Going out of quiet and beautiful green Dalton, and into the hospital of
Frere's Landing, 't is a wonderful change we make.
The silence of one place is as remarkable as the silence of the other,
perhaps. That of the hospital does not resemble that of the hamlet,
however. At times it grows oppressive and appalling, being the silence
of anguish or of death. A stranger reaching Dalton in the night might
wonder in the morning if there were in reality any passage out of it,
for there the lake, on one of whose western slopes is the
"neighborhood," seems locked in completely by the hills, and an ascent
towards heaven is apparently the only way of egress. Yet there's
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, speaking now seriously enough. "She is
of the greatest service, out of this room as well as in it."
"Why do I feel then as if something had happened,--something
disagreeable? We don't have such good times as we used to have when you
sat here and told stories, and let me run on like a school-boy."
"You have better company, that's all. I'm not such a fool that I can't
see it. You have better times, lad,--if I don't."
"Then all you did for me before she came was for pity's sake! Who's in
the ditch now, getting all the favor you used to show to me?"
The voice and manner with which these words were spoken produced an
effect not readily yielded to, though the surgeon was perfectly aware
that his emotion was unperceived and unguessed by the man on the bed
there, who was investigating a difficulty which had puzzled him.
* * * * *
So we have come to _this_ point. Away down at Frere's Landing, amid
scenes of anguish, tribulation, and death, where elect souls did
minister, there was found ministration by these elect souls in their own
behalf.
They had gained a "Landing-Place" that was sacred ground, and if
Philosophy and Science would also stand there they must put their shoes
from off their feet, for the ground was holy. Priests whose right it was
to stand within the veil were servants there; and day by day, as they
discerned each other's work, it was not required of them always to dwell
upon the nature of sacrifice.
Each, in such work as now was occupying the doctor and Miss Ames, had
need of the other's strengthening sympathy, day by day, and of all the
consolations of friendship, such as royal souls are permitted to bestow
on one another.
With the surgeon, not a young man in anything except happiness, it was
as if there were broad openings, not _rents_, in the heavy leaden skies.
Pure, bright lights shone along the horizon, warmth overspread the cold.
With her, perpetual and sufficient are the compensations of love. To him
who plants of this it is returned out of earth, and out of heaven, in
good measure, pressed down, and running over. Nay, let us not argue.
The sick man lying on his cot, the convalescent guided by her to balcony
or garden, the crippled and the dying, had all to give her of their
hearts' best bloom. And if it proved that there was one among these who,
to her apprehension, walked in white, like an angel, of whom she asked
no thanks, no praise, only aid and sympathy, what mortal should look
surprise? The constant, the pure, the alive through all generations, the
Alive Forever, will not. And the rest may apologize for overhearing a
story not intended for their ears.
It happened one evening that the surgeon and Miss Ames met outside the
hospital doors, near the old sea-wall. They were walking in no haste,
watching, it seemed, the flight of the brave little sea-birds, as they
made their way now above and now among the breakers. After the
heart-trying labors of the day, an hour like this was full of balm to
those who were now entered on its rest. But it was not secure from
invasion. Even now a voice was shouting to the surgeon, and he heard it,
though he walked on as if he were determined not to hear. He had taken
to himself this hour; he had earned it, he needed it; surely the world
could go on for one hour without him!
But the importunity of the call was not to be resisted. So, because the
irresistible must be met, the surgeon stood still and looked around. A
poor little fellow was making toward him with all speed.
"Mail for you, sir," he said, as he came nearer, and he gave a package
of newspapers, and one little letter, into the surgeon's hands.
So Miss Ames and he sat down on the stone wall to scan those newspapers,
and the surgeon opened his note.
Obviously a scrawl from some poor fellow who had obtained a discharge on
account of sickness, and gone home. It was not rare for the surgeon to
receive such missives from the men who had been under his charge.
Wonderful was the influence he gained over the majority of his patients.
Wonderful? No. The man of meanest talents, who gives himself body and
spirit to a noble work, can no more fail of his great reward, than the
seasons of their glory. Never man on this Landing thought meanly of the
hospital surgeon's skill, or questioned his right to rank among the
ablest of his tribe,--no man, and certainly not the woman who was making
a hero out of him, to her heart's great content.
While Miss Ames looked at the papers, he proceeded, without much
interest in the business, to open and read his note.
One glance down the blurred and blotted page served to arrest his
attention, in a way that letters could not always do. Here was not a cup
of cold water to sip and put aside. He glanced at Miss Ames. She was
absorbed in a report of "the situation," getting items of renown out of
one column and another, which should ease many an aching body, smooth
many a sick man's pillow, ere the night-lamps were lighted in the wards.
If she had chanced to look up at him just then, while he, with scared,
astonished eyes, was glancing at her, it is impossible to say what words
might have escaped him, or what might have forever been prevented
utterance. But she was not looking. What heavenly angel turned her eyes
away?
And now, before him whose prerogative was Victory, what vision did
arise? An apocalyptic vision: blackness of darkness forever, and side by
side with chaos, fair fields of living green, through which a young girl
walked towards a womanhood as fair as hers who sat beside him.
Unconscious of wrong that child, and yet how deeply, how variously
wronged! If he had meditated a great robbery, he could not have quailed
in the light of the discovered enormity as he did now before the vision
of his Janet.
Years upon years of struggle and of conquest could hardly give to the
surgeon of Frere's a more notable victory, one which could fill his soul
with a serener sense of triumph, than this hour gave, when he sat on the
old stone wall that guarded shore from sea, with the child's letter in
his hands, which had not miscarried, but had moved straight,
straight--do not Divine providences always?--as an arrow to its mark.
* * * * *
Out of the secret place of strength he came, and he held that letter
open towards Miss Ames.
"Here's something to be thought of," said he, endeavoring to speak in a
natural and easy tone of voice. "I don't know that I could ask for
better counsel than yours. My little girl has written me a letter. I
didn't know that she could write. See what work she has made of it. But
what sort of parents can she have, do you think, twelve years old, and
writing a thing like that?"
Miss Ames laid aside, or rather, to speak correctly, she _dropped_ the
newspapers. There was nothing in all their printed columns to compare
with this item of intelligence,--that the surgeon had a living wife and
a living daughter. She took the letter he was holding towards her, and
said, "Indeed, Doctor," quite as naturally as he had spoken. But she did
not look at him. She read the letter,--every misspelled word of
it,--then she said: "Perhaps it doesn't say much for the parents. But
something--I should think a great deal--for the child. Strange you
didn't tell me about her before. But I like to have her introduce
herself."
"You do!"
"Promotion, eh!" she was looking the scrawl over again.
The word, as she pronounced it, was not an interrogation. Miss Ames
seemed to be musing, yet with no activity of curiosity, on the one idea
which had evidently possessed the child's mind in writing.
There was silence for a moment after this ejaculation; then the surgeon
spoke.
"I enlisted as a private," said he, speaking with a difficulty that
might not have been manifest to any ordinary hearer. "My daughter did
not know that I had a profession; but my diploma satisfied the
Department when my promotion was spoken of. When I became a live man in
the service, I wished to serve where I could bring the most to pass, and
it was not in camp, or on the field,--except as a healer." He looked at
his watch as he uttered these last words, and arose as if his hour of
rest had expired; but then, instead of taking one step forward, he
turned and looked at Miss Ames, and she seemed to hear him saying, "Is
this a time for flight?"
He answered that question, for he had asked it of himself, by sitting
down again.
"I _ought_ to take a few minutes to myself," he said, with grave
deliberation, "I shall have no time like this to speak of my child,--for
her, I mean"; and if, while he spoke thus, he lacked perfect composure,
the hour was his, and he knew it. "More than a dozen years ago," he
continued, "I went to Dalton. I was sick and dying, as I thought.
Janet's mother nursed me through a fever, and was the means of saving my
life. I married her. I was grateful for the care she had taken of me;
and while regaining my strength, during that September and October, I
fell into the mistake of thinking that it was she who made the world
seem beautiful to me again, and life worth keeping. But you have seen
enough since you have been in this hospital to understand that this war
has been salvation to a good many men, as it will prove to the nation. I
enlisted as much as anything to get away from--where I was. The Devil
himself couldn't hold me there any longer. He had managed things long
enough. The child is capable of love, you see. Can you help us? I don't
know, but I think you were sent from above to do it, somehow. I see--I
must live for Janet. When I think that she might live in the same world
where you do, that I have no right to surround her with any other
conditions--does God take me for a robber? No! for he managed to get
this letter to me when--" He stopped speaking,--it seemed as if he were
about to look at his watch again; but instead of that, he said "Good
evening" to Miss Ames, and bowed, and walked back towards the hospital.
His assistant gathered up the newspapers, and then sat down again and
looked out towards the sea. The tide was coming in. She sat awhile and
watched the great waves lift aloft the graceful branches of green and
purple sea-weed, and saw the stormy petrels going to and fro, and
listened to the ocean's roar. She was sounding deeper depths than those
awful caverns which were hidden by the green and shining water from her
eyes.
If Janet Saunders, child of Nancy Elkins, at that moment felt a thrill
of joy, and broke forth into singing, would you deem the fact
inconsequent, not to be classed among the wonders of telegraphic
achievement?
I think her little cold, pinched, meagre life--nay, _lot_--was
brightened consciously on that great day of being,--that the sun felt
warmer, and the skies looked fairer than they ever had before. The
destiny which had seemed to be in the hands or charge of no one on earth
was in the hands of two as capable as any in this world for services of
love.
* * * * *
But now what was to be done by Dr. Saunders? Every man and woman sees
the "situation." For the present, of course, he was sufficiently
occupied; he was in the service of his country. But when these urgent
demands on his time, patience, and humanity, which were now incessant,
should no longer be made, because the country had need of him no
longer,--what then? Men mustered out of service generally went home;
family and neighborhood claimed them. What family, what neighborhood,
claimed him? His very soul abhorred the thought of Dalton, where he had
died to life; where he had buried his manhood. The very thought that the
neighbors would not be able to recognize him was a thought which made
him say to himself they never _should_ recognize him. He would _not_ be
identified as the poor creature who went out of Dalton with one hope,
and only one,--that the first day's engagement might see him lying among
the unnamed and unknown dead. But if the neighbors and his wife exposed
to him relations which he swore he would not degrade himself so far as
to resume, what was to become of his daughter? That was more easily
managed. He could send her away from home to school, if he could find a
lady in the land who would compassionate that neglected little girl, and
teach her, and train her, and be a mother to her.
Miss Ames knew such a one. Let the little girl be sent to Charlestown to
Miss Hall, Miss Ames's dear friend, and no better training than she
would have in her school could be found for her throughout the land.
Miss Ames gave this advice the day she went away from Frere's, for she
had decided, for her brother, that he never would recover his strength
until he was removed to a cooler climate. So they were going on a
government transport, which would sail for Charlestown direct. This
little business in regard to Janet Saunders could be managed by her
immediately on arrival home. And so the surgeon wrote a letter, which he
sent by his assistant, to Miss Hall, and another to the minister of
Dalton, and another still to Janet and her mother. And all these
concerned little Jenny; and all this grew out of the letter written in
the blacksmith's shop, and the doctor's recovered integrity.
But the question yet remained, What could be done for Nancy? If
education in that direction were possible,--to what purpose? That she
might become his equal when the strength of his hope that he had done
with her was lying merely in this, that they were unequal? But
hope,--what had he to do with hope, especially with such a hope as this?
What had he to do with hope, who had come forth from Dalton as from a
pit of despair? There were no foes like those of his own household; he
was hoping that for all time he had rid himself of them. That would have
been desertion, in point of fact. Well; but all that a man hath will he
give for his life. He was safely distant from that place of disaster and
death; but he must recognize his home duties, at least by the
maintenance of his family. Yes, that he would do. He began to consider
how much was due to him for services rendered to the government,--for
the first time to consider.
So, long before winter came, Nancy Saunders found herself on intimate
terms with the minister and his wife,--for the minister had received his
letters from the surgeon, and promptly accepted his commission, securing
comfortable winter quarters for Nancy, and escorting Janet to
Charlestown, after his wife had aided the doctor's wife in preparing the
child for boarding-school. All these changes and transactions excited
talk in Dalton. Every kind of rumor went abroad that you can imagine;
and it was currently believed at last that the doctor had made a fortune
by some army contract. So well persuaded of this fact was his wife,
that, as time wore on, she began to think, and to say, that, if such was
the case, she didn't know why she should be kept on short allowance, and
to inquire among the neighbors the easiest and the shortest route from
Dalton to Frere's Landing. Nobody seemed able to answer the question so
well as Ezra Cramer; and he assured her that she would lose her head
before she got half through the army lines which stretched between her
and the hospital. But then Ezra was a born know-nothing, said
Nancy,--that everybody knew.
Walking up and down the sea-wall, night after night, during the hour of
rest he appropriated to himself,--knowing that these things were
accomplished, for in due time letters came informing him of the
fulfilment of his wishes,--the surgeon had ample leisure for considering
and reconsidering this case. It was one that would not stay disposed of.
What adjournments were made! what exceptions were taken! and what
appeals to higher courts were constantly being made!
As often as a scrawl came from Colonel Ames reporting progress, and the
plans he and his sister were making, the deeds they were doing, the
grand-jury was sworn and the surgeon arraigned before it; the chief
justice came into court, and all the witnesses, and the accusation was
read. Then the counsel for the defendant and the counsel for the
plaintiff appeared. But, with every new trial of the case, new charges
and new specifications were brought forward and made, and it was equal
to being in chancery. If the war lasted through a generation, it was
likely that the surgeon's suit would last as long.
This was as notable a divorce case as ever was made public.
On the plaintiff's behalf the argument ran thus: Here was a man, a
gentleman by birth, education, and profession, legally united to a woman
low-born, low-bred, and so ignorant that she could neither read nor
write. He had come to the neighborhood where she lived, to the door of
the very house she occupied, sick in body and in mind. Disappointments
and ill-health had reduced him to the shadow of himself in person, and
his mind, of course, shared his body's disaffection.
A sick person, as all experience in practice has proved over and over
again, is hardly to be called a responsible being. Invalids love and
hate without reason,--which is contrary, he said, as he stood in the
presence of the court,--contrary to what is done among persons in sound
health.
Under the shelter of her uncle's roof he had lain for weeks, sick of a
fever. He was saved alive, but so as by fire. This girl waited on him
through that time as a servant. He was thrown chiefly on her hands,--no
other person could be spared to wait on the poor stranger. She comforted
him. Her ways were not refined and gentle as if she had been taught
refinement and tenderness by precept or example. She had strong
good-sense. So far as she understood his orders, she obeyed them. When
he could not give any, she made use of her own judgment, and sought
first of all his comfort. She was kind. In her rough honesty and
unwearied attention he found cause for gratitude.
Rising for the first time from his bed of sickness, he would have fallen
if she had not lifted him and laid him back upon his bed. When he became
strong enough to stand, but not without support, she gave him that
support. She assisted him from the little room, and the little house
when the walls became intolerable to him, and it happened to be in the
early morning of a day so magnificent that it seemed another could never
be made like it. He could not forget how the world looked that morning;
how the waters shone; how the islands stood about; how the surrounding
hills were arrayed in purple glory; how the birds sang. This land to
which he was a stranger, which he had seen before only on that night
when he came in the dark to her uncle's door, looked like Paradise to
him; he gazed and gazed, and silent tears ran down his pale face through
the furrows of his wasted cheeks. She saw them shining in his beard, and
said something to soothe him in a comforting way, as any woman would
have spoken who saw any creature in weakness and pain. The manner or the
word, whatever it was, expressed a superiority of health, if of no other
kind, and he was in no condition to investigate either its quality or
its degree.
When, with voice feeble and broken as a sick child's, he thanked her for
all she had done, and she answered that it was nothing but a pleasure,
and he need not thank her, he did not forthwith forget that she had
watched day and night over him for nearly two months; that many a time
weariness so overpowered her that she sat and slept in the broad
daylight, and looked paler than when he lay like a dead weight on her
hands.
He remembered in court, and could not deny it, that when, believing that
this was destiny as it was also pleasure, he asked the girl to marry
him, she answered, "No,"--as if she did not trust what he said, that she
was necessary to his happiness. She told him that he did not belong in
Dalton, and that he would not be happy there with her and her people. He
answered that all he desired to know was whether she loved him. By and
by he was able to gather from the answers she gave, as well as failed to
give, all he desired to know, and they were married.
And, since he was beginning life anew, it was shown in court, nothing of
the old life should enter into this of Dalton. He buried his profession
in the past, and undertook other labors,--labors like those of Uncle
Elkins; he would abide on that level where he found himself on his
recovery, and make no effort to lift his wife to that he had renounced.
She was a child of Nature. He would learn life anew of her; but he
failed of success in all his undertakings. Shall a man attempt to
extenuate his failures? It seemed new to him; he acknowledged it in open
court, that from the day of his entrance into Dalton to the day he left
it, he was under some enchantment there. And if an insane man is not to
be held responsible in law for his offences, he had the amplest title to
a quitclaim deed from that which had grown out of the Dalton experience.
So the lower courts disposed of the case. He was free. But after a time
the suit was carried up before superior powers, and thus the advocate
for the defendant showed cause on the new trial.
She was living among the people of whom she had been born. In person she
was attractive as any girl to be found on all the lake or hillside; a
rosy-cheeked, fair-faced, fair-haired blue-eyed girl, with a frank voice
and easy address. She had a "Hail fellow! well met!" for every man,
woman, and child of the vicinity. She had lovers, all the way up from
her childhood, rustic admirers, and one who looked at her from a not far
distance, who dressed himself in his best and went to her uncle's house
on Sundays and other holidays, and who was courting Nancy after his
fashion, with all plans for their future marked out fully in his
mind,--and these would have fulfilment if his suit were only successful;
and in regard to that he had no fears or doubts.
Until this stranger came to Uncle Elkins's house! During his long
sickness the young lover was helpful in many ways to Nancy. But he
began to be suspicious by and by of the results of this much waiting. At
last, before he was himself ready to do it, he asked Nancy to be his
wife; but he was too late. She had "given her word" to the poor fellow
whom she had lured back from Death's door.
The court was admonished to take cognizance of this fact, that, if Nancy
had married the man in whom her heart had been interested up to the time
when the stranger came, she would have married in her own sphere, a man
of her own rank, and would have loved him as he did her, with an equal
love; they would have lived out their lives, animating them with
skirmishes and small warfare, and winning victories over each other,
which would have proved disastrous as defeats to neither.
It would have been no high crime to such a man that Nancy was ignorant
up and down through the range of knowledge; he would not have turned
away in disgust from his endeavors to teach her, if she took it into her
head to learn, though she dropped and regained the ambition through
every winter of her life. He would have plodded on in his accustomed
ways, would have protected his wife and child from starvation and cold,
without imagining that a husband and father could retire from his
position as such, or abrogate his duties. No vague expectations in
regard to herself, no bitter disappointment in regard to him, would have
attended her. The very changes in her character, which had made her not
to be endured,--how far was he whose name she bore responsible for them?
She had been accustomed to thrift and labor, she saw in him idleness and
waste of power and life. She had exhausted the resources readiest to her
hand in vain, and had only then given up her expectation.
It was not be denied that it was humiliation and wrath to live with her;
but her husband had sought her,--she had not sought him! If he could
plead for himself the force and constraint of circumstances, should not
the same defence be set up for her? And what might not patience, and
better management, and gentler and more noble demeanor towards her, have
done for her? Was _he_ the same man he was when he went away from
Dalton? Was he the same man in Dalton that he had been in his youth? Was
it not out of the pit that he himself had been digged? It became evident
that the arguments for the defendant were producing a result in court.
The judge on his throne, as well as the grand-jury, listened to the
argument in favor of the woman. And at last the case was decided; for
the judge charged the jury, that, if it could be shown that there was
mere incompatibility, it was the business of the superior mind to make
straight a highway for the Lord across those lives. Let every valley be
exalted, every hill be brought low.
Dr. Saunders _acquiesced_ in this verdict, and wrote a letter to his
wife. He knew she could not read it, but he knew also that she could
procure it to be read to her. He filled it with accounts of his
situation, occupation, expectation; and he sent her money. He said that,
if he could get a furlough, he might run up North for a few days, as
other men went home who could get leave of absence, to see that those
whom he had left behind him were doing well; and they would both perhaps
be able to go and see their daughter Jenny, or else they might have her
home for a holiday. He wrote a letter saying these things and others,
and any wife might have been proud to receive such from her husband, "in
the war."
And when he had sent it, he looked for no answer. This was a kind of
giving which must look for no return. And yet an answer was sent him. He
did not receive it, however, it was sent at so late a date; he was then
on his way to Dalton.
When the whistle of the miniature boat which plied the lake sent a
warning along the hillside that a passenger was on board who wished to
land, or that mail was to be sent ashore, a small boat was rowed from
the Point by a lad who was lingering about, waiting to know if any such
signal were to come, and one passenger stood at the head of the ladder,
waiting for him to come alongside. This was Dr. Saunders, who, having
been rowed ashore, walked three miles down the road, and up along the
mountain, to the Dalton neighborhood.
The first man whom he met as he walked on was the blacksmith, who had
been instrumental in getting Jenny's letter written. He was sitting in
front of his shop, alone. There was nothing about this man who was
walking into Dalton to excite a suspicion in the mind of the shrewdest
old inhabitant who should meet him that his personality was familiar to
Dalton eyes. He might safely ask what questions he would, and pursue his
way if he chose to do it. Nobody would recognize him.
The doctor lingered as he went past the shop; but the blacksmith did not
speak, and he walked on; and he passed others, his old neighbors, as he
went. This was hardly pleasant, though it might be the thing he desired.
He walked on until he came to the red farm-gate of Farmer Elkins,
Nancy's uncle. There he stopped. Under the chestnut-trees, before the
door, the farmer sat. The doctor walked in, and towards him like a man
at home, and said, "Good evening, Uncle."
The wrinkled old farmer looked up from his drowse. He had hardly heard
the words spoken; but the voice that spoke had in it a tone that was
familiar, were it not for the cheeriness of it; and--but no! one glance
at the figure before him assured him of anything rather than Saunders!
Yet the old man, either because of his vague expectation or because of
the confusion of his half-awake condition, said something audibly, of
which the name of Nancy, and her name alone, was intelligible.
"Well, where _is_ Nancy," said the other, laying his hand on the
farmer's shoulder in a manner calculated to dissipate his dream.
The old man looked at the doctor with serious, suspicious eyes, scanned
him from head to foot, and there was a dash of anger, of unbelief, of
awe, and of deference in the spirit with which he said, "If you're
Saunders, I'm glad you've come, but you might 'a' come sooner."
"You're right, and you're wrong, Uncle. I'm Saunders, true enough. But I
couldn't come before,--this is my first furlough."
"Did you get the letter?"
"No, what letter? Who wrote to me?"
The judge and the jury looked down from the awful circle, in the midst
of which stood Saunders, and surveyed the little hard-faced,
yellow-haired farmer, with eyes which seemed intent on searching him
through all his shadowy ambiguity. If only he would make such answer as
any other man in all the land might expect,--thought the
prisoner,--"Why, your wife, of course." The doctor was prepared to
believe in a miracle. Since he went away his wife might have been
spurred on by the ambition to rival her daughter, who was being
educated. She perhaps had learned to write, and in her pride had written
to her husband!
The answer Elkins gave was the only one of which the doctor's mind had
taken no thought.
"Nancy died a month ago." There the old man paused. But as the doctor
made no answer, merely stood looking at him, he went on. "She got your
letter first, though, Nancy did. I think, if anything could a-hindered
her dying, that would. She came out here to read your letter," (he did
not say to hear it read, and Saunders noticed that,) "and my folks, she
found, was busy, and nobody was round to talk it over with her, so
nothing could stop her, but she put right in and worked till night, and
on top o' that she would go back to the village, and it was raining, and
so dark you could scurce see the road; but she'd made up her mind to go
South and find you, and so we couldn't persuade her to stop over night.
But the next day, when she come back to tell us when she was going to
start for Dixie, she was took down right here, that suddin. There's been
a good deal of that sickness round here sense, and fatalish, most
always. But I tell 'em it took the smartest of the lot off first, when
it took Nancy."
The doctor stood there when the teller of this story had stopped
speaking. He was not looking at _him_,--of that the old man was certain.
He seemed to be looking nowhere, and to see nothing that was near or
visible.
"Come into the house and take something," said Uncle Elkins, for he
began to be alarmed.
"Was Janet here?" asked the doctor, as if he had not heard the
invitation.
"We had to send for her. Nancy was calling for her all the time," said
Farmer Elkins, as if he doubted how far this story ought to be
continued, for he did not understand the man before him. He only knew
that once he had fallen down on his door-step, and lain helpless beneath
his roof hard on to two months; and he watched him now as if he
anticipated some renewal of that old attack,--and there was no Nancy now
to nurse, and watch, and slave herself to death for him; for that was
the way folk in the house were talking about Nancy and her husband in
these days.
"Did she get here in time? Who went after her?"
"The minister went. We had 'em here a fortnight,--well on to 't."
"What, the minister, too?"
"No, I mean the young woman who come from Charlestown with Jenny. Her
name was--" He paused long, endeavoring to recall that name. It trembled
on the doctor's lips, but he did not utter it. At last said Farmer
Elkins, "There! it was Miss Amey,--Amey? Yes. She took the little girl
back hum with her. It was right in there, in the room where you had that
spell of fever of yourn. She got you well through that! Ef anything
could 'a' brought her through that turn, your letter would. It came
across my mind once that, as she'd saved _your_ life, may be you was
going to save hern by that are letter! And she was so determined to get
to your hospital!"
"Thank God she got the letter, any way!" exclaimed the doctor.
At that the old man walked into the house to set its best cheer before
Nancy's husband, who looked so much like a mourner as he stood there
under the trees, with the bitter recollections of the past overwhelming
every other thought and feeling of the present.
Because it seemed to him that he could not sleep under old Elkins's roof
that night, he remained there and slept there,--in the room where his
fever ran its course,--in the room where Nancy died.
Because this story of the last months of her life was as gall and
wormwood to him, he refused it not, but went over it with his wife's
relations, and helped them spread a decent pall, according to the custom
of mourners; over what had been.
Was he endeavoring to deceive himself and others into the belief that he
was a mourning man? He was but accepting the varied humiliations of
death; for they do not all pertain to the surrendering life. He was not
thinking at all of his loss through her, nor of his gain by her. He was
thinking, as he stood above the grave of fifteen years, how high
Disgrace and Misery had heaped the mound. So bitterly he was thinking of
the past, it was without desire that he at last arose and faced the
future.
* * * * *
When he went to Charlestown--for a man on furlough had no time to
lose--and saw his Janet in the Colonel's house,--Miss Ames took Janet
home with her after that death and funeral,--when he saw how fair and
beautiful a promise of girlhood was budding on the poor neglected
branch, he said to his assistant, "Will you keep this child with you
until the war is over? I am afraid to touch her, or interfere with her
destiny. It has been so easy for me to mar, so hard to mend."
* * * * *
Miss Ames kept the child; the war ended. The surgeon then, like other
men, returned home; his regiments were disbanded, and now, one duty, to
mankind and the ages, well discharged, another, less conspicuous, but as
urgent, claimed him. There was Janet, and Janet's mother,--she who had
risen, not from the grave indeed, but from the midst of dangers,
sacredly to guard and guide the child.
On his way to them he asked himself this question, "How many times must
a man be born before he is fit to live?"
He did not answer that question; neither can I.
He informed his assistant of the court's decision in reference to the
plea of "incompatibility," and she said that the justice of the sentence
was not to be controverted with success by any counsellor on earth; but
the reader may smile, and say that it was not difficult to come to this
decision under the circumstances.
We will not argue that point. I had only the story to tell, and have
told it.