THE MIDNIGHT REVEL--MARY AND HER MOTHER.
Time stole into eternity,
And they stood wondering by,
Breathless, and oh, how silently
To watch the lov'd one die.
Between that portion of Bellevue occupied as an hospital and the main
building lay several enclosures sparsely cultivated with flowers, but
altogether possessing a barren and dismal aspect. Scattered through
these enclosures were offices and shanties, some occupied by favored
paupers, and others used as work-shops and for the culinary purposes
of the Hospitals.
In one of these shanties a shocking scene presented itself that night.
The signal for a secret carouse had been given, and the orderlies and
nurses crept stealthily from their posts by the sick, and came through
the midnight darkness towards the shanty. Some came slowly and at
once; while others stole like gaunt wild beasts, by the high wall that
sweeps parallel with the western front of the main Hospital,
sheltering themselves beneath the willow trees and the deep shadow
cast by the building, while with their hands they groped eagerly along
the wall. They found, after some trouble, the cords for which they
were seeking, each with a piece of iron at the end, that had been cast
over the wall by an accomplice outside the gate. Three of these cords
lay tightened across the wall, their iron ballast sunk into the turf,
and with breathless haste they were drawn over each with a bottle at
the end, which, as it reached the top of the wall, fell into the foul
hands grasping at it.
One bottle was broken in the fall, for the man stationed to receive it
was very old, and he could not see like the others. When the vessel
was dashed against the stones bespattering the aged drunkard with its
contents, he fell upon the grass wringing his hands and bemoaning his
hard fate. The others met his grief with muttered curses, and one of
them spurned the grovelling creature with his foot, showering fierce
reproaches upon his carelessness.
They drove this miserable being back to his lair in the shanties,
but he crawled abjectly toward them, begging to join the carouse
notwithstanding his great misfortune. They would still have rejected
him, but the old man had learned craft with his age, and when pleading
was of no avail, betook himself to threats, which proved more
effectual than his tears. Fearing that he might expose them in the
morning, they consented that the old man should have a portion of
their spoils, and he followed them through the darkness like a lame
old hound that takes his food greedily, though beaten by the hand that
gives it.
A cooking-stove stood in the shanty, with a pine table and some
stools. Upon the stove was a metal lamp burning dimly and emitting a
cloud of smoke. One end of the table held a tin candlestick, where a
meagre tallow-candle swaled away in the socket, and the table was
littered with fragments of food in little round pans. An iron spoon or
two, with three or four tin cups, lay amid this confusion. Around this
table hovered half a dozen women nearly intoxicated with brandy
supplied by the nurses, from number ten.
In this state was the shanty when the two orderlies came in, hugging
the great black bottles to their bosoms, followed by the old pauper,
who still muttered discontentedly at his loss.
Then began the carouse in earnest! The tin cups were filled again and
again--the earthen pitchers circulated from lip to lip--like wild
animals, they devoured the fragments stolen from the convalescent
patients, and swallowed the stimulants, of which they had plundered
the dying not a stone's throw off; pipes and tobacco were produced,
the women smoking fiercely like the men; while ribald jests and
muttered curses rose through the foul smoke.
And these were the persons provided by a law of New York City for the
sick poor--these fierce women, reeling to and fro like fiends amid the
smoke, making sport of pain, joking about coffins--laughing with
drunken glee over the death throes they had witnessed. These were the
nurses a great and rich city gave to its poor--merciful economy--sweet,
beautiful humanity!
And there sat those gentle children in the fever wards so wickedly
deserted. From time to time Isabel parted the violet lips of her poor
mother, and forced through them the liquid fraud that was so cruelly
deceiving them. Mary went from bed to bed administering to the dying
poor, as she had done the night before; but with a heavy heart, for
all that she gave them imparted no strength. She could see the
helpless creatures droop and sink from minute to minute; one or two
were benefited, but the rest only seemed worse from all her tending.
Mary was giving a draught of water to a young woman, who in her
delirium clamored constantly for drink, when Isabel stole softly to
her side. The child was very pale, and her large eyes dilated with
terror. She took hold of Mary's dress and pulled it.
"Mary, oh, Mary, she did not swallow the last. Come, come and help
me!"
Mary sat down the water pitcher and went to Mrs. Chester. She bent
down close to the motionless face, listening. You could see her cheek
grow pale in the dim light, as she held her own breath, hoping to
catch one flutter from those white and parted lips. She lifted her
head at last, and turned her mournful eyes on Isabel.
The little girl looked imploringly upon her--she shed no tear--uttered
no word; but fell, like a wounded bird, prone to the floor, and there
stood poor Mary in the midst of death, utterly alone.
When the nurses came reeling up from their carouse, three lay dead
upon those narrow cots besides Mrs. Chester, and two were dying.
"Go and call Crofts!" cried Mrs. Fuller, staggering from bed to bed,
reckless and fierce. "Let us have the cots cleared--bring in the
shrouds, I say. Tell Crofts we have plenty of use for his pine boxes
to-night."
The other nurse obeyed her, muttering fiercely against the unevenness
of the floor.
The coffins were brought in, and these two wretched women arranged the
poor creatures they had murdered, for their pauper graves. They came
to Mrs. Chester last, but Mary Fuller, who knelt by the bed-side with
poor Isabel senseless at her feet, arose and stood firmly before her
mother.
"You shall not touch her! You shall not even look at her!" cried the
noble child--and with her trembling hand she drew the sheet over the
features she had so dearly loved.
The woman glared fiercely upon the child. Drink had rendered her
ferocious--she lifted her clenched hand, shaking it savagely, and an
oath broke from her hot lips--an oath over the beautiful dead.
"I--I will put that on," said the child, pointing to the shroud which
the nurse held crushed under her arm.
"Out of my way!" cried the furious woman--"out of the way, or I will
strike you!"
"Mother, leave this poor lady to me, or I will go myself and call up
the doctor," answered the child firmly.
"Out of my way!" repeated the wretched woman.
The child grew pale as death, but in her eyes rose the steady firmness
of a meek but strong spirit, fully aroused.
"Mother, though you strike me to your feet, though you kill me, I will
not let you come near this poor lady--not now--not as you are!"
"As I am!--how is that?" cried the vile mother, lifting her soiled
apron to her eyes and heaving a sob. "Here I am, a poor, forlorn
prisoner, and you, my own child, must come to taunt me in this
way--I wish I were dead--oh, I do--I do!"
And in a fit of maudlin self-condolence, the base woman betook herself
to a corner of the ward where, with her arms flung across the cot of a
delirious patient, she muttered herself into a heavy slumber.
Mary Fuller turned to her mournful task. First she sprinkled water in
poor Isabel's face, and strove with all her feeble skill to bring the
child from the death-like swoon in which she had fallen; but the
beautiful child lay upon the floor, pale as her mother, and looking
nearly as much like death. When all her own simple efforts at
restoration proved fruitless, Mary went out in search of help; she met
Crofts in the passage, who took the child in his arms and bore her to
the matron's room.
When Crofts returned with the pine coffin he found the remains of poor
Jane Chester reposing beneath the scant folds of an Alms House shroud.
The pale hands were laid meekly on her bosom, and her hair--that long,
beautiful hair, which Chester had been so proud of, lay in all its
bright beauty over her brow. Disease had not yet reached the purple
bloom that lay upon those tresses, and Mary, following her own gentle
memory of the past, had disposed them in rich waves back from the
forehead, which gave a singular but beautiful look to that calm, dead
face. They lifted the pale form of Jane Chester, and laid it
reverently in the pauper coffin. There was neither pillow nor lining
there, nothing but the bare boards to receive those delicate limbs,
and this bleak poverty made even the heart of Crofts sink within him.
"It is a pity--she does not seem like the rest--I wish we had asked
the matron for a strip of cloth or something to put under her head,"
he whispered, addressing the stolid man who stood by.
"Wait, only wait a few minutes," answered Mary, laying her hand
eagerly on Crofts' arm. "How kind it is of you to think of this. You
will wait, I am sure. I--I will get something!"
"Very well, we will take out the others first," said Crofts, who was
very kindly disposed toward the little girl; "be quick, though."
Mary went out in breathless haste. She was very pale, and her eyes
were full of sorrowful eagerness as she went forth into the dim, grey
morning, just breaking through the fog that lay on the Long Island
shore, and revealing the waters that rolled darkly between that and
Bellevue. She threaded her way through the enclosures which we have
mentioned. The light was just sufficient to reveal a few spring
flowers, starting up from the soil, and the soft foliage of an old
vine or two that covered the nakedness of some outbuilding.
Ignorant of those rules that made her act a trespass, Mary wandered
on, gathering up the hyacinths, violets and golden crocuses to which
the night had given birth. Down to the water's edge she rambled,
carefully gathering up each bud in her passage. In a corner of the
superintendent's garden she found an old pear tree, dead, except the
trunk and a single limb nearest to the ground, that was studded with
snow-white blossoms.
Mary clambered up by the wall, and breaking off handful after handful
of these fragrant buds, carried them, all wet with dew, back to the
hospital. As she bore her treasure along the fever ward, scenting the
pestilential atmosphere with their pure breath, the sick turned their
languid faces toward her, greedily inhaling the transient sweetness.
Two or three of the convalescent women followed her with longing eyes.
She felt these glances and turned back, leaving a spray of the dewy
buds upon the pillow of each. The grateful look with which her
kindness was greeted softened somewhat the sorrow that oppressed her.
With the most touching reverence she knelt by Mrs. Chester's coffin,
lifted that cold head softly from the boards, and placed the flowers
she had brought beneath it. Softly she laid her benefactress down upon
the blossom pillow. The delicate blending of rosy purple with the rich
gold of the crocuses and the golden green willow leaves, relieved by
the pure white of the blossoms underneath, cast around the dead a halo
of spiritual beauty. The soft and blended brightness of the flowers
seemed to illuminate those beautiful and tranquil features. Around the
form of Jane Chester there seemed nothing of death but its solemn
repose.
"Not yet--a little, only a little longer!" pleaded the child, as
Crofts came to close the coffin, "I hope, I am almost sure, Isabel can
bear to look at her now!"
Crofts smiled grimly, and sat down on the empty cot. In a few moments
Mary came into the ward, supporting Isabel with her frail strength.
The child wept no longer, but the trembling of her little form was
painfully visible as she tottered forward. Not a word passed between
the children--not a look was exchanged, but when Isabel bent over her
mother, and saw the blossom shadows trembling around her head, her
lips began to quiver, and the tears gushed from her heart.
Crofts, the common upholsterer of the Poor House, turned away his
face, and wiped his eyes with the skirt of his coat. Close by him
stood the man who shared his horrid duties, gazing with a look of
stolid indifference on the scene. Crofts arose, and taking this man
by the arm, led him out from the ward.
The two little girls went away after the coffin was removed; directly
Mary came back with her shawl and hood on. She was ready to leave
Bellevue, and returned to say a last, kind word to her mother. The
promise she had made her father on his death-bed rose to her mind, and
took the form of a prayer.
"Mother, look up, mother, I am going." The woman turned heavily and
lifted her head. "I am going, mother."
"Very well, I can't help it," muttered the mother, heavily.
"I don't know where they will take us, or if we shall ever see one
another again," persisted the child; "but, oh, mother before we part,
tell me how I can make you love me?"
"If there is a drop of brandy anywhere about, bring it and I'll love
you dearly, indeed I will, little Mary; I ain't at all well, Mary, and
a drop of brandy is good for sickness; get some, that's a dear; I'm
very fond of you, Mary!"
"Mother, I cannot; but, if you will never ask for it again, I will.
Oh, I will die for you; I hav'n't anything but my life to give--nor
that," she added, with a sudden thought, "for it belongs to God; I
have nothing."
Mrs. Fuller had fallen asleep, and heard nothing of this. So Mary
turned away sorrowful, but not altogether hopeless. Those who trust in
God never are.