A Houseful of Girls by Sarah Tytler (simple ebook reader .txt) 📕

illuminated texts and oleographs, which generous supporters of the hospital sent to brighten its cold bareness and soften and cheer what was harsh and subdued in its atmosphere. Annie was not even greatly affected by the greeting of one of her patients, an elderly man recovering from an operation, and still slightly off his head when the fever rose on him. She went to him with a cooling, soothing application, and he told her incoherently to come again and give him his dinner and his tea. He liked a young lass or lady, be she which she liked, with red cheeks and shining eyes to wait upon him. It minded him of a bit wench of a daughter of his he had lost when she was twelve years—the age of the little wench in the Bible, for parson had preached[172] about her the Sunday after his lass's funeral. It broke her mother's heart for all that, and he buried her too within three months. Then the place got lonesome, and he took what was not good for him, till he had come to this; though whether it were the House or just an hospital he was lying in he could not clearly say.

Then there happened what Annie was wont to describe as a miracle of mercy to bring her to a better mind. A young boy whose leg had been crushed by a waggon was carried into the operating theatre for an immediate operation. It was the lecture hour, and a great professor of surgery with his class of students, together with several of the other doctors connected with St. Ebbe's, was in attendance. But it was also customary, especially where a female patient or a patient so young as the boy in question was concerned, for a nurse, generally the sister of the ward, to be present to hold the sufferer's hand if it were wished, or when it was possible to support the poor head against her breast. It so chanced that the sister was out, and other available nurses were engaged, so in circumstances which would admit of no delay Annie was for the first time called to the front and summoned to undertake the responsibility of the situation. Already she had lost sight of herself, and was standing looking so calm, firm, and prepared for every emergency, that the operating[173] surgeon, with a glance at her, put her youth and position as a probationer aside, and accepted what help she could give.

It was a critical case, and for some medical reason no anæsthetic could be administered. The boy was past the unconsciousness of childhood, and though nearly fainting with fright, pain, and weakness, remained quite sensible of the further ordeal he had to undergo. He was keenly alive to the humane motive which induced the surgeon to turn his back upon him in selecting his instruments. He even heard, with ears morbidly acute, the low words addressed to the interested spectators, "Now, gentlemen, I am about to begin."

With a stifled sob the poor little fellow suddenly managed to raise himself from the table on which he was stretched. He looked round wildly on the circle of men's faces, controlled and expectant, with a certain every-day expression in anticipation of what, in its blind terror and life and death importance to him, was a familiar occurrence to them, and on the one woman's face, controlled too, but with an indescribable wistfulness under the control. Then he made his childish appeal, shrill with misery, "Oh, gentlemen, will you not stop till I say my prayers?"

There was an instant pause of surprise, commiseration, constraint—the peculiar awkwardness[174] which in Englishmen waits on any provocation to betray feeling. Nobody liked to look at his neighbour to see how he looked, lest there should be the most distant sign of emotion in his own face. Some strong men there had ceased to pray or to believe in prayer, yet all were more or less touched by the lad's implicit faith.

As for Annie she had been praying at that very moment, praying fervently in the silence of her heart, that she might be saved from breaking down and allowed to be of some service to the boy.

"Certainly, certainly, my little chap; but you must be quick about it," said the great surgeon a little hoarsely.

"Our-Father-which-art-in-Heaven," began the boy, running the words together and speaking with a parrot-like monotony in an unnaturally high-pitched key. Then his voice began to quaver a little till he stopped short with a cry of despair—"I cannot mind the words, I cannot say my prayers. Oh! will nobody say them for me? If mother, as is not in Lon'on, were here, she would do it fast," he ended, flinging out one thin arm and clutching convulsively at the air in a kind of panic-stricken terror.

There was another second's dead silence. It was broken by a woman's voice. Annie had taken a step forward close to the boy's elbow, so that her voice was in his ear. She could not kneel,[175] but instinctively she clasped her hands and bent her head reverently as she said in low but clear tones which were carried throughout the length and breadth of the room, and thrilled in every ear, the Lord's Prayer. At its close she went on without hesitation in the same wonderfully audible voice: "God bless this little boy. Forgive him every wrong he has ever done. Keep him safe, and raise him up again, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen."

Another voice—a deeper one—responded to the "Amen." It was said by the famous operator's enemies that he was lax in his religious opinions, and that he rarely found time to go to church. Nevertheless it was he who with grave heartiness repeated the Amen.

The little lad had sunk back when she began to speak, and there he lay without giving her a word or sign of thanks—his best acknowledgment of her compliance with what might be his last wish being his quaking submission. He could not keep still his quivering flesh, or hold back altogether his piercing cries and piteous moans, but he bit his tongue in seeking to stifle them. For he was not fighting with his Maker and his fate; he was trying in his boyish way, with his small fortitude and resignation, to endure, in the might of the support which had been asked for him.

[176]Annie too clenched her teeth, while she opened her eyes to take in everything that passed before them, as a mirror may be turned to receive the minutest impression from the scene it reflects. But she did not hear a single shriek or wail, because her ears were filled with the higher harmonies which she had called forth. She clasped one of the boy's trembling hands in her own warm one, which did not grow cold in the contact. She was on the alert to meet his only half-seeing gaze, and to give back a glance of tender sympathy and protection—the true mother's look that is to be found when occasion calls for it in every good woman's face,—ay, it may even be seen in the precociously earnest, kindly eyes of many a loving woman-child.

There were plenty of other helpers to render the surgeon all the assistance he needed in his work, with far more celerity and ability than Annie could have supplied. But while sense lingered in the little patient's eyes, it was to the woman he turned for the pity and aid which did not fail him; it was through her that he drew from One mightier than all, the spiritual strength for his terrible bodily conflict. In a sense Annie and he were both on their trial, they served their novitiate together, and helped each other to bear and overcome. When the operation was over he lay, with the sweat drops[177] of agony which Annie was gently wiping off, not gone from his forehead, but also with the reflection still lingering on his white face of the courage and patience with which he had been ready to meet death.

"You have behaved remarkably well, and shown no want of pluck, my lad," said the surgeon as a parting word of encouragement and cheer. "Lie still and you'll be able to see your friends by and by. I believe you'll do famously, and we'll see whether a substitute cannot be found for the limb you have lost."

He turned to Annie who had done all, and more than all, that was required of her, probably because she had entirely forgotten herself. She was not even then sensible of a swift reaction, an overwhelming tide of embarrassment. She continued more than half unconscious of the number of eyes which, now that the operation was over, were fixed upon her, marvelling, admiring, condemning, or ridiculing. For what act is there, let it be ever so disinterested or self-sacrificing, against which no voice will rise in condemnation or in mockery?

But it was not the operating surgeon who either condemned or scoffed at Annie's conduct. He drew her aside, not speaking to her on the religious side of the episode, which he did not conceive that[178] he had the smallest right or title to do, but addressing her on the purely medical aspect of the incident, on which he considered that he was entitled, nay, even bound to speak. His manner was a little blunt and brusque rather than suave, like that of a man who had no time to waste in paying compliments or making soft speeches, but it was thoroughly approving.

"You did quite right, nurse; I'm much obliged to you. That poor boy wanted all the comfort he could get. If he had gone on and worked himself into a frenzy before I had taken up the knife, I do not know that I could have done my work, and certainly the probability of his recovery would have been greatly lessened."

"I am glad," said Annie simply, with a little gasp of returning consciousness. "It is good of you to say so, doctor," but it was doubtful whether she knew what she was saying. She was penetrated through and through with thankfulness, yet thanks to herself seemed so irrelevant that she did not care to hear them.

There was more than Annie who thought that thanks to her were out of place and superfluous. This was specially so with one among the group of younger men, who at the moment of entering the ward had been fully alive to the circumstance that "the pretty nurse," as she was known to them,[179] was on active duty. They had speculated on whether she would stand an operation, and what a disturbance and nice mess there would be if she fell flat on the small of her back on the floor, or went off in a fit of hysterics in the middle of it; and how their "boss" would endure such a disconcerting interruption to the proceedings. As it happened, the speculators were in their turn startled, abashed, or irritated, according to their respective temperaments and frames of mind, by what followed.

But there was a young giant, with a blonde beard, who let his blue eyes fall on the floor, drew back till he leant against the wall, and thrusting his hands into his pockets, asked himself in a dazed, humbled way, if an angel had come down among them, and where was the good of presuming to thank an angel? It was a thousand times more officious and audacious than to disregard the hackneyed quotation about the folly of painting a lily and perfuming a rose.

Annie, the moment she could be spared, went to her own room, fell down on her knees, and cried as if her heart would break. Yet they were not unhappy, but blissful tears, though they were as much for her own unworthiness as for God's unmerited goodness.

Then she snatched up a sheet of paper and[180] wrote home. "I was so discontented—such a peevish wretch, this morning, but I have had a tonic, and now I am so unspeakably satisfied with my lot in life that I believe I am the happiest girl in England to-night. I would not change places with a hundred old Aunt Pennys, only I know, alas! that I am not half good enough to be a nurse. Yet I would rather be a nurse than any other character in the world, and I would not go back for a permanency to dear old Redcross, after which I was hankering this very morning, and live at home with you all again, leading the aimless, self-seeking life I led, not though Mr. Carey's bank were to rise out of its ashes and flourish to an extent that its greatest upholders never dreamt of—not though