Jerome Jerome - Novel Notes

"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?'

"I had a hard time between the two of them, for, with the help of her sister, I was nursing them both. It was an unprofessional thing to do, but I could see they were not well off, and I assured the doctor that I could manage. To me it was worth while going through the double work just to breathe the atmosphere of unselfishness that sweetened those two sick-rooms. The average invalid is not the patient sufferer people imagine. It is a fretful, querulous, self-pitying little world that we live in as a rule, and that we grow hard in. It gave me a new heart, nursing these young people.

"The man pulled through, and began steadily to recover, but the wife was a wee slip of a girl, and her strength―what there was of it―ebbed day by day. As he got stronger he would call out more and more cheerfully to her through the open door, and ask her how she was getting on, and she would struggle to call back laughing answers. It had been a mistake to put them next to each other, and I blamed myself for having done so, but it was too late to change then. All we could do was to beg her not to exhaust herself, and to let us, when he called out, tell him she was asleep. But the thought of not answering him or calling to him made her so wretched that it seemed safer to let her have her way.

"Her one anxiety was that he should not know how weak she was. 'It will worry him so,' she would say; 'he is such an old fidget over me. And I AM getting stronger, slowly; ain't I, nurse?'

"One morning he called out to her, as usual, asking her how she was, and she answered, though she had to wait for a few seconds to gather strength to do so. He seemed to detect the effort, for he called back anxiously, 'Are you SURE you're all right, dear?'

"'Yes,' she replied, 'getting on famously. Why?'

"'I thought your voice sounded a little weak, dear,' he answered; 'don't call out if it tries you.'

"Then for the first time she began to worry about herself―not for her own sake, but because of him.

"'Do you think I AM getting weaker, nurse?' she asked me, fixing her great eyes on me with a frightened look.

"'You're making yourself weak by calling out,' I answered, a little sharply. 'I shall have to keep that door shut.'

"'Oh, don't tell him'―that was all her thought―'don't let him know it. Tell him I'm strong, won't you, nurse? It will kill him if he thinks I'm not getting well.'

"I was glad when her sister came up, and I could get out of the room, for you're not much good at nursing when you feel, as I felt then, as though you had swallowed a tablespoon and it was sticking in your throat.

"Later on, when I went in to him, he drew me to the bedside, and whispered me to tell him truly how she was. If you are telling a lie at all, you may just as well make it a good one, so I told him she was really wonderfully well, only a little exhausted after the illness, as was natural, and that I expected to have her up before him.