MORE than once in speaking at public meetings on behalf of hospitals I have alluded to my much valued possession—a twenty-krone piece—and have employed it as an illustration of the gratitude of the hospital patient. The subject of this incident was a Norwegian sailor about fifty years of age, a tall, good-featured man with the blue eyes of his country and a face tanned by sun and by salt winds to the colour of weathered oak. His hair and his beard were grey, which made him look older than he was. He had been serving for three years as an ordinary seaman on an English sailing ship and spoke English perfectly. During his last voyage he had developed a trouble which prevented him from following his employment. Accordingly he had left his ship and made his way to London in the hope of being cured. Inquiring for the hospital of London he was directed to the London Hospital and, by chance, came into my wards. He62 had an idea—as I was told later—that the operation he must needs undergo might be fatal, and so had transferred his savings to his wife in Norway.
He was a quiet and reserved man, but so pleasant in his manner that he became a favourite with the nurses. He told them quaintly-worded tales of his adventures and showed them how to make strange knots with bandages. The operation—which was a very ordinary one—was successful, and in four or five weeks he was discharged as capable of resuming his work as a seaman. His ship had, however, long since started on another voyage.
One morning, three weeks after he had left the hospital, he appeared at my house in Wimpole Street. My name he would have acquired from the board above his bed, but I wondered how he had obtained my address. I assumed that he had called to ask for money or for help of some kind. As he came into my room I was sorry to see how thin and ill he looked, for when he left the wards he was well and hearty.
He proceeded to thank me for what I had done, little as it was. He had an exaggerated idea of the magnitude of the operation, which idea he would not allow me to correct. I have listened to many votes of thanks, to the effulgent language,63 the gush and the pompous flattery which have marked them; but the little speech of this sailor man was not of that kind. It was eloquent by reason of its boyish simplicity, its warmth and its rugged earnestness.
As he was speaking he drew from his pocket a gold coin, a twenty-krone piece, and placed it on the table at which I sat. “I beg you, sir,” he said, “to accept this coin. I know it is of no value to you. It is only worth, I think, fifteen shillings. It would be an insult to offer it as a return for what you have done for me. That service can never be repaid. But I hope you will accept it as a token of what I feel, of something that I cannot say in words but that this coin can tell of. When I left my home in Norway three years ago my wife sewed this twenty-krone piece in the band of my trousers and made me promise never to touch it until I was starving. A seaman’s life is uncertain; he may be ill, he may be long out of a job; and so for three years this coin has been between me and the risk of starvation. When I was in the hospital I had a wish to give it to you if it so happened that I got well. Here I am, and I do hope, sir, you will accept it.”
I thanked him as warmly as I could for his kindness, for his thought in coming to see me and64 for his touching offer, but added that I could not possibly take the gold piece and begged him to put it back into his pocket again and present it to his wife when he reached home. At this he was very much upset. Pushing the coin along the table towards me with his forefinger, he said: “Please, sir, do take the money, not for what it is worth but for what it has been to me. I am proud to say that since I left the hospital I have been starving. I have been looking for a ship. I have not slept in a bed since you saw me in the wards. Now, at last, I have got a ship and, thank God, I have kept the coin unbroken so that you might have it. I implore you to accept it.”
I took it; but what could I say that would be adequate for such a gift as this? My attempt at thanks was as stumbling and as feeble as his had been outright; for I am not ashamed to confess that I was much upset.
I have received many presents from kindly patients—silver bowls, diamond scarf-pins, gold cigarette cases and the like, but how little is their value compared with this one small coin? As I picked it up from the table I thought of what it had cost. I thought of the tired man haunting the docks in search of a ship, often aching with hunger and at night sleeping in a shed, and yet65 all the time with a piece of gold in his pocket which he would not change in order that I might have it.
A coin is an emblem of wealth, but this gold piece is an emblem of a rarer currency, of that wealth which is—in a peculiar sense—“beyond the dream of avarice,” a something that no money could buy, for what sum could express the bounty or the sentiment of this generous heart?
It would be described, by those ignorant of its history, as a gold coin from Norway; but I prefer to think that it belongs to that “land of Havilah where there is gold” and of which it is truly said “and the gold of that land is good.”