Joe was waiting to get us into the carriage.
I looked at the girl anxiously as we drove along.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Better, thank you. Miss.”
“You wouldn’t have been better long if you had stayed in that place,” I said grimly.
And that was how Lily Craddock came into my life and it started to change from then on.
I had something to do. Every morning when I awoke the first thing I thought of was my patient. She had looked fairly healthy in that hospital but that was when she was compared with people on the point of death, and as soon as I had her under my care, I discovered that she was frail, undernourished, rather fearful of the world, desperately trying to earn enough money to keep herself alive.
The care other filled my days. I planned her meals; I tended her; I nursed her; and my pleasure in seeing her change under my eyes was worth all my efforts.
Once she said to me: “I reckon my good angel sent me under that carriage. I didn’t know there was people like you in the world. When I think of what you’ve done for me …”
I was deeply moved and I said to myself then: I don’t think it is anything much compared with what you are doing for me.
I was moving away from despair, from melancholy. I would never cease to mourn my dead, but I had been shown almost by a miracle that life was not entirely barren for me. There was something worthwhile that I could do.
Lily once said: “I feel better when you stroke my roreneau. It’s something about your hands, Miss Pleydell.”
I looked at them. Long, tapering fingers ‘artist’s fingers,” someone had once said. I had no skill in the arts unless one could call nursing an art.
I was haunted by those people in the hospital and the memory of the few nurses I had seen. They were unclean, blowsy and unkempt; they smelled of gin, and I was sure they neglected the sick and vulnerable.
That seemed terrible to me and I rejoiced that I had been able to take Lily away.
As for myself, I was eating more; tending Lily made me hungry. Special dishes were prepared for her, for Jane and Polly had thrown themselves wholeheartedly into the task of, as they said, ‘getting her on her feet’. I would sometimes be tempted yes, actually tempted to share those dishes and nothing could have pleased Jane and Polly more. They were nursing me back to health as well as Lily Craddock.
Sometimes the gloom would descend on me and I would think of my baby crying for me when I was not there, unable to breathe and no one there to care for him . and finally that doctor . that wicked doctor who had come to experiment on him. Perhaps he knew what he gave him would not save his life but he wanted to see the effect.
Somehow the neglect of those hospital patients became linked in my thoughts with that doctor. Those nurses cared only for themselves.
They were unemployable in most things so they came to the hospital.
What a way to choose people for this most important of professions.
Those who entered it should have dedication; they should feel they had a duty to succour the sick. They should be properly trained. Yet what those women wanted was a lazy life, food for themselves and shelter.
And that doctor . in his way he cared nothing for life either. He wanted to prove the effect his drugs had on people and he had no compunction in using them to further his evil experiments.
I remembered hearing of the infamous Madame de Brinvilliers who had lived in the seventeenth century. She had wanted to murder people who stood in her way, and before poisoning them, she had tested her poisons on hospital patients to see the effect, and whether she could administer them without detection.
The hospitals must have been something like the one I had seen. I could imagine that woman visiting, as an angel of mercy, ministering to the sick, bringing them food laced with poison. That doctor was a similar case, only being a doctor he had more opportunity of carrying out his murderous methods than she had.
I was filled with a burning desire to do something. I had changed. I no longer felt that I had finished with life. It was like being born again. I could see a purpose in my life. It was as though I had had a divine revelation. I was being told something about myself, and it was only now that Lily Craddock had brought it home to me so clearly that I realized what it was. My ayah had said, “You have healing hands. It is a gift and the gods do not look kindly on those who do not use the gifts they bestow on them.”
Had I a gift? Yes, I had. It was to save lives. I had seen the suffering in those beds of pain and it had affected me deeply. I felt inadequate. What could I do about it? My own child, I believed, had been neglected. Murdered! That was a wild statement; but if they had called Dr. Calliber in time he might have saved his life. Instead, Aubrey had brought his devilish familiar to my child’s bedside and that man had given him a drug and killed him.
Because he had been my beloved son I might be passionately unreasonable in this case, but I believed that they might have saved his life and had failed to do so. I was going to find that doctor. I was going to confront him; I was going to prevent him from causing the death of someone else with his diabolical experiments.
I had taken a gigantic step forward.
I had a purpose in life. I would grow strong and well and in due course it would be revealed to me which road I should take.
In the meantime I was finding solace and indeed exhilaration in nursing Lily Craddock back to health.
She had been with us for two weeks and was greatly improved, then a melancholy seemed to come over her and progress slackened.
Jane and Polly discovered the reason.
“You know what, Miss Pleydell, that girl’s worried.”
“She has no need to be.”
“Well, she’s getting better. I reckon she’s enjoyed being the invalid.
What she is thinking now is: What am I going back to? “
“You think she’s anxious about the future?”
“She’s that all right.”
“I see,” I said. I had been thinking about Lily’s future for some time.
She was a seamstress, we knew, and finding it hard to make a living.
She had been a country girl until two years ago. She belonged to a big family and rimes were hard; she had had to leave the family circle and earn her own living. She had been in service and had not liked it. She had come to London where she thought the rich lived and that she might therefore earn a good living with her needle.
It was clear to us all that she was not going to do that with any great success.
I explained my feelings to Jane and Polly.
“I am not a rich woman,” I told them, ‘but my father has left me adequately provided for if I am not extravagant. I could offer Lily a job here. She could help you . perhaps sew for us and do the shopping. “
“Not the shopping,” said Jane.
“She’s too soft, with her country ways.
She’d get done all the way round. To put her loose in the market-place with the mistress’s money would be like putting one of them martyrs into the lion’s den. And she’s no Daniel. “
I laughed.
“You had better carry on with the shopping, then; but I could manage to pay Lily a little salary and at least she would be well fed and housed.”
“You’re your father all over again. Miss,” said Polly.
“Don’t worry.
We were wondering about asking you if we could keep her. “
When I put the suggestion to Lily her joy was overwhelming and from that moment there was a change in her. That perpetual nervousness and apprehension slipped away from her.
I thought: I am almost happy.
I used to sit with them in the evenings and gradually learned about their lives before they came into mine. Jane and Polly had had a hard childhood, with a drunken bully of a father whose entrance into the house was a signal for terror.