The Healing Season

by Ruth Axtell Morren

  Digsby nodded at the information and proceeded to ask him more questions.

  When they arrived at the dispensary, Mr. Russell motioned to the crowded sidewalk. “As you’ll notice, the area is teeming with children. Most have nowhere to go.

  “There is a growing problem of children left to fend for themselves in this city. More children are born to women unable or sometimes unwilling to take care of them. The foundling homes receive so many, and as far as I’m concerned, many of those are immediate death sentences to the infants left on their doorsteps.”

  “What do you mean?” Digsby asked sharply, as they made their way past the line of people waiting outside the dispensary.

  “It’s one way of curbing the population. Starve them, expose them to the elements, and few newborn infants will survive.”

  Eleanor felt sick at heart at the thought. How close her own daughter could have come to such an end.

  “Many philanthropists in the city give to these foundling homes,” Digsby argued.

  “But do they ever bother to see how they are run?”

  The banker fell silent, glancing at Eleanor. “Are you all right, my dear? You’re as pale as a bleached rag.”

  “Ye-es,” she replied faintly, wishing she could dispel the image of so many unwanted infants.

  “Are you sure?” Mr. Russell asked. “I have smelling salts inside.”

  She nodded, wanting only to get past the sick people crammed around the entrance. The surgeon held the door open for her as she clutched Digsby’s arm.

  They entered the crowded waiting room.

  “What do they do when you’re not available?” Digsby asked with a look of surprise around the room.

  “I have a partner, an apothecary, who is just as skilled as I in performing certain surgeries. We also have a couple of apprentices.”

  He directed himself to the crowd. “Excuse us, please. Make way for the lady.” He opened a passage for them to the examination rooms at the rear of the waiting area.

  “Good morning, Albert.” Mr. Russell nodded to his partner and to the apprentices.

  “Hello there, Ian. Done so soon at the hospital?”

  “I’ll go by later. I brought a few guests to see our work here.” He introduced them to the young apothecary-surgeon.

  “What is wrong with our patient here?” he asked Denton, with a nod to the man sitting at the examination table.

  “Mr. Jenkins has an ulcerated throat. It’s quite severe. He’s had it for three weeks now, haven’t you?”

  The man nodded without speaking.

  “What you need most,” the apothecary told him, “is bed rest. But as I know you are not able to follow this advice, I shall give you a prescription for a draft made of liquorice, marshmallow, and meadow sweet, three herbs to aid in reducing the inflammation. In the meantime, keep your throat well wrapped.”

  After he’d escorted the man out, Mr. Russell’s partner shook his head sadly. “Without proper rest and care, I don’t know how he can expect to get well.”

  “Why doesn’t he stay home, then?” Digsby asked.

  “Afraid he’ll lose his job,” Mr. Russell replied. “Jobs are scarce these days.”

  After he had answered Digsby’s questions concerning the number of patients and types of illnesses they most treated at the dispensary, Mr. Russell asked them if they wouldn’t like to accompany him on some of his rounds.

  Eleanor tried to gauge Digsby’s reaction. She sincerely hoped he’d been moved by all he’d witnessed so far to support the surgeon’s work.

  “Despite what you see here, many sick people don’t go anywhere to be treated,” Mr. Russell was saying to the banker. “Many can’t afford the fee. Although we accept anyone who comes to our door, there are many who are suspicious of doctors. They prefer to buy some remedy from an empiric hawking a tonic at the nearest corner.”

  Digsby agreed to convey the surgeon to the vicinity of the mission in the East End. The three of them returned to his carriage. They crossed the Thames and passed Great Fire Memorial, before turning down Gracechurch Street. Ian rode up with the coachman and instructed him. Eleanor glanced out the window as the coach entered a warren of narrow streets. The houses were crammed together, many leaning precariously outward over the street as if squeezed from the pressure of the buildings at each side.

  The appearance was all too depressingly familiar from her childhood.

  The carriage stopped frequently as Mr. Russell paid calls on the sick. Eleanor and Digsby followed him, trudging up dark, smelly staircases, picking their way past loiterers whose smudged, sullen faces stared at them. She edged closer to Digsby’s comforting bulk, her lacy handkerchief to her nostrils.

  Most of the patients were bedridden with coughs and congested lungs. Mr. Russell told those parents with sick children to bring them to the mission. Those with toothaches he sent to the dispensary.

  As they reemerged into the murky light of a narrow street, a woman in a calf-length skirt approached and clutched at Mr. Russell’s arm. “Give us a farthing, luv.”

  Eleanor stared at the woman’s face. Her skin was covered with ugly nodules and bumps. But the surgeon seemed not to notice. He rummaged in his pocket and brought out a few pennies. “There you go, Celia.”

  “You’re a good man.” She looked past him to Eleanor and Digsby. “Who’re the swells with you? Find yourself a lady at last, Doc? You deserve a good woman…” Her words were slurred and she turned away from Ian, weaving her way into a refuse-strewn alley.

  “What was wrong with her?” Eleanor came up close to him as they resumed walking.

  “The skin lesions and ulcers, you mean?”

  She nodded.

  “Secondary stage of syphilis.”

  “The pox!” She stepped back in horror.

  “She won’t come in for treatment, and I’m afraid it will soon be too late.”

  They walked in silence and arrived at a squalid flat, where he checked on a young boy who lay on the floor with a high fever. The dwelling was cold and only a thin blanket covered the child on his dirty pallet.

  Mr. Russell turned to Mr. Digsby. “This boy had only a runny nose last week,” he explained in a grave voice. “I’m going to take him to the mission. We’re not far from it. There’s clearly no heat in these rooms, and this child has no chance if he stays here.”

  “Feverish is he?”

  “Yes. I would ask your favor in allowing me to transport the child in your carriage.”

  He waited for Digsby’s assent.

  The man looked left and right, clearly nervous at the idea. “Isn’t it contagious?”

  “There is always a risk,” the surgeon answered. “I could go down and seek a hack. But it’s a very short ride to the mission. We were heading that way.”

  Sensing the urgency of the matter, Eleanor approached Digsby and cooed in her softest tones, “Come, Mr. Digsby, we’ll sit the child far from you, and air out the carriage afterward.”

  Leaving them to work it out, Mr. Russell crouched back down at the child’s side.

  “Will my boy be awright?”

  Ian looked up at the woman. “Do you have any other blankets or a cloak?” he asked the mother. The mother, a woman so emaciated her bones seemed to jut out from her skin, from her drawn cheeks to the knobby wrists protruding from the threadbare sleeves. Her black hair grew straight and stiff like a scarecrow’s hay stuffing.

  “Nothin’ I can spare. There’re the other young ones to think o’, you see.” She took the moth-eaten shawl from around her scrawny shoulders. “Here, take this. It’s all I have.”

  He pushed it back toward her. “No, keep your shawl. I’ll wrap the child with what we have.”

  Eleanor’s heart squeezed painfully. “I’m sure there’s a carriage blanket down below,” she said. “Let me fetch it.” Before Digsby could object, she hurried from the room.

  In a few minutes she was back, panting from her quick climb up and down the stairs.

&nb
sp; “Thank you,” Mr. Russell told her with a grateful smile. She felt her cheeks grow warm at his regard. He knelt back down by the boy, whom Eleanor estimated to be between seven and eight years old. After wrapping him in his own blanket, the surgeon spread out the much thicker, woolen throw she had brought up. He laid the child in this and wrapped him up like a cocoon.

  The next instant he lifted up the bundle and turned to Digsby. “Well?”

  “Come along,” the older man said, as if resigned to his fate. “The sooner we get him out of this cold, the better.”

  The boy’s mother clutched Mr. Russell’s arm. “Take care o’ him, Doctor. I can’t pay ye anything.”

  “Don’t worry yourself about it. I’m taking him to a Methodist mission nearby.” He gave her the directions, and they descended back to the street.

  Mr. Russell laid the boy on the coach seat. Digsby sat as far from him as he could on the opposite side of the roomy vehicle. Eleanor stroked the boy’s hot forehead. Poor lamb. He reminded her of Sarah a scant few weeks ago.

  In a few minutes they arrived at the mission. Eleanor followed Mr. Russell, who carried the child directly to the infirmary, where a nurse came up to them immediately.

  “A wee sick one?” she asked. “Come along, then, we have an empty bed over here.

  “Oh, dear me, let’s get these filthy things off him. I’ll fetch a clean nightshirt.”

  Another woman came to assist, and they soon had the boy in a warm bed.

  Mr. Russell turned to the banker when they stood once more in the corridor of the mission. “Thank you, Mr. Digsby.”

  He grunted. “If I come down with anything, I hope you’ll be by to treat me.”

  The surgeon grinned. “Just send someone to fetch me. I’ll come any time of the day or night.”

  “Don’t worry yourself, Mr. Digsby,” Eleanor reassured him, “Mr. Russell is very good at treating fevers.”

  He harrumphed and led them back out to his awaiting carriage, grumbling about airing it out and burning the blanket.

  Mr. Russell turned to Eleanor with a look of concern. “We’re in the heart of Whitechapel. Do you have the stamina to go on a few more visits in the neighborhood?”

  She realized how useful she’d felt in the past few moments. “Only if you’ll allow us to take you someplace for dinner afterward. I think you’ll have earned a good meal by then.”

  “This from the lady who faints from self-starvation?”

  She returned his smile with a lighthearted laugh. “I have no performance tonight. I can eat like a horse.”

  He was looking at her so cordially she felt herself blush. She, who was so used to manipulating men’s emotions while keeping her own under strict control, found herself time and again in Mr. Russell’s company giving way to reactions and feelings she had no command of.

  Where would it lead? She could see no simple ending to the script.

  Chapter Ten

  Henry did nothing but rave about Mrs. Neville for the rest of the week. He told Ian they must take her everywhere to promote the idea of a children’s hospital.

  After he’d gone to see The Spectre for a second time, he said to Ian, “You must go. Mrs. Neville is adorable as the fainthearted Leporello. The audience is wild about her. They predict the show will run over a hundred days.”

  Ian ignored his friend, but when he left the dispensary, he was once again tempted to turn his footsteps toward the theater. The same argument that had waged in his mind since the party at Somerset House began again.

  He owed Mrs. Neville something for what she had done that evening. Digsby’s visit had proven invaluable. He’d corroborated everything Ian had said during his talk at the gentlemen’s club. The men were interested in a constructive plan to stem the rising tide of illness and debauchery in the city. Riots were on the rise among both mill workers and unemployed. They vilified the Prince Regent, who was almost afraid to ride his carriage in the streets.

  After Ian’s talk, another gentleman approached him saying he’d read a paper Ian had published on a surgery technique. The man had then invited him to address the Royal Society on the subject. This was the most prestigious gathering of scientists, philanthropists and intellectuals of the day.

  All this because Mrs. Neville had introduced him to Digsby. The least Ian could do was go see her in her new show. He owed her that much. It was such an insignificant action, but one that would best demonstrate his gratitude. Why his reluctance?

  Because the rational part of him knew he mustn’t keep seeing her. The more he did, the more drawn he felt to her. It had gone beyond her beauty, he realized. He had seen a genuine distress and caring in her when she’d visited the sick. He could no longer dismiss her as a mere actress concerned only with rising to fame in her narrow world.

  He had heard from Althea that Mrs. Neville had been visiting the mission a few mornings a week. Sometimes it seemed he couldn’t escape her name. Like a spider’s thread, the more he sought to evade it, the more entangled he became. He would go, he finally resolved. He’d go and be done with it! At least it would silence Henry for a few days.

  The decision made, Ian turned the corner toward the Royal Circus. When he arrived, the entrance was once again filled with loitering prostitutes and merchants peddling food, flower girls selling their bouquets, and ticket sellers announcing the plays.

  “Five shillings a box, two shillings the pit! Sellout crowd! See Mr. Moreland as Don Giovanni, Mrs. Neville as Leporello! Come and get your ticket before they sell out.”

  Ian climbed the steps to the lobby with a heavy heart, feeling dragged to his destruction. Why had he no strength of will when it came to the actress? This was madness, he told himself as he purchased a box seat and made his way to his place.

  The orchestra began to play and soon the actors appeared on the stage from the side doors. Ian put on his spectacles and sat back, prepared for a piece he would certainly disapprove of.

  The crowd loved the bawdy lyrics, hooting and calling out. Mrs. Neville winked at them several times as she delivered her lines. She strutted around the stage in her long coat and knee breeches and powdered wig.

  He had to admire her talent. Her voice wasn’t dainty or refined; it was warm and lusty.

  How had God given to one so much talent to squander among such a lowly audience—men shouting their lewd remarks, women talking and laughing among themselves whenever they wished?

  The longer he watched her perform, the more his admiration grew. He recalled what she had come out of and her fight to rise above her beginnings. She’d achieved much in her young life. These realizations only deepened his sorrow that she could never be the one for him.

  Mrs. Neville reached one end of the stage and swiveled about it, her hands on her hips, belting out a song. Ian remembered the sensation of standing on the stage. How it must feel tonight with a crowd applauding her.

  She took a step forward in the middle of a syllable, and the next second she disappeared.

  Ian leaned forward, wondering for a second at this trick. He remembered the trapdoors on the floor. Why would they have her go down one now? A bloodcurdling scream rent the air, eerily echoing from the chamber below.

  Ian leaped to his feet before anyone could react and ran out to find a way onstage. That had been no act. His heart pounded as he jerked open the stage door. Pandemonium broke out, actors shouting and running to the open trapdoor, their panic spreading to the audience.

  Ian pushed his way through actors and audience members who had managed to climb onto the stage. He reached the gaping trapdoor and knelt at its edge. “How far does it descend?” he asked an actor beside him.

  “About ten feet, but there’s all kinds of equipment down there she could have fallen on,” the man answered in fear.

  “Get some light! Someone get some light!” Ian shouted.

  Soon a stagehand was shining a lantern down below.

  Ian’s heart constricted seeing Eleanor lying deadly still, her body spla
yed like a rag doll’s. A large metal contraption of wheels and pulleys sat right below the trapdoor. It was clear she must have hit that before falling onto the floor to one side.

  “Is she dead?”

  “She doesn’t look like she’s breathing to me.”

  “She must’ve broke her skull falling on that machinery.”

  Ian ignored their cries and rushed to the back of the stage, grabbing a stagehand who was just entering. “Show me how to get down there. She needs medical attention. Hurry, man! I’m a doctor.”

  At that, the man’s eyes widened and he came to life. “This way. There’s a staircase at the rear. Wait, we’ll need a light.” He grabbed a candle from a wall sconce and continued to the back of the stage, behind the scenic backdrops.

  They ran down the stairs, their shoes clattering against the steps. It seemed an eternity before they reached Eleanor.

  Ian knelt beside her and immediately felt for her pulse.

  “Is she alive? Is she breathing?” came the shouts from above their heads.

  As soon as he heard the steady throbbing of her vein, Ian bowed his head. Thank You, Lord.

  “Yes, she’s alive,” he told the stagehand. He proceeded to check her for any broken bones.

  Her eyelids fluttered open. “Where—what happened?” Her voice sounded faint. As she took a breath, she gasped in pain.

  “Where does it hurt?”

  “My…side,” she whispered, making a faint motion with her hand but flinching as she moved. “Oh…it even hurts…to bre…athe…”

  As she moaned softly, he opened the heavy jacket she wore and touched her rib cage gingerly.

  She cringed when he touched the middle sternal ribs. “It hurts awfully.”

  “Do you remember what happened?” he asked as he continued his probing, his fingers running along each ridge, his eyes flicking back and forth from her torso to her face, watching for the least reaction.

  “I turned…and the next thing I knew…I was falling into the dark. I smashed into something…I don’t remember anything more until now.”