BETTY’S FIRST PATIENT
The wounded men lay in an empty warehouse which in the whaling-days
had been used for the storing of oil, and was now owned by an old
whaler living back of the village.
Captain Joe had not waited for permission and a key when the accident
occurred and the wounded men lay about him. He and Captain Brandt had
broken the locks with a crowbar, improvised an operating-table for the
doctors out of old barrels and planks, and dispatched messengers up
and down the shore to pull mattresses from the nearest beds.
The room he had selected for the temporary hospital was on the ground
floor of the building. It was lighted by four big windows, and
protected by solid wooden shutters, now slightly ajar. Through these
openings timid rays of sunlight, strangers here for years, stole down
slanting ladders of floating dust to the grimy floor, where they lay
trembling, with eyes alert, ready for instant retreat. From the
overhead beams hung long strings of abandoned cobwebs encrusted with
black soot, which the bolder breeze from the open door and windows
swayed back and forth, the startled soot falling upon the white cots
below. In one corner was a heap of rusty hoops and mouldy
staves,—unburied skeletons of old whaling-days. But for the
accumulation of years of dust and mould the room was well adapted to
its present use.
Lacey’s cot was nearest the door. His head was bound with bandages;
only one eye was free. He lay on his side, breathing heavily. The
young rigger had been blown against the shrouds, and the iron
foot-rest had laid open his cheek and forehead. The doctor said that
if he recovered he would carry the scar the rest of his life. It was
feared, too, that he had been injured internally.
Next to his cot were those of two of the sloop’s crew,—one man with
ribs and ankle broken, the other with dislocated hip. Lonny Bowles,
the quarryman, came next. He was sitting up in bed, his arm in a
sling,—Captain Brandt was beside him; he had escaped with a gash in
his arm.
Captain Joe was without coat or waistcoat. His sleeves were rolled up
above the elbows, his big brawny arms black with dirt. He had been up
all night; now bending over one of the crew, lifting him in his arms
as if he had been a baby, to ease the pain of his position, now
helping Aunty Bell with the beds.
Betty sat beside Lacey, fanning him. Her eyes were red and heavy, her
pretty curls matted about her head. She and Aunty Bell had not had
their clothes off. Their faces were smudged with the soot and grime
that kept falling from the ceiling. Aunty Bell had taken charge of the
improvised stove, heating the water, and Betty had assisted the
doctors—there were two—with the bandages and lint.
“It ain’t as bad as I thought when I wired ye,” said Captain Joe to
Sanford, stopping him as he edged a way through the group of men
outside. “It’s turrible hard on th’ poor mate, jes’ been married.
Never died till he reached th’ dock. There warn’t a square inch o’
flesh onto him, the doctor said, that warn’t scalded clean off. Poor
feller,” and his voice broke, “he ain’t been married but three months;
she’s a-comin’ down on the express. Telling her’s the wust thing we’ve
got to do to-day. Cap’n Bob’s goin’ ter meet ’er. The other boys is
tore up some,” he went on, “but we’ll have ’em crawlin’ ’round in a
week or so. Lacey’s got th’ worst crack. Doctor sez he kin save his
eye if he pulls through, but ye kin lay yer three fingers in th’ hole
in his face. He won’t be as purty as he was,” with an effort at a
smile, “but maybe that’ll do him good.”
Sanford crossed at once to Lacey’s bed, and laid his hand tenderly on
that of the sufferer. The young fellow opened his well eye, and a
smile played for an instant about his mouth, the white teeth gleaming.
Then it faded with the pain. Betty bent over him still closer and
adjusted the covering about his chest.
“Has he suffered much during the night, Betty?” asked Sanford.
“He didn’t know a thing at first, sir. He didn’t come to himself till
the doctor got through. He’s been easier since daylight.” Then, with
her head turned toward Sanford, and with a significant gesture,
pointing to her own forehead and cheek, she noiselessly described the
terrible wounds, burying her face in her hands as the awful memory
rose before her. “Oh, Mr. Sanford, I never dreamed anybody could
suffer so.”
“Where does he suffer most?” asked Sanford in a whisper.
Lacey opened his eye. “In my back, Mr. Sanford.”
Betty laid her fingers on his hand. “Don’t talk, Billy; doctor said ye
weren’t to talk.”
The eye shut again wearily, and the brown, rough, scarred hand with
the blue tattoo marks under the skin closed over the little fingers
and held on.
Betty sat fanning him gently, looking down upon his bruised face. As
each successive pain racked his helpless body she would hold her
breath until it passed, tightening her fingers that he might steady
himself the better: all her heart went out to him in his pain. Aunty
Bell watched her for a moment; then going to her side, she drew her
hand with a caressing stroke under the girl’s chin, a favorite
love-touch of hers, and said:—
“Cap’n says we got to go home, child, both of us. You’re tuckered out,
an’ I got some chores to do. We can’t do no more good here. You come
’long an’ get washed up ’fore Caleb comes. You don’t want to let him
see ye bunged up like this, an’ all smudged and dirty with th’ soot
a-droppin’ down. He’ll be here in half an hour. They’ve sent the tug
to the Ledge for him an’ the men. Come, Betty, that’s a good child.”
“I ain’t a-goin’ a step, Aunty Bell. I ain’t sleepy a bit. There ain’t
nobody to change these cloths but me. Caleb knows how to get along,”
she answered, her eyes watching the quick, labored breathing of the
injured man.
The mention of Caleb’s name brought her back to herself. Since the
moment when she had left her cottage, the night before, and in all her
varying moods since, she had not once thought of her husband. At the
sound of the explosion she had run out of her house bareheaded, and
had kept on down the road, overtaking Mrs. Bell and the neighbors. She
had not stopped even to lock her door. She only knew that the men were
hurt, and that she had seen Captain Joe and the others working on the
sloop’s deck but an hour before. She still saw Lacey’s ghastly face as
the lantern’s light fell upon it, and his limp body carried on the
barrow plank and laid outside the warehouse door, and could still hear
the crash of Captain Joe’s iron bar when he forced off the lock. She
would not leave the sufferer, now that he had crawled back to life and
needed her,—not, at least, until he was out of all danger. When
Captain Joe passed a few minutes later with a cup of coffee for one of
the sufferers, she was still by Lacey’s side, fanning gently. He
seemed to be asleep.
“Now, little gal,” the captain called out, “you git along home. You
done fust-rate, an’ the men won’t forgit ye for it. Caleb’ll be mighty
proud when I tell ’im how you stood by las’ night when they all piled
in on top o’ me. You run ’long now after Aunty Bell, an’ git some
sleep. I’m goin’ ’board the sloop to see how badly she’s hurted.”
Betty only shook her head. Then she rested her face against Captain
Joe’s strong arm and said, “No, please don’t, Captain Joe. I can’t go
now.”
She was still there, the fan moving noiselessly, when Mrs. Leroy, her
maid, and Major Slocomb entered the hospital. The major had escorted
Mrs. Leroy from New York, greatly to Sanford’s surprise, and greatly
to Mrs. Leroy’s visible annoyance. All her protests the night before
had only confirmed him in his determination to meet her at the train
in the morning.
“Did you suppose, my dear suh,” he said, in answer to Sanford’s
astonished look, as he handed that dainty woman from the train on its
arrival at Keyport, “that I would permit a lady to come off alone into
a God-forsaken country like this, that raises nothin’ but rocks and
scrub pines?”
Mrs. Leroy seemed stunned when she saw the four cots upon which the
men lay. She advanced a step toward Lacey’s bed, and then, as she
caught sight of the bandages and the ghastly face upon the
blood-stained pillow, she stopped short and grasped Sanford’s arm, and
said in a tremulous whisper, “Oh, Henry, is that his poor wife sitting
by him?”
“No; that’s the wife of Caleb West, the master diver. That’s Lacey
lying there. He looks to be worse hurt than he is, Kate,” anxious to
make the case as light as possible.
Her eyes wandered over the room, up at the cobwebbed ceiling and down
to the blackened floor.
“What an awfully dirty place! Are you going to keep them here?”
“Yes, until they can get to work again. The building is perfectly dry
and healthy, with plenty of ventilation. We will have it cleaned
up,—it needs that.”
Betty merely glanced at the group as she sat fanning the sleeping man.
Their entrance had made but little impression upon her; she was too
tired to move, and too much absorbed in her charge to offer the fine
lady a chair.
Something in the girl’s face touched the visitor.
“Have you been here all the morning?” she asked, crossing to Betty’s
side of the cot, and laying a hand on her shoulder. With the passing
of the first shock the natural tenderness of her heart had overcome
her. She wanted to help.
Betty raised her eyes, the rims red with her long vigil, and the
whites all the whiter because of the fine black dust that had sifted
down and discolored her pale cheeks.
“I’ve been here all night, ma’am,” she said sweetly and gently, drawn
instinctively by Mrs. Leroy’s sympathetic face.
“How tired you must be! Can I do anything to help you? Let me fan him
while you rest a little.”
Betty shook her head.
The major crossed over to the cot occupied by Lonny Bowles, the big
Noank quarryman, whose arm was in a sling, and sat down on the edge of
the bed. No one had yet thought of bringing in chairs, except for
those nursing the wounded. As the Pocomokian looked into Bowles’s
bronzed, ruddy face, at the wrinkles about his neck, as seamy as those
of a young bull, the great broad hairy chest, and the arms and hands
big and strong, he was filled with astonishment. Everything about the
quarryman seemed to be the exact opposite of what he himself
possessed. This almost racial distinction was made clearer when, in
the kindness of his heart, he tried to comfort the unfortunate man.
“I’m ve’y sorry,” the major began, with an embarrassment entirely new
to him, and which he could not account for in himself, “at finding you
injured in this way, suh. Has the night been a ve’y painful one? You
seem better off than the others. How did you feel at the time?”
Bowles looked him all over with a curious expression of countenance.
He was trying to decide in his mind, from the major’s white tie,
whether he was a minister, whose next remark would be a request to
kneel down and pray with him, or whether he were a quack doctor who
had come to do a little business on his own account. The evident
sincerity and tenderness of the speaker disconcerted him for the
moment. He hesitated for a while, and finally formulated a reply in
his mind that would cover the case if his first surmise as to his
being a minister were correct, and might at the same time result in
his being let alone if the second proved to be the case.
“Wall, it was so damn sudden. Fust thing I knowed I wuz in the water
with th’ wind knocked out’er me, an’ the next wuz when I come to an’
they bed me in here an’ the doctor a-fixin’ me up. I’m all right, ye
see, only I’m drier’n a lime-kiln. Say, cap,”—he looked over toward
the water-bucket, and called to one of the men standing near the
door,—“fetch me a dipper.”
To call a landsman “cap” around Keyport is to dignify him with a title
which he probably does not possess, but which you think would please
him if he did.
“Let me get you a drink,” said the major, rising from the bed with a
quick spring indicative of his hearty desire to serve him. He clipped
the floating tin in the bucket and brought it to the thirsty man.
Bowles drained the contents to its last drop. “He ain’t no preach an’
he ain’t no sawbones,” he said to himself, as he returned the empty
tin to Slocomb with a “Thank ye,—much obleeged.”
Somehow the reply satisfied the major far more than the most
elaborately prepared speech of thanks which he remembered ever to have
received.
Then the two men continued to talk freely with each other, the one act
of kindness having broken down the barrier between them. The
Pocomokian, completely forgetting himself, told of his home on the
Chesapeake, of his acquaintance with Sanford, of his coming up to look
after Mrs. Leroy. The major’s tone of voice was as natural and
commonplace as if he had been conversing with himself alone. “Couldn’t
leave a woman without protection, you know,” to which code of
etiquette Bowles bobbed his head in reply; the genuine, unaffected
sympathy of the rough man before him seemed to have knocked every
fictitious prop from under his own personality.
The quarryman, in turn, talked about the Ledge, and what a rotten
season it had been,—nothing but southeasters since work opened; last
week the men only got three days’ work. It was terrible rough on the
boss (the boss was Sanford), paying out wages to the men and getting
so little back; but it wasn’t the men’s fault,—they were standing by
day and night, catching the lulls when they came; they’d make it up
before the season was over; he and Caleb West had been up all the
night before getting ready for the big derricks that Captain Joe was
going to set up as soon as they were ready; didn’t know what they were
going to do now with that Screamer all tore up: a record of danger,
unselfishness, loyalty, pluck, hard work, and a sense of duty that was
a complete revelation to Slocomb, whose whole life had been one
prolonged loaf, and whose ideas of the higher type of man had
heretofore been somehow inseparably interwoven with a veranda, a
splint-bottomed chair, a palm-leaf fan, and somebody within call to
administer to his personal wants.
When Captain Joe returned from an inspection of the sloop’s
injuries,—strange to say, they were very slight compared to the force
of the explosion,—Mrs. Leroy was still talking to Sanford, suggesting
comforts for the men, and planning for mosquito nettings to be placed
over their cots. The maid, a severe-looking woman in black, who had
never relaxed her grasp of the dressing-case, had taken a seat on an
empty nail-keg which somebody had brought in, and which she had
carefully dusted with her handkerchief before occupying. It was
evident from her manner that there was absolutely nothing she could do
for anybody.
Captain Joe looked at the party for a moment, noted Mrs. Leroy’s
traveling costume of blue foulard and dainty bonnet, ran his eye over
the maid, glanced at the major, in an alpaca coat, with white
waistcoat and necktie and gray slouch hat, and said in his calm,
forceful, yet gentle way to Mrs. Leroy, “It was very nice of ye to
come an’ bring yer friend,” pointing to the maid, “an’ any o’ Mr.
Sanford’s folks is allers welcome at any time; but we be a rough lot,
an’ the men’s rough, and ye kin see for yerself we ain’t fixed up fur
company. They’ll be all right in a week or so. Ef ye don’t mind now,
ma’am, I’m goin’ to shet them shetters to keep the sun out o’ their
eyes an’ git th’ men quiet,—some on ’em ain’t slep’ any too much. The
tug’ll be here to take ye all over to Medford whenever ye’re ready;
she’s been to th’ Ledge fur th’ men. Mr. Sanford said ye’d be goin’
over soon.” He glanced about the room as he spoke, until his eye
rested on Sanford. “Ye’re goin’ ’long, didn’t I hear ye say, sir?”
Then addressing Slocomb, whose title he tried to remember, “We’ve done
th’ best we could, colonel. It ain’t like what ye’re accustomed to,
mebbe,—kind’er ragged place,—but we got th’ men handy here where we
kin take care on ’em, an’ still look after th’ work, an’ we ain’t got
no time to lose this season; it’s been back’ard, blowin’ a gale half
the time. There’s the tug whistle now, ma’am,” turning again to Mrs.
Leroy.
Mrs. Leroy did not answer. She felt the justice of the captain’s
evident want of confidence in her, and realized at once that all of
her best impulses could not save her from being an intrusion at this
time. None of her former experience had equipped her for a situation
of such gravity as this. With a curious feeling of half contempt for
herself, she thought, as she looked around upon the great strong men
suffering there silently, how little she had known of what physical
pain must be. She had once read to a young blind girl in a hospital,
during a winter, and she had sent delicacies for years to a poor man
with some affliction of the spine. She remembered that she had been
quite satisfied with herself and her work at the time; and so had the
pretty nurses in their caps, and the young doctors whom she met, the
head surgeon even escorting her to her carriage. But what had she done
to prepare herself for a situation like this? Here was the reality of
suffering, and yet with all her sympathy she felt within herself a
fierce repugnance to it. After all her aspirations, how weak she was,
and how heartily she despised herself!
As she turned to leave the building, holding her skirts in her hand to
avoid the dirt, the light of the open door was shut out, and eight or
ten great strong fellows in rough jackets and boots, headed by Caleb
West, just landed by a tug from the Ledge, walked hurriedly into the
room, with an air as if they belonged there and knew they had work to
do, and at once.
Caleb strode straight to Lacey’s bed. His cap was off, his hands were
clasped behind his back. He felt his eyes filling, and a great lump
rose in his throat as he stood looking down at him. He never could see
suffering unmoved.
The young rigger opened his well eye, and the pale cheek flushed
scarlet as he saw Caleb’s face bending over him.
“Where did it hit ye, sonny?” asked Caleb, bending closer, and
slipping one hand into Betty’s as he spoke.
Betty pointed to her own cheek. Lacey, she said, was too weak to
answer for himself.
“I’ve been afeard o’ that b’iler,” Caleb said, turning to one of the
men, “ever sence I see it work.”
Betty shook her head warningly, holding a finger to her lips. Caleb
and the men stopped talking.
“You been here all night, Betty?” whispered Caleb, putting his mouth
close to her ear, and one big hand on her rounded shoulder.
Betty nodded her head.
“Ye ought’er be mighty proud o’ her, Caleb,” said Captain Joe, joining
the group, and speaking in a lowered tone. “Ain’t many older women
’longshore would’er done any better. I tried ter git ’er to go home
with Aunty Bell two hours ago, but she sez she won’t.”
Caleb’s face glowed and his heart gave a quick bound as he listened to
Captain Joe’s praise of the girl wife that was all his own. His rough
hand pressed Betty’s shoulder the closer. He had always known that the
first great sorrow or anxiety that came into her life would develop
all her nature and make a woman of her. Now the men about him would
see the strong womanly qualities which had attracted him.
“Lemme take hold now, Betty,” said Caleb, still whispering, and
stooping over her again. “Ye’re nigh beat out, little woman.”
He slipped his arm around her slender waist as if to lift her from the
chair. Betty caught his fingers and loosened his hand from its hold.
“I’m all right, Caleb. You go home. I’ll be ’long in a little while to
get supper.”
Caleb looked at her curiously. Her tone of voice was new to him. She
had never loosened his arm before, not when she was tired and sick.
She had always crept into his lap, and put her pretty white arms
around his neck, and tucked her head down on his big beard.
“What’s the matter, little one?” he asked anxiously. “Maybe it’s
hungry ye be?”
“Yes, I guess I’m hungry, Caleb,” said Betty wearily.
“I’ll go out, Betty, an’ git ye some soup or somethin’. I’ll be back
right away, little woman.” He tiptoed past the cot, putting on his cap
as he went.
Two of the men followed him with their eyes and smiled. One looked
significantly at Lacey and then toward the retreating figure, and
shook his head in a knowing way.
Betty had not answered Caleb. She did not even turn her head to follow
his movements. She saw only the bruised, pale face before her as she
listened to the heavy breathing of the sufferer. She would have
dropped from her chair with fatigue and exhaustion but for some new
spirit within her which seemed to hold her up, and to keep the fan
still in her hand.
When Sanford, after escorting Mrs. Leroy to her home, returned to the
improvised hospital, he found the lanterns lighted, and learned that
the doctor had dressed the men’s wounds, and had reported everybody on
the mend, especially Lacey; at Betty’s urgent request he had made a
careful examination of the young rigger’s wounds, and had pronounced
him positively out of danger. Only then had she left her post and gone
to her own cottage with Caleb.
Captain Joe had followed Aunty Bell home for a few hours’ rest, and
all the watchers had been changed.
There was but one exception. Beside the cot upon which lay the sailor
with the dislocated hip sat the major, with hat and coat off, his
shirt-cuffs rolled up. He was feeding the sufferer from a bowl of soup
which he held in his hand. He seemed to enjoy every phase of his new
experience. It might have been that his sympathies were more than
usually aroused, or it might have been that the spirit of vagabondage
within him, which fitted him for every condition in life, making him
equally at home among rich and poor, and equally agreeable to both,
had speedily brought him into harmony with the men about him.
Certainly no newly appointed young surgeon in a charity hospital could
have been more entirely absorbed in the proper running of the
establishment than was Slocomb in the care of these rough men. He had
refused point-blank Mrs. Leroy’s pressing invitation to spend the
night at her house, his refusal causing much astonishment to those who
misunderstood his reasons.
“I’m going to take charge here to-night, major,” said Sanford, walking
toward him, realizing for the first time that he had neglected his
friend all day, and with a sudden anxiety as to where he should send
him for the night. “Will you go to the hotel and get a room, or will
you go to Captain Joe’s cottage? You can have my bed. Mrs. Bell will
make you very comfortable for the night.”
The major turned to Sanford with an expression of profound sympathy in
his face, hesitated for a moment, and said firmly, with a slight
suggestion of wounded dignity in his manner, and in a voice which was
sincerity itself, “By gravy, suh, you wouldn’t talk about going to bed
if you’d been yere ’most all day, as I have, and seen what these po’
men suffer. My place is yere, suh, an’ yere I’m going to stay.”
Sanford had to look twice before he could trust his own eyes and ears.
What was the matter with the Pocomokian?
“But, major,” he continued in protest, determining finally in his mind
that some quixotic whim had taken possession of him, “there isn’t a
place for you to lie down. You had better get a good night’s rest, and
come back in the morning. There’s nothing you can do here. I’m going
to sit up with the men myself to-night.”
The major did not even wait for Sanford’s reply. He placed the hot
soup carefully on the floor, slipped one hand under the wounded man’s
head that he might swallow more easily, and then raised another
spoonful to the sufferer’s lips.