i can appreciate now what my father and nurse bundle must have suffered during my dangerous illness. it was not a common tie that bound my father's affections to my life. not only was i his son, i was his only son. moreover, i was the only living child of the beloved wife of his youth—all that remained to him of my fair mother. then i was the heir to his property, the hope of his family, and, without undue egotism, i may say, from what i have been told, that i was a quaint, original, and (thanks to mrs. bundle) not ill-behaved child, and that, for a while at least, i should have been much missed in the daily life of the household.
mrs. cadman told me, long afterwards, exactly how many days and nights nurse bundle passed in my sick chamber, "and never had her clothes off;" and if the wearing of clothes had been one of the sharpest torments of the inquisition, mrs. cadman could not have spoken in a hollower tone, or thrown more gloom round the announcement.
that, humanly speaking, my good and loving nurse saved my life, i must ever remember with deep gratitude. there are stages of fever, when, as they say, "a nurse is everything;" and a very little laziness, selfishness, or inattention on nurse[68] bundle's part would probably have been my death-warrant. but night and day she never relaxed her vigilance for one instant of the crisis of my malady. she took nothing for granted, would trust no one else, but herself saw every order of the doctor carried out, and, at a certain stage, fed me every ten minutes, against my will, coaxing me to obedience, and never losing heart or temper for one instant. and this although my petulance and not infrequent assurances that i wished and preferred to die—"i was so tired"—within the sick room, and my father's despair and bitter groan that he would sacrifice every earthly possession to keep me alive, outside it, would have caused many people to lose their heads. in such an hour many a foolish, gossiping, half-educated woman, by absolute faithfulness to the small details of her trust, by the complete laying aside of personal needs and personal feelings, rises to the sublimity of duty, and, ministering to the wants of another with an unselfish vigilance almost perfect, earns that meed of praise from men, which from time to time persists, in grateful hyperbole, to liken her sex to the angels.
my poor father, whose irrepressible distress led to his being forbidden to enter my room, powerless to help, and therefore without alleviation for his anxiety, simply hung upon nurse bundle's orders and reports, and relied utterly on her. fortunately for his own health, she gained sufficient influence to insist, almost as peremptorily as in my case, upon his taking food. often afterwards did she describe how he and rubens sat outside the door they were not allowed to enter; and she used to declare that when she came out, rubens, as well as my father, turned an anxious and expectant[69] countenance towards her, and that both alike seemed to await and to understand her report of my condition.
only once did nurse bundle's self-possession threaten to fail her. it was on my repeated and urgent request to "have the clergyman to pray with me."
mrs. bundle, like most uneducated people, rather regarded the visitation of the sick by the parish clergyman as a sort of extreme unction or last sacrament. and to send for the parson seemed to her tantamount to dismissing the doctor and ringing the passing bell. my father was equally averse from the idea on other grounds. moreover, our old rector had gone, and the lately-appointed one was a stranger, and rather an eccentric stranger, by all accounts.
for my own part, i had a strong interest in the new rector. his christian name was the same as my own, which i felt to constitute a sort of connection; and the tales i had heard in the village of his peculiarities had woven a sort of ecclesiastical romance about him in my mind. he had come from some out-of-the-way parish in the west of england, where his people, being thoroughly used to his ways, took them as a matter of course. it was his scrupulous custom to conform as minutely as possible to the canons of the church, as well as to the rubrics of the prayer book, and this to the point of wearing shoes instead of boots. he was a learned man, a naturalist, and an antiquarian. his appearance was remarkable, his hair being prematurely white, and yet thick, his eyes grey and expressive, with thick dark eyebrows, which actually met above them. for the rest, he was tall, thin, and dressed in obedience to the[70] canons. i had been much interested in all that i had heard of him, and since my illness i had often thought of the unqualified note of praise i had heard sounded in his favour by more than one village matron, "he's beautiful in a sick-room." it was on one occasion when i heard this that i also heard that he was accustomed on entering the house to pronounce the appointed salutation, in the words of the prayer book, "peace be to this house, and to all that dwell in it." and so it came about that, when my importunity and anxiety on the subject had overcome the scruples of my father and nurse, and they had decided to let me have my way rather than increase my malady by fretting, the new rector came into my room, and my first eager question was, "did you say that—about peace, you know—when you came in?"
"i did," said the rector; and as he spoke one of his merits became obvious. he had a most pleasing voice.
"say it again!" i cried, petulantly.
"peace be to this house, and to all that dwell in it," he repeated slowly, and with slightly upraised hand.
"that's rubens and all," was my comment.
as i wished, the rector prayed by my bedside; and i think he must have been rather astonished by the fact that at points which struck me i rather groaned than said, "amen." the truth is, i had once happened to go into a cottage where our old rector was praying by the bed of a sick old man—a methodist—who groaned "amen" at certain points in a manner which greatly impressed me, and i now did likewise, in that imitativeness of childhood which had helped to lead me to the[71] fancy for surrounding my own sick bed with all the circumstances i had seen and heard of in such cases in the village. for this reason i had (to her hardly concealed distress) given nurse bundle, from time to time, directions as to my wishes in the event of my death. i remember especially, that i begged she would not fail to cover up all the furniture with white cloths, and to allow all my friends to come and see me in my coffin. thus also i groaned and said "amen"—"like a poor person"—at what i deemed suitable points, as the rector prayed.
he was not less wise in a sick room than mrs. bundle herself. he contrived to quieten instead of exciting me, and to the sound of his melodious voice reading in soothing monotone from my favourite book of the bible—the revelation of st. john the divine—i finally fell asleep.
when the inspired description of the new jerusalem ended, and my own dream began, i never knew. as i dreamed, it seemed a wonderful and beautiful vision, though all that i could ever remember of it in waking hours was the sheerest nonsense.
and this was the beginning of my acquaintance with the rev. reginald andrewes.