Nurse Elisia Part 35

He heard her patiently, and shook his head.

"It is impossible, my dear young lady," he said sharply. "I can but battle with a few of the atoms of misery in the vast sands of troubled life. From your description of the case, I fear I can do no good, and my time for seeing patients here at home is over, while a score of poor creatures are lying in agony at my hospital waiting their turn."

She looked at him despairingly, and he spoke more gently.

"I admire and respect the grand self-denial of such ladies as yourself who devote themselves to these tasks, so do not think me unfeeling. It is that I can only attend a certain number of cases every day."

"But you would go to some wealthy patient," she cried imploringly, "and I will pay you whatever fee you ask."

"You wrong me, my dear young lady," he said gravely. "I would not go to-day to any wealthy or great patient for any sum that could be offered me. I take fees, but I hope my life is not so sordid as that."

"Forgive me," she said hastily. "I beg your pardon."

"Yes," he said, taking her hand to raise it reverently to his lips, "I forgive you, my child, and I will prove it by seeing the poor woman of whom you speak. Come."

He led her out to the carriage waiting to take him to the hospital, and a group of the wretched dwellers in the foul street soon after stood watching the great surgeon's carriage, while he was in the bare upstairs room of the crowded house. He stayed an hour, and came again and again, till the day came when another carriage stopped at that door, and a hushed crowd of neighbours stood around, to see Nurse Elisia's patient carried out, asleep.

"If I only had come to you sooner!" she said.

"I could have done no more," replied Sir Denton. "Believe me, it is the simple truth. We can both honestly say that we have done everything that human brain and hands could do."

They were walking slowly away from the house where the woman had died.

"And now I must speak to you about yourself."

"About myself?" she said wonderingly.

"Yes; I ask you no questions about your friends, or your reasons for taking up the life to which you have devoted yourself; but I am interested in you and your future. Do you intend to go on attending the sick and suffering?"

"Yes," she said simply.

"Good; but not like this. You are young and beautiful, and at all hours you are going about here alone."

"I have no fear," she said, smiling. "The poor people here respect me."

"Yes; and, to the honour of rough manhood, I believe, my child, that there are hundreds who would raise a hand for your protection; but the time will come when you will meet with insult from some drink-maddened brute. You must give it up. Your presence is so much light in these homes of darkness, but--you have interested me, as I tell you."

She looked at him searchingly.

He read her thoughts and smiled.

"I am speaking as your grandfather might. Let me advise you, my child.

This must not go on."

"I thank you," she replied; "but I have devoted myself to this life, and I cannot turn back."

"I do not ask you to turn back," he said. "You have devoted yourself to the sick and suffering. The duties can be as well performed where you will be safe, and treated with respect."

She looked at him doubtingly.

"Let me counsel you," he said. "Come."

"Where?" she asked, and he held out his hand. "You can trust me," he said; and he led her to his carriage, and then through the ward of the hospital where he reigned supreme.

It was a few days after a terrible accident at one of the hives of industry, and among other sufferers, some ten or a dozen poor work-girls lay, burned, maimed, and in agony, longingly gazing at the door to see the face of the grey-haired man on whose words they hung for life and strength.

That day he came accompanied by his pale, sweet-faced young friend, in whose beautiful eyes the tears gathered as she went round with him from bed to bed, appalled by the amount of bodily and mental suffering gathered in that one narrow s.p.a.ce.

"Well?" he said, a couple of hours later. "Is it too dreadful, or will you help me here?"

"Can I?" she said simply. "I am so ignorant and young."

"You possess that," he said gravely, "which no education can impart.

Your presence here will be sunshine through the clouds. I should shrink from asking you to come among these horrors, but you have, for some reasons of your own, taken up this self-denying life, and I tell you that you can do far more good to your suffering fellow-creatures here than by seeking out cases in those vile streets. You will be safe from insult and from imposition. We have no impostors here. What do you say?"

She gave him her hand, and the next day Nurse Elisia came from her home--somewhere west, the other nurses said--and returned at night unquestioned, and after a week or two of jealousy and avoidance, as one different to themselves, the attendants one and all were won to respect and deference by acts, not words.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

"YOU INSULT ME!"

And now Nurse Elisia sat in Ralph Elthorne's chamber, her face buried in her hands, the memories of her past life rushing back and a sense of misery and despair increasing, so that she felt that the time had come when she must rise and flee from a place which had suddenly become insupportable to her.

Then a change came over her. There was a feeling of pa.s.sionate resentment, and a desire to do battle against the one who had wrecked her life.

"Shall I stand by and see another's life destroyed as mine has been?"

But her own misery and despair drove these thoughts away, and her spirit was sinking lower and lower as the complications of her position seemed to increase.

"I cannot stay here," she said to herself. "It is impossible. I have no part or parcel with these people. I have done my duty, and I must go."

Suddenly she started as if she had been stung, for her hand had been taken, and Neil Elthorne was bending over her.

"For Heaven's sake," he whispered, "don't! I cannot bear to see you suffer. Tell me, why are you in such grief?"

"Mr Elthorne!" she cried in a low voice, as she glanced toward where the patient lay asleep.

"Yes; Neil Elthorne," he said huskily. "I cannot bear to see you in such distress. I have fought with it; I have struggled and suffered for months and months now. I felt that it was a kind of madness and that it was folly and presumption to think as I did of one who seemed never even to give me a thought. I came down here. It was to flee from you, and try to forget you, but fate brought you here, and I have had to go on from day to day fighting this bitter fight."

"Mr Elthorne--your father--are you mad?"

"Yes," he said excitedly. "Mad; and you have made me so. I know that I am not worthy of you, but listen; give me some hope. Elisia, have pity on me--I love you."

"No, no; hush, hush!" she whispered excitedly. "It is impossible; it is not true."

"It is not impossible, and it is true," he said. "You must have known this for long enough. You must have seen the cruel struggle I have had.

Are you so cold and heartless that you turn from me like this?"