I don’t think there is anything worse than the sense of utter desolation that envelops you when the hospital door finally closes on everybody you know, and you are alone with total strangers and unknown terrors ahead. The dreariest moment of my whole life was when I found myself alone in a private ward at Mildmay, with no one whom I knew within call.

Yet was it mere chance, I wonder, that the nurses at their prayers that day sang Matheson’s beautiful hymn—“O Love, that wilt not let me go”?

It came to me along the corridor, as I lay staring at the ceiling. I tried, in my heart, to sing it with them; but I gave it up when they got to the verse—

I couldn’t see the rainbow just then.

Nevertheless, I got to love that room as one of the happiest spots on earth, for the sake of the people whom I found there; and during the ten weeks I remained in it, I proved beyond all chance of further doubt that when God seems to be taking from us, He is in reality giving us something better than all we could ever ask or think. At the moment of the taking, perhaps, our eyes are too dimmed to see this, but in the fulfilment of time, when He wipes away our tears, may it not be that, in addition to banishing our sorrows, He will clear our vision, that we may see how marvellously He made all things work together for good?

Next day I remarked, irritably, that I didn’t like the green walls, and I thought the green bedspread positively bilious.

The matron, looking at me with a twinkle in her eyes, said, “Dear lady, you shall have another bedspread this instant; and as soon as you are well enough to be moved, we will re-paint the walls whatever colour meets with your approval;—we can’t do it while you are in bed, can we? Meanwhile, I shall call you ‘Delicate Fuss’!”

(And “Delicate Fuss” I have remained ever since.)

But there was such an amount of misery bottled up inside me, some of it was obliged to spill over, and I once more reiterated my desire to die.

“That’s all right,” said the matron cheerfully; “but how about your tombstone? You would like a really artistic one, wouldn’t you? And being literary, surely you would wish to edit what is to go on it. Now let us see what we can scheme out.”

So we all settled to a discussion of shapes and styles and suitable words. The nurses warmed to the work, the ward sister came in to give her views, and for the first time for weeks I found myself smiling. Finally, it was unanimously decided that the most appropriate and truthful description would be these simple words—

“SHE WAS PLAIN BUT OCCASIONALLY PLEASANT.”

But the time came when I was beyond even discussing tombstones; when I could not bear a sound in the room and even quiet footsteps jarred me. Then it was that I found out more especially what the spirit of Mildmay stands for. It was no mere perfunctory service that was rendered the invalid. Doctors, matron, nurses said nothing of the extra hours of work they put in on my account; of the watching and the tending when they were really supposed to be off duty. It seemed wonderful that I, who had looked forward to the inevitable with a terrible dread of being lonely and among strangers, should actually find myself, when the time came, surrounded by friendly faces, and cared for by people who had grown very dear to me.

And fancy a hospital where they went to the trouble of bandaging up the door-handles to prevent noisy bangs; where they laid down matting to deaden the sounds in the corridor; where they fixed peremptory notices to the doors, enjoining all and sundry to close them quietly; where even the ward-maid constituted herself dragoness-in-chief, for the time being, watching and waiting, and then pouncing on any unthinking person who might let a latch slip through her fingers, or a house-porter who might clatter a coal-scuttle.

Yet this—and a great deal more—is what they did at Mildmay, just because one patient was going through a bad time.

Thanks to all the care I received, I was at last able to leave the hospital. Of course I was glad to go out into the big world again—who wouldn’t be, after lying all that time with no other “view” visible from where I lay but three chimney-pots? I was glad to think I was going to be able to walk again, and take up my work once more. But I felt genuine regret at having to say good-bye to the people I had really grown to love during my stay with them.

I shall never forget the morning that I was taken away by a couple of nurses to the seaside. The others came, in ones and twos, to say good-bye. And in the midst of it, the great surgeon walked in—just to see what the patient was like before she started.

“Now confess,” he said, “a hospital isn’t such a bad place after all, is it?”

I agreed with him; but I couldn’t put into words what a wonderfully good place I had found it.

I could only think what a contrast was presented between the poor, forlorn thing who arrived those months before, and the still-very-wobbly, but cheerfully-smiling, person who was now driving away, while the nurses leaned out of the upper windows and showered rice all over the vehicle.