The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
another way; for I am not writing this true story among celestial altitudes for you. I returned from Dalton by a mundane road.
Out of Frere's Hospital, however, its silence and seclusion, many a stranger never found his way except by the high mountains of transfiguration, in the chariots of fire, driven by the horsemen of Heaven, covered with whose glory they departed.
Through the wards of this well-ordered hospital a lady passed one night, and, entering a small apartment separated from the others, advanced with noiseless step to a bedside, and there sat down. You may guess if her heart was beating fast, and whether it was with difficulty that she kept her gray eyes clear of tears. There were about her traces of long and hurried journeying.
Under no limitations of caution had she passed so noiselessly through the wards. Involuntary was that noiselessness,—involuntary also the surprise with which one and another of the more wakeful patients turned to follow her, with hopeless, weary eyes, as she passed on. Now and then some feeble effort was made to attract her attention and arrest her progress, but she went, absorbed beyond observation by the errand that constrained her steps and thoughts.
When she reached the door of the apartment to which the surgeon had directed her, she seemed for an instant to hesitate; then she pushed the door open and passed into the room. The next instant she sank into a chair by the bedside of a man who was lying there asleep. It seemed as if the silent room had a profounder stillness added to it since she entered.
It was Colonel Ames whom she saw lying on the cot before her with a bandage round his forehead, so evidently asleep. He was smiling in a dream. He was not going to give up the ghost, it seemed, though he had given up so much—how much!—with that passion of giving which possessed this nation, North and South, during four awful, glorious years. He had given up the splendor and the beauty of this world. All its radiance was blotted out in that moment of fury and of death when the shot struck him, and left him blind upon the field.
Never on earth would it be said to him, "Receive thy sight." The lady knew this who sat down by his bedside to wait for his awaking. The surgeon had told her this, when at last, after having searched for her brother long among the dead, she came to Frere's Hospital and found him alive.
She sat so close beside him it seemed that he could not remain a moment unconscious of her immediate presence after waking. Her hand lay just where his hand, moving when he wakened, must touch it. She had rightly calculated the chances; he did touch it, and started and said: "Who's here? Doctor!" Then with a firmer grasp he seized the unresisting fingers, and exclaimed, "My God, am I dreaming? it ought to be Lizzie's hand."
"The doctor told me I should find you here, and might come," she answered; and, disguised as the voice was by the feeling that tore her heart, the Colonel, poor young fellow, listening as if for life, knew it, and said, "O Lizzie, my child, I don't know about this,—why couldn't you wait?"
"I waited and waited forever," she answered. "You're not sorry that I've found you out after such a hunt? Of course you'll make believe, but then—you needn't; I'm here, any way!"
Just then the surgeon came in. The Colonel knew his step, and said, "Doctor, look here; is this Lizzie?"
"I believe you're right," said the doctor. "She said she had a hero for a brother, and I have no doubt about that myself."
"O Dan, we had given you up! Though I knew all the time we shouldn't. I could not believe—"
"Must come to that Lizzie,—do it over again; for what you have here isn't your old Dan."
"My old Dan!" she exclaimed, and then there was a little break in the conversation the two heroes were endeavoring to maintain.
Meanwhile the surgeon had seated himself on the edge of the bed waiting the moment when there should be a positive need of him. He saw when it arrived.
"Colonel," said he, in his hearty, cheery voice, which alone had lifted many a poor fellow from the slough of misery, and put new heart and soul in him, since his ministrations began in the hospital,—"Colonel, your aids are in waiting."
The soldier smiled; his face flushed. "My aids can wait," said he.
"That is a fine thing to say. Here he has been bothering me, madam, not to say browbeating me, and I've been moving heaven and earth for my part, and at last have secured the aids, and now hear him dismiss them!"
"Bring them round here," said the patient suddenly.
The surgeon quietly lifted from the floor a pair of crutches, and placed them in his patient's hands.
"How many years must I rely on my aids?" he asked quietly.
"Perhaps three months. By that time you will be as good as ever."
A change passed over the young man's face at this. Whatever the emotion so expressed, it had otherwise no demonstration. He turned now abruptly toward his sister, and said: "They can wait. I've got another kind of aid now. Come, Lizzie, say something."
A sudden radiance flashed across his face when he ceased to speak, and waited for that voice.
"I shall be round again in an hour," said the surgeon.
He could well be spared. The brother and sister had now neither eye nor thought except for each other.
The surgeon's face changed as he closed the door. Every one of their faces changed. As for the gentleman whose duty took him now from ward to ward, from one sick-bed to another, it was only by an effort that he gave his cheerful words and courageous looks to the men who had found day after day a tonic in his presence.
The brother and sister clasped each other's hands. Few were the words they spoke. He was looking forward to the years before him, endeavoring to steady himself, in a moment of weakness, by the remembrance of past months of active service.
She was thinking of the days when she walked with her hero out of delightsomeness and ease into danger and anxiety, all for the nation's succor, in the nation's time of need. Some had deemed it a needless sacrifice. Of old, when sacrifice was to be offered, it was not the worthless and the worst men dared or cared to bring. The spotless, the pure, the beautiful, these were no vain oblations. These two said in solemn conference, "We will make an offering of our all." And their all they offered. See how much had been accepted!
Having offered, having sacrificed, it was not in either of these to repent the doing, or despise the honor that was put upon them. No going back for them! No looking back! No secret repining! The Colonel had done his work. As for the Colonel's sister, there was no place on earth where she would not find work to do.
And here in this hospital, in her brother's room, she found a sphere. Going and coming through the various wards, singing hymns of heavenly love and purest patriotism, scattering comforts with ministering hands, which found brothers on all those beds of languishing, how many learned to look for her appearing, and to bless her when she came! But concerning her work there, and that of other women, some of whom will go crippled to the grave from their service,—soldiers and veterans of the army of the Union,—enough has everywhere been said.
Among all these patients there was one, a sick man, to whom her coming and her going, her speech and her silence, became most notable events. Living within the influence of such manner and degree of social life as her presence in the hospital established, he was like a returned exile, who, yet under ban, felt all the awkwardness, constraint, and danger of his position. This man, who discovered in himself merely helplessness, was not accounted helpless, but the helper of many. He was, in short, the surgeon of the hospital.
One day the Colonel said to him, "You don't like to have my sister here. Are the hired nurses making a row?"
The surgeon's face betrayed so much interest in this subject, and so much embarrassment, it seemed probable he would come out with an absolute "Yes"; but his speech contradicted him, for he said with indifference, "Where did you get that pretty notion?"
"Out of you, and nowhere else. What puzzles me, though, is, she seems to think she is doing some good here. And didn't you say you'd no objection to her visiting the wards?"
"I should think it a positive loss if she were called or sent away from the hospital," said the surgeon,