“I HAVE prayed so earnestly and waited so long, and it seems all in vain — and yet, I know that God does hear and answer prayer.”
This was the sentence in her mother’s letter to which Nurse Ernton turned back when she had finished it, and read it over again.
“I don’t believe He does,” she said to herself.
Poor Nurse Ernton! She had been brought up to believe in the power of prayer, and if she had looked back honestly into her past life, she could have pointed to many an answered prayer of her own, but the sunny trust of her childhood had become clouded by the mists of unbelief. She had not lost her faith in God as the Creator and Ruler of the universe, but she had lost her faith in Him as the Hearer and Answerer of prayer. She looked at the world’s mysteries of trouble and anguish, disappointment and death; she looked at her own home, over which, unlifted as it seemed by earnest prayer, hung one dark shadow which had clouded its light for years, and all earth’s problems seemed to stand deserted and alone in a dim world of shadows.
It was a pleasant room in which she was seated at breakfast; roses peeped in through the open window and scented the air with their delicate fragrance; outside, bathed in the bright June sunshine, stretched the green lawn and well-kept grounds of the Grange gardens, and between the rose-flecked boughs of the pink may, and the laburnum trees with their golden blossoms, might be seen the thatched roofs of the cottages and gray ivy-mantled tower of the little village Church. But the scent seemed to die out of the roses, and the light out of the sky as she repeated defiantly: “I don’t believe He hears and answers prayer”; and it was with a sad face and a heavy heart she finished he breakfast.
Then she laid the letter aside with a determined air, and putting on her usual cheerful expression — for to look bright, however downhearted she might feel was, she had been taught, one of the first duties of a nurse. She went out of the room and across the passage to her patient.
He lay in bed, a man hardly beyond the prime of life, with soft brown hair and beard, and gentle, steadfast eyes; he had been hopelessly ill ever since the beginning of the year, but within the last few days, to the surprise of both doctor and nurse, he had rallied wonderfully.
“I have had such a good night, Nurse, and am feeling so much better this morning,” he said, smiling at her as she entered. “I really believe I shall be able to get as far as Bluebell Copse, and hear the nightingale again after all.”
“I hope so,” she answered cheerfully, as she smoothed his pillow and re-arranged the bedclothes. “You have a great fancy to hear the nightingale, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have,” he replied; “I should like to hear one once more. I have even prayed that I might, I want to so much,” he added.
Then he went on dreamily after a little pause. “I have never prayed earnestly for anything in all my life but God has given it to me sooner or later — He is very good.”
And as he lay there, Nurse Ernton “saw his face as it had been the face of an angel,” and the words of doubt and despair died away on her lips, and into her heart came a fervent desire that she could regain the happy trust of childhood which this man had kept unshaken through all the troubles and trials of a life nearly twice as long as her own.
The remembrance of that peaceful face and of those simple words of unwavering faith, soothed her unconsciously as she went about her work that morning.” ‘Sooner or later,’ he said,” she thought; “perhaps after all, someday God will answer mother’s prayer.”
The doctor came for his usual daily visit, and the sick man told him of his fancy, and said how much stronger he was feeling; but when he asked how soon he thought he would be able to go out, the doctor evaded the question, saying cheerily, he must wait a day or two longer, and then they would see about it.
When he left, Nurse Ernton followed him from the room, as she always did, to receive her orders, and then she ventured to ask if he thought their patient would be able to carry out his desire.
He shook his head. “I wish he might,” he answered, “but it is absolutely impossible.”
“ ‘Absolutely impossible,’ and God is Almighty — so much for the power of prayer!” she said to herself bitterly as she returned to the sick room.
Half an hour later she had to go to the kitchen to see about a special preparation of beef tea, which she always made herself. Cook was busy making pastry, but as she rolled and buttered and rolled again, her tongue went as fast as her fingers.
“Master’s better to-day, Nurse! ‘e looks much more like ‘is self; when I went in with ‘is broth this morning I was quite pleased to see ‘im. ‘You’re looking more like yourself, sir,’ sez I. Yes,’ sez he, I’m ever so much better. In a day or two I ‘ope, please God, to get out o’ doors, and ‘ear the nightingale a-singing.’ I ‘ope so too, sir,’ sez I. Master’s powerful set on ‘caring them nightingales. I don’t think much of their singing myself. Give me a canary that’ll sing all day long and be something to look at, too; not a little brown bird that’s nothing to look at if you do see it, and that only sings at night when folks ought to be in bed and asleep. But there, we can’t all think alike, and a good job, too. Why if everyone liked the same thing, the dishes wouldn’t ever go round, as I sec to Baker sometimes. My word, now, there’s a knock at the door, and me up to me elbows in flour! Do, Nurse, go and see who it is, there’s a good soul.”
Nurse, who, sick at heart, had been listening with an occasional murmur of assent to cook’s uninterrupted chatter, did as she was asked and found an overgrown, ragged-looking lad of fourteen or fifteen with a bunch of bee orchids in his rough, dirty fingers. He held them out to her in a shamefaced fashion, saying, “For master, ‘e likes ‘em.”
“Thank you! he will be very pleased with them, he is so fond of flowers,” she said as she took them, took them fairly from his hand, with no careful avoidance of contact. The boy noticed it, and instead of making off at once, as usual, stopped to ask gruffly, “Be ‘e mortal bad?”
“He is rather better today, thank you,” she answered gently. “Who shall I say brought him the flowers?”
But he had gone off by this time with slouching walk and hanging head, so she went back to the kitchen to ask there.
“Who is ‘e? Why, Idle Dick, that’s who ‘e is, and the plague of the whole parish, that’s what ‘e is,” cook answered energetically as she glanced at the retreating figure. “But he’ll do anythink for master,” she added, “I’ll say that much for ‘im. But there, anyone would; there isn’t a soul in the village but what would do anythink for ‘im.”
Nurse Ernton went back to the sick room, her whole soul full of bitterness. Any one of these people who knew the dying man, even the worst of them, would do anything for him, but the God he had served so faithfully and loved so fervently would not grant him this one last desire, this little thing on which he had set his heart. That night she fell asleep, when she did sleep, with the words ringing in her brain and keeping time with the tick of the clock beside her — “God does not hear and answer prayer — doeot-does-not-does-not.”
The sick man was not so well the next day; the unexpected accession of strength died away, leaving him weaker than before, and an attack of faintness came over him in the afternoon which the nurse’s practiced eye told her was the beginning of the end.
The sun set, the shadows deepened; across the flower-starred lawn came the scented evening breeze, and the room was very still. Suddenly, through the open window came the flash of wings, and a little brown bird, flying in, perched on the rails at the foot of the bed and began to sing.
Not a breath disturbed it; the dying man lay still and listened, smiling; his wife sat close beside him, and the nurse stood near in silence, while the bird poured out its soul in pure, plaintive, rich-toned snatches of melody — the unrivalled sweetness of the nightingale’s song. Tears stole down Nurse Ernton’s cheeks as she listened, and the bitterness of unbelief melted out of her heart; what she heard was more than a nightingale’s song — it was the heavenly music of an answered prayer, a pledge that God, the Almighty, the All-loving, hears, and answers the prayers of the children of men — sooner or later. She can wait now.
E. A. M.