Friends I Have Made

Rocking herself to and fro, and moaning bitterly, till a friendly arm is offered, and she is led away, the crowd parting to let her pass, with many a rough, sympathising word uttered; and then with her burden of sorrow she slowly totters along the gloomy street, followed by a straggling crew of children, ragged boys, girls top-heavy with babies tied up in shawls, and wonderful above all other things for their vitality. To see them day by day, and the risks they run, the only wonder is that their babyhood does not form their shroud, and cover them effectually from further advance towards adolescence.

And now a cab drawn at a foot’s pace towards the great door of the hospital – to so many the jaws of death. A little crowd here even, to see the patient carried in by the two stout porters. A little crowd here, when it might be a case of fever or something else – infectious, contagious. But no; this is no fever case, but one for our skilled surgeons; for the poor lad is bleeding, bound up, and fainting. Injured by machinery. His finger was caught by the cogs of a machine – the hand, the arm drawn in, and crushed right up to above the elbow, so that, what with loss of blood and the shock to the system, it will be a clever surgeon that can save his life.

But he will have the best of skill here, and every appliance that surgery can devise to allay his sufferings – everything but the tender hands of those he loves; while it will take all his hopefulness to fight against the sorrowful thoughts of his maimed and helpless future. He, a poor wounded one of the great army fighting for life – battling day by day with poverty, from childhood to old age; and he early stricken down in the contest.

And now another carriage stops the way; and the porters are not wanted, for the occupant steps out, evidently with his wife, upon whose arm he leans slightly as they go up the steps. To a casual observer there does not seem much the matter, for he smiles as he speaks cheerily to his companion; but somehow his lip seems to be quivering, and he stops at the last step to give one look round, and not at the dull brick and mortary street, but upwards at the bright sky flecked with fleecy clouds, and there is an agony of longing in that look, which tells of the panting of the soul for health, and of a shadow hovering above him which seems to hide the future from his hopeful gaze. As he still looks up, loth to enter, his glance seems to have within it something of that we see upon the emigrant’s face when on shipboard with the anchor a-peak, and the sails shaking out – it seems to say “Farewell.”

But he has returned to the present, and with his lips quivering, he enters the great portal, and the door swings to behind him; while who can say how he will quit the place – alive and hopeful, past the great danger, and with some wondrous operation performed by skilful hands; or merely the lifeless clay, with the spirit returned to its Maker?

An out-door patient creeping up by the aid of a stick – one who cannot summon the fortitude to quit his home, though he would be better in the hospital – better in body perhaps, but worse in spirit; for he would be homesick, and suffering in mind for the homely comforts and the familiar, ministering hands.

And now another pallid, quivering object, leaning upon the arm of friend or relative. He can hardly walk, and must be suffering from some severe internal disease; but he has been by three times, and though his hand grasps the order for admission, he dares not enter, but muttering “Not yet, not yet,” draws his companion away, and totters on until he is fain to rest upon a step. But who can wonder that he should flinch and shrink back when the dread moment arrives? How many who enter the hospital feel that for them there is written above the portal, “Who enter here leave hope behind?” The great gloomy building has by them been considered as a forlorn hope to try when every other means has failed; and with shattered nerves, and mind and body worn by disease, they may well shudder and turn from the building, when the robust in health could hardly enter such an abode of pain and sorrow without a clutching at the heart. And then, too, who is he that seeks a home within the English Maison Dieu but the poor man, perhaps the bread winner of a large family? and he enters, perhaps, with the knowledge that while he is battling with disease those at home are fighting against the wolf poverty, who has lain down at their door.

But the poor fellow has nerved himself at last, and slowly crawls up the steps, takes one glance round as his fellow-sufferer did some quarter of an hour ago, and the portal has closed upon him.

Next comes the rattling of wheels, and a cab turns the corner at as near an approach to a gallop as the shambling horse can manage. Emergency here; and as the cab dashes up, a man springs off the box, and runs up the steps; and then come the porters with their chair to lift out of the vehicle, a groaning mass of charred humanity, wrapped in a blanket, and whose cries on being touched thrill through one’s very marrow, till the door swings to once more.

Again a cab driven up, with this time a policeman on the box, to jump down and fetch out those iron-nerved men whose aid is so frequently sought.

No brand from the burning this time; but another one fallen in the fight with poverty – another wounded – no! hush! they say he is slain, and hesitate before lifting the nerveless, flaccid, collapsing form into the chair.

But he is carried in, and I follow to know the truth and learn it in a few minutes; for the poor fellow, a painter, has fallen from an upper window, with a fearful crash, upon the cruel spikes of the area railings, from which, the newspapers tell us next day, with hideous perspicuity, “he was lifted with great difficulty the spikes having entered his body.”

Guy’s, Saint Thomas’s, Saint Bartholomew’s, Saint George’s, Middlesex, King’s College, University, round all of their doors such dread horrors still abound, and to an extent that almost staggers belief. Sorrow, pain, poverty, despair, all seem to join hands and revel around the suffering wretches; but even to these dismal shadows – these clouds of life – there are silver linings. Hope is there; faith is there; mercy is there; and pity mourns over the suffering poor. It is the collecting together of scenes of misery – the gazing upon so many sufferers at once; and for the moment we forget that suffering is inevitable – that more or less mental or bodily, it must fall to each one’s share; and as we turn shuddering away, we forget that these great institutions are an honour to our country, and glance but at one side of the question. We forget the quiet, gentlemanly men of iron nerve and determination – the heroes who might wear the palms borne by our warriors – the men who engage face to face with disease, and pluck full many a victim from the grim dragon’s jaws. We think not of these calm unassuming men walking quietly into houses plague-stricken, and shunned by all but the mercenary nurse; we forget that such a thing is unknown as a doctor shrinking from facing the worst fever, and leaving the sufferer unaided. Well, there are honours more to be desired than empty titles; and in the love, respect and reverence of their fellow men our doctors must revel, for ours is a strange country. We are not given to showy uniforms, and crosses and ribbons. Perhaps it is as well; for the uniforms and decorations tarnish and fade, while the name once honoured grows brighter with the lapse of years.

The figures seem startling – nay, they are staggering to the belief; but doubtless the statistician had good grounds for declaring that more fall by accidents in the streets of London than suffer upon the whole of the railways in our kingdom. Truly, there is good cause for the boards of much abused directors to smile and rub their hands upon hearing such a statement, for it must be gratifying to their sense of self esteem. But leaving out those who suffer in private, what incredible scenes are witnessed by those who make a tour of a hospital! In addition to the street accidents, what else have we to show of the ills to which mortal flesh is heir? Burnings and scaldings, domestic and from manufactories; falls, including sprains, bruises, dislocations, and simple and compound fractures; cuts, so fearful that one turns away shuddering, and wondering that life has not escaped through the awful gash; limbs crushed, torn or shattered by machinery; wounds from blows, enough to fill any hospital with horrors, without stopping to consider that cruel, insidious enemy disease, mining and burrowing its way through the human system, and battling step by step with the science brought to bear upon it. And in what forms does it present itself? Many common enough, and whose names are sad household words among us, while others are of so complicated a nature that one turns away from the pale, suffering, distorted face with a shudder.

Saddening, most saddening is that aspect of a hospital ward, and the most moving sight is that anxious face of the trembling, suffering patient, before in his extreme horror Nature is merciful to him and draws the veil of insensibility before his starting eyes. “What is it to be?” seems written upon every line of his haggard countenance. Life, to complete some darling scheme – life, to which we all so tenaciously cling; or the cold silent grave? Who will tell him, nurse or doctor? And even then does he not look them through and through doubtingly? If they whisper to him of life, he dares hardly believe it, fancying that ’tis but to rouse his flagging energies; while if they refuse to answer his anxiously reiterated questions does he not feel that they give him up, and set it down to ignorance – for he will not die.

I walk between the rows of beds, some empty, some occupied; and then how the frailty of our hold upon life is forced upon me – how insecure seems the tenure! And then more and more how it comes home to the feelings what a trivial matter is our own poor life to the great world at large; how little we should be missed, and how little the busy frequenters of our street think of the sufferers within these bleak, blank walls.

My companion stops with me at last by the bed where lies my friend of the crape butterfly, and as he lies there, very pale but evidently clean and comfortable, his face lights up with pleasure, and he holds out his hand in welcome to me as I take the chair by his side.

“What?” he said, “you never came o’ purpose to see me, ma’am?”

I assure him that I have, and the poor fellow is so taken aback by this simple little act of kindness that all he can say is, “I’m blessed!” and that he keeps on repeating.

By degrees, though, we are in full conversation, and I have told him about seeing his wife and given her message of love, and then he has told me with the greatest exactness all about the way in which that nearside horse let out at him with his off hoof, and caught him in the leg. There are no bones broken, but it has been very painful, and how that he should have been at Saint George’s or Charing Cross Hospital only a doctor who lived at Richmond and often rode up and down on his omnibus wanted him to come into his hospital, University College.

“And precious kind he’s been to me, that he has. Why, if I’d been his own brother he couldn’t have done for me better.”

And so he chatted on about himself, his wife and children, and lastly, as he found a willing listener, about horses, the one that kicked him, and horses in general.

“I don’t think as the poor creetur did it out of spite again me ma’am,” he said, “for I’m always pretty gentle with horses, for I likes ’em. He let out at me because, perhaps, a fly touched him or out of fidgetiness or something; but anyhow I got it.

“You’d hardly think it, lying wrapped up warm here, but being weak I s’pose has brought out my rheumatics horrid.

“Wonderful trying thing to a man’s constitution is ’bus driving; particular when them cold winds and biting rains are on. Then’s the time one suffers from the rheumatics. Don’t know what they are, I s’pose? Good job for you, ma’am. Take my advice, and keep them at a distance, for they’re a sort of poor relation as will stick to you; and so sure as you fancy you’ve got rid of them, back they comes first rainy day as there is. Rainy day, you knows, just the time as poor relations comes down on you; though, p’raps, you ain’t got any poor relations. Some people ain’t – leastwise, none as they knows. Well, first rainy day you’re a bit out o’ sorts they comes back again, the rheumatics does, and you know it, and no mistake.

“I got ’em through getting wet, and being obliged to sit on the box all day. A raw nip of brandy would have kept ’em off p’raps, but raw nips of brandy tell upon a man, and I promised Sairey I wouldn’t have so many, for she’s werry particular about my personal appearance, and she said as the brandy got in the end of my nose and stopped there; so I sat it out that day without a raw nip, though I was having nips enough anyhow.

“That night I could hardly get off my box; next day I was a bit better, but next night I had to be helped down; and though I fought it out, day after day, knowing as giving up meant stopping the bread and cheese, it got to be so that there was no bearing it, and I couldn’t sit, nor stand, nor sleep without having some drops out of a bottle of stuff as the old woman bought at the chemist’s. Why, it was like toothache beginning in your hip and running right down in your boot, only twice as bad.

“‘Have the doctor,’ says the missus, after I’d been at home two days.

“‘I won’t,’ I says; ‘what’s the good of doctors?’

“‘What’s the good of lying there suffering?’ she says.

“I didn’t know, so I didn’t tell her; and at last, after I’d been twisting about early one morning like a skinned eel, she sent for the doctor, and he came.

“Curious thing, pain, ain’t it? I often think, that it would do some of these fellers as ill-use horses good if they had a sharp twist or two of right down real, genuine agony. I ain’t going to say that I never hits a horse, because I do, you know, when he’s a bit lazy or troublesome; but I never lay the whip on him unless it’s necessary, and I’ll do as much with my horses with kindness, as you will with kicks, and blows, and swearing.

“Well, I beg your pardon, you know, when I say you will by swearing, and kicks, and blows, I do not mean you yourself, you know, but people in general as handles the ribbins.

“Of course the best way to a horse’s affections is feeding him, but it’s wonderful what sense there is in the poor dumb beasts; and talking about pain puts me in mind of one ’oss as I used to drive. He was a chestnut ’oss, he was, as pretty a creature as ever you saw. Been a carriage ’oss, but the hair was taken off one of his shoulders, and through that blemish he came in our service. Never touched him with the whip, I didn’t, not to hit him; give him a gentle stroke down to take off the flies, or to lay his hair straight, I would, and he’d never flinch nor move, he knew my ways so well, and when I spoke he’d turn his head round and look at me, if his head was free enough, with them two great sensible eyes of his, so that we was quite friends.

“I’ve done what I never told anyone before – I’ve given the stableman who had him in charge more than one shilling so as no other driver should get ‘my chestnut,’ as I got to call him; and off and on I drove him three years, till one morning Wispey Joe, as he had him in charge, says to me, he says: ‘Chestnut’s rough. Got the staggers, I think.’

“I went into the stable in a hurry, for I was a bit late, and there, sure enough, was the poor ’oss with his legs stretched out like those of a stool, and his head down; but as soon as he heard my voice he whinnied, and roused up, making his halter rattle through the ring as he turned round to me, and I went up and patted him, and found that he hadn’t touched his corn, while he was all of a sweat.

“‘Come, old feller,’ I says; and I stirred his food up a bit, and, as if understanding me, he put his nose in the manger, but he only blew the meat about – good bruised oats and chopped meat it was, too – and then he looks up at me again, as much as to say, ‘It’s no good – I can’t feed.’

“So I took a handful of stuff out and held it to him, stroking his forelock with t’other hand, and he made a try at it, and then gave a regular sigh, and hung down his poor old head.

“Well, I was obliged to go, for time was up; so I gave him a pat or two, and Wispey Joe a pint of beer to take care of him, and then, werry heavy-hearted and sad, I went on to the box, thinking a good deal about that there horse, for we seemed to have got to be such friends. ‘Tst,’ I’d say, and them willing old shoulders of his would shoot into the collar till I checked him. He was willing, and always seemed to be trying to show me how he could pull.

“It was quarter-past eleven that night when I turned into the yard and got off the box. ‘How’s the chestnut?’ I says to Joe. ‘Good as gone,’ he says. ‘The vet’s with him now, and one of the foremen.’

“I goes into the stable, along past the heels of a dozen horses, to where there was a lanthorn burning, and as I got up I saw my poor chestnut rear, strike his head against the roof, and then fall down on his side, kicking and moaning as if in pain, and lifting his pore head up and letting it fall again upon the heap of straw they had put in his stall. Poor old fellow! they’d put plenty of straw in to keep him from hurting himself as he lay there on his side throwing out his heels, and beating against the wooden side of the place with his hoofs. It was a pitiful sight, and I soon learnt that the veterinary surgeon had done all he could, but had very little hopes of him. He said it was some kind of inflammation with a long name; but I was taking more notice of my poor horse than of what he said.

“‘You’d best not go near him,’ he said, ‘the poor thing is dangerous.’ But before he’d finished speaking I was down on my knees in the straw with that faithful old head on my arm; and as I spoke, the poor thing turned up its muzzle and whinnied at me so pitifully, and let it fall again, that to have saved my life, ma’am, I couldn’t have helped it, but leaned down over him, and the nat’ral softness of the man came dripping from my eyes, hot and fast, as it seemed to me that I was going to lose my poor old chestnut.

“Of course it was very weak and childish, but then we are all weak and childish sometime or another; and you know it was almost in the dark, while I had my back to the two men looking on, besides being ever so far inside the stall. So for about a minute I went on like that, and then I said a few words to the poor thing again; and as often as I did so he tried to raise his head and whinny, and let it fall again.

“I never saw so pitiful a sight before; and I couldn’t have believed in a dumb beast being so human in its actions; for there were the poor strained dim eyes lifted up to mine in that quiet sensible way in which a horse can look, and then he’d whinny again, when he’d seem to have a fit of agony come on, and kick at the side of the stall, but not near me, for I was behind his head. Then several times the poor thing staggered up to his feet, and reared again and again, striking his head against the roof; and at such times I had to get out of his way, or he might have fallen on me; but the greater part of the time he was lying on his side upon the straw, with his old head on my arm. Perhaps it’s foolish of me – perhaps it ain’t – but I fancy he was easier with his head there, and when the fits of pain came on and he kicked, he did it more quietly. However, I know one thing, and that is, that whenever I spoke to him, right up to the last, he tried to answer me after his fashion, and turned his muzzle towards me.

“I forgot all about being tired that night, and as it was necessary that someone should sit up, why, I let Wispey go and lie down in the loft while I stopped with the chestnut. It was a strange night, that was, to pass there in that stable by the light of a lanthorn; and it’s wonderful how being here in this hospital has put me in mind of it over and over again. Now and then a horse would be fidgeting his halter in the rings; but mostly all was quiet but my poor horse moaning gently, and it soon came home to me that he was getting weaker and weaker. He seldom got up now, and when he kicked out it was feebly, while more than once he turned his head round as if to see whether I was there.

“I don’t want to pass such another night, ma’am; it was too much like being with a fellow-creature; and I’m afraid I shouldn’t have felt it any more deeply if it had been with a relation. I know it sounds stupid and unnatural, but poor men haven’t many friends, and that chestnut horse was one of mine.

“It was just getting towards daylight when the poor thing, as had been very quiet for some time, began to get restless, and throw out its legs again as it laid on its side, just as if it was galloping, and then it lay still again and only moaned. I spoke to him and he lifted his head just a little way, but it fell back, and after a few minutes, during which I felt as I had never felt before – as it, even with this poor beast, there was something awful about to take place – I spoke to him again, just as I had been used to do, while one hand was under his head, me kneeling behind him in the straw, and the other hand resting on his nose – I spoke to him again, and I could feel him try to lift his head, but he didn’t. Then the light shining on his great staring eyes, I either saw, or fancied I did, the tears rolling out of them – but I’m not sure, for I could not see clear just then; while, after a few minutes’ silence, I half started to my feet, frightened like, for the chestnut gave a wild hollow cry, that you could have heard all through the mews, and then there was a shivering run through him, and it was all over. Not as I knew it though, till Wispey Joe spoke to me, for the horse’s cry had woke him up.

“He was a good horse, and I hope he’s gone where there’s pleasant green pastures and clear flowing rivers, such as I used to hear about when I had a chance of going to a place of worship. Perhaps it’s wrong to think such things as that there’s a place after this life for poor dumb beasts; but many of ’em almost seems to need something to look forward to, for they gets a sorry time of it here, what with blows, and kicks, and bad living; and I don’t care, but a man who’d be wilfully a brute to a dumb animal wouldn’t be worry partickler about being a brute to his brother man. I offended one of our drivers one day, after he’d been a thrashing a horse, by asking some one which was the brute – the horse or the man.

“And that’s all about that poor old chestnut, and I daresay you’ll laugh at me for being so soft about him, but we all have strange feelings at times, and I hope as everyone as puts on a bit of crape for one as is gone to his long home, feels his loss as truly as I did that of my poor old ’oss.

“‘Here have I been fidgetted to death about you,’ the missus says. ‘Come, sit down, and have a bit of breakfast. Can’t eat? Nonsense! What?’

“‘The poor old chestnut’s dead,’ I says; and she never pressed me no more.

“But, lor’ ma’am, only to think of it. I began telling you about my rheumatics coming on again here, and went right off about the old chestnut horse.”

“Poor horse!” I said, and rose to go.

“Must you go so soon, ma’am,” he said; “well, yes, I suppose so, but time does seem so long here listening to other fellows who are ill and groaning, and your coming did cheer me up so it made my tongue run like anything. Good bye, ma’am, good bye.”

And now, once more out in dreary Gower Street, and even as I went along some one was being taken towards the hospital in a cab, but I had not the heart then to look within.

Chapter Nineteen.

My Old Bookseller

It was some six months after, that, finding myself in the neighbourhood, I made a point of going down the North London road so as to call on the old couple, who had had charge of the house.

But the substantial and eligible residence had been let, while half a dozen rain soaked carcases had been plastered up; and seeing a board with an attractive notice I concluded that they would be there and I was right: they were in charge of a wretchedly damp place.

They smiled a welcome to me as they answered the door together, and, learning that I was not house-seeking but a visitor, I was soon sitting chatting to them, and found that they were only too willing to communicate their affairs to me, though the old lady was suffering from a touch of pleurisy, and she was very quiet.