Ida had moved away, and Stafford drew a long breath and forced a smile.

"No," he said, huskily, and almost to himself. "Yes; it must have been fancy. She could not have been there. It is impossible!"

Mr. Joffler whistled and winked to himself comprehendingly.

"She!'" he murmured. "Ah, that's it, is it? Ah, well I've been there myself! Don't you let the fancy upset you, sir! It 'ull pa.s.s afore we gets into the open. Nothing like the sea for teachin' you to forget gals you've left behind you! Come down below and try and peck a bit.

There's cold beef--_and_ pickles. That'll send them kind o' fancies to the right about."

Ida turned and walked quickly away. Her head swam, she looked like one in a dream. It was, of course, impossible that the man she had seen could be Stafford: Stafford on board a cattle-ship! But the hallucination had made her feel faint and ill. She remembered that she had eaten nothing since yesterday at noon, and she ascribed this freak of her imagination to the weakness caused by want of food.

She left the quay slowly--as if her heart and her strength and all her life's hope had gone with the dingy vessel--and emerging on the narrow, crowded street, looked for some shop at which she could buy a roll of bread. Presently she saw a baker's at the opposite side of the road to that on which she was walking, and she was crossing, when a huge empty van came lumbering round the corner. She drew back to let it pa.s.s; and, as she did so, a lighter cart came swiftly upon her. She was so dazed, so bewildered by the vision she had seen, and the noise of the street, that she stood, hesitating, uncertain whether to go on or retreat to the pavement she had left.

The woman--or man--who hesitates in the middle of a busy London street is lost: the cart was upon her before she had moved, the shaft struck her on the shoulder and down she went into the muddy road!

The driver jerked the horse aside, and leapt from his seat, the usual crowd, which seems to spring instantaneously from the very stones, collected and surged round, the usual policeman forced his way through, and Ida was picked up and carried to the pavement.

There was a patch of blood on the side of her head--the dear, small head which had rested on Stafford's breast so often!--and she was unconscious.

"'Orse struck 'er with 'is 'oof," said the policeman, sententiously.

"'Ere, boy, call a keb. I'll have your name and address, young man."

A cab was brought, and Ida, still unconscious, was carried to the London Hospital.

And lay there, in the white, painfully clean, carbolic-smelling ward, attended by the most skillful doctors in England and by the grave and silent nurses, who, notwithstanding their lives of stress and toil, had not lost the capacity for pity and sympathy. Indeed, no one with a heart in her bosom could stand up unmoved and hear the girl moaning and crying in a whisper for "Stafford."

Day and night the white lips framed the same name--Stafford, Stafford!--as if her soul were in the cry.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

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 circ.u.mstance 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 cla.s.s 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.ses 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.