Part 2

Lucy always brought him his pipe, but he never smoked it in the room, thinking it made her cough. And then, after he had finished, he shut down the window, and she drew the white muslin curtain; those who passed and repassed saw their shadows: the girl bending over a large book, and her father seated opposite to her; listening while she read, his elbow placed on the table, and his head resting on his hand. The drapery was so transparent that they could see his sword and sash hanging on the wall above his hat; and the branch of laurel with which Lucy had adorned the looking-glass that morning in commemoration of the battle of Toulouse. Before the sergeant-major went to bed that night he called old Mary, and whispered, “You were quite right about old John Coyne. Lucy never marched better than she did to-day; and her voice, both in reading, and the little hymn she sung, was as strong as a trumpet. I’ll give it well to old John, to-morrow;”—but he never did. The sergeant-major was usually up the first in the house; yet, the next morning, when Mary took hot water to his room she stepped back, seeing he was kneeling, dressed, by his bed side; half an hour passed; she went again. Mr. Joyce had never undressed, never laid upon the bed since it had been turned down; he was dead and cold; his hands clasped in prayer. Some of the vessels of the heart, or head, had given way; the wonderful machine was disturbed; its power destroyed in an instant.

Lucy Joyce was now utterly alone in the world; of her father’s relatives she knew little or nothing; her mother was an only child, and her grandmother and grandfather were both dead. A generous and benevolent lady, aware of the circumstance under which she was placed, offered to provide Lucy with a situation;—but what situation? She looked too delicate, too refined for service; and she was not sufficiently accomplished to undertake the duties of even a nursery governess, “Have none of their slavery, dear,” exclaimed poor Mary, while weeping bitterly; “take your pick of the things to furnish two little rooms, Miss Lucy, and sell the rest. I’ve a power of friends, and can get constant work; turn my hand to any thing, from charing to clear-starching, or if the noise wouldn’t bother you, sure I could have a mangle; it would exercise me of on evening when I’d be done work: don’t lave me, Miss, don’t darling, any way, till you gather a little strength after all you’ve gone through; the voice of the stranger is harsh, and the look of the stranger is cold, to those who have lived all their days in the light of a father’s love. I took you from your mother’s breast a wee-some, woe-some, babby, and sure, my jewel own, I have some right to you. I’ll never gainsay you. And to please you, dear, I’ll listen to any chapter you’ll read out of the Book; nor never let the echo even of a white, let alone a black, oath cross my lips.” But Lucy Joyce was too right-minded to live on the labour of an old servant. She retained barely enough to furnish for Mary a comfortable room, and accepted, much to the faithful creature’s mortification, a “place” in a family—one of the hardest “places” to endure, and yet as good, perhaps, as, from her father’s position, she could have expected—as half-teacher, half-servant; a mingling of opposite duties; against the mingling of which, reason utterly revolts; inasmuch as the one must inevitably destroy the influence of the other.

[Picture: Fulham church?]

It was not in the thick atmosphere of the crowded city—where the most healthful find it difficult to breathe, and where the panting sufferer’s agony is increased fourfold—that Lucy undertook the duties and labours of her new occupation; her way lay through the venerable and picturesque OLD VILLAGE OF FULHAM, and so, beneath the arch and over the “wooden way,” to Putney. Pleasant and happy the sister villages looked; divided by the noble Thames, and joined by the bridge—the most primitive of all the bridges which cross the broad river. Mary walked respectfully behind; but, now and then, spoke words of encouragement, while the tears ran down her cheeks. They paused to look down upon the water, so broad and glassy, athwart whose bosom the long light boats were sporting; the clock of Putney church struck the hour, and Lucy remembered that, for the first time in her life, she was bound to note its chime as the voice of an employer. The VILLAGE OF PUTNEY was soon passed; yet not without some difficulty to the poor girl; her chest heaved and panted as she endeavoured to walk lightly up the rising ground towards the Heath, where her future home was situated; poor Mary whispering, “Take it asy, dear; don’t hurry yourself, avourneen.” They parted at the gate.

[Picture: Putney with bridge and church]

Time would pass almost unregistered by us, but for the abruptness of some of its movements. Every country has its great national _datas_, which fix a period. Of late, in France, “the revolution,” and “three glorious days;” in Ireland, “the ninety-eight;” in Scotland “the forty-five;” in England, “the restoration,” “the riots.” These stormy doings are History’s high places. Yet events which effect changes as entire and as wonderful, continue untalked about or unthought of, because they have not been heralded by beat of drum, and written in fields of slaughter. So, in private life, time would pass for ever unregistered by us, but for the abruptness of some of its movements—things that seem either to stop its course or send it dashing forward. The most humble have their “great events”—their mental land marks. “It was just before I was married,” or “immediately after our eldest boy was born,” is the frequent observation of the wife and mother. The widow says, “before my husband died.” Poor Lucy, when the sufferings of pain were increased by the anxieties of duty, and retrospection was forced upon her, could only say, or think, “when my dear father was alive,”—that was her land mark! The duties incident to her new position; the exertion which children require, and which is _perpetual_, though parents are the only persons who do not feel it to be so; the exercise, the necessity for amusing and instructing the young, the high-spirited, and the active; these added to the change of repose for inquietude, of being the one cared for, to the having to care for others; the entire loneliness of spirit, all combined to make her worse, to crush utterly the already bruised reed.

Lucy was fully sensible of the consoling power—the great PLEASURE of being useful; and her mind was both practically and theoretically Christian; so, she never yielded to fretfulness or impatience; she knew that, through all her trials—through her waking hours of pain, through the weary time of total incapacity for the fulfilment of her duties—God was with her, was her stay, was her support; was trying her, as pure gold is tried in the fire; would sustain her in spirit unto the end: she knew all this, she never doubted, but she suffered; her heart fluttered like an imprisoned bird, as she toiled and panted up the high stairs, while the children laughed and sported, with the spirit and energy of health, and called to her to ‘come faster.’ Night brought rest without refreshment; she could not sleep; and, stifling her cough, lest she should disturb others, she would look up to the starry sky, often repeating—

“Oh! that I had wings like a dove;”

but hardly had she so prayed, when a sense of her own unworthiness, of the duty of watching and waiting for God’s appointed time, would come upon her, and she would add, “Not my will, but Thine be done.” No one was cruel, no one even unkind to her; the cross cook (all good cooks are cross), would often make her lemonade, or reserve something she thought the young girl might eat; the lady’s-maid, who had regarded her, at first, as a rival beauty, won by her cheerful patience, said, that even when her eyes were full of tears, there was a smile upon her lip; all the servants felt for her; and, at length, her mistress requested her own physician to see what was the matter with “poor Joyce.”

There are exceptions, no doubt; but, taken as a body, medical men—God bless them for so being!—are the very souls of kindness and generous humanity; how many have I known whose voices were as music in a sick chamber; who, instead of taking, gave; ever ready to alleviate and to sustain.

“Have you no friends?” he inquired.

“None, sir,” she replied; “at least none to support me; and,” she added, “I know I am unable to remain here.” While she said this, she looked with her blue, truthful, earnest eyes, into his face; then paused, hoping, without knowing what manner of hope was in her, that he would say—“she _was_ able;” but he did not; and she continued, “there is no one to whom I can go, except an old servant of my poor father’s; so, if—” there came, perhaps, a flush of pride to her cheek, or it might be she was ashamed to ask a favour—“if, sir, you could get me into AN HOSPITAL, I should be most grateful.”

“I wish I could,” he answered, “with all my heart. We have hospitals enough; yet, I fear—indeed, I know—there is not one that would receive you, when aware of the exact nature of your complaint. You must have a warm, mild atmosphere; perfect quiet, and a particular diet; and that for some considerable time.”

“My mother, sir,” said Lucy, “died of consumption.”

“Well, but you are not going to die,” he replied, smiling; “only you must let your father’s old servant take care of you, and you may soon get better.”

Lucy shook her head, and her eyes overflowed with tears; the physician cheered her, after the usual fashion. “I am not afraid of death, sir,” said the young woman; “indeed, I am not; but I fear, more than I ought, the passage which leads to it; the burden I must be to the poor faithful creature who nursed me from my birth. I thought there was an hospital for the cure of every disease; and this consumption is so general, so helpless, so tedious.”

“The very thing,”—said the doctor, who, with all his kindness, was one of those who think “so and so,” because “all the faculty” thought “so and so,” for such a number of years;—“its being tedious is the very thing; it is quite a FORLORN HOPE.”

“But, sir,” answered the soldier’s daughter, “FORLORN HOPES _have sometimes led to_ GREAT VICTORIES, _when they have been_ FORLORN, _but not_ FORSAKEN.”

The doctor pressed into her hand the latest fee he had received, and descended the stairs. “That is a very extraordinary girl, madam, in the nursery,” he said to the lady, “something very superior about her; but she will get worse and worse; nothing for her but a more genial climate, constant care, perfect rest, careful diet: if she lives through the winter she must go in the spring. Lungs! chest! blisters will relieve her; and if we could produce the climate of Madeira here for a winter or so, she might revive; but, poor thing, in her situation—”

The lady shook her head, and repeated, “Ay; in her situation.”

“It is really frightful,” he continued, “the hundreds—thousands, I may say—who drop off in this dreadful disease; the flower of our maidens; the finest of our youths; no age, no sex, exempt from it. We have only casual practice to instruct us in it; we have no opportunity of watching and analyzing it, _en masse_, as we have with other complaints; it is turned out of our hospitals before we do what we even fancy might be done; it is indeed, as she said just now, ‘_forlorn_’ and ‘_forsaken_.’ Why, I know not; I really wish some one would establish an hospital for the cure, or, at least, the investigation of this disease; many, if taken in time, would be saved. Suffering, the most intense, but, perhaps, the best endured, from the very nature of the complaint, would be materially lessened, and a fresh and noble field opened for an almost new branch of our profession.”

The physician prescribed for Lucy. He saw her again, and would have seen her repeatedly, but the family left town suddenly, in consequence of the death of a near relative, and the very belief that nothing could be done for her, circumstanced as she was, contributed to her being forgotten. The human mind has a natural desire to blot out from memory objects that are hopeless. Lucy went to Mary’s humble lodging, and fancied, for a day or two, she was much better. She had the repose which such illness so naturally seeks. Mary’s room was on the ground floor of a small house, in a little street leading off “Paradise-row.” The old pensioners frequently passed the window; she could hear the beat of the Asylum drums; sometimes they awoke her out of her sleep in the morning; but she liked them none the less for that. Mary put away her poor master’s hat (which she brushed every morning), his sword and sash, and his gloves, in her own box, when Lucy came, least the sight of them should make her melancholy; but Lucy saw their marks upon the wall, and begged she would replace them there. She gave her little store, amounting to a few pounds, into the nurse’s hands, who spent it scrupulously for her—and yet not prudently; for she ran after every nostrum, and insisted upon Lucy’s swallowing them all. Sometimes the fading girl would creep along in the sunshine, and so changed was she, in little more than a year, that no one recognised her, though some would look after her, and endeavour to call to mind who it was she so strongly resembled.

The only living thing that rejoiced with Mary over her return, was a lean, hungry dog, the favourite of an out-pensioner who died about six months before the sergeant-major. It was ill-favoured, but faithful, remaining many nights upon its master’s grave. Lucy coaxed it home and fed it; and though the creature’s erratic disposition prevented its accepting the refuge she then offered, he would come in occasionally for a night’s lodging, or a breakfast, and depart without a single wag of his stunted tail. When Lucy left Chelsea, Mary almost lost sight of the dog, though she met him sometimes, and then he would look to her—a sort of recognition—and walk on. The morning after Lucy’s return, while she lay upon her nurse’s bed, the door was poked open by a thick, grizzled nose, and in another instant the pensioner’s dog rushed to her, expressing his joy by the most uncouth sounds and motions, screaming while licking her hands, and, when his excitement subsided, lying down inside the door, with his eyes fixed upon her, baffling all Mary’s efforts to turn him out. Beauty, after all, has very little to do with the affections; after its first sun stroke, it loses most of its power. Lucy had the keen appreciation of the beautiful which belongs to a refined mind in every situation of life; yet the gratitude of that poor ugly dog attached her to him; through all her sufferings, when her nurse was out at work, he was a companion, something to speak to. The little store was soon expended, though Mary would not confess it; Lucy, skilled in the womanly craft of needlework, laboured unceasingly; and, as long as she was able to apply to it, Mary found a market for her industry. But as the disease gained ground, her efforts became more feeble, and then the faithful nurse put forth all her strength, all her ingenuity, to disguise the nature of their situation; the expense of the necessary medicine, inefficient as it was, would have procured her every alleviating Comfort—IF THERE HAD BEEN AN INSTITUTION TO SUPPLY IT.

I have often borne testimony to that which I have more often witnessed—the deep, earnest, and steadfast fidelity of the humbler Irish! yet I have never been able to render half justice to the theme. If they be found wanting in all other good or great qualities, they are still true in this—ever faithful, enduring, unwearied, unmoved; past all telling is their fidelity! The woman whose character I am now describing, was but one example of a most numerous class. Well she would have known, if she had given the matter a thought, that no chance or change could ever enable Lucy to repay her services, or recompence her for her sacrifices and cares; yet her devotion was a thousand times more fervent than if it had been purchased by all the bribes that a kingdom’s wealth could yield. By the mere power of her zeal—her earnest and utterly unselfish love—she obtained a hearing from many governors of hospitals; stated the case of “her young lady,” as she called her, the child of a brave man, who had served his country, who died before his time, from the effects of that service; and she, his child, was dying now, from want of proper treatment. In all her statements, Mary set forth everything to create sympathy for Lucy, but, nothing that tended to show her own exertions; how she toiled for her, night and day; how she was pledging, piece by piece, everything she had, to support her; how her wedding-ring was gone from off her finger, and the cherished Waterloo medal of her dead husband (which, by some peculiarly Irish effort of the imagination, she said “was his very picture”) had disappeared from her box. She whispered nothing of all this, though she prayed and petitioned at almost every hospital for medicine and advice. Dismissed from one, Mary would go to another, urging that “sure if they could cure one thing they could cure another, anyhow they might try;” and if she, the beloved of her heart, was raised up from a bed of sickness, “God’s fresh blessing” would be about them, day and night. “They got up hospitals,” she would add, “for the suddenly struck for death; for the lame, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind; for the vicious! but there were none to comfort those who deserved and needed more than any! She did not want them to take her darling from her. She only asked advice and medicine.” She implored for nothing more. The Irish never seem to feel ashamed of obtaining assistance from any source, except that which the English fly to, as their legitimate refuge—the Parish; and Mary would have imagined she heaped the bitterest wrong upon Lucy, if she had consulted “the parish doctor;” thus, her national prejudice shut her out from the only relief, trifling as it might have been, which she could obtain for the poor girl she so tenderly cherished.

[Picture: Chelsea workhouse with blind woman and girl]

Mary had such an aversion to the “Poor-house” that she would go round the public road rather than pass the rambling building close to the burying-ground, where the Chelsea poor find shelter; and was never beguiled but once to look through the gate at the Workhouse in the Fulham Road. It was formerly the residence of the second Lord Shaftesbury; where Locke, and other great men of his time, congregated. “I stopped to look in at it, Miss Lucy, dear,” she said, “through a fine ould ancient gate—and the flower-pots, up the steps, were filled with beautiful flowers—and an old residenter—a blind woman, that a slip of a girl held by the hand, was standing on the top; and there came out a fine-dressed lady, for all the world like a full-blown trumpet; and the dark woman courtesied, and asked lave to ‘come out’—think of one craythur asking another for lave to breathe the air of heaven outside an ould gate!—and, I suppose she got it, for the lady in red threw some words at her, and she gave another courtesy, and came down the steps—her and the girleen. I had seen enough, and turned away, for my heart was full. I have never lived in slavery, and, plase God, I won’t die in it, Miss Lucy—and none I love shall ever be _behoulden_ to a parish.” This was reasoning—more of the heart than of the head. And yet, who can say that poor Mary was very wrong? True, that a roof shelters, and food keeps in existence the English pauper; but all the feelings that are cherished and honoured without the workhouse walls, are insulted and uprooted within; the holy law of wedded life—the command, what God hath joined let not man separate—is there outraged; fifty years have that aged man and woman paid the tithe and the tax; half a century have they laboured honestly; the grave has closed over their children and their early friends, and they are forced to durance in the poor man’s prison; but they must no longer quench their thirst from the same cup, or pray beside the same couch; the law of man divides what can be re-united only in the presence of the Creator! No wonder then, if, like poor Mary, many turn away from unjust judgment, and resolve not to “die in slavery,” having been guilty of no sin but that of being poor. Oh! but it is a grievous augmentation of evil when sympathy is diverted from its natural channel, and the sufferer is taught daily the sad knowledge that to want is to be criminal.

And so the fell disease, pale and ghastly, stalked on, grasping its panting and unresisting victim, closer and more close; wasting her form—infusing the thirsty fever into her veins—parching her quivering lips into whiteness—drawing her breath—steeping her in unwholesome dews—and, at times, with a most cruel mockery, painting her cheek and lighting an _ignis fatuus_ in her eyes, to bewilder with false hopes of life, while life was failing! Sometimes she would talk of this life as if it were everlasting, and—looking over a worn memorandum-book of her father’s, in which all the battles _he_ was engaged in were chronicled after a soldier’s fashion; the day of the month noted, the name of the place, which added another to our wreath of glories, illuminated by the colours of his regiment rudely indicated by a star or an “_hurra_,” in a peculiarly cramped hand—she would become excited, and weave imaginary trophies, calling to her broken-hearted nurse to bring her the green laurel which her father loved to distribute among his comrades; these fever fits, however, were at long intervals, and brief; gradually as “the spring,” the physician had spoken of, advanced, the mingled hopes of this world, which are but as the faint shadowings of the great HEREAFTER, strengthened and spiritualized; and her thoughts were prayer, prayer to Him the Saviour and Redeemer; prayerful and patient she was, gentle and grateful; her perceptions which had been, for a time, clouded, quickened as her end drew near; she saw the furniture departing, piece by piece; at last she missed her father’s sash and sword; and when poor Mary would have framed excuses, she placed her quivering fingers on her lips, and spoke more than she had done for many days. “God will reward you for your steadfast love of a poor parentless girl; you spared _my treasure_ as long as you could, caring nothing for yourself, working and starving, and all for me. Oh, that the world could know, and have belief in the fervent enduring virtues that sanctify such rooms as this, that decorate bare walls, and make a bright and warming light when the coal is burnt to ashes, and the thin candle, despite our watching, flickers before the night is done. I have not thought it night, when I felt your hand or heard you breathe.” Oh! what liberal charities are there of which the world knows nothing! How generous, and how mighty in extent and value, are the gifts given by the poor to the poor!