God's Children

by Mabli Roberts

  ‘What can be so important that it keeps her from a matter that I know to be dear to her kind heart?’ I asked her attaché, but he had no answer for me beyond that she would come just as soon as she could.

  ‘Pardonnez-moi, Madame Marsden,’ a gentlemen hailed me and continued to address me in French. I followed his thread with some difficulty, so was relieved when he agreed to speak English so that I might better understand him. ‘I was saying,’ he explained, ‘that it is a curious thing, how you, a woman, succeeded not only in traversing the wild regions of our nation but also in finding the lepers who are so few and so elusive.’

  ‘I assure you, sir, they may be far from civilisation, but sadly they are far from being few.’

  ‘Oh? And how many of these wretched folk did you come upon?’

  ‘They totalled upwards of sixty, and you must comprehend that this is only a small proportion of the true number.’

  ‘How can you be certain? After all, your leper hunt was widely known, would not all of these misfortunates have rushed to see you? Surely they would have been determined to tell you of their sorry situation the better to obtain new homes and a good living from your charitable supporters.’

  ‘You must appreciate that a leper cannot, by the very nature of his afflictions, rush anywhere, for his deformed and painful limbs or his failing eyesight would prevent him from doing so however earnestly he wished it.’

  The man, who appearance was that of one given to overindulgence, with a complexion that suggested gout lay in wait for him, raised his eyebrows. ‘Perhaps, Madam Nurse, you have fallen victim to the tall tales people of those regions like to tell. A woman may take into her head romantic imaginings of suffering, and see herself in the role of heroine in the story she conjures.’

  There was a little laughter from his companions at this suggestion, and I became aware that several guests were now listening to our conversation.

  ‘I assure you, sir, that I am not such a woman as is given to the fanciful dreams you describe. I base my opinions on what I found in Siberia. On what I saw there. On the very real suffering I witnessed. On the terrible conditions in which the lepers now exist.’

  A woman stepped forward. ‘Did you encounter these people at close quarters, Madame Marsden?’ she asked.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And yet here you stand, not scarred by the terrible freezing weather, nor infected with the dread disease, nor indeed bearing any single mark upon you that might suggest you have endured all you describe in the course of your travels.’

  To my astonishment, this observation was met with a murmur of assent and some nodding from the little group around us.

  ‘It was my good fortune to escape injury,’ I said. ‘As for infection, I am a nurse of many years’ experience and am perfectly capable of taking all measures necessary in order to protect myself.’

  ‘There are some,’ came a voice from the serried ranks, ‘who say you scarce stepped from your fur-lined sleigh, but instead sent others to inspect these festering wretches, keeping yourself at a safe remove.’

  ‘Who says that?’ I demanded. ‘Let them show themselves, and I will tell them as I tell you, I sought out those to whom I had travelled thousands of miles to offer God’s help and that of the good people of Russia. I went among the lepers fearlessly, for I was about God’s work. They received me with tears and with joy, for they knew at last that they were not forgotten. Shame on anyone who would snatch from those poor innocents the chance that their suffering might be lessened.’

  The first speaker, who now puffed out his stout chest, full of importance at having started this slanderous debate, had more to say. ‘It would seem, however, that the lepers still languish in the snow, while you enjoy the splendour of the Winter Palace, and the hospitality of the Her Majesty the Empress. One might conclude that whatever good Nurse Marsden has done the lepers, they have certainly done her no harm at all!’

  At this there was an outburst of laughter. It was too much to stand with good grace!

  ‘The Tsarina is my most stalwart supporter. She will vouch for me! She will speak of my integrity.’

  ‘Perhaps she might,’ my tormentor continued. ‘And yet, strangely, the Empress is not at your side. Why is that, d’you suppose?’

  At this more laughter! As I looked about me faces loomed out of the crowd, jeering and vulgar, poking fun, amusing themselves at my expense, enjoying the slander that was being presented them. I tried to insist on what was truth and what was not, but there was such a clamour by now, and the orchestra had struck up again, and I could not make my voice heard. And still the Tsarina was not to be found. Still she stayed away.

  ‘I simply do not see why there was such urgency,’ Nell stomped ahead of me into the hotel room. ‘Surely you could have waited until tomorrow to go to the newspapers?’

  I should have been more understanding of her disappointment, perhaps, but the hour was very late, and I was exhausted from the effort of dashing around Paris and cajoling recalcitrant newspaper people into cooperation. ‘There would be little point in my going to the trouble of obtaining an interview with Monsieur Pasteur were nobody to hear of it. News grows old with startling rapidity, Nell. It could not wait.’

  ‘It seems nothing ever can,’ she said petulantly, striding up and down the room in the most provoking manner. ‘Nothing and nobody except me, who is always to wait while more important things demand your time and attention. Which is to say everything.’

  ‘You are being ridiculous,’ I told her, removing my hat and dropping it upon the bed. The lamps in the room were particularly bright and a fierce headache had taken hold of me. I rubbed my eyes for a moment. ‘There will be plenty of time for sightseeing tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘Until, no doubt, some other pressing business arises.’

  ‘Why must you take this tone? When we planned our tour of France and Germany to raise funds you knew that my mission would be the main focus of our time here. This was never to be a pleasure trip.’

  ‘I know that when you persuaded me to pay for all the railway tickets and hotels and such like I thought it not unreasonable to expect that we might also enjoy travelling together.’

  ‘And you are not enjoying it, evidently.’

  ‘Do you really care so little about me?’

  ‘Nell, I am too tired to argue with you. I have a headache…’

  ‘There are times I am at a loss to know how to win back your affection!’ She was becoming extremely distressed, weeping as she spoke now, gesticulating and pacing faster and faster.

  ‘You have never for one minute lost my affection!’

  Suddenly she strode over to me and thrust her face close to mine, her eyes wild with a startling, pent up fury that had at last burst forth. ‘Must I compete with the whole of Europe now as well as your precious lepers?’ she shouted. ‘It would appear I am nothing more to you than a source of funds for your grand plans. How are we to pay for all this gadding about? Nell shall pay! How will we dine, where will we sleep? Do not concern yourself, for Nell shall pay for it all! What am I buying with all this money? A few scraps of your time? Perhaps you do not care for me at all, but only my money, which will not last for many more weeks, given the rate at which it must be spent in the name of your cause!’

  ‘You must not say such things!’

  ‘I say what is evident to everyone else, what my friends have been telling me for months, but I would not listen. That I am nothing more than an income for the pious Kate Marsden, who will not stop even at prostituting herself to a silly, lonely widow in her desire to find fame in her great leper hunt!

  Something inside me gave way. I acted not with thought, but from deep hurt at her words. I cannot excuse my action, I can only explain that it arose from an instant of heartbreak, so that I do not recall raising my hand. I remember all too well, however, the feel of her cheek as I struck her, the curiously slow manner of her falling, and the terrible sound of her face hitting the dressing table as she fe
ll.

  I remember the snow was red. As I turned my face to the west – for what? A glimpse of home? – the setting sun leached its colour into the thirsty snow. Ada commented upon it, remarking on the richness of the hue. She found it rather charming. I did not. It made me think of pain. Of the suffering of those I travelled to help. Of Christ’s blood spilled for us. It was as if that scarlet ice, that crimson stretch of frigid earth, held within it all the agonies of mankind.

  ‘Who is that? Who’s there?’ My voice sounds horribly feeble. I hardly recognise it as my own. I should not be alive still, lingering in this hospital bed, waiting for God to take me to Him. I have lived too long. I have no future, only a long and distant past. My present is peopled with ghosts. So many of my brothers and sisters died young, and yet I had the strength to cross the wilderness and live on to old age. I have been of no use to anyone for many years now, existing on the charity of others. Why am I still here? And who is it who has come to me now? ‘Show yourself,’ I say as firmly as I am able, which is to say not at all. ‘Come nearer so that I might see you.’

  A figure moves in the corner of the room. The light is low, it is evening, I think, and there are no lights lit in here. All the illumination there is comes from the twilight through the window, and the tawny rectangle of light falling from the corridor through the open door. Into this patch of warmth steps a woman. I struggle to sit up a little and frown in an effort to make my eyes work better. I cannot alter my position greatly, as my stroke-afflicted body no longer responds to orders from my clumsy brain in the way that it ought to. My left side will not move at all now. I peer at the person who now stands at the foot of my bed.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I ask again, my old woman’s voice rasping across the space between us.

  I am answered with a question. ‘Don’t you know me Kate? Have you forgotten me entirely?’

  The voice is familiar. Yes. I know it! ‘Jessy? Is that you, Jessy?’

  She remains too distant for me to see clearly, her face still turned to the shadows.

  ‘I waited for you to come to me for such a long time. But you never came.’

  ‘You were in India. I couldn’t go there. I had to go to Russia.’

  ‘You said you would come. You promised we would be together in India. That was why I went ahead.’ She still has the childlike whine to her voice, even after all this time. I recall hearing it when she objected to my spending time with Nell. I recall hearing it when I could not go with her as we had planned.

  ‘I couldn’t follow, Jessy. I wanted to, but there wasn’t enough money…’

  ‘There was never enough money.’

  ‘And then I heard of the lepers in Siberia, and of the herb that grew there. Their need was so very great, Jessy, and if there was the slightest chance of a cure… How could I not go?’

  ‘You were chasing a fairy tale. There was no cure. There is no cure still.’

  ‘I had to find out for myself. I had to try.’

  She moves a little closer, and now I can see she is wearing her nurse’s uniform. The one she took with her to India. But it is filthy, covered in blood and stains and terrible things. And now I can see that her hair hangs loose and wild about her shoulders. I become aware of a foul smell, rank and bitter. I know it well. It is the smell of disease. It is the stink of death.

  ‘I waited there for you,’ she says, stepping forwards and turning so that at last I can see her face.

  ‘Oh! Poor Jessy!’

  ‘You never came. You left me there sick and frightened. I died alone, Kate. All those miles from home because of you, and I died alone.’

  When the scandal took hold, like a beast that grips its prey and will not release it until it is limp and dead, I was in America. That scandal, those lies, those half-truths and calumnies, they chased me around the globe, snapping at my heel no matter how far or how fast I travelled. I was assailed from all quarters – the newspapers in New Zealand, The Times in London, any number of American papers. It was quite astonishing how much harm can be done, how far the reach, of a handful of determined people. I tried my best to answer the accusations when I could. I published my own letters in what papers would take them. I defended my name where I could, even bringing my own law suit to fight for my reputation. All came to nothing, however, for once such slanders are spoken and heard, once such libels are written and read, they are known, and they can never be unknown. People turned against me, people whom I had loved and revered. The hardest of these losses to bear was not, after all, my darling Nell. No, the deepest hurt I felt, I believe, was when the Tsarina spurned me. I was no longer welcome at the Russian royal court. I was told she said of me, ‘Let not that woman ever set foot in Russia again!’ What poison must have been whispered in her ear for such a woman as Maria Feodorovna to turn her back on someone she had supported once so wholeheartedly. If only I had been allowed to see her, to speak with her, one more time, I could have made her understand. I am certain of it.

  This particular stage was well lit and helpfully low, which was all the better for displaying the model of the Lepers’ Hospital. I was singularly pleased with the way it had turned out. I had found an architect who had employed a skilled craftsman to construct the model for me, perfectly to scale, painted and even planted with artificial trees and flower beds. It was a perfect representation of how the finished hospital and surrounding buildings would look, and it was an invaluable aid to my talks during my fundraising tour. My talks in England upon my return home had been well received and well attended, and had garnered positive words from reporters in the newspapers. Likewise, there had been a deal of interest upon my arrival in America, and my events there had attracted attention in every city I visited. I had permitted myself the hope that the hospital would indeed come into being, and that my fundraising efforts would continue apace across the country.

  That was before I encountered Isabel Hapgood.

  The venue in New York was filled to capacity, and I had spent the opening moments of my speech outlining my plans for the hospital, and explaining how the money would be used. I had then gone on to try, in my inadequate way, to tell of the dire circumstances in which the lepers lived. I encouraged questions from the floor throughout my talks, and at this point a young woman in the centre of the auditorium raised her hand and then got to her feet. Her own question was harmless enough, and was one I expected to have put to me each time I spoke.

  ‘Miss Marsden, I wonder could you tell us something of the details of the disease? What exactly are the symptoms?’

  I recall being surprised, in the early months of my tours, that this query was always made. Were people attending merely for the sensational aspects of the suffering that the lepers endured? Was I providing nothing more than some manner of travelling sideshow that would have been more profitable had I dragged with me the most hideously deformed patient I could find? I chose not to believe this was the case, rather I felt that people came to hear of the lepers because they were at heart good Christians who wished to do what they could to relieve the suffering of the poorest of God’s children. It was only fitting that they be given all the facts before being asked to part with their money. However, I had developed a pragmatism that I am certain served both me and my cause well. When writing my account of my journey across the wilderness I had kept in mind this desire to vicariously experience danger and horror. Including what some might see as almost overwhelming details was necessary in order to pique people’s curiosity and to move them, I hoped, so that they might feel inclined to contribute financially to the building of the hospital.

  ‘The disease involves a dying off of the nerves at the body’s extremities – fingers, toes, nose – so that the afflicted person loses sensation in these areas,’ I explained. ‘Pain is the body’s defence against injury; without it we are unable to register the effects of, say, a contusion, or a burn. Keep in mind that without sensation a person becomes clumsy, so that he may cut his hand whilst preparing food without noticing he
has done so. The resultant wound is not treated properly, does not heal well, and becomes infected. These constant infections break down the general health of the patient. Added to this is the gradual atrophying – the dying off – of the affected areas. This is why typically a person who has been suffering from the disease will lose fingers and toes, sometimes whole hands and feet.’ There were murmurs throughout the audience. ‘I have seen lepers with no feet at all, forced to hobble on decaying ankle stumps, handless, with faces disfigured terribly.’ There were further gasps. I pressed on, as I knew I must. ‘The disease often affects the eyes, causing painful sores and inflammation which in many instances leads to blindness, which in turn worsens the sufferer’s clumsiness, confounding the initial problem with the limbs. Another common factor are the lesions, which can appear on any part of the body. Indeed, these are often the first indication that a person has the disease. Although progress of many of the symptoms is mostly slow, these ugly, rough lumps and scaly patches can multiply with alarming rapidity, so that faces are entirely covered. They can, indeed, give the appearance of scales, which is where the disease found its name, from the Greek lepra, which means “scaly”.’

  There was silence in the room now as those present fell under the spell of their imaginations, picturing the poor sufferers in their hellish state. I allowed them a moment to dwell upon this, though I knew that nothing their minds could conjure could come close to the awful truth.