"I never enter the door of a house to which I have been summoned," she said to me one evening, "without wondering, as I step over the threshold, what the story is going to be. I always feel inside a sick-room as if I were behind the scenes of life. The people come and go about you, and you listen to them talking and laughing, and you look into your patient's eyes, and you just know that it's all a play."
The incident that Jephson's remark had reminded me of, she told me one afternoon, as I sat propped up by the fire, trying to drink a glass of port wine, and feeling somewhat depressed at discovering I did not like it.
"One of my first cases," she said, "was a surgical operation. I was very young at the time, and I made rather an awkward mistake―I don't mean a professional mistake―but a mistake nevertheless that I ought to have had more sense than to make.
"My patient was a good-looking, pleasant-spoken gentleman. The wife was a pretty, dark little woman, but I never liked her from the first; she was one of those perfectly proper, frigid women, who always give me the idea that they were born in a church, and have never got over the chill. However, she seemed very fond of him, and he of her; and they talked very prettily to each other―too prettily for it to be quite genuine, I should have said, if I'd known as much of the world then as I do now.
"The operation was a difficult and dangerous one. When I came on duty in the evening I found him, as I expected, highly delirious. I kept him as quiet as I could, but towards nine o'clock, as the delirium only increased, I began to get anxious. I bent down close to him and listened to his ravings. Over and over again I heard the name 'Louise.' Why wouldn't 'Louise' come to him? It was so unkind of her―they had dug a great pit, and were pushing him down into it―oh! why didn't she come and save him? He should be saved if she would only come and take his hand.
"His cries became so pitiful that I could bear them no longer. His wife had gone to attend a prayer-meeting, but the church was only in the next street. Fortunately, the day-nurse had not left the house: I called her in to watch him for a minute, and, slipping on my bonnet, ran across. I told my errand to one of the vergers and he took me to her. She was kneeling, but I could not wait. I pushed open the pew door, and, bending down, whispered to her, 'Please come over at once; your husband is more delirious than I quite care about, and you may be able to calm him.'
"She whispered back, without raising her head, 'I'll be over in a little while. The meeting won't last much longer.'
"Her answer surprised and nettled me. 'You'll be acting more like a Christian woman by coming home with me,' I said sharply, 'than by stopping here. He keeps calling for you, and I can't get him to sleep.'
"She raised her head from her hands: 'Calling for me?' she asked, with a slightly incredulous accent.
"'Yes,' I replied, 'it has been his one cry for the last hour: Where's Louise, why doesn't Louise come to him.'
"Her face was in shadow, but as she turned it away, and the faint light from one of the turned-down gas-jets fell across it, I fancied I saw a smile upon it, and I disliked her more than ever.
"'I'll come back with you,' she said, rising and putting her books away, and we left the church together.
"She asked me many questions on the way: Did patients, when they were delirious, know the people about them? Did they remember actual facts, or was their talk mere incoherent rambling? Could one guide their thoughts in any way?
"The moment we were inside the door, she flung off her bonnet and cloak, and came upstairs quickly and softly.
"She walked to the bedside, and stood looking down at him, but he was quite unconscious of her presence, and continued muttering. I suggested that she should speak to him, but she said she was sure it would be useless, and drawing a chair back into the shadow, sat down beside him.
"Seeing she was no good to him, I tried to persuade her to go to bed, but she said she would rather stop, and I, being little more than a girl then, and without much authority, let her. All night long he tossed and raved, the one name on his lips being ever Louise―Louise―and all night long that woman sat there in the shadow, never moving, never speaking, with a set smile on her lips that made me long to take her by the shoulders and shake her.
"At one time he imagined himself back in his courting days, and pleaded, 'Say you love me, Louise. I know you do. I can read it in your eyes. What's the use of our pretending? We KNOW each other. Put your white arms about me. Let me feel your breath upon my neck. Ah! I knew it, my darling, my love!'
"The whole house was deadly still, and I could hear every word of his troubled ravings. I almost felt as if I had no right to be there, listening to them, but my duty held me. Later on, he fancied himself planning a holiday with her, so I concluded. 'I shall start on Monday evening,' he was saying, and you can join me in Dublin at Jackson's Hotel on the Wednesday, and we'll go straight on.'
"His voice grew a little faint, and his wife moved forward on her chair, and bent her head closer to his lips.
"'No, no,' he continued, after a pause, 'there's no danger whatever. It's a lonely little place, right in the heart of the Galway Mountains―O'Mullen's Half-way House they call it―five miles from Ballynahinch. We shan't meet a soul there. We'll have three weeks of heaven all to ourselves, my goddess, my Mrs. Maddox from Boston―don't forget the name.'
"He laughed in his delirium; and the woman, sitting by his side, laughed also; and then the truth flashed across me.
"I ran up to her and caught her by the arm. 'Your name's not Louise,' I said, looking straight at her. It was an impertinent interference, but I felt excited, and acted on impulse.
"'No,' she replied, very quietly; 'but it's the name of a very dear school friend of mine. I've got the clue to-night that I've been waiting two years to get. Good-night, nurse, thanks for fetching me.'
"She rose and went out, and I listened to her footsteps going down the stairs, and then drew up the blind and let in the dawn.
"I've never told that incident to any one until this evening," my nurse concluded, as she took the empty port wine glass out of my hand, and stirred the fire. "A nurse wouldn't get many engagements if she had the reputation for making blunders of that sort."
Another story that she told me showed married life more lovelit, but then, as she added, with that cynical twinkle which glinted so oddly from her gentle, demure eyes, this couple had only very recently been wed―had, in fact, only just returned from their honeymoon.
They had been travelling on the Continent, and there had both contracted typhoid fever, which showed itself immediately on their home-coming.
"I was called in to them on the very day of their arrival," she said; "the husband was the first to take to his bed, and the wife followed suit twelve hours afterwards. We placed them in adjoining rooms, and, as often as was possible, we left the door ajar so that they could call out to one another.
"Poor things! They were little else than boy and girl, and they worried more about each other than they thought about themselves. The wife's only trouble was that she wouldn't be able to do anything for 'poor Jack.' 'Oh, nurse, you will be good to him, won't you?' she would cry, with her big childish eyes full of tears; and the moment I went in to him it would be: 'Oh, don't trouble about me, nurse, I'm all right. Just look after the wifie, will you?'