He laughed. "To nobody but the council. Good-bye. Good luck to you!"
An hour later she saw the city slowly disappearing as the cars rolled out over the new lands.
Mr. Lewis settled himself comfortably in his seat. "And now for Maryland, my Maryland!"
"By George!" he exclaimed presently, putting his hand into his pocket, "here is a letter from Mr. Southard. It will serve to amuse us; but I am sorry that the others hadn't seen it."
He opened the letter, and they read it together. Mr. Southard had been ill, he wrote, and was yet only able to dawdle about the wards of the hospital and gossip with the patients. He had been offered private quarters, but had preferred a hospital. It chanced that the Sisters of Charity had charge of the one to which he was sent, and they had given him the best of care.
That was the gist of the letter.
How will that read to his congregation, I wonder?" Margaret said. "I fancy they won't half like it."
"Perhaps not. But I call that a good letter. It is the best we have had; not a word of religion, from first to last."
"But it breathes the very spirit of charity," was the quick reply. "How gently he mentions every one! Not a hard word even for the enemy!"
Mr. Lewis deliberately folded the letter.
"I dare say; and that is the kind of religion I like. When I hear a man continually calling on God to witness everything he says and does, I always think that he stands terribly in need of a backer."
They reached New York the next morning, and learned there that the panic was increasing rather than diminishing. The track was yet open, but no one went South who had not pressing business.
"What do you say, Maggie?" asked Mr. Lewis. "On to Richmond, eh?"
"Do let us go!" she begged, her impatience growing with every obstacle.
"On it is, then. I like your pluck."
"I should think that the lady would rather wait," the conductor suggested.
"Wait, sir?" said Mr. Lewis bluffly. "By no means! Don't trouble yourself. She isn't one of the squealing sort."
"Very well," the man replied doubtfully. "But we shall go pretty fast."
Margaret's heavy eyes brightened. "That is what I want. You cannot go too fast for me."
On they went again with steadily increasing speed, reaching Philadelphia ahead of time. There fresh news of disaster awaited them. On then to Baltimore, where they found the citizens arming, and every one full of excitement.
"I must and will go through!" Margaret said passionately, seeing Mr. Lewis about to expostulate.
He resumed his seat. "Then I shall go with you."
They stopped only long enough to be assured that communication with Washington was still open, then started on the last stage of their journey, keeping a sharp lookout, since it was not impossible that at almost any moment they might be saluted by a volley of musketry, or thrown headlong over an unseen hiatus in the rail.
"Seems to me we are getting over the ground at a tearing pace," remarked one of the passengers in a lazy drawl. "For my part, I don't know but I'd as lief stand my chance of a minie-ball as run the risk of being knocked into railroad-pi. A slug is a neat thing; but these smash-ups are likely to injure a fellow's personal appearance."
"There they are!" exclaimed an other, who had been watching through a glass ever since they left Baltimore. "I should guess that there's only a score of cavalry; but they may have more behind. Do you see? Just over the hill. It's a pretty even thing which of us reaches the crossing first. Not above a mile ahead, is it?"
He of the drawl, a cavalry captain, turned to Margaret. "Do you object to fire-arms, ma'am?" he asked, in much the same tone of voice he would have used in asking if she objected to cigar-smoke.
"Not when there is need of them," she replied.
He pulled a beautiful silver-mounted revolver out of his pocket, and carefully examined the barrels.
"This has been like a father to me," he said with great tenderness. "It's all the family I have. The barrels I call my six little sisters. Each one has a name. They've got pretty sharp tongues, but I like the sound of 'em; and they always speak to the point. Jennie is my favorite—see! her name is engraven, with the date—ever since she helped me out of a hobble at Ball's Bluff. I was playing cat and mouse with a fellow there, he with his rifle aimed, waiting to get a shot at something besides my boot or the end of my beard, and I hanging on the off-side of my horse, clinging to saddle and mane. I was brought up on horseback, and have spent a good part of my time scouring over the Southwest, Missouri, Texas, and thereabouts; but of course I couldn't hang there for ever. Well, just as I was thinking that I should have to drop, or straighten up and take my slug like a man, I managed to spare a finger and thumb, and got Paterfamilias here out of my belt. Where can one better be than in the bosom of his family? says I. I didn't hurt the fellow much; I didn't mean to. When two men have been dodging and watching that way for some time, they get to have quite an affection for each other. I spoilt his aim, though; and I fancy that he will never be a very good writer any more."
"Aren't you sorry now that you came?" Mr. Lewis asked Margaret.
"No," she said brightly; "I feel as though we shall get through."
A new spirit was beginning to stir in her veins. The speed of the cars was of itself exciting—those long strides at the full stretch of the iron racer, when the wheels, instead of measuring the track with a steady roll, rise up and drop again with a sharp click, as regular as verse; not that cantering line of Virgil's, "Quadrupedante" and the rest, but a hard, iambic gallop. Besides this, the sense of danger and power combined was intoxicating. For, after all, danger is intolerable only when we have nothing to oppose to it.
There had been trees and rocks, but they were changed to a buzz, the road became a dizziness, and the whole landscape swam. There was something near the track that looked about as much like horsemen as the shadow of the same would look in broken, swift-running water; a few shots were heard, there was a little rattle of shivered glass; then all the men broke into a shout.
"Did you hear Jennie smile?" asked the captain, as he put Paterfamilias carefully into his belt again.
Margaret laughed with delight, and gave her handkerchief a little flutter out the window. "I can guess how chain-lightning feels," she said; "only it can't go on minutes and minutes."
Chapter XII.The Court Of The King.
After their little adventure, our travellers rode triumphantly into Washington, and Miss Hamilton found her friends glad to receive her the more so that she came as a boarder, and their house was nearly empty.
The Blacks had, in their younger days, been humble followers of Doctor Hamilton; and though their acquaintance with Margaret was slight, as they felt a kind of duty toward all the connection, they were proud to receive her.
"I am anxious about friends whom I have not heard from for some time," she explained; "and I have come here to look round a little."
"Who do you know in the army?" Mrs. Black inquired, not too delicately, considering the reserve with which her visitor had spoken.
Miss Hamilton was not learned in the slippery art of evasion. She simply ignored the question.
"I am exhausted," she said. "Of course I did not sleep any last night; and the ride has been fatiguing. I have but one desire, and that is to rest. Can you show me to my room at once? I feel as though I should drop asleep as soon as my head touches the pillow. When I do sleep, please don't wake me."
When she lay down to rest the afternoon sun was gilding the trees in the square opposite, flaring on the long white-washed walls of the hospital in their midst, and brightening momentarily the pale faces pressed close to the window-bars of the jail beyond. When she woke from the deep and dreamless sleep that seemed to have almost drawn the breath from her lips, it was night. Some one had set a star of gas burning in her room, and left a plate of cake and a glass of wine on the stand at her bedside.
Margaret raised herself like one who has been nearly drowned and still catches for breath, gathered her benumbed faculties and recollected where she was. All was quiet within the house; and without there was stillness of another sort, a silence that was living and aware, a sense as of thousands waking and watching. Now and then there came from the hospital across the street some voice of a sleepless sufferer, the long, low moan of almost exhausted endurance, the broken cry of delirium, or the hoarse gasp of pneumonia.
After a while these sounds became deadened, and finally lost in another that rose gradually, deepening like the roll of the sea heard at night.
Margaret went to her window and leaned out. The sultry air was heavily-laden with fragrance from the flower-gardens around, and in the sky the large stars trembled like over-full drops of a golden shower descending through the ambient purple dusk.
That sea-roll grew nearer as she listened, and became the measured tramp of men. Soon they appeared out of the darkness at the left, marching steadily line after line, and company after company, to disappear into darkness at the right. They moved like shadows, save for that multitudinous muffled tread, and save that, at certain points, a street-light would flash along a line of rifle-barrels, or catch in a flitting sparkle on a spur or shoulder-strap. Then, like a dream, they were gone; darkness and distance had swallowed them up from sight and hearing; and again there was that strange, live stillness, broken only by the complaining voices of the sick.
As Margaret looked, the dim light in one of the hospital-wards flared up suddenly and showed three men standing by a bed near one of the windows. They lifted the rigid form that lay there, and placed it on a stretcher; two of the men bore it out, and the light was lowered again, After a little while the men appeared outside bearing that white and silent length between them, through the dew and the starlight, and were lost from sight behind the trees. When they returned, they walked side by side; and what they had carried out they brought not back again.
The watcher's heart sent out a cry: "O Father in heaven! see how thy creatures suffer."
In the excitement of the last part of her journey, and the exhaustion following it, she had almost forgotten her object in coming; but this sight brought it all back. She remembered, too, that she had been dropping into the old way of taking all the burden on her own shoulders; and even in crying out for pain, she recollected the way of comfort. How sweet the restfulness of that recollection! As though a child, wandering from home, lost, weary, and terrified, should all at once see the hearth-light shining before him, and hear the dear familiar voices calling his name. She thought over the lessons learned during that blessed retreat, that Mecca toward which henceforth her thoughts would journey whenever her soul grew faint by the way. The half-forgotten trust came back. Who but He who had set the tangles of this great labyrinth could lead the way out of it? Who but He whose hand had strung the chords of every human heart could ease their straining, and bring back harmony to discord? Where but with Him, the centre of all being, could we look for those who are lost to us on earth?
When, long after sunrise, Mrs. Black entered her visitor's chamber, she found Margaret kneeling by the window, fast asleep, with her head resting on the sill.
There was plenty of news and excitement that morning. All communication with the North was cut off, the President and his family had come rushing in at midnight from their country-seat, and there was fighting going on only a few miles out of town. It was altogether probable that the Confederates would be in the city before night.
Mrs. Black told all this with such an air of satisfaction in the midst of her terror that Margaret made some allowance for embellishment in the story. Evidently the good woman enjoyed a panic, and was willing to be frightened to the very verge of endurance for the sake of having it to tell of afterward. She went about in a sort of delighted agony, gathering up her spoons and forks, and giving little shrieks at the least unusual sound.
"If they should bombard the city, my dear," she said, "we can go down cellar. I have an excellent cellar. It is almost certain that they will come. We must be in a strait when the treasury-clerks come out. And such a sight! They passed here just before I went up to call you, all in their shirt-sleeves, and looking no more like soldiers, dear, than I do this minute. Half of them carried their rifles over the wrong shoulder, and seemed scared to death lest they should go off. And no wonder; for the way the barrels slanted was enough to make you smile, even if there were a bomb-shell whizzing past your nose.The muzzles looked all ways for Sunday, so to speak. There were little boys with them, too. I don't see where their pas and mas were, if they've got any. It's a sin and shame. Do eat some more breakfast, pray! You may as well have a full stomach; for if we should be obliged to hide in the cellar, we might not dare come up to get a mouthful for twenty-four hours. I do hope it won't be a long siege. If they've got to come in, let'em come. I'm sure they would be too much of gentlemen to molest a houseful of defenceless females. As for poor Mr. Black, he doesn't count. Though he is my husband, I have seen braver men, not to speak of women. I had to threaten him, this morning, within an inch of his life, to prevent him from running a Confederate flag out of the window. He keeps one in his trunk, in case it should be needed. He declared he heard firing in the avenue. Bless me! What is that?"
"One of the servants has broken a dish."
"The destructive minxes! But where are you going, dear? Over to the hospital? Oh! they don't admit visitors on Sunday. Even on week-days you can't get in till after the surgeons have gone their rounds, and that is never before ten o'clock. It is military rule, you know; as regular as clock-work. It won't come ten till sixty minutes after nine o'clock, not if you perish. The first time I went in there, the soldier on guard came near running me through with his bayonet, just because I didn't walk in a certain particular road. I tried to reason with him; but you might as well reason with stocks and stones. There was the man in the middle of the road, and there was the point of his bayonet within an inch of my stomacher; and the upshot of the matter was, that I had to turn about and walk in a straight road instead of a curved one, for no earthly reason that I could see. You really cannot get in to-day. Wait till to-morrow, and I will go over with you."
Margaret smoothed on her gloves.
"Mrs. Black," she said, "did you ever hear of the man who said that whenever he saw 'Positively no admittance' posted up anywhere, he always went in there directly?"
"Well," the lady sighed, "I can't say but you may get in. You are your grandfather's granddaughter, and he never said fail. Only, be sure you look your best. You remember the song your mother used to sing about the chief who offered a boatman a silver pound to row him and his bride across the stormy ferry; and the Highland laddie said he would, not for the 'siller bright,' but for the 'winsome lady.' Many's the time I cried to hear your poor mother sing that, and how they all perished in the storm, and the father they were running away from stood on the shore lamenting. Your grandfather would wipe his eyes on the sly, and wait till she had finished every word of it; and then he would speak up and say that she had better be singing the praises of God. May be the officers over there will be like the Highland boatman, and do for you what they would n't do for an ugly old woman like me."
Margaret closed her ears to that piercing sentence, "the song your mother used to sing "—O silent lips!—and going out, crossed over to the hospital.
As she turned into a curved road that approached the door, a soldier pacing there presented his bayonet, probably the same one that had threatened Mrs. Black's plaited linen stomacher.
"You must go the other way," he said with military brevity.
The smaller the warrior, the greater the martinet. Doubtless this young man regarded his present adversary with far more fierceness than he would have shown toward a six-foot Texan grey coat, with a belt bristling with armor, and two eyes like two blades.
Margaret retreated with precipitance, hiding a smile, and took the other road.
"Your pass, ma'am," said a second soldier at the step.
"I haven't any," she said pitifully, and looked with appealing eyes at an officer just inside the door.
He came out immediately.
"What is your pleasure, madam?" he asked, touching his hat.
She told her errand briefly, and handed him the letters she had brought.
Mrs. Black had not overrated the power of the winsome lady. The surgeon in charge, for this was he, merely glanced over the letters to learn the bearer's name and State. He had already found her face, voice, and gloves such as should, in his opinion, be admitted anywhere and at all times.
"Please come in," he said courteously. "It is almost inspection time now, and I must be on duty. But if you will wait in my office a little while, I shall be happy to escort you through the wards."
"Thank you! But cannot I go now, by myself?" said Margaret.
He drew himself up stiffly, in high dudgeon at the little value she set on his escort. "Certainly! You can do just as you please."
She thanked him again, and went up the hall, utterly unconscious that she had been greatly honored.
The hall was very long, so long that the door at the furthest end looked as though only a child could go through without stooping, and the wards were built out to right and left. She visited every one, walking up and down the rows of beds, her eager glance flashing from face to face. There was no face there that she had ever seen before. With a faint voice she asked for the names of those who had lately died. The names were as strange as the faces. Finally she sat down in one of the wards to rest.
The inside of the hospital was altogether less gloomy than the outside had appeared. They were in a bustle of preparation for inspection, putting clean white covers on the beds and the stands, regulating the medicine-table and the book-shelves, squaring everything, looking out that the convalescents were in trim, belt-buckles polished, shoes bright, hair smooth, jackets buttoned up to the chin.
The ward looked fresh and cheerful. The white walls were festooned with evergreen, green curtains shaded the windows, and the floor was as white as a daily scouring could make it. Nearly half of the patients were dressed, and eagerly talking over the news; and even the sickest there looked on with interest, and brightened occasionally.
"Fly round here!" cried the ward-master, a fair-faced, laughing young German. "They've gone into the next ward. Hustle those clothes out of sight somewhere. Tumble 'em out the window! Kohl, if you groan while the surgeons are here, I'll give you nothing but quinine for a week. Can't somebody see to that crazy fellow up there! He's pulling the wreath down off the wall. Pitch into him! Tell him that he shan't have a bit of ice to-day if he doesn't lie still. And there's that other light-head eating the pills all up. I'll be hanged if he hasn't swallowed twenty-five copper and opium pills!Well, sir, you're dished. Long Tom, mind yourself, and keep your feet in bed."
"I can't!" whispered Tom, who seemed to be a mere boy, though his length was something preposterous. "The bed is too short."
"Well, crumple up some way," said the ward-master, laughing. "I'll have you up next week, fever or no fever. If you lie there much longer, you'll grow through the other side of the ward."
"It isn't my fault," Tom said pitifully to Miss Hamilton, who sat near him. "When I went to bed here, five weeks ago, I wasn't any taller than the ward-master; and now I believe I'm seven feet long. I believe it was that everlasting quinine!" And poor Tom burst into tears.
"Here they are!" said the ward-master. "Attention!"
Instantly all was silence. Each convalescent stood at the foot of his bed, and the nurses were drawn up inside the door. The little procession of surgeons appeared, marched up one side of the ward and down the other, and out the door; and the inspection was over.
As they passed by her, one of them, in drawing his handkerchief from his pocket, drew with it a card, which, unseen by him, dropped at Margaret's feet. She took it up, and saw the photograph of the gentleman who had dropped it, dressed in the uniform of a Confederate colonel.
"Who was that last surgeon in the line?" she asked of Tom.
"That's our surgeon, Doctor A——. He is a Virginian."
"Who is his guarantee here, do you know?" she inquired.
"He's a friend of Senator Wyly's," Tom said.
An orderly came to the door. "Every man who is able to carry a rifle get ready to go down to Camp Distribution," he said. "Don't let any of 'em shirk, Linn. Send some of those fellows down to the office to be examined. Every man is wanted."
As Margaret went out, she saw Surgeon A—— hasten from one of the wards, and look along the floor of the hall, as if in search of something. His face was very pale, she saw, and he looked up sharply at her as she approached him.
"Perhaps you miss this photograph, Col. A——," she said, offering it to him.
His face reddened violently as he took it. "Has any one seen it besides you, madam?" he asked.
"No one."
"Will you give me an opportunity to explain?" he asked eagerly. "If you would permit me to call on you, or accompany you out now—"
"By no means," she replied coldly. "I do not wish to hear any explanation. I am here on business of my own, and shall not, probably, take any further notice of what I have seen. But if on second thought I should consider myself obliged to mention it, you can make your explanation to Mr. Lincoln."
She left him at that, and went home to hear Mrs. Black's compliments on her success.
There were no more visits that day; but the next morning a close carriage was sent to the door, and Margaret began her rounds.
In the afternoon she found herself going out Fourteenth street toward Columbia Hospital. There was a shower, and as the horses plodded along through the pouring floods of southern rain, she leaned her face upon her hand and wondered sadly what was to come of this search of hers, and if that strange, irresistible impulse on which she had been shot, like Camilla on her spear, over every obstacle to her coming, had been, after all, but a vain whim.
Looking up presently, she found that they were in the midst of what seemed to her an army, soldiers crowding close to the carriage, and stretching forward and backward as far as she could see. It was the Sixth corps, one of them told her, going out to meet Early and Breckinridge.
They were marching in a mob, without order, plodding wearily through the rain that just served to wash from them the stains of their last battle. Their faces were browned and sober, their clothes faded and stained; many, foot-sore with long marches, carried their shoes in their hands. They were little enough like the gay troops she had seen march away from home.
When they came to the college hospital, it was found impossible to reach the side-walk through that crowd, and Margaret ordered the driver to wait till they should pass. As she leaned back in her carriage and watched the living stream flow slowly over the hill, a gentleman came out of the hospital, and, standing on the sidewalk opposite her, seemed to be looking for some one among them. Presently his face brightened with a recognizing smile, and he waved his handkerchief to one who was riding near. As the horseman drew up between her and the sidewalk, Margaret's heart seemed to leap into her mouth. He was wrapped in a cloak, and a wide-brimmed hat, still dripping from the spent shower, shaded his face; but she knew him at the first glance.
"O Mr. Granger!"
A shout from the convalescents collected outside the tent wards drowned her glad cry, and the next instant she would not for the world have repeated it. By a sudden revulsion of feeling, the face that had flushed with delight now burned with unutterable shame and humiliation.
For the first time she looked on what she had done as the world might look upon it—as Mr. Granger himself might look upon it. Friends or foes, he was a gentleman, and she a lady, and not a baby. She, wandering from place to place, unbidden, in search of him, weeping, praying, making a fool of herself, she thought bitterly, and he sitting his horse there gallantly, safe and merry, within reach of her hand, showing his white teeth in a laugh, stroking down his beard with that gesture she knew so well, taking off his hat to shake the raindrops from it, and loop up the aigrette at the side!
She had time to remember with a pang of envy the quiet, guarded women who sit at home, and take no step without first thinking what the world will say of it.
"If he should think of me at all," she said to herself, "he would fancy me at home, trailing my dress over his carpets, making little strokes with a paint-brush, having a care lest I ink my fingers, or teaching Dora to spell propriety—as I ought to be! as I ought to be! I need a keeper!"
But still, with her veil drawn close, she looked at him steadily; for, after all, he was going into battle, and he was her friend. As she looked, he glanced up at one of the hospital windows, and immediately his glance became an earnest gaze. He ceased speaking, and his face showed surprise and perplexity.
"What do you see?" his friend asked.
"Strange!" he muttered, half to himself. "It is only a resemblance, of course, but I fancied I saw there a face I know, looking out at me. It is gone now."
Whatever it was, the sight appeared to sober as well as perplex him. He took leave of his friend, and, drawing back to join his regiment, brought his horse round rather roughly against Miss Hamilton's carriage.
"I beg your pardon, madam!" he said at once, taking off his hat to the veiled lady he saw there.
He must have thought her scarcely courteous; for she merely nodded, and immediately turned her face away.
He rode slowly on, looking back once more to the hospital window, and in a few minutes was out of sight.
"Will you get out now?" asked the driver.
Margaret started.
"Why, yes."
She went in and seated herself in the hall. "I want to rest," she said to a soldier who stood there. "I don't feel quite well."
A slight, elderly lady in a black dress, and with her bonnet a little awry, came down the stairs, and stood looking about as though she expected some one.
"Can you tell me where Miss Blank is to be found?" she asked of the soldier to whom Margaret had spoken. "She has been out in the tent wards, and there she comes," he said, nodding toward a young woman who came in at the door furthest from them, and, with a face expressive of apprehension, approached the waiting lady.
"You wished to see me?" she asked tremulously.
"Yes," was the reply. "You will be ready to return home to-morrow, or as soon as communication is reestablished. I will send your transportation papers to-night. You need not go into the wards again."
The young woman stared in speechless distress and astonishment, her eyes filling with tears.
"Is that Miss Dix?" Margaret asked of the soldier.
"Yes," he replied. "She makes short work of it. That is one of the best nurses, and the best dresser in the hospital."
"Why is she dismissed?"
"Miss Dix has probably heard something about her. She's a good young woman, but the old lady is mighty particular."
Margaret rose to meet Miss Dix as she came along the hall.
"I am going to stay in Washington a few days," she said, "and I would like to be useful while I am here. Can I do anything for you?"
"Who are you?" asked the lady. Margaret presented her credentials, and Miss Dix glanced them over, then looked sharply at their owner.
"I am afraid you are too young," she said.
"I am twenty-eight, and I feel a hundred," said Margaret.
"Do you know anything about nursing?"
"As much as ladies usually know."
"Will you go to a disagreeable place?"
"Yes, if it is not out of the city."
"Come, then; my ambulance is at the door."
In two minutes the carriage was dismissed, and Margaret was seated in the ambulance, and on her way down to the city again.
"You will be very careful who you speak to," the lady began; "you will dress in the plainest possible manner, wear no ornaments, and, of course, high necks and long sleeves. Your hair—are those waves natural?"
"Yes'm!" said Margaret humbly, and was about to add that perhaps she could straighten them out, but checked herself.
"Well, dress your hair very snugly, wear clean collars, and don't let your clothes drag. It looks untidy. Is that dress quite plain?"
Margaret threw back the thin mantle she wore, and showed a gray dress of nunlike plainness.
"That will do," the lady said approvingly.
Here they turned into the square, and got out at the door of the hospital Margaret had visited the day before. She was introduced to the officer of the day, received an astonished bow from the surgeon-in-charge in passing, caught a glimpse of Doctor A——, and was escorted to her ward.
"Be you the new lady nurse?" asked Long Tom.
"So it seems; but I am not quite sure," she said.
"I'm proper glad," said Tom, with an ecstatic grin. "I liked the looks of you when I saw you yesterday."
"And so here I am 'at the court of the king,'" she thought.
Chapter XIV.Out Of Harm's Way.
Common sense goes a great way in nursing; and when there is added a sympathetic heart, steady nerves, a soft voice, and a gentle hand, your nurse is about perfect, though she may not have gone through a regular course of training.
Ward six considered itself highly favored in having Miss Hamilton's ministrations, even for a few days. The nauseous doses she offered were swallowed without a murmur, fevered eyes followed her light, swift step, and men took pride in showing how well they could bear pain when such appreciative eyes were looking on.
Mrs. Black, rushing over to expostulate and entreat, became a convert. It was certainly very romantic, she said; and since her young friend was not treated like a common nurse, but had everything her own way, it was not so bad. And without, perhaps, having ever heard the name of Rochefoucauld, the good lady added, "Anything may happen in Washington now."
Moreover, Miss Hamilton would sleep and take her meals at Mrs. Black's, which was another palliating circumstance.
Mr. Lewis, with a fund of gibes ready, came also to see the new nurse. But the sight of her silenced him.
Bending over a dying man to catch the last whisper of a message to those he would never see again; speaking a word of encouragement to one who lay with his teeth clenched and with drops of agony standing on his forehead; mediating in the chronic quarrel between regulars and volunteers; hushing the ward, that the saving sleep of an almost exhausted patient might not be broken—in each of these she seemed in her true place. As he looked on, he began to realize how impertinent are conventionalities when life and death are in the balance.
"I don't blame you, Margaret," he said seriously, "though I am glad that you don't think of staying any longer than I do. I will give you till Friday afternoon. If we start then, we can reach home by Sunday morning. The track is open, and I am just off for Baltimore. Good-by."
She accompanied him to the door. "If you should see Mr. Granger, or write to him," she said, with some confusion, "don't mention why I came here. I am ashamed of it."
"Oh! you needn't feel so," he replied soothingly. "We have had a nice little adventure to pay us for the journey; and you were breaking your heart with inaction and anxiety."
"Women should break their hearts at home!" she said proudly, her cheeks glowing scarlet.
That was Wednesday. Thursday morning, as she rose from a five o'clock breakfast to go over to the hospital, a carriage stopped at the door, and, looking out, she saw Mr. Lewis coming up the walk.
O God! The blow had fallen! No need even to look into his white and smileless face to know that.
He stopped, and spoke through the open window. "Come, Margaret!"
Morning, was it? Morning! She could hardly see to reach the carriage, and the earth seemed to be heaving under her feet.
As they drove through that strange, feverish world that the sunny summer day had all at once turned into, she heard a long, heavy breath that was almost a groan. "O dear!" said Mr. Lewis.
She reached out her hand to him, as one reaches out in the dark for support. "Tell me!"
"It is a wound in the head," he said; "and any wound there is bad. I got the dispatch at Baltimore last night, and came right back. They forwarded it from Boston. Why did not you tell me that you saw him Monday?"
"Saw him!"
"Then you didn't know him?" Mr. Lewis said. "I thought it strange you shouldn't mention it. Louis says that when they were going out past Columbia College, he glanced up at one of the windows, and saw you leaning out and looking at him. You were very sober, and made no motion to speak; and after a moment your face seemed to fade away. It made such an impression on him that he asked to be carried there and to that room, though it isn't an officers' hospital. He was almost superstitious about it, till I told him that you were really here."
It was true then. The intensity of her gaze, and the concentration of her thoughts upon him at that moment had by some mystery of nature which we cannot explain, though guesses have been many, impressed her image on his mind, and thrown the reflection of it through his eyes, so that where his glance chanced to fall at that instant, there she had seemed to be.
"You must try to control yourself, Margie," Mr. Lewis went on, his own lip trembling. "There is danger of delirium. He is afraid of it, and watches every word he says. He can't talk much. I'll give you a chance to say all you want to; and whenever I'm needed, you can call me. I will wait just outside the door. Give your bonnet and shawl to the lady. There, this is his room, and that is yours, just across the entry."
Then they went in.
The pleasant chamber was clean, cool, and full of a soft flicker of light and shade from trees and vines outside. On a narrow, white bed opposite the windows lay Mr. Granger. Could it be that he was ill? His eyes were bright, and his face flushed as if with health. The only sign of hurt was a little square of wet cloth that lay on the top of his head. But in health, in anything short of deadly peril, he would have smiled on seeing her after so long a time, and when she stood in such need of reassuring. His only welcome was an outstretched hand, and a fixed, earnest gaze.
She seated herself by the bedside. "I have come to help take care of you, Mr. Granger." Then smiling, faintly, "You don't look very sick."
"I was in high health before I got this," he said, motioning toward his head.
Perhaps he saw in her face some sharp springing of hope; for he closed his eyes, and added almost in a whisper, "It isn't as wide as a barn-door, nor as deep as a well; but it will do."
The room swam round before her eyes a moment, but she kept her seat.
Presently the surgeon came in, and she gave place to him. But as he removed the cloth from his patient's head, she bent involuntarily, with the fascination of terror, and looked, and at the sight, dropped back into her chair again. She had looked upon nature in her inmost mysterious workshop, to which only death can open the door. It was almost like having committed a sacrilege.
Mr. Lewis wet a handkerchief with cologne, and put it into her hand. The others had not noticed her agitation.
When the surgeon left the room, he beckoned Margaret out with him. "All that you can do is, to keep his head cool," he said. "Don't let him get excited, or talk much without resting. He has kept wonderfully calm so far; but it is by pure force of will. I never saw more resolution."
There was nothing to do, then, but to sit and wait; to make him feel that he was surrounded by loving care, and to let no sign of grief disturb his quiet.
She returned to the room, and Mr. Lewis, after bending to hold the sick man's hand one moment in a silent clasp, went out and left them together.
After a little while, when she had resumed her seat by him, Mr. Granger spoke, always in that suppressed voice that told what a strain there was on every nerve. "I should have asked you to marry me, Margaret, if I had gone back safe," he said, looking at her with a wistful, troubled gaze, as if he wished to say more, but could not trust himself.
"No matter about that now," she replied gently. "You have been a good friend to me, and that is all I ever wanted."
"We could be married here, if you are willing," he went on. "Mr. Lewis will see to everything."
Margaret lightly smoothed his feverish hands. "No," she said, "I do not wish it. I didn't come for that. We are friends; no more. Let me wet the cloth on your head now. It is nearly dry."
He closed his eyes, and made no answer. If he guessed confusedly that his proposal, and what it implied, so made, was little less than an insult, it was out of his power to help it then. And if for a breath Margaret felt that all her obligations to him were cancelled, and that she could not even call him friend again, it was but for a breath. His case was too pitiful for anger. She could forgive him anything now.
"I shall always stay with Dora, if you wish it," she said softly. "Do not have any fears for her. I will be faithful. Trust me. I could gladly do it for her sake, for I never loved any other child so much. But still more, I will take care of her for yours."
"I arranged everything before I came away," he said, looking up again. And his eyes, she saw, were swimming in tears. "I looked out for both of you. Your home was to be always with her, and Mr. Lewis to be guardian for both."
Margaret could not trust herself to thank him for this proof of his care for her.
"Have you seen the chaplain?" she asked, to turn the subject.
"Yes; but I don't feel like seeing him again. He does me no good, and his voice confuses me. You are all the minister I need"—smiling faintly—"and yours is the only voice I can bear."
While he rested, she sat and studied how indeed she should minister to him.
Mr. Granger had never been baptized; and, though nominally what is called an orthodox Congregationalist, he held their doctrines but loosely. He had that abstract religious feeling which is the heritage of all noble natures, the outlines of Christianity even before Christianity is adopted, as Madame Swetchine says; but his experience of pietists had not been such as to tempt him to join their number. If a man lived a moral life, were kind, just, and pure, it was about all that could be required of him, he thought. Such a life he had lived; and now, though he approached death solemnly, it was with no perceptible tremor, and no painful sense of contrition.
She watched him as he lay there, smitten down in the midst of his life and of health. He was quiet, now, except that his hands never ceased moving, tearing slowly in strips the delicate handkerchief he found within his reach, pulling shreds from the palm-leaf fan that lay on the bed, or picking at the blanket. It was the only sign of agitation he showed. His face was deeply flushed, his breathing heavy, and his teeth seemed to be set.
Once he raised himself, and looked through the open window at the treetops, and the city spires and domes. Margaret wondered if they looked strange to him, and what thoughts he had; but she never knew.
After waiting as long as she dared, she spoke to him. "Can I talk to you a little, Mr. Granger, without disturbing you?" she asked.
"Speak," he said; "you never disturb me."
She began, and without any useless words, explained to him the fundamental doctrines of the church, original sin, the redemption, the necessity and effects of baptism. What she said was clear, simple, and condensed. A hundred times during the last two years she had studied it over for just such need as this.
"You know of course," she concluded, "that I say this because I want you to be baptized. Are you willing?"
"I would like to do anything that would satisfy you," he said presently. "But you would not wish me to be a hypocrite? You cannot think that baptism would benefit me, if I received it only because you wanted me to. I don't think that I have led a bad life. I have not knowingly wronged any one. I am sorry for those sins which, through human frailty, I have committed. But if I were to live my life over again, I doubt if I should do any better. No, child, I think it would be a mockery for me to be baptized now."
She changed the cloth on his head, laid the ice close to his burning temples, and fanned him in silence a few minutes.
Then she began again, repeating gently the command of our Saviour regarding baptism, and his charge to the church to baptize and teach.
"It is impossible to force conviction," he said. "I cannot profess to believe what I do not."
The words came with difficulty, and his brows contracted as if some sudden pain shot through them.
"I am not careless of the future, dear," he said after a while. "I know that it is awful, and uncertain; but it is also inevitable! It is too late now for me to change. But I wish that you would pray for me. Let me hear you. Pray your own way. I am not afraid of your saints."