"Then I fairly broke down and cried bitterly; and I told the doctor how sore afflicted I was--how G.o.d had taken my husband and babe from me--how all my little means had been consumed in the expenses of nursing--how the little furniture in my rooms would not pay half what I owed to honest folk--and how, even in my unspeakable wretchedness, I could not ask the Almighty to take away my life, for I could not rest in death if I left the world without paying my just debts. Well, sir, the doctor sate down by me, and said, in his softest and simplest way:--

"'Come, come, neighbour, don't you frighten yourself. Be calm, and listen to me. Don't let the thought of debts worry you. What little I have done in the way of business for your poor child and husband I never wish to be paid for--so there's your greatest creditor disposed of. As for the others, they won't trouble you, for I'll undertake to see that none of them shall think that you have wronged 'em. I wish I could do more, neighbor; but I ain't a rich man, and I have got a wife and a regiment of little ones at home, who won't help, in the long run, to make me richer--although I am sure they'll make me happier.

But now for yourself; you must go to the fever-hospital, to have your illness out; the physician who'll take care of you there is the cleverest in all London; and, as he is an old friend of mine, I can ask him to pay especial attention to you. You'll find it a pleasant, cheerful place, much more cool and comfortable than your rooms here; the nurses are all of them good people; and while lying on your bed there you won't have to fret yourself with thinking how you are to pay for the doctors, and medicine, and kitchen physic.'

"I was only too thankful to a.s.sent to all the doctor said; and forthwith he fetched a coach, put me into it, and took me off to the fever-hospital, to which his influence procured me instant admittance. Without delay I was conveyed to a large and comfortable bed, which, with another similar bed parallel to it, was placed against the wall at the end of a long gallery, containing twenty other beds. The first day of my hospital life I spent tranquilly enough; the languor of extreme exhaustion had soothed me, and my malady had not robbed me of my senses. So I lay calmly on my couch and watched all the proceedings and arrangements of the great bed-room. I noticed how clean and white all the beds looked, and what kindly women the nurses were; I remarked what a wide s.p.a.ce there was down the middle of the room between the two rows of beds, and again what large intervals there were between the beds on each side; I observed, too, that over every bed there was a ventilator set in the wall, and beneath the ventilator a board, on which was pinned a paper, bearing, in a filled-up printed form, the number of the bed to which it belonged, the date when the occupant was admitted to the ward, the names of the physician and nurse under whose charge she was, the medicine she was taking, and the diet on which she was put. It made me smile, moreover, to note how the nurses, when giving physic or nourishment, or otherwise attending to their charges, would frequently address them by the numbers on their boards, instead of their names.

"'Nurse, dear,' I asked, with a smile, when my attendant came near me, 'what's my name?'

"'Oh, dear!' said she, looking up at the board which had already been fixed over my head, 'your name is Number Eleven.'

"It would be hard for me to give you, sir, any notion of how these words, _Number Eleven_, took possession of my mind. This was the more strange, because the nurse did not usually call me by them; for she was a motherly creature, and almost always addressed me as 'poor dear,' or 'poor child'; and the doctors who had the charge of me spoke to me as 'friend,' or 'old friend,' or 'neighbor.' But all the same for that, I always thought of myself as Number Eleven; and ere many days, if any one had asked me what my name was, I could not for the life of me have remembered Abigail Mallet, but should have answered Number Eleven. The patient in the next bed to me was Number Twenty-two; she was, like myself, a poor woman who had just lost a husband and child by the fever, and both of us were much struck, and then drawn to each other, by discovering how we had suffered alike. We often interchanged a few words during the sorrowful hours of the long, hot nights, but our whisperings always turned on the same subject.

'Number Eleven,' I used to hear her poor thin lips murmur, 'are you thinking of your baby, dear?' 'To be sure, darling,' I would answer; 'I am awake, and when I am awake, I am always thinking of her.' Then most times she would inquire, 'Number Eleven, dear, which do you think of most--the little one or her father?' Whereto I would reply, 'I think of both alike, dear, for whenever I look at her, a fair young angel in heaven--she seems to be lying in her father's arms.' And after we had conversed so, No. 22 would be quiet for a few minutes; and often, in the silence of the night, I could at such times hear that which informed me the poor woman was weeping to herself--in such a way that she was happier for her tears.

"But my malady progressed unfavourably. Each succeeding night was worse to endure; and the morning light, instead of bringing refreshment and hope, only gave to me a dull, gloomy consciousness that I had pa.s.sed hours in delirium, and that I was weaker and heavier in heart, and more unlikely than ever to hold my head up again. They cut all the hair off my head, and put blisters at the back of my neck; but the awful weight of sorrow and the gnawing heat kept on my brain all the same. I could no longer amuse myself with looking at what went on in the ward; I lost all care for the poor woman who lay in the next bed; and soon I tossed to and fro, and heeded nothing of the outer world except the burning, and aching, and thirst, and sleeplessness that encased me.

"One morning I opened my eyes and saw the doctor standing between me and No. 22, talking to the nurse. A fit of clearness pa.s.sed over my understanding, such as people suffering under fever often experience for a few seconds, and I heard the physician say softly to the nurses, 'We must be careful and do our best, sister, and leave the rest to G.o.d. They are both very ill; this is now the fourth day since either of them recognized me. They must have more wine and brandy to help them through. Here, give me their boards.' On this, the nurse took down the boards, and handed them, one after the other, to the physician, and he, taking a pen from a clerk, who always attended him, wrote his directions on the papers, and handed them back to the nurse.

Having heard and seen all this, I shifted in my bed, and after a few weak efforts to ponder on my terrible condition, and how awful a thing it is to die, I fell back into my former state of delirium and half-consciousness.

"The next distinct memory I have of my illness was when I opened my eyes and beheld a wooden screen standing between me and the next bed.

My head felt as if it had been put into a closely fitting cap of ice; but apart from this strange sensation, I was free from pain. My body was easy, and my mind was tranquil. My nurse was standing at the foot of my bed, looking towards me with an expression of solemn tenderness; and by her side was another woman--as I afterwards found out, a new nurse, unaccustomed to the ways of the hospital.

"'What is that screen there for?' asked the novice.

"My nurse lowered her voice, and answered slowly, 'Number Eleven, poor soul, is dying; she'll be dead in half an hour; and the screen is there so that Number Twenty-Two mayn't see her.'

"'Poor soul!' said the novice, 'may G.o.d have mercy upon her!'

"They spoke scarcely above a whisper, but I heard them distinctly; and a solemn gladness, such as I used to feel, when I was a young girl, at the sound of church music, came over me at learning that I was to die.

Only half an hour, and I should be with baby and Richard in heaven!

Mixed with this thought, too, there was a pleasant memory of those I had loved and who had loved me--of sister Martha and her husband and children, of the doctor who had been so good to me and brought me to the hospital, of my lady in India, of many others; and I silently prayed the Almighty with my dying heart to protect and bless them.

Then pa.s.sed through me a fluttering of strange, soft fancies, and it was revealed to me that I was dead.

"By-and-by the physician came his round of the ward, stepping lightly, pausing at each bed, speaking softly to nurses and patients, and, without knowing it, making many a poor woman entertain kinder thoughts than she had ever meant to cherish of the wealthy and gentle. When he came to the end of the ward, his handsome face wore a pitiful air, and it was more by the movement of his lips than by the sound of his mouth that I knew what pa.s.sed from him to the nurse.

"'Well, sister, well,' he said, 'she sleeps quietly at last. Poor thing! I hope and believe the next life will be a fairer one for her than this has been.'

"'Her sister has been written to,' observed the nurse.

"'Quite right; and how is the other?'

"'Oh, No. 22 is just the same--quite still, not moving at all, scarcely breathing, sir!'

"'Um!--you must persevere. Possibly she'll pull through. Good-bye, sister.'

"Late in the evening my sister Martha came. She was dressed in black, and led with her hand Rhoda, her eldest daughter. Poor Martha was very pale, and worn, and ill; when she approached the bed on which I lay, she seemed as if she would faint, and she trembled so painfully that my kind nurse led her behind the screen, so that she might recover herself out of my sight. After a few seconds--say two minutes--she stood again at the foot of my bed--calmer, but with tears in her eyes, and such a mournful loveliness in her sweet face as I had never seen before.

"'I shouldn't have known her, nurse,' she said, gazing at me for a short s.p.a.ce and then withdrawing her eyes--'she is so much altered.'

"'Ah, dear!' answered the nurse, 'sickness alters people much--and death more.'

"'I know it, nurse--I know it. And she looks very calm and blissful--her face is so full of rest--so full of rest!'

"The nurse fetched some seats, and made Martha and Rhoda sit down side by side; and then the good woman stood by them, ready to afford them all comfort in her power.

"'How did she bear her illness?' inquired Martha.

"'Like an angel, dear,' answered the nurse. 'She had a sweet, grateful, loving temper. Whatever I did for her, even though my duty compelled me to give her pain, she was never fretful, but always concealed her anguish and said, "Thank you, dear, thank you, you are very good; G.o.d will reward you for all your goodness"; and as the end came nigher I often fancied that she had reasonable and happy moments, for she would fold her hands together, and say sc.r.a.ps of prayers which children are taught.'

"'Nurse,' replied my sister after a pause, 'she and I were the only children of our father, and we were left orphans very young. She was two years older than I, and she always thought for me and did for me as if she had been my mother. I could fill whole hours with telling you all the goodness and forbearance and love she displayed to me, from the time I was little or no bigger than my child here. I was often wayward and peevish, and gave her many hours of trouble, but though at times she could be hot to others she never spoke an unkind word to me. There was no sacrifice that she would not have made for me; but all the return I ever made was to worry her with my evil jealous temper. I was continually imagining unchristian things against her: that she slighted me; that, because she had a mistress who made much of her, she didn't care for me; that she didn't think my children fit to be proud of. And I couldn't keep all these foolish thoughts in my head to myself, but I must needs go and speak them out to her, and irritate her to quarrel with me. But she always returned smooth words to my angry ones, and I had never a fit of my unjust temper but she charmed me out of it, and showed me my error in such a way that I was reproved, without too much humiliation, and loved her more than ever.

Oh! dear friend, dear good nurse, if you have a sister, don't treat her, as I did Abigail, with suspicion and wicked pa.s.sion; for should you, all the light speeches of your frowardness will return to you, and lie heavy on your heart when hers shall beat no more.'

"When Martha had said this she cried very bitterly; and as I lay dead on my bed, and listened to her unfair self-reproaches, I longed to break the icy bonds that held me, and yearned to clasp her to my breast. Still, though I could neither move nor utter a sound, it thrilled me with gladness to see how she loved me.

"'Mother,' said little Rhoda, softly, 'don't cry. We shan't be long away from Aunt and her baby, for when this life is done we shall go to them. You know, mother, you told me so last night.'

"It was not permitted to me to hear any more. A colder chill came over my brain--and, wrapt in unconsciousness and deep stillness, I lay upon my bed.

"My next recollection is of beholding the gray dawn stream in through the half-opened windows, and of wondering, amid vague reminiscences of my previous sensations, how it was that a dead person could take notice of the world it moved in when alive. It is not enough to say that my experience of the last repose was pleasant to me; I was rejoiced and greatly delighted by it. Death, it seemed then, was no state of cold decay for men to shudder at with affright--but a condition of tranquility and mental comfort. I continued to muse on this remarkable discovery for an hour and more, when my favourite nurse reappeared to relieve the woman who had taken the night-watch, and approached me.

"'Ah!' she surprised me by saying, as a smile of congratulation lighted her face, 'then you are alive this morning, dear, and have your handsome eyes wide open.'

"This in my opinion was a singularly strange and inappropriate address; but I made no attempt to respond to it, for I knew that I was dead. and that the dead do not speak.

"'Why, dear heart,' resumed the nurse, kneeling by my side and kissing me, 'can't you find your tongue? I know by your eyes that you know me; the gla.s.sy stare has left them. Come, do say a word, and say you are better.'

"Then a suspicion flashed across my brain, and raising my right hand slightly, I pointed to the bed of No. 22, and asked, 'How is she?--how is she?'

"'Don't frighten yourself, dear,' answered the nurse, 'she isn't there. She has been moved. She doesn't have that bed my longer!'

"'Then it is _she_ who is dead, nurse; and all the rest was a dream?

It is she who is dead?'

"'Hush, hush, dear! she has gone to rest--'

"Yes! it was all clear to me. Not I but my unfortunate companion had died; and in my delirious fancy I had regarded the friends who came to see her, and convey her to the grave, as my sister Martha and her little daughter Rhoda. I did not impart to the nurse the delusion of which I had been the victim; for, as is often the case with the sick, I was sensitive with regard to the extreme mental sickness into which I had fallen, and the vagaries of my reason. So I kept my secret to the best of my power; and having recognised how much better I was, how the fever had quitted my veins and the weight had left my head, I thanked G.o.d in my heart for all his mercies, and once more cherished a hope that he might see fit to restore me to health.

"My recovery was rapid. At the end of a fortnight I was moved into the convalescents' ward, and was fed up with wine and meat in abundance. I had every reason to be thankful for all the kindness bestowed on me in the hospital, and all the good effect G.o.d permitted that kindness to have. But one thing troubled me very much and cut me to the quick.

Ever since I had been in the hospital my sister had neither been to see me, nor sent to inquire after me. It was no very difficult business to account for her neglect of me. She had her good qualities (even in the height of my anger I could not deny that), but she was of a very proud high temper. She could sacrifice anything but her pride for love of me. I had gone into an hospital, had received public charity, and she hadn't courage to acknowledge a sister who had sunk so low as that! But if she was proud so was I; I could be as high and haughty as she; and, what was more, I would show her that I could be so! What, to leave her own sister--her only sister--who had worked for her when she was little, and who had loved her as her own heart! I would resent it! Perhaps fortune might yet have a turn to make in my favour; and if so I would in my prosperity remember how I had been treated in my adversity. I am filled with shame now, when I think on the revengeful imaginations which followed each other through my breast. I am thankful that when my animosity was at its height my sister did not present herself before me; for had she done so, I fear that, without waiting for an explanation from her, I should have spoken hasty words that (however much I might have afterwards repented them, and she forgiven them) would have rendered it impossible for us to be again the same as we were before. I never mentioned to any one--nurse or patient--in the convalescent ward, the secret of my clouded brows, or let out that I had a friend in the world to think of me or to neglect me. Hour after hour I listened to women and girls and young children, talking of home pleasures and longing to be quite well, and dismissed from the confinement of the hospital, and antic.i.p.ating the pleasure which their husbands, or mothers, or sisters, or children, would express at welcoming them again; but I never gave a word of such gossip; I only hearkened, and compared their hopes with my desolation, morosely and vindictively. Before I was declared perfectly restored I got very tired of my imprisonment; indeed the whole time I was in the convalescent ward my life was wearisome, and without any of the pleasures which the first days of my sickness had had. There was only one inmate of the ward to which I was at first admitted, as yet, amongst the convalescents; none of them knew me, unless it was by my number--a new one now, for on changing my ward I had changed my number also. The nurses I didn't like so well as my first kind attendant; and I couldn't feel charitably, or in any way as a Christian ought to feel, to the poor people by whom I was surrounded.

"At length the day came for my discharge. The matron inquired of me where I was going; but I would not tell her; I would not acknowledge that I had a sister--partly out of mere perverseness, and partly out of an angry sense of honour; for I was a country-bred woman, and attached to the thought of 'going into a hospital' a certain idea of shame and degradation, such as country people attach to 'going on the parish', and I was too proud to let folk know that my sister had a sister in an hospital, when she clearly flinched from having as much said of her.

"Well, finding I was not in a communicative humour, the matron asked no more questions; but, giving me a bundle containing a few articles of wearing apparel, and a small donation of money, bade me farewell; and without saying half as much in the way of grat.i.tude as I ought to have said, I walked out from the hospital garden into the wide streets of London. I did not go straight to my old lodgings, or to the house of the doctor who had been so kind to me; but I directed my steps to an inn in Holborn, and took a place in the stage-cart for Stratford.

As I rode slowly to my sister's town I thought within myself how I should treat her. Somehow my heart had softened a great deal towards her during the few last days; a good spirit within me had set me thinking of how she had helped me to nurse my husband and baby--how she had accompanied me when I followed them to their graves--how she and her husband had sacrificed themselves so much to a.s.sist me in my trial; and the recollection of these kindnesses and proofs of sisterly love, I am thankful to know, made me judge Martha much less harshly.

Yes! yes! I would forgive her! She had never offended me before! She had not wronged me seven times, or seventy times seven, but only _once_! After all, how much she had done for me! Who was I, that I should forget all that she had done, and judge her only by what she had left undone?

"The stage-cart reached Stratford as the afternoon began to close into evening; and when I alighted from it, I started off at a brisk pace, and walked to my sister's cottage that stood on the outskirts of the town. Strange to say, as I got nearer and nearer to her door my angry feelings became fainter and fainter, and all my loving memories of her strong affection for me worked so in me that my knees trembled beneath me, and my eyes were blinded with tears--though, if I had trusted my deceitful, wicked, malicious tongue to speak, I should still have declared she was a bad, heartless, worthless, sister.

"I reached the threshold, and paused on the step before it, just to get my breath and to collect as much courage and presence of mind as would let Martha know that, though I forgave her, I still was fully aware she might have acted more n.o.bly. When I knocked, after a few seconds, little Rhoda's steps pattered down the pa.s.sage, and opened the door. Why, the child was in black! What did that mean? Had anything happened to Martha or her husband, or little Tommy? But before I could put the question Rhoda turned deadly white, and ran back into the living-room. In another instant I heard Tommy screaming at the top of his voice; and in a trice I was in the room, with Martha's arms flung round my neck, and her dear blessed eyes covering me with tears.