Chapter X: A Difficult Patient

I had a little talk with granny the next day.

Mrs. Marshall was dozing uneasily, and I was sitting by granny, nursing the baby, and waiting for Mr. Hamilton, when I felt her cold wrinkled hand laid on mine.

'What is it, Elspeth?' I asked, thinking she wanted something.

'What put it in your head, my bairn, to do the Lord's work? that is what I am wanting to know. I have been listening to you this morning singing like a bird about the house, with all the bit creatures chirping about you, and I said to myself, "What could have put it into her head to leave all her fine friends, and come and wait on the likes of us old and sick folk and young bairns?"'

I do not know what there was in this speech that made me cry, but I know I had some difficulty in answering, but I told her a little about Charlie, and how sad I was, and how I loved the work, and she patted my hand softly all the time.

'Never fret, my bairn. You will not be lonely long: the Lord will see to that. He would not let you work for Him and do nothing for you in return. Nay, that is not His way. Look at me: as doctor said the other day, I have dreed my weird; few and evil have been my days, like Jacob, but here I sit like a lady by the fire, warm and comfortable and hearty, thank God; and Andrew's wife lies on her death-bed, poor woman.'

'Yes; but, Elspeth, you sit there in the dark.'

'Eh, but it is peaceful and quiet-like, and the Lord bides with me, "and darkness and light are both alike to him,"' finished Elspeth reverently. And then I heard the click of the gate, and rose hastily, only the baby cried as I laid her on Elspeth's lap, and I had to stay a moment to pacify her.

Mr. Hamilton came in and stood by us.

'Do not hurry yourself; I can easily wait a few minutes if you are not ready. Are you sure you are not too tired to come?' he continued, looking at me a little inquisitively, and I was certain that he noticed the trace of tears on my face. Why was it I never could speak of my darling quite calmly?

'I am perfectly ready, and baby has left off crying,' I returned, taking up my basket, and then we left the house together.

'I hope you do not suffer from low spirits, like the rest of us,' he said, in rather a kind tone, as we walked on. 'It is to be expected that a cross-grained fellow like myself should have fits of the blues occasionally. That is one thing I particularly admire about Cunliffe! however worried he is, one never sees him out of humour; his ups and downs are never perceptible. I do believe he is less selfish than other people.'

'There is no one like Uncle Max,' I rejoined fervently.

'Is it not odd that we should suit each other so well?' he asked presently, 'for we are complete contrasts. I can bear him to say things to me that I would knock any other fellow down for saying. That is why I let him preach to me, because he honestly believes what he says and tries to act up to his profession.' He broke off here, for by this time we had reached Woodbine Cottage, and he unlatched the gate for me.

A thin-faced child with a cropped head and clean white pinafore opened the door, and dropped an alarmed courtesy when she saw us.

'Please sir, Aunt Susan is out, and Aunt Phoebe is very bad this afternoon, and cannot see any one. She is lying in the dark, and I was to let none of the neighbours in while Aunt Susan was away.'

'All right, Kitty; but Aunt Phoebe will see me.' And he walked into the passage, and told the child to close the door gently. The room we passed was strewn with work-material, and looked cold and comfortless, but a small kitchen opposite had a warm cosy aspect. Mr. Hamilton passed both rooms and tapped at a door lower down the passage, and then without waiting for an answer entered, and beckoned me to follow him.

A dark curtain had been drawn across the window, and the dim glow of a cindery fire scarcely gave sufficient light to discern the different pieces of furniture. Mr. Hamilton gave vent to a suppressed exclamation of impatience as he seized the poker, but I could not but notice the skilful and almost noiseless manner in which he manipulated the coals. Then he looked round for a match, and lighted a candle on the mantelpiece, in spite of a peevish remonstrance from the patient.

'You will make my head worse, doctor: nothing but the dark eases it.'

'Nonsense, Phoebe! I know better than that,' he returned cheerfully, and then he stepped up to the bed, and I followed him. The woman who lay there was still young in years, she could not have been more than three- or four-and-thirty, but every semblance of youth was crushed out of her by some subtile and mysterious suffering; it might have been the face of a dead woman, only for the living eyes that looked at us.

The hopeless wistful look in those eyes gave me a singular shock. I had never seen human eyes with the same expression; they seemed as though they were appealing against some awful destiny. Once when Charlie and I were staying at Rutherford a beautiful spaniel belonging to Lesbia had been accidentally shot while straying in some wood. The poor animal had dragged himself with pain and difficulty to the garden-gate, and there we found him. I shall never forget the wistfulness of the poor creature's eyes when his mistress knelt down and caressed him. He died a few minutes afterwards, licking her hand. I could not help thinking of Tito when I first saw Phoebe Locke; for the same unreasoning anguish seemed in the sick woman's eyes. A tormented soul looked out of them.

There was something rigid and uncompromising in the whole aspect of the sick-room; there was nothing to tone down and soften the harsh details of bodily suffering; everything was in spotless order; the sheets were white as the driven snow; a formidable phalanx of medicine-bottles stood on the small square table; there were no books, no pictures, no flowers; a sampler hung over the mantelpiece, that was all. I saw Mr. Hamilton glance disapprovingly at the row of bottles.

'I told Kitty to clear all that rubbish away,' he said curtly. 'Why do you not have something pleasanter to look at, Phoebe?--some flowers, or a canary? you would find plenty of amusement in watching a canary.'

'Birds are never still for a moment; they would drive me mad,' returned Phoebe, in the hollow tones that seemed natural to her. 'Flowers are better; but what have I to do with flowers? Doctor,' her voice rising into a shrill crescendo, 'you must give me something to send me to sleep, or I shall go mad. I think, think, think, until my head is in a craze with pain and misery.'

'Well, well, we will see about it,' humouring her as though she were a child. 'Will you not speak to this lady, Phoebe? She has come down here to help us all,--sick people, and unhappy people, and every one that wants help.'

'She can't do anything for me,' muttered Phoebe restlessly; 'no one--not even you, doctor, can do anything for me. I am doomed,--doomed before my time.'

Mr. Hamilton looked at me meaningly, as though to say, 'Now you see what you have to do: this is more your work than mine.' I obeyed the hint, and accosted the sick woman as cheerfully as though her dismal speech had not curdled my blood.

'I hope I shall be some comfort to you; it is hard indeed if no one can help you, when you have so much to bear!'

'To bear!' repeating my words as though they stung her. 'I have lain here for three years--three years come Christmas Eve, doctor--between these four walls, summer and winter, winter and summer, and never knew except by heat or cold what season of the year it was. And I am young,--just turned four-and-thirty,--and I may lie here thirty years more, unless I die or go mad.'

'Now, Phoebe,' remonstrated Mr. Hamilton,--and how gently he spoke!--'have I not told you over and over that things may mend yet if you will only be patient and good? You are just making things worse by bearing them so badly. Why, a friend of mine has been seven years on her back like you, and she is the happiest, cheeriest body: it is quite a pleasure to go into her room.'

'Maybe she is good, and I am wicked,' returned Phoebe sullenly. 'I cannot help it, doctor: it is one of my bad days, and nothing but wicked words come uppermost. The devil has a deal of power when a woman is chained as I am.'

'Don't you think you could exorcise the demon by a song, Miss Garston?' observed Mr. Hamilton, in an undertone. 'This is just the case where music may be a soothing influence; something must be tried for the poor creature.'

The proposition almost took away my breath. Sing now! before Mr. Hamilton! And yet how in sheer humanity could I refuse? I had often sung before to my patients, and had never minded it in the least; but before Mr. Hamilton!

'You need not think of me,' he continued provokingly,--for of course I was thinking of him: 'I am no critic in the musical line. Just try how it answers, will you?' And he walked away and turned his back to us, and seemed absorbed in the sampler.

For one minute I hesitated, and then I cleared my throat. 'I am going to sing something, Phoebe. Mr. Hamilton thinks it will do you good.' And then, fearful lest her waywardness should stop me, I commenced at once with the first line of the beautiful hymn, 'Art thou weary? art thou languid?'

My voice trembled sadly at first, and my burning face and cold hands testified to my nervousness; but after the first verse I forgot Mr. Hamilton's presence and only remembered it was Charlie's favourite hymn I was singing, and sang it with a full heart.

When I had finished, I bent over Phoebe and asked if I should sing any more, and, to my great delight, she nodded assent. I sang 'Abide with me,' and several other suitable hymns, and I did not stop until the hard look of woe in Phoebe's eyes had softened into a more gentle expression.

As I paused, I looked across the room. Mr. Hamilton was still standing by the mantelpiece, perfectly motionless. He had covered his eyes with his hand, and seemed lost in profound thought. He absolutely started when I addressed him.

'Yes, we will go if you have finished,' but he did not look at me as he spoke. 'Phoebe, has the young lady done you any good? Did you close your eyes and think you heard an angel singing? Now you must let me take her away, for she is very tired, and has worked hard to-day. To-morrow, if you ask her, she will come again.'

'I shall not wait to be asked,' I returned, answering the dumb, wistful look that greeted the doctor's words. 'Oh yes, I shall come again to-morrow, and we will have a little talk, and I will bring you some flowers, and if you care to hear me sing I have plenty of pretty songs.' And then I kissed her forehead, for I felt strongly drawn to the poor creature, as though she were a strange, suffering sister, and I thought that the kiss and the song and the flowers would be a threefold cord of sympathy for her to bind round her harassed soul through the long hours of the night.

Mr. Hamilton followed me silently out, and on the threshold we encountered Susan Locke. She was a thin, subdued-looking woman, dressed in rusty black, with a careworn, depressed expression that changed into pleasure at the sight of Mr. Hamilton.

'Oh, doctor, this is good of you, surely,--and you so busy! It is one of Phoebe's bad days, when nothing pleases her and she will have naught to say to us, but groan and groan until one's heart is pretty nigh broken. I was half hoping that you would look in on us and give her a bit of a word.'

'Miss Garston has done more than that,' replied Mr. Hamilton. 'I think you will find your sister a little cheered. Give her something comfortable to eat and drink, and speak as cheerfully as you can. Good-night, Miss Locke.' And then he motioned to me to precede him down the little garden. Mr. Hamilton was so very silent all the way home that I was somewhat puzzled; he did not speak at all about Phoebe,--only said that he was afraid that I was very tired, and that he was the same; and when we came in sight of the cottage he left me rather abruptly; if it had not been for his few approving words to Susan Locke, I should have thought something had displeased him.

Uncle Max made me feel a little uncomfortable the next morning. I met him as I was starting for my daily work, and he walked with me to Mrs. Marshall's.

'I was up at Gladwyn last evening, Ursula,' he began. 'Miss Elizabeth is still away, but the other ladies asked very kindly after you. Miss Hamilton means to call on you one afternoon, only she seems puzzled to know how she is ever to find you at home. I cannot think what put Hamilton into such a bad temper; he scarcely spoke to any of us, and looked horribly cranky, only I laughed at him and he got better; he never mentioned your name. You have not fallen out again, eh, little she-bear?' looking at me rather anxiously.

'Oh dear, no; we are perfectly civil to each other; I understand him better now.' But all the same I could not help wondering, as I parted from Max, what could have made Mr. Hamilton so strangely silent.

It was still early in the afternoon when I found myself free to go and see Phoebe; she had been on my mind all day, and had kept me awake for a long time; those miserable eyes haunted me. I longed so to comfort her. Miss Locke opened the door; I thought she seemed pleased to see me, but she eyed my basket of flowers dubiously.

'Phoebe is looking for you, Miss Garston, though she says nothing about it; it is not her way; but I see her eyes turning to the door every now and then, and she made Kitty open the curtains. If I may make so bold, those flowers are not for Phoebe, surely?'

'Yes, indeed they are, Miss Locke. Dr. Hamilton wishes her to have something pleasant to look at.' But Miss Locke only shook her head.

'The neighbours have sent in flowers often and often, and she has made me carry them out of the room; the vicar used to send them too, but he knows now that it is no manner of use: she always says they do not put flowers in tombs, only outside them: she will have it she is living in a tomb.'

'We must get this idea out of her head,' I returned cheerfully, for I was obstinately bent on having my own way about the flowers.

Kitty was sewing on a little stool by the window; the curtains were undrawn, so that the room was tolerably light, and might have been cheerful, only an ugly wire blind shut out all view of the little garden.

I could not help marvelling at the strange perversity that could wilfully exclude every possible alleviation; there must be some sad warp or twist of the mental nature that could be so prolific of unwholesome fancies. As I turned to the bed I thought Phoebe looked even more ghastly in the daylight than she had done last evening; her skin was yellow and shrivelled, like the skin of an old woman; her eyes looked deep-set and gloomy, but their expression struck me as more human; her thin lips even wore the semblance of a smile.

When I had greeted her, and had drawn from her rather reluctantly that she had had some hours' sleep the previous night, I spoke to Kitty. The little creature looked so subdued and moped in the miserable atmosphere that I was full of pity for her, so I showed her a new skipping rope that I had bought on my way, and bade her ask her aunt Susan's permission to go out and play.

The child's dull eyes brightened in a moment. 'May I go out, Aunt Phoebe?' she asked breathlessly.

'Yes, go if you like,' was the somewhat ungracious answer.

'She is glad enough to get away from me,' she muttered, when Kitty had shut the door gently behind her. 'Children have no heart; she is an ungrateful, selfish little thing; but they are all that; we clothe her and feed her, and it is little we get out of her in return; and Susan is working her fingers to the bone for the two of us.'

I took no notice of this outburst, and commenced clearing away the medicine-bottles to make room for my basket of chrysanthemums and ivy-leaves. Uncle Max had procured them for me, but I had no idea as I arranged them that they had come from Gladwyn.

Phoebe watched my movements very gloomily; she evidently disapproved of the whole proceeding. I carried out the bottles to Miss Locke, and begged her to throw them away: 'they are of no use to her,' I observed. 'Mr. Hamilton intends to send her a new mixture, and this array of half-emptied phials is simply absurd: it is just a whim. If your sister asks for them when I have gone, you can tell her that Miss Garston ordered them to be destroyed.'

On my return to the room I found Phoebe lying with her eyes closed. I could have laughed outright at her perversity, for of course she had shut them to exclude the sight of the flower-basket, though it was the loveliest little bit of colour, the dark-red chrysanthemum nestled so prettily among trails of tiny variegated ivy. I resolved to punish her for this piece of morbid obstinacy, and took down the wire blind; she was speechless with anger when she found out what I had done, but I was resolved not to humour these ridiculous fancies; the dull wintry light was not too much for her.

'You must not be allowed to have your own way so entirely,' I said, laughing: 'your sister is very wrong to give in to you. Mr. Hamilton wishes your room to be more cheerful: he says the dull surroundings depress and keep you low and desponding, and I must carry out his orders, and try how we are to make your room a little brighter. Now'--as she seemed about to speak--'I am going to sing to you, and then we will have a talk.'

'I don't care to hear singing to-day, my head buzzes so with all this flack,' was the sullen answer; but I took no notice of this ill-tempered remark, and began a little Scotch ballad that I thought was bright and spirited.

She closed her eyes again, with an expression of weariness and disgust that made me smile in spite of my efforts to keep serious; but I soon found out that she was listening, and so I sang one song after another, without pausing for any comment, and pretended not to notice when the haggard weary eyes unclosed, and fixed themselves first on the flowers, next on my face, and last and longest at the strip of lawn, with the bare gooseberry bushes and the narrow path edged with privet.

When I had sung several ballads, I waited for a minute, and then commenced Bishop Ken's evening hymn, but my voice shook a little as I saw a sudden heaving under the bedclothes, and in another moment the large slow tears coursed down Phoebe's thin face. It was hard to finish the hymn, but I would not have dispensed with the Gloria.

'What is it, Phoebe?' I asked gently, when I had finished. 'I am sorry that I have made you cry.'

'You need not be sorry,' she sobbed at last, with difficulty: 'it eases my head, and I thought nothing would ever draw a tear from me again. I was too miserable to cry, and they say--I have read it somewhere, in the days when I used to read--that there is no such thing as a tear in hell.'

I tried not to look astonished at this strange speech. I must let this poor creature talk, or how should I ever find out the root of her disease? so I answered quietly that no doubt she was right, that in that place of outer darkness there should be weeping, without tears, and a gnashing of teeth, beside which our bitterest human sorrow would seem like nothing.

'That is true,' she returned, with a groan; 'but, Miss Garston, hell has begun for me here; for three years I have been in torment, and rightly too,--and rightly too,--for I never was a good woman, never like Susan, who read her Bible and went to church. Oh, she is a good creature, is Susan.'

'I am glad to hear it, Phoebe: so, you see, your affliction, heavy as it is,--and I am not saying it is not heavy,--is not without alleviation. The Merciful Father, who has laid this cross upon you, has given you this kind companion as a consoler. What a comfort you must be to each other! what a divine work has been given to you both to do,--to bring up that motherless little creature, who must owe her very life and happiness to you!'

She lay and looked at me with an expression of bewildered astonishment, and at this moment Miss Locke opened the door, carrying a little tea-tray for her sister. I had a glimpse of Kitty curled up on the mat outside the door, with the skipping-rope still in her hand. She had evidently been listening to the singing, for she crept away, but in the distance I could hear her humming 'Ye banks and braes' in a sweet childish treble that was very harmonious and true.