Chapter VI: In the Hospital

"My voice Thou hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee."—PSA. v. 3.

IT was a cold, foggy morning in November. Even at Northcliffe the sun could hardly pierce through the misty clouds, but in London it was far worse.

All the lamps were lighted in the streets and shops, and a thick yellow fog hung over everything.

The gas was lighted, too, in the hospital where John Horbrook lay. It was a very large ward in which he was placed, and there were many beds in it—upwards of twenty. There was rarely a bed vacant, for there is much pain and sickness in the world, and there are numbers of poor people who have not the means to pay for a doctor, and who are only too thankful to avail themselves of hospitals, where the poorest man or woman has as much skill and attention bestowed upon them as if they were rich. Everything in the long ward is as clean as possible, and were it not for the look of pain and suffering upon many of the faces, one might almost think an hospital a place of enjoyment.

John Horbrook's bed was about the middle of one of the rows extending down each side of the room. The patients have just finished breakfast, and John is reading aloud to them from his Bible. He had always done so at home, and it was one of the few home customs he could follow in that great London hospital. He had begun the very morning after his admission. They were strange, rough men some of them in the ward, and the thought had crossed John's mind,—

"Perhaps they will not listen to me, and maybe they will make game of me."

But God helped him to do what he knew was the right thing. And so the very first morning, as soon as breakfast was over, he said,—

"My mates, I have always been used to read a little from God's Holy Word every day to my dear ones at home, and I should be sorry to leave off the good habit. No one can tell how short his time may be on earth, but for us who are all suffering from some accident or illness, the time may be nearer than to other men. With God's blessing, then, it surely must be good for us to read some little of His message to us all; we should be but too ready to listen to the message from an earthly king."

There was silence for several minutes after John Horbrook ceased speaking.

And then a man who occupied the bed next to that of John, and who was very ill, said in a low voice,—

"It be long years since I have heard any one speak as you have done, and then it was my mother who spoke. When you began, I made up my mind not to listen to you, but your words touched me. My mother used to call us her 'dear ones'—it is so long ago! The doctor told me yesterday I couldn't get better, and I, for one, am quite willing to hear you read."

"I don't want any 'cant!'" said a gruff voice from an opposite bed.

The speaker was a porter who had met with a severe accident whilst lifting some heavy weight. He followed up the explanation with some oaths, and then relapsed into silence.

Several other patients said they "didn't care about anything of the kind, but that if John liked to read, they couldn't stop him; they were not bound to listen."

Some few seemed glad at the proposal, and one old man, who was rather hard of hearing, asked the nurse to let him move nearer the middle of the room as soon as there was a bed vacant.

So John began to read, and none interrupted him. After that first morning, it was easy work, and it soon became quite to be looked forward to by many who had at first been quite indifferent to it.

The sick man in the bed next to John Horbrook's grew daily worse and worse, and at length died. But almost his last words were thanks to God for having sent him such a friend as John.

"I had got to be so hardened," he said, "but you have brought back to me all that mother taught me long ago, and I can now die in peace, trusting in God's forgiveness for the sake of His dear Son."

He died the night before the foggy November morning spoken of at the beginning of this chapter. And so one of the beds by John Horbrook's side became vacant.

It was late in the same afternoon, and the fog was becoming thicker as night came on. Many accidents took place in the streets, the fog making it almost impossible for drivers to see foot passengers when crossing the different thoroughfares. About five o'clock, there was a stir at the door of the ward, and then some men appeared carrying some one upon a stretcher. Two of the house surgeons walked by the side of the stretcher, and the bearers of it stopped at the vacant bed next to which John lay.

No sound had until then come from the man who was being carried, but when the surgeons prepared to lift him from the stretcher on the bed, he uttered a loud groan.

"Another bad fog accident," whispered one of the bearers in answer to a question from John; "he has been run over by an omnibus, and has both legs broken."

John Horbrook shuddered, and partly drew the little curtain at the head of his bed, that he might be spared some of the sad scene which he knew must follow. But he could not close his ears; and very heartrending were the cries of the sufferer as the surgeons examined his injuries. John saw by the expression of their faces that the case was a hopeless one.

"So young, too," whispered one of the nurses; "he can't be twenty."

"Where do your friends live, my poor fellow?" said the surgeon, quietly.

There was no answer, and the question was repeated.

"Friends? I ain't got any." This was said in a low voice.

"Where do you live, then?"

"Anywhere—nowhere!"

The last word was uttered in a loud and desperate tone of voice, and John Horbrook started at the sound, and drew back his bed-curtains to try and see the speaker. He could not get a sight of his face, however, for the surgeons we're standing between the two beds. But he lay straining his ears to catch the next words which might be spoken.

"You are very badly hurt," said the same surgeon who had first spoken, "and I thought you might like some one to be sent for. Have you no parents living? You must still be very young."

A groan was the only answer. And the surgeon, after giving a few directions to the nurse, left the ward.

John Horbrook heard them whisper to each other as they passed by his bed that the sufferer would not live through the night.

"Amputation would be of no good—the injuries are too great."

The nurse gave the poor fellow a composing draught, according to the doctor's orders, and very soon the patient's mind began to wander. He talked enough now, but in a rambling, unconnected way.

A strange suspicion had taken possession of John's mind. This was no other than "Tom, his Tom," who lay dying beside him. He could see his face plainly now; but there was nothing in that to recall the fresh-coloured, hearty boy Tom Horbrook had once been.

John took out his Bible, and in a trembling voice began reading aloud the parable of the prodigal son, turning his head towards the bed on which the young man lay. No one present ever forgot that reading, or the scene that followed.

"Oh, my mates!" continued John, when he had finished the parable. "This message is to every one of us, this message of love and mercy is to 'all,' even to the greatest sinner that ever lived, if he will but repent and come to his Saviour.

"'Oh wonderful redemption,
God's remedy for sin
The door of heaven is open
And you may enter in.'"

Something in the last few words, and the tone in which they were uttered, seemed to strike upon the sufferer's ear.

"The door is shut, the door is shut!" he muttered.

"Knock, and it shall be opened," said Horbrook.

"I said I never would go back again," muttered the young man; "and now I can't knock."

John raised himself in his bed as much as it was possible for him to do with his limb still confined in the cradle or frame in which it was placed, and bent a long and searching look at the youth's face. In the face, old before its time, in the sunken cheeks and bloodshot eyes, he read a sad record of sin and punishment. But he must have read something else as well, for those near him were startled by his next words.

"Tom Horbrook, 'my son,' speak to me!"

A few seconds' pause, and then, as if the long-forgotten voice had made itself heard, the young man turned partly round towards John's bed.

"Who calls Tom Horbrook? I tell you I won't come,—I'm old enough to be my own master,—I said I would be—and—what's all this pain? Where am I? I— I won't send to father, I'm—my own master!" And he burst into a mocking laugh, which soon subsided into a moan of pain.

"Tom, 'my son!'"

"'Your' Tom!" Again the tone of voice calmed him for a moment. "I'm nobody's Tom, I ain't."

"Tom, 'my son!'" And John sobbed aloud.

"Is that mother crying? Did she cry when I went away?"

"She cried and prayed for you night and day, Tom; she has never forgotten you."

"Why cannot I see her then? Why is it so dark? And why—but I'm my own master, and I won't go back."

Then he began rambling again, and never recovered his senses until just before the last. All the time, he seemed to be living over again in memory his life of sin; and then the pain he suffered was intense, until at length mortification set in, and from that time, he gradually sank.

The surgeons had been to see him again, though they could do nothing for him. But, touched by John Horbrook's sad story of his long-lost son, they ordered the two beds to be put close together. And all through that long night, the father watched his dying boy, praying only that a few minutes' consciousness might be granted him before he died.

Just as the cold grey light of morning was breaking in the sky, Tom Horbrook fixed his eyes upon his father with a look of recognition.

"Tom, 'my Tom,' do you know me?"

"Father, my father!" The voice was hollow and very faint, but it was very music to John Horbrook's heart.

"Father, pray, I CAN'T pray, father; father,—'my' father!"

They were Tom's last words, though it was some little time before he died.

John Horbrook prayed with all his heart and soul that God would have mercy upon his dying son. And though Tom never spoke again, he more than once pressed his father's hand as it lay clasped in his. Then the pressure relaxed, and all was over.

No one can tell what penitent thoughts God may in His infinite mercy have put into Tom's sinful heart. But such a death should be a solemn warning to all who live a godless life.