Ruth Axtell Morren - The Healing Season

As they continued in silence, Ian noticed Jem shaking his head once or twice. Finally the boy could keep still no longer. “I can’t believe you didn’t recognize Mrs. Neville. Why, her playbills are posted everywhere. She’s been taking London by storm in her latest role. I’ve heard even the Prince is enchanted.”

“Well, then I must be the only one in London who has not yet succumbed to Mrs. Eleanor Neville’s charms. She was almost useless as an assistant.” Again, a different picture rose to his mind, of a young woman overcoming her terror to save a friend’s life. He shook aside the image. An actress was little better than a prostitute.

“I was afraid I’d have to divide my time between reviving her and keeping my primary patient from bleeding to death,” he added cuttingly.

“Poor thing! She must have had a rough time of it. I wish I’d been there with you!”

Ian looked at the young man with pity. “To help my patient or to hold Mrs. Neville’s hand?”

Ian couldn’t help picturing those slim hands with their almond shaped nails, how they’d smoothed back the patient’s hair from her brow, and remembering her soft voice as she encouraged her friend throughout the night’s ordeal.

An actress? The image wouldn’t fit the one formed last night. How long would the innocent-looking, ladylike woman be impressed upon Ian’s memory?

As she sat before her mirror, her maid dressing her hair, Eleanor was gratified to note that a full nine hours’ rest followed by the special wash for her face made of cream and the pulverized seeds of melons, cucumber and gourds had left her complexion as fresh and soft as a babe’s.

She touched the skin of her cheek, satisfied she would need no cosmetics today.

With her toilette completed, Eleanor went to her wardrobe and surveyed her gowns. The mulberry sarcenet with the frogged collar? She tapped her forefinger lightly against her lips in consideration. No, too militaristic.

The pale apricot silk with the emerald-green sash? She had a pretty bonnet that matched it perfectly. Too frivolous?

She ran her hand over the various gowns that hung side by side, organized by shades of color. Blues, from palest icy snow to deepest midnight, greens from bottle to apple, reds from burgundy to cerise, and so on to the white muslins and satins. She enjoyed seeing the palette of colors. Gone forever were the days when she was lucky enough to have one dirty garment to clothe her back.

She pulled out one gown and then another until she finally decided on a walking dress of white jaconet muslin with its richly embroidered cuffs and flounced hemline. With it she wore a dark blue spencer and her newest French bonnet of white satin, trimmed with blue ribbons and an ostrich plume down one side of the crown.

When she had judged herself ready, she stood before her cheval glass for a final inspection. Her blond tresses peeked beneath the bonnet, with a small cluster of white roses set amidst the curls. She fluffed up her lace collar. White gloves and half boots in white and blue kid finished the outfit. The picture of maidenly innocence and purity.

“How do I look, Clara?” she asked the young maid.

“Very pretty, ma’am. The colors become you.”

Eleanor smiled in recognition of the fact. Good. If her appearance didn’t put Mr. Russell to shame, her name wasn’t Eleanor Neville.

She took up the shawl and beaded reticule her maid held out to her.

“Is the coach ready?” she asked Clara.

“I’ll see, madam,” Clara answered with a bob of her head and curtsy.

“I shall be in the drawing room below,” Eleanor said.

She had found out from the young boy in Betsy’s rooming house that Mr. Russell had a dispensary in Southwark, in the vicinity of Guy’s and St. Thomas’s Hospitals. They were not so very far from the theater, she thought, as she sat in her coach and rode from her own neighborhood in Bloomsbury and headed toward the southern bank of the Thames.

She needed to accomplish two things on this visit to the surgeon: firstly, to find out about proper nursing care for Betsy, and secondly, to clear up a few things to the good doctor.

She would present such a composed, elegant contrast to the woman he’d seen the night before last that he would fall all over himself with apologies.

She was not a streetwalker and had never been. It mortified her more than she cared to admit that after so many years, someone could so easily fail to notice her refinement and see only the dirty street urchin.

It hadn’t helped that she’d behaved like such a poor-spirited creature during Betsy’s ordeal. But it had been awful finding Betsy like that. Eleanor still felt a twinge of nausea just thinking about it.

She gazed out the window of her chaise, no longer seeing the streets, but recalling the terrified young girl, younger than Betsy, when she’d gone into premature labor. She rarely ever called up those memories, but last night had summoned up all the horrors of those hours of painful labor in vivid detail.

Her own delivery had ended successfully in the birth of a child who had survived, but the ordeal for a scared, undernourished, ignorant girl had almost killed her.

She folded her gloved hands on her lap. Those days were far behind her. She was a different person, one older and wiser in the ways of the world, and few people knew anything of her past.

The coach arrived at the surgeon’s address, and the coachman helped her descend onto the busy street.

The building looked respectable enough. Mr. Russell must have achieved some success in his profession to be able to open his own dispensary.

Several people stood in line at the front. As she neared the brick building, she noticed the brass plaque by the door.

Mr. Ian Russell, licensed Surgeon, Royal College of Surgeons

Mr. Albert Denton, Apothecary-Surgeon

Below it appeared: Midwifery Services.

She pushed past those waiting, ignoring their angry looks and murmurs, and entered the brick building.

Immediately, she took a step back. The place reeked of sickness and poverty. The waiting room was packed with unwashed bodies—young, old, and every age in between. By their dress, they did not look like paying patients. The rumors must be true that Mr. Russell served one and all.

Every available wooden bench was occupied. Some huddled on the floor. The rest stood leaning against the walls.

Eleanor braced herself and ventured farther into the waiting room. She was surrounded by the lowest refuse of life, those that inhabited Southwark and other similar London neighborhoods. She saw them lurking at the fringes of the theater every night when she departed in her coach. Hard work and determination had enabled her to escape these surroundings, and she had no desire to ever live in such conditions again.

She took a few steps more and found a bit of wall space to lean against. Daring another peek around her, she saw that some of the sick had even brought a form of payment: a pigeon in a small wooden cage, a handkerchief wrapped around some bulky item—a half-dozen potatoes or turnips to give to the good surgeon in exchange for his services.

She heard moans of pain beside her and, looking down, she saw a man holding his wrist gingerly in his other hand. Beside him sat another with an exposed ulcerated leg propped up in front of him.

Eleanor brought her scented handkerchief to her nostrils, fearing the foul miasma that permeated the air. She couldn’t take the risk of exposing herself to some perilous humor and sicken.

All eyes were upon her—at least of those patients not too caught up in their pain. She read admiration and some envy in their glances. She was accustomed to that look and bestowed smiles on one and all alike before retreating behind an impersonal gaze above the crowd.