When they were about nine months old, my birds began to get very quarrelsome, damaging each other by fighting. From my bed I heard trouble in the cage but I could not go to them. I had now been in the Sanatorium for over a year. I was losing, not gaining. At last, to my dismay, I found that all my contemporaries were either dead or had gone home to continue the outdoor treatment there. A few, a very few, were cured.
The big Scotch house-doctor who was at the San when I came had been succeeded by a little English woman doctor of whom I was very fond. Most of the old nurses, too, were gone, new ones had come.
One day the London doctor introduced me to a visiting physician she had brought down with her for the week-end.
She said of me, “This is the San’s old-timer.” Shame swept me as she said, “Sixteen months, isn’t it, Mammy?” She turned to the visitor, explaining, “She’s Mammy to every bird in the neighbourhood, raising nestlings to take back to Canada where they have few songsters.”
Canada! Why, I was no nearer the voyage than I had been sixteen months back. I knew by every one’s gentleness to me, by the loving, evasive letters I received from old patients, it was not expected I would ever get back to Canada.
I was troubled about my birds. The old friends, who had always been willing to lend a hand with them when I was laid up, were gone—newcomers were indifferent. They did not know the birds, did not know me. The birds themselves were increasingly quarrelsome. The whole situation bothered, worried me. I pondered, unhappy.
At last the doctor had written to my people in Canada. It was decided to try a severe, more or less experimental, course of treatment. A special nurse was brought down from London, a masseuse, callous, inhuman, whom I hated. The treatment consisted of a great deal of massage, a great deal of electricity and very heavy feeding. This nurse delighted in telling horrible stories, stories of deformities and of operations while she worked over me. Her favourite story was of a nephew of hers, born without a nose. One hole in the middle of his face served as both nose and mouth; it sickened me. I appealed to the doctor who forbade nurse talking to me during the long hours of massage. This angered the woman; she turned mean to me.
The day before treatment started I said to the little house-doctor whom I was fond of, “What about my birds?”
The treatment was to last from six to eight weeks. Doctor was silent. I went silent too.
I asked, “May I get up for half an hour today?”
“You are too weak, Mammy.”
“There is something I must attend to before treatment starts.”
“Your nurse will do anything.”
“This thing only I can do.”
She gave a humouring consent. I knew she thought it made little difference. Her eyes filled; she was a dear woman.
In the quiet of the rest hour, when nobody was about, I slipped from my room, out through a side door in the corridor, into the yard where my birdcage stood. The birds heard my stick, my voice—they shrieked delightedly. I caught them every one, put them into a box which I took back into my bedroom.
Panting heavily I rang my bell, “Send doctor!”
Doctor came hurrying.
“Chloroform my birds.”
“Oh, Mammy! Why not free them?”
“I love them too much! Village boys would trap the tame things—slow starvation on a diet of soaked bread and earth worms! Please, doctor! I’ve thought it all out.”
She did what I asked.
The next day I was moved into a quiet, spacious room—treatment under the new nurse began. She would allow no one to come into the room but the doctor. I was starved on skim milk, till they had brought me as low as they dared. Gradually they changed starvation to stuffing, beating the food into my system with massage, massage, electricity—four hours of it each day. The nurse was bony-fingered, there was no sympathy in her touch; every rub of her hand antagonized me. The electricity sent me nearly mad. I was not allowed to read, to talk, to think.
By degrees I gained a little strength but my nerves and spirit were in a jangle. By and by I got so that I did not want to do anything, to see anybody, and I hated the nurse. I had two months of this dreadful treatment—eighteen months in the East Anglia Sanatorium all told! Then the doctor said, “Now we will try letting you go back to work.”
Work! I had lost all desire to work now. When first ill I used to ask, “When can I get back to work, when can I get back to work?” continually and they had answered, “When you have ceased wanting to.” I suppose they had got me in that place now—thought they had killed eagerness and ambition out of me.
Nurse took me up to London. I spent a wretched day or two in the house of the “Big One”. At the time she was in a burst of exhilaration because she had been summoned to attend the wife of the Dean of St. Paul’s. If it was not Lady this or Lord that, it was the Very Reverend Dean. Stretching after Big Pots, yearning to hang on to the skirts of titled, of “worthwhile” people—English worship of aristocracy! Oh, I loathed it! I left the doctor’s house and went down to Bushey, forbidden ever to attempt working in London again.
The Bushey Studios were closed; classes would not re-open for two weeks. I took rooms in the village, disheartened, miserable, broken, crying, always crying, couldn’t stop.
The San’s little house-doctor took a long, roundabout, cross-country journey from the San to Bushey specially to see me. I cried through her entire visit. She was deeply distressed at my condition, and I was shamed.
Through my tears and a pouring rain, I watched her wash down Bushey High Street. Yet doctor’s parting words had done me vast good. This is what they were,—“I realize how hard it is after eighteen months of absolute inertness to find yourself again adrift, nobody, nothing, weak as a cat! I am proud of the fight you are putting up.” After she had gone she ran back up the steps again to take me in her arms, hold me a moment tight, tight, say again, “I am proud of you!”
Oh how could she be proud of such a bitter-hearted, sloppy old coward? In my room she saw evidence of trying to pick up life’s threads again. She guessed the struggle. I wished I had not cried all the time she was there! I’d make her laugh yet. “I’ll make Little Doctor and all of them laugh!” I vowed and, running to my trunk, dug up a sketch book and fell to work.
Two weeks I laboured incessantly over a satire on the San, and on the special treatment. I wrote long doggerel verses and illustrated them by some thirty sketches in colour, steadily crying the while. The paper was all blotched with tears. I just ignored the stupid tears. The skit was funny—really funny; I bound the pages together, posted them off to Little Doctor—waited—.
Promptly her answer came.
“Bravo! How the staff roared!—all the staff but matron and me, we knew its price.”
The world was upside down! The ones I had aimed to make laugh cried. I loved doctor’s and matron’s tears all the same and, believe it or not, their tears dried mine.
I went back to Mr. Whiteley’s studio and slowly got into work again. It was not easy. I was weak in body, bitter in spirit. In about three months I was to be allowed to travel.
Five years and a half in London! What had I to show for it but struggle, just struggle which doesn’t show, or does it, in the long run?
Mrs. Radcliffe, Mrs. Denny, Mildred had all been down to the San, from time to time, to visit me. Just now I could not bear Mrs. Radcliffe’s bracing, Mrs. Denny’s religion, Mrs. Compton’s and Mildred’s love. No, my pride could not face them, not just now. Without good-byes, I slipped through London, straight to Liverpool. Good-bye to my high hopes for work, to my beautiful birds, to my youngness! Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye—surely enough good-byes. Yet my ungracious creeping past those in London who were so kind to me has always left deep down in me a sore feeling of shame and cowardice.
I did not know the land which haze was swallowing was Ireland. I only knew I was glad to be leaving the Old World.
“Sure, it’s Ireland is your home, too?” an Irish voice said at my side. I looked into the blue eyes of an Irish boy, homesick already.
“Canada is my home,” I replied.
He faded into the crowd. I never saw but I thought often again of that kind boy who took for granted that my sadness was homesickness, same as his. Sad I was about my failures, but deep down my heart sang: I was returning to Canada.
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