: “Gran says would miss like one of our kittens? They’ll be able to leave their mother next week, and I’ll bring the lot up for her to choose from, if she’d like one.”

A boy arrived with a basket containing a fine black cat. “Mother’s sent this for the lady. Just you see how he’ll jump over my hand and stand on his hind legs!”—(a wild scramble followed). “Here, Peter! here—come _back_—Pe-ter! Puss, puss, puss! There now, I’ve done it! Mother said as I wasn’t to open the basket till I was inside the house! I ’spect he’s back home again by now! But I’ll bring him up again presently. The lady’ll love to have him, he’s so knowing.”

Later, I heard a woman’s voice: “Poor _dear_ soul, it _do_ seem hard; and the on’y cat she’ve got, too! Well, we’ve six to our house, and she can have all of ourn and welcome.”

As Virginia said, it was not quite so embarrassing as griskins, because, at least, each had four legs with which to get itself off home again.

* * * * *

But it is weary work lying still day after day till the weeks actually lengthen into months. I kept on telling myself I was making headway, but it was a poor pretence. I gave up thinking about it at last, and wondered how I could best endure the pain that no one seemed able to relieve.

The autumn had now changed to winter, and one morning I woke to see snow bearing down the fir-trees and lying on the hills. The snow is very beautiful when one is well and strong, and able to go out in the crisp cold air and enjoy it; but to me, penned in among the hills, miles away from town and the advantages of up-to-date civilisation, it gave a sudden sense of desolation. It shut me off most effectually from the big world I wanted so badly to see again. As I looked out upon that snow, it seemed as though I were buried already.

One desire swamped all others, and that was the longing to get back to London where friends would be around me, and specialists within easy reach. And yet that appeared to be an utter impossibility. It has always been a matter of pride with me that my cottage is situated in one of the most inaccessible spots in the British Isles; I used to feel so happy in the thought that it was only with the utmost difficulty that a vehicle could be got near the garden gate. It gave me such a sense of seclusion and delightful “far-away-ness” after the crush and hustle of town life.

But for once I wished I had been a wee bit more accessible. I realised that there might be certain advantages in having a good county road close by whereon a helpless invalid could be driven to the station without having every bone in her body jolted to pieces! But it was too late to do anything now.

Altogether it was two months before I let anyone in town know how ill I really was; most people thought I was merely taking a long rest. Naturally it was at once suggested a specialist should be sent for; but I said no. I was such a weak creature by this time, I felt I couldn’t bear to hear the worst—I was almost sure there would be a “worst” to hear—and that a specialist wouldn’t diagnose my illness as merely overwork. I insisted that I would rather be left to die quietly. I know it sounds very cowardly, and I _was_ a coward at the time. But I think many women will understand this condition of mind; we do try so often to push back, with both our hands, trouble of this sort, when we dimly see it ahead.

The hale and hearty person will naturally exclaim: “How perfectly ridiculous! How much more sensible to have proper advice, and then set to work to get strong again!” I know! I have myself said this sort of thing to ill people many a time in the past! But I learnt a lot of things during that breakdown; among them, that it is very easy to lay down the law as to what should be done, and to act in a common-sense manner, when one is well; but it is quite another thing to follow one’s own good advice, or, in fact, do anything one ought to do, when one is too weak even to think!

Yet how often it happens that, in our direst extremity, help comes when least expected! So soon as it became known in town that I was really seriously ill, there appeared among my morning letters a note from one of London’s most famous surgeons saying that he was coming down on a friendly visit in a couple of days “just to see if I can help you at all.”

I read the letter a second time, and then all my fears vanished. Someone coming “to help” me seemed so different from a formal consultation. That phrase was better than reams of ordinary sympathy, or kind inquiries, or professional expressions. And then I felt so glad that the matter had been taken out of my hands. It seemed as though a weight was lifted from my brain, and being a feeble as well as a foolish creature, at first I put my head under the eiderdown and had a weep—for sheer gratitude; but a few minutes later I rubbed my eyes and felt I was heaps better already!

* * * * *

Yet the way was not entirely clear, even though this busy, over-worked specialist was offering to spend more than a day in journeying right across England to the far-off cottage; there was the snow to be reckoned with, and, when it likes, the snow on our hills can frustrate anybody’s best-laid plans. The sky was very grey; I did hope no more would fall, otherwise the roads would probably be impassable.

Owing to the scarcity of trains in our valley, the local doctor was to tap the main line some miles away, and meet the great surgeon; and a rich resident was kindly loaning a cherished new car, as the doctor did not consider either of his own motors worthy of the occasion.

But even he was dubious as he looked at the heavy skies. He said he could manage to get the car through eighteen inches of snow; but if it were deeper than that——! I remembered that only a couple of years before I had been snowed up in the cottage with drifts six-foot deep. The outlook wasn’t exactly encouraging.

Such heaps of tragedies seemed possible within the next twenty-four hours. Suppose, for instance, royalty should suddenly develop some malady necessitating arms or legs being amputated without delay——! I simply dared not think about such a calamity; and even though the specialist escaped a royal command, and actually set off to catch the train that was to bring him to our hill-country, there might be an accident; London streets are beset with terrors; I never realised till that moment how many dangers a man must face between Wimpole Street and Paddington Station! But I tried to have faith that all would be well.

I heard a soft step in the room—every step that came near me was softened nowadays. I opened my eyes and saw Abigail beside my bed.

“Please, m’m, do you happen to know if the specialist-doctor takes pepper?” she asked in the half-whisper that she had adopted as her bedroom voice.

“I haven’t the remotest idea,” I said; “but why do you want to know?”

“Because we’ve just smashed the glass pepper-box, and we haven’t another down here. And I can’t exactly put it on the table in a mustard-pot!”

* * * * *

I watched for the snow, the eighteen inches I was dreading; but the wind changed and it didn’t fall. Instead, next morning found us enveloped in a solid fog—the only fog we had had this season. Hills and valleys were blotted out as completely as though they had never existed. The cottage seemed to stand in mid-air, with nothing but grey unoccupied space around it. And it was such a raw, penetrating fog.

I just lay and watched the grey, blind world outside the windows, and counted the half-hours as the morning wore by. And isn’t it amazing how long the very minutes can be when one is right-down ill, and waiting for a doctor?

In a small isolated community like ours, one excitement is made to do duty for a long while. The impending visit of the surgeon from London was soon the topic of general conversation. And little white curtains were pulled aside from cottage windows as the car, with the doctor and a stranger, was seen coming down one hill and over the bridge into the village in the valley, switchbacking again up the opposite hill to reach the particular crag on which my cottage is perched.

Owing to previous heavy rains, the lanes were almost impassable in places; overflowing brooks made rivers and swamps in most unexpected spots. Thus it was that the car could not come within half-a-mile of the cottage; it had to be “beached” high and dry in somebody’s farmyard, and the rest of the journey made on foot. The walk is a positive fairyland dream in summer; but on the bleak December day the ferns and flowers were gone, and the withered grass stalks rustled with a disconsolate wheeze, while the pine-trees creaked and moaned in the wind. It seemed an unkind, inhospitable sort of a day to bring a busy, valuable man such a long, cold distance.

At last I heard brisk footsteps coming down the path to the door, scrunching the cones that had fallen from the larches. Then a cheerful voice was speaking, while great-coats were being taken off down below. I shut my eyes, and felt I need not worry any more.

* * * * *

After all, we women are curious creatures! We consult a specialist when we have some weakness that won’t give way to ordinary treatment, and then, when, out of his exceptional knowledge and wide experience, he tells us what will probably cure us, many of us immediately beseech him to make it something else.

When the surgeon told me what course it would be necessary to take if I was to be got on to my feet again, I immediately began to state a hundred reasons why I wished he would prescribe something entirely different. He said he was going to have me brought to London at once and taken to a hospital. I knew that was the very last thing I could endure. I have always had an absolute terror lest I should ever have to go into a hospital; and here I was confronted with it face to face. I said I could _not_ go into one; whatever treatment was necessary must be done in my own home. I didn’t want to be among strangers and with nurses whom I had never seen before; I wanted to be nursed by people I knew. And as for chloroform, well, I would gladly die first! such was the horror I had of it. And I continued on these lines.

The surgeon listened very patiently and let me have my say out. (Where in the world does a man like this get his marvellous stock of patience from!) He even agreed with most of my arguments. Anæsthetics were disagreeable; it certainly would be pleasanter to be in my own home; and it might be nicer if I had only friends around me, etc.

But, all the same, it was borne in upon me that I might as well try to get the Sphinx to turn its head and nod over to a pyramid, as to attempt to make the man who was talking to me budge an eighth of an inch. And he wound up by saying, “I am afraid, however, that it will have to be a hospital—I’m so sorry—but I want you to go into a private ward in Mildmay. You shall have the best man in London to administer the anæsthetic; and as for nurses—well, if you don’t say they are some of the finest women you have ever met, I shall be much surprised.”

By this time I had my head under the eiderdown again, and was howling away (quietly). I was so truly sorry for myself!

The great man waited for a minute, and then, as the sniffles didn’t stop, he said—

“Now just listen to me. You are in the habit of writing heaps of good advice to people when they are in trouble—telling them to have faith when adversity comes, and to bear their burdens bravely. Don’t you think you are a most inconsistent person? Here you are, confronted with something that is going to be a trifle trying, and you immediately turn your face to the wall, and say you prefer to die, without so much as giving a solitary kick! Why, Hezekiah isn’t in it, beside you! What is your faith worth at this rate!”

Then for a good half-hour he sat and talked, reminding me of our duty as professing Christians; of the wrong we do when we try to shuffle away from our work; of God’s care for His children individually, and of our foolishness in doubting Him in times of trouble.

I had got to a very low ebb spiritually as well as physically. Being cut off from the world and so much alone, with only a pain to think about, my outlook on life had become altogether distorted. My soul was certainly in need of a bracing up just then—and it got it.

One thing impressed me very much at this time, viz., the marvellous power that lies in the hands of those who can bring healing to the soul as well as healing to the body. The most devoted of God’s ministers have seldom such power as this. They can bring messages of hope and consolation, but they do not know how much a sick person is able, physically, to stand in the way of a strong spiritual tonic, and they seldom dare administer one, even though they may think it necessary.

But the doctor knows how much the patient is equal to. And the man who has consecrated to God’s service a life that is spent in mending the poor broken bodies of humanity is surely doing work that angels might envy; undoubtedly God gives him power and opportunity that falls to the lot of few other men.

* * * * *

The December afternoon closed in early, and the surgeon had once more to take a long, dreary journey to get back to the urgent work waiting for him in town. But he left behind him a far more sane and sensible person than he had found on his arrival.

When he had gone, after having made the most comprehensive and detailed plans for my removal, Abigail tiptoed into my room, her face all aglow with excitement.

“I thought you’d like to know I heard the specialist-doctor say, when I was bringing in the sweets at lunch, that he didn’t know when he had eaten roast chicken he had enjoyed so much. I shall rub it into cook when we go home. And I’d better let Sarah Ann Perkins know, as we got it from her.”

“Take whatever is left, and keep it for a souvenir,” I said. “And if you like to have the carcase framed, I’ll pay for it.”

“You look better already,” she replied.

Thus the great man scattered cheeriness in various directions; and Sarah Ann, a year later, pridefully showed me the chicken’s wings a-top her best Sunday bonnet.

* * * * *

In just as much time as it took my London doctor to come west to assume charge of me, they got me under way.

“But how am I ever going to reach the main road!” I wailed.

“Perfectly easy,” said Ursula. “You are going to be carried, and every masculine in the place is willing to lend a hand.”

And so they did. One young man made himself entirely responsible for my luggage, going off with it by train, that there should be no chance of any delay. A stalwart fisherman and a sturdy young farmer carried me, in a chair, straight up hill for half a mile to where a motor was waiting on the county road.

Everybody was so gentle and quiet, and yet very businesslike. They stood silently, with their hats off, while I was put into the car. I looked round on the hills, convinced that I was looking at them for the last time, and felt exactly as though I were present at my own funeral!

Even the people in the village kept sympathetically in the background, with the same sort of respect one observes when a funeral procession passes; though at the last house in the village one dear kindly soul pulled her little white curtains aside, waving her hand and smiling encouragingly to me as we went by.

XIV

In Mildmay Hospital—An Interlude

I DON’T think there is anything worse than the sense of utter desolation that envelops you when the hospital door finally closes on everybody you know, and you are alone with total strangers and unknown terrors ahead. The dreariest moment of my whole life was when I found myself alone in a private ward at Mildmay, with no one whom I knew within call.

Yet was it mere chance, I wonder, that the nurses at their prayers that day sang Matheson’s beautiful hymn—“O Love, that wilt not let me go”?

It came to me along the corridor, as I lay staring at the ceiling. I tried, in my heart, to sing it with them; but I gave it up when they got to the verse—

“O Joy, that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to Thee; I trace the rainbow through the rain, And feel the promise is not vain, That morn shall tearless be.”

I couldn’t see the rainbow just then.

Nevertheless, I got to love that room as one of the happiest spots on earth, for the sake of the people whom I found there; and during the ten weeks I remained in it, I proved beyond all chance of further doubt that when God seems to be taking from us, He is in reality giving us something better than all we could ever ask or think. At the moment of the taking, perhaps, our eyes are too dimmed to see this, but in the fulfilment of time, when He wipes away our tears, may it not be that, in addition to banishing our sorrows, He will clear our vision, that we may see how marvellously He made all things work together for good?

* * * * *

Next day I remarked, irritably, that I didn’t like the green walls, and I thought the green bedspread positively bilious.

The matron, looking at me with a twinkle in her eyes, said, “Dear lady, you shall have another bedspread this instant; and as soon as you are well enough to be moved, we will re-paint the walls whatever colour meets with your approval;—we can’t do it while you are in bed, can we? Meanwhile, I shall call you ‘Delicate Fuss’!”

(And “Delicate Fuss” I have remained ever since.)

But there was such an amount of misery bottled up inside me, some of it was obliged to spill over, and I once more reiterated my desire to die.

“That’s all right,” said the matron cheerfully; “but how about your tombstone? You would like a really artistic one, wouldn’t you? And being literary, surely you would wish to edit what is to go on it. Now let us see what we can scheme out.”

So we all settled to a discussion of shapes and styles and suitable words. The nurses warmed to the work, the ward sister came in to give her views, and for the first time for weeks I found myself smiling. Finally, it was unanimously decided that the most appropriate and truthful description would be these simple words—

“SHE WAS PLAIN BUT OCCASIONALLY PLEASANT.”

But the time came when I was beyond even discussing tombstones; when I could not bear a sound in the room and even quiet footsteps jarred me. Then it was that I found out more especially what the spirit of Mildmay stands for. It was no mere perfunctory service that was rendered the invalid. Doctors, matron, nurses said nothing of the extra hours of work they put in on my account; of the watching and the tending when they were really supposed to be off duty. It seemed wonderful that I, who had looked forward to the inevitable with a terrible dread of being lonely and among strangers, should actually find myself, when the time came, surrounded by friendly faces, and cared for by people who had grown very dear to me.

And fancy a hospital where they went to the trouble of bandaging up the door-handles to prevent noisy bangs; where they laid down matting to deaden the sounds in the corridor; where they fixed peremptory notices to the doors, enjoining all and sundry to close them quietly; where even the ward-maid constituted herself dragoness-in-chief, for the time being, watching and waiting, and then pouncing on any unthinking person who might let a latch slip through her fingers, or a house-porter who might clatter a coal-scuttle.

Yet this—and a great deal more—is what they did at Mildmay, just because one patient was going through a bad time.

* * * * *

Thanks to all the care I received, I was at last able to leave the hospital. Of course I was glad to go out into the big world again—who wouldn’t be, after lying all that time with no other “view” visible from where I lay but three chimney-pots? I was glad to think I was going to be able to walk again, and take up my work once more. But I felt genuine regret at having to say good-bye to the people I had really grown to love during my stay with them.

I shall never forget the morning that I was taken away by a couple of nurses to the seaside. The others came, in ones and twos, to say good-bye. And in the midst of it, the great surgeon walked in—just to see what the patient was like before she started.

“Now confess,” he said, “a hospital isn’t such a bad place after all, is it?”

I agreed with him; but I couldn’t put into words what a wonderfully good place I had found it.

I could only think what a contrast was presented between the poor, forlorn thing who arrived those months before, and the still-very-wobbly, but cheerfully-smiling, person who was now driving away, while the nurses leaned out of the upper windows and showered rice all over the vehicle.

XV

The Return to the Flower-Patch

AND because it is the correct thing to introduce a wedding into the last chapter, I had better mention the one I know most about.

I always did say that, whenever I married, my wedding should be characterised by everything appertaining to common sense; while all the feebleness and foolishness and weakmindedness I had noticed at other people’s weddings would be entirely lacking. I have often remarked how strange it is that otherwise sensible people seem to lose all idea of proportion when it comes to arranging a wedding; how they let themselves be obsessed with clothes and furniture and wedding presents that they don’t require; or if they do require them, they might have been dealt with on orderly systematic lines.

“Why need there be a chaos of garments in the spare room and every wardrobe and chest of drawers in the house just because one person is going to be married?” I have said many a time. Well, I’m not going to say it again. In fact, the older I get the more I find life resolves itself into one continual discovery that I needn’t have said half the things that I did say in my first youth.

But with regard to the wedding, I think I started all right; it was as matters proceeded that I was overtaken by the inevitable. I really was too busy with arrears of work that accumulated during my long illness to see to the trousseau details _in extenso_, so I asked an intimate friend if she would take this in hand for me—which she kindly agreed to do. She had had lots of experience, and her taste was exquisite; so I knew matters were safe with her. She asked me what frocks I already had. I replied, “Not a rag fit to wear!”