My progress towards restored health was but slow; and poor I—an individual who had always regarded with mortal aversion confinement and monotony in every shape—was forced to undergo the tedium of a protracted illness and convalescence. Terribly weary did I get of the long days and nights as they dragged on without bringing anything to amuse me, and to enliven the dulness of existence. Other patients had friends and acquaintances who came to see them on visiting days, but I had not even that mild excitement to look forward to, for I was utterly solitary and unknown. Unluckily, too, the literary resources of the place were but limited. For though there was a so-called library yet its stock of books was lamentably small, and, as it seemed to me, uninteresting. And though odd numbers of old magazines and newspapers would drop in upon us at intervals, yet their appearance was nothing like as regular and frequent as I should have liked, or as I think it would have been if benevolently disposed people had realised what a boon it is to many hospital patients to know something of what goes on in the outside world from which they are excluded.
My mind, then, having but few distractions, was all the more ready to occupy itself with whatever person or thing happened to come prominently before it. And thus I found myself continually engaged in studying and thinking about the Sister, who, for the time being, filled a position of conspicuous importance in my life, as a sort of guardian angel in whom I felt a serene confidence that she would see I was never seriously wronged or ill-used in any way.
She was the first Sister with whom I had ever come in contact, and, by my acquaintance with her, the prejudice I had previously entertained against all sisters was speedily swept away. Sister Helena, as she was called, must, I think, have been between thirty and thirty-five years old, and was tall and graceful in figure. She had handsome features; a high broad forehead; a keen eye that seemed to notice everything within its range; a square chin, and a firm mouth; and no one who saw her could doubt that she possessed both power and intelligence above the average. Her face was pale, and her expression—except when she smiled—grave to the verge of austerity. But it was the gravity of thoughtfulness, not of gloom and sadness; and whatever tendency to austerity she may have had was reserved exclusively for herself. Most certainly it was never visible in her behaviour to the sick; for she always showed them the kindliest sympathy and tenderness, devoting herself to them absolutely, and treating them with a loving gentleness and tenderness that was enough to make one suppose they were her dearest friends.
As she was general superintendent of the hospital-nursing and arrangements for the relief of the sick, she had usually too much to do with looking after her subordinates and seeing that they did their duty, to be able to officiate in person as nurse. But she was thoroughly capable of doing so in case of need, and whenever circumstances happened to make it necessary for her to bandage, sew up, or dress wounds, or perform any other services of the kind for patients, she was sure to do whatever was required as gently, skilfully, and efficiently as any one—or indeed more so.
One very marked distinction between her and the ordinary professional nurses was, that she was unmistakably a lady by birth, and possessed naturally—without effort or thinking about it—the subtle charm of refinement. I—who had fondly imagined myself to be superior to the influence of any sentimental vanity of that kind—was astonished and disappointed to find how quickly I detected this in her, and how attractive it was to me. I could not disguise from myself that I was highly susceptible to the charm to which I had believed I was indifferent; and that it was infinitely preferable to me to have to do with the person in whom I instinctively recognised an equal than with those who were inferiors. Refined associates were more congenial to me than vulgar ones, in spite of all my knocking about; and even though provoked at my own folly, I sometimes could not repress a sigh to think that I had left my own rank of life in favour of a lower one.
Well; the more I observed and thought about Sister Helena, the more did I wonder what her previous history could have been. Here was a woman, evidently well born and bred, good-looking, below middle age, clever, amiable, sensible, capable, and in every way qualified to make her mark and be popular in society. Why on earth, then, should she be spending her existence in hard work amongst the painful sights and scenes of a hospital, instead of enjoying herself in the sphere to which she belonged naturally? For the fact that she was at the hospital I was profoundly thankful, because I was myself a gainer by it; but none the less was it an inexplicable mystery to me, and one which I was constantly endeavouring to find plausible theories to account for.
As, therefore, I was intensely curious about her, admired, liked, and was grateful to her, and through her could enjoy the, to me, pleasant feeling of association with a cultivated and refined lady, it followed naturally that I sought eagerly for opportunities of having to do with her, and never failed to profit by any excuse for making her occupy herself about me. The pleasure her company gave me was too evident to escape her quick observation, and when she perceived it her kindness of heart prompted her to gratify my wishes as far as might be; for she was one of those to whom nobody ever held out their hands in vain. Therefore, though her multifarious avocations made it impossible, as a rule, for her to bestow much individual attention on any particular person whose case was not so critical and special as to give it precedence over ordinary business, yet she would always—unless in a very great hurry—stop and say a kind word to me in passing through the ward; and sometimes, on the rare occasions when she had a few minutes to spare, she would even come in on purpose to chat with me. I do not know whether or not she had the same intuitive consciousness that I had of our both belonging to the same social order; but, at all events, there sprung up between us by degrees an intimacy beyond that which is ordinarily produced by the relations of nurse and patient.
As it was not in her nature to see any kind of suffering without trying to relieve it, she tried to hit upon some means of varying the unchanging sameness of life by which she perceived me to be oppressed. It was not possible to do much for me in this way whilst I was tied by the leg in bed, but when at last I was able to get up and crawl about a little with the help of sticks, she asked me if I thought I could get as far as her room, which was on the same floor as the ward, and only a short distance from it. On my replying in the affirmative, she filled me with delight by inviting me to go and have tea there with her that afternoon. Oh how impatiently I counted the minutes till tea-time came! and how welcome and refreshing was the change to her room from the dreary old ward of which I was so tired!
From that date our intimacy advanced much more rapidly than before; for, as she saw how I enjoyed the visit to her room, hardly a day passed on which I was not invited there at some time or other. It was not often that she was able to be with me all the time, for she was almost always called off elsewhere on business. But when this happened she did not expect me to go back to the ward unless I chose, and if I preferred—as I invariably did—to stay where I was, and amuse myself with books, work, or my own thoughts whilst awaiting her return, I was at liberty to do so. Indeed, if she had not been willing to trust me in her room without her, it would generally not have been worth while my going there at all; for the demands upon her time were perpetual, and she hardly ever had any leisure. It was Sister here and Sister there from morning till night; and, as far as I could see, she had not a single minute in the day which she could call her own, and reckon on as secure from interruption.
I have already said that one object which I had had for desiring to know her was, that I wanted to learn her past history, wherein I believed must lie some mysterious reason which had caused her to adopt her present hard, untempting, self-denying life. But as our acquaintance progressed and I came to know her more and more, I perceived with surprise that there was no hidden mystery at all about the matter, and that instead of any thrilling romance or tragedy such as I had imagined, the reason for her life was simply the love of God, and desire to serve Him in the best way she could. That was the sole motive for every deed, word, and thought of hers—the one compass by which her course was steered.
The reason why this discovery amazed me as it did was, that I had never dreamt of its being possible for any one with respectable mental abilities to take religion thus au grand sérieux. I cannot say I had ever troubled my head much about religion at all; but still I had a vague idea of it as a thing which people of weak intellect sometimes made a fuss about, but which the wiser part of the world treated as a mere unreal conventionality—a sort of outer garment which was assumed and respected solely out of deference to Mrs. Grundy.
It was startling to me, therefore, to meet with such a living contradiction of this idea as Sister Helena. She was no fool, as I knew, but very much the reverse; and in her management of the hospital she gave daily proofs of good sense, shrewdness, and sound judgment, which made it impossible to think she would be led away by visionary notions, or act lightly and without due consideration. Nor was she a person who ever bestowed a thought upon Mrs. Grundy, or who could be suspected of any taint of humbug and unreality in either word or deed. Yet to this sensible, intelligent, absolutely honest woman, religion was a fact of such vital importance as to be the mainspring of her life—the one thing to be put before everything else! So extraordinary did it seem to me, that I should certainly have refused to believe in the phenomenon at all if I had not beheld it with my own eyes.
It appeared evident to me that it must need a very powerful engine to be the motive force of such steady, self-sacrificing, practical goodness as hers, and I thought I should like to understand somewhat of the nature of that engine. With this object in view I directed constant questions towards the subject that interested me, and thus it came about that religion was the theme upon which we conversed more frequently than any other. I do not recapitulate our conversations, because I consider they would be out of place in a book of this kind; but this much I will say, that they made a strong impression on me, and caused me to think of religion very differently from what I had done hitherto. She was the first person I had ever met whose deeds really harmonised with her professions, and all that she said had weight with me, because her life was an unmistakable proof that she honestly and fully did believe the things she professed to believe. I began to contemplate the possibility of there being a real meaning in the creeds and prayers which I had often heard and joined in when at church without attaching any sense at all to them. I began, too, to have an idea that perhaps church membership might be something more than a mere empty form, and that there might be some real advantage in belonging to that Church of which I had been a member all my life as a matter of course, and without ever supposing it could make the slightest difference to me, one way or other. And, more than all, in proportion as I became inclined to believe in the truth and reality of religion, so also did the conviction grow upon me that I myself was not exactly altogether what I should be, and that it behoved me to set about reforming.
I really did want to amend what was amiss, and to become better than I was; but still I did not want to be too good. Such goodness as Sister Helena's, for instance, was, I knew, far beyond my powers; and besides that, my hearty admiration for it in her did not lead me to desire it for myself, because I was quite sure that even if it were possible for me to attain to such a pitch of self-denying excellence, I should not enjoy it, as I was a deal too fond of worldly comforts and joys ever to be happy without them.
Certainly it was very singular that there should be so wide a difference between one person's sense of duty and another's. When first this difference struck me, I was inclined to be somewhat uneasy at the comparatively diminutive proportions of my own virtue; but then there occurred to me a very comfortable and reassuring way of accounting for it. People's bodies were predisposed towards measles, whooping cough, and other illnesses in varying degrees, and had them lightly or severely according to the extent of that predisposition; and some people even never had these illnesses at all—being apparently endowed with some constitutional peculiarity which acted as an antidote to the poison of disease. And from this I argued that probably people's minds varied in a similar fashion in regard to virtue—some being more, and some less receptive of it. I supposed that a person could only be affected by religion and goodness according to the degree of his mental predisposition towards such things, and that some people could never be influenced by them at all. I thought this supposition a perfectly reasonable one, and highly satisfactory also. For in that case it was obviously absurd to expect much goodness from a person whose mind was so constituted as to be antagonistic to virtuous influences; and of course no one could be blamed for what was merely a natural defect.
I propounded my theory triumphantly to Sister Helena one day when she was insisting upon the necessity of some virtue or other which I thought ordinary mortals need not trouble themselves about. But she refused absolutely to agree with me; declared that goodness was equally attainable by all who chose; and laughed at the idea of people having a natural liability towards or against it, like they might have towards or against a fever.
"All very well for you to talk," answered I; "but I should like to know how else it's to be accounted for that some people should be so much better than others as to become sisters, monks, and nuns, and all that sort of thing? I'm sure it must need a very special and uncommon predisposition towards goodness to make any one give up every mortal thing that can make them happy—as they do!"
"Not at all," she replied quickly; "you'll find good and earnest people in the world, just as much as in convents. It's a question of vocation—not of superior goodness. Some people have such a natural inclination for a conventual life that they are happier there than they would be in the world; and some people, on the other hand, are happier in the world. Each set seeks happiness in its own way. And for any one to join a religious community without having a real vocation for it is a very great mistake, and not a good or desirable thing at all."
"Well, then," said I, "you believe that people are born monks and nuns, just as they are born poets, painters, musicians, or sculptors. Nascitur non fit. After all, I don't see that that's so very unlike my predisposition theory."
"Why, there's this great difference," she said smiling; "according to you, some people would have no chance of goodness at all; and I maintain, on the contrary, that every one has an equal chance. Goodness certainly manifests itself differently in different individuals; but you can't argue from that that it exists in them in different degrees. Remember that it is no great hardship for a person who doesn't care for society to give it up; and that you mustn't judge the merit of an action by its effects, but by how much it costs the doer."
And then a knock at the door, and an urgent request for the Sister to go and see after something or other immediately, terminated our conversation abruptly as usual; and I remained alone, musing on the fresh proof I had just received of the erroneousness of my original ideas regarding Sisters. Never for an instant had I doubted that they enjoyed—whether legitimately or not—a profound sense of superiority to the general run of humanity; and now that my old prejudice against them was overcome, I had arrived at the conclusion that, as they really were immeasurably better than the rest of the world (judging by Sister Helena), they had a perfect right to pique themselves thereon. Yet, instead of that, Sister Helena had not only refused to acquiesce in my ascription of honour and glory to them, but had argued with evident sincerity to prove that there was no special merit whatever in being a Sister! If I had been one, I should not have thought anything of the sort, I knew very well.
As the spark latent in flint needs a blow to bring it out, so, I suppose, whatever capacity I possessed for faith and virtue must have lain dormant in me till quickened to life by Sister Helena. They are elements which cannot possibly begin to mix actively in any one's existence without producing a commotion in that person's previous ways of going on, and so I soon found myself sorely troubled in mind respecting my uncompleted project for being revenged upon my step-mother. Up to the present time I had only disquieted her with threatening letters, and had not yet arrived at the finishing touch of making known her humble origin to her husband and her friends. That had necessarily been deferred by my being laid up in hospital; but I had not given it up for a moment, and had meant that the execution of my threats against her should be one of the first things I would do when I should be able to get about again. In my opinion she richly deserved punishment for the undutifulness to her mother, ingratitude to her step-father, absurd vanity, and bad behaviour in general, of which she had been guilty. And as my own personal enmity for her gave me an especial willingness to be the instrument whereby justice was to overtake her, I looked forward with extreme satisfaction to the completion of my scheme, and regarded it as a most righteous and proper proceeding.
All of a sudden, however, this pleasant prospect was disturbed by my newly awakened conscience insisting on taking a very different view of the matter, and declaring that as forgiveness was a duty and revenge was wrong, therefore I ought to give up the intention that I was cherishing. I opposed this conviction—struggled, argued, and tried to evade the conclusion that was so distasteful to me. But it was no use; conscience was too strong, and stuck firmly to its point, till I was forced, at last, reluctantly to abandon my beloved scheme.
So far, therefore, virtue was victorious; but its power did not extend far enough to prevent my regretting bitterly that I had not fully accomplished my designs against Lady Trecastle before any new ideas had come to interfere. Since conscience declared positively that I ought to overcome the old grudge which I bore her, I should have to do so; but it would now be a hard matter to accomplish, whereas I was sure that I could have done it sweetly and with hardly any effort at all, if only I had had the satisfaction of feeling that my plan of revenge had been carried out fully. For forgiveness is a duty whose performance is marvellously facilitated by the knowledge that the offender has had to suffer in some way or other for his wrongdoing.
I was quite in earnest about desiring to be true to such light as I had arrived at, and therefore did not exactly wish to return to my previous unenlightened condition. Yet I sighed as it dawned upon my mind that these new ideas might involve new restraints, and that perhaps henceforth I should be less my own mistress than before.
It would be so much easier to take to religion if it did not seem likely to deprive me of freedom, thought I, ruefully.