THE CRADLE FALLS.
In the rear of the great commercial centre of New Orleans, on that part
of Common street where it suddenly widens out, broad, unpaved, and
dusty, rises the huge dull-brown structure of brick, famed, well-nigh
as far as the city is known, as the Charity Hospital.
Twenty-five years ago, when the emigrant ships used to unload their
swarms of homeless and friendless strangers into the streets of New
Orleans to fall a prey to yellow-fever or cholera, that solemn pile
sheltered thousands on thousands of desolate and plague-stricken Irish
and Germans, receiving them unquestioned, until at times the very floors
were covered with the sick and dying, and the sawing and hammering in
the coffin-shop across the inner court ceased not day or night. Sombre
monument at once of charity and sin! For, while its comfort and succor
cost the houseless wanderer nothing, it lived and grew, and lives and
grows still, upon the licensed vices of the people,--drinking, harlotry,
and gambling.
The Charity Hospital of St. Charles--such is its true name--is, however,
no mere plague-house. Whether it ought to be, let doctors decide. How
good or necessary such modern innovations as "ridge ventilation,"
"movable bases," the "pavilion plan," "trained nurses," etc., may be,
let the Auxiliary Sanitary Association say. There it stands as of old,
innocent of all sins that may be involved in any of these changes,
rising story over story, up and up: here a ward for poisonous fevers,
and there a ward for acute surgical cases; here a story full of simple
ailments, and there a ward specially set aside for women.
In 1857 this last was Dr. Sevier's ward. Here, at his stated hour one
summer morning in that year, he tarried a moment, yonder by that window,
just where you enter the ward and before you come to the beds. He had
fallen into discourse with some of the more inquiring minds among the
train of students that accompanied him, and waited there to finish and
cool down to a physician's proper temperature. The question was public
sanitation.
He was telling a tall Arkansan, with high-combed hair, self-conscious
gloves, and very broad, clean-shaven lower jaw, how the peculiar
formation of delta lands, by which they drain away from the larger
watercourses, instead of into them, had made the swamp there in the rear
of the town, for more than a century, "the common dumping-ground and
cesspool of the city, sir!"
Some of the students nodded convincedly to the speaker; some looked
askance at the Arkansan, who put one forearm meditatively under his
coat-tail; some looked through the window over the regions alluded to,
and some only changed their pose and looked around for a mirror.
The Doctor spoke on. Several of his hearers were really interested in
the then unusual subject, and listened intelligently as he pointed
across the low plain at hundreds of acres of land that were nothing but
a morass, partly filled in with the foulest refuse of a semi-tropical
city, and beyond it where still lay the swamp, half cleared of its
forest and festering in the sun--"every drop of its waters, and every
inch of its mire," said the Doctor, "saturated with the poisonous
drainage of the town!"
"I happen," interjected a young city student; but the others bent their
ear to the Doctor, who continued:--
"Why, sir, were these regions compactly built on, like similar areas in
cities confined to narrow sites, the mortality, with the climate we
have, would be frightful."
"I happen to know," essayed the city student; but the Arkansan had made
an interrogatory answer to the Doctor, that led him to add:--
"Why, yes; you see the houses here on these lands are little, flimsy,
single ground-story affairs, loosely thrown together, and freely exposed
to sun and air."
"I hap--," said the city student.
"And yet," exclaimed the Doctor, "Malaria is king!"
He paused an instant for his hearers to take in the figure.
"Doctor, I happen to"--
Some one's fist from behind caused the speaker to turn angrily, and the
Doctor resumed:--
"Go into any of those streets off yonder,--Treme, Prieur, Marais. Why,
there are often ponds under the houses! The floors of bedrooms are
within a foot or two of these ponds! The bricks of the surrounding
pavements are often covered with a fine, dark moss! Water seeps up
through the sidewalks! That's his realm, sir! Here and there among the
residents--every here and there--you'll see his sallow, quaking subjects
dragging about their work or into and out of their beds, until a fear
of a fatal ending drives them in here. Congestion? Yes, sometimes
congestion pulls them under suddenly, and they're gone before they know
it. Sometimes their vitality wanes slowly, until Malaria beckons in
Consumption."
"Why, Doctor," said the city student, ruffling with pride of his town,
"there are plenty of cities as bad as this. I happen to know, for
instance"--
Dr. Sevier turned away in quiet contempt.
"It will not improve our town to dirty others, or to clean them,
either."
He moved down the ward, while two or three members among the moving
train, who never happened to know anything, nudged each other joyfully.
The group stretched out and came along, the Doctor first and the
young men after, some of one sort, some of another,--the dull, the
frivolous, the earnest, the kind, the cold,--following slowly, pausing,
questioning, discoursing, advancing, moving from each clean, slender bed
to the next, on this side and on that, down and up the long sanded
aisles, among the poor, sick women.
Among these, too, there was variety. Some were stupid and ungracious,
hardened and dulled with long penury as some in this world are hardened
and dulled with long riches. Some were as fat as beggars; some were old
and shrivelled; some were shrivelled and young; some were bold; some
were frightened; and here and there was one almost fair.
Down at the far end of one aisle was a bed whose occupant lay watching
the distant, slowly approaching group with eyes of unspeakable dread.
There was not a word or motion, only the steadfast gaze. Gradually the
throng drew near. The faces of the students could be distinguished.
This one was coarse; that one was gentle; another was sleepy; another
trivial and silly; another heavy and sour; another tender and gracious.
Presently the tones of the Doctor's voice could be heard, soft, clear,
and without that trumpet quality that it had beyond the sick-room. How
slowly, yet how surely, they came! The patient's eyes turned away toward
the ceiling; they could not bear the slowness of the encounter. They
closed; the lips moved in prayer. The group came to the bed that was
only the fourth away; then to the third; then to the second. There
they pause some minutes. Now the Doctor approaches the very next bed.
Suddenly he notices this patient. She is a small woman, young, fair to
see, and, with closed eyes and motionless form, is suffering an agony of
consternation. One startled look, a suppressed exclamation, two steps
forward,--the patient's eyes slowly open. Ah, me! It is Mary Richling.
"Good-morning, madam," said the physician, with a cold and distant bow;
and to the students, "We'll pass right along to the other side," and
they moved into the next aisle.
"I am a little pressed for time this morning," he presently remarked, as
the students showed some unwillingness to be hurried. As soon as he
could he parted with them and returned to the ward alone.
As he moved again down among the sick, straight along this time, turning
neither to right nor left, one of the Sisters of Charity--the hospital
and its so-called nurses are under their oversight--touched his arm. He
stopped impatiently.
"Well, Sister"--(bowing his ear).
"I--I--the--the"--His frown had scared away her power of speech.
"Well, what is it, Sister?"
"The--the last patient down on this side"--
He was further displeased. "_I'll_ attend to the patients, Sister," he
said; and then, more kindly, "I'm going there now. No, you stay here, if
you please." And he left her behind.
He came and stood by the bed. The patient gazed on him.
"Mrs. Richling," he softly began, and had to cease.
She did not speak or move; she tried to smile, but her eyes filled, her
lips quivered.
"My dear madam," exclaimed the physician, in a low voice, "what brought
you here?"
The answer was inarticulate, but he saw it on the moving lips.
"Want," said Mary.
"But your husband?" He stooped to catch the husky answer.
"Home."
"Home?" He could not understand. "Not gone to--back--up the river?"
She slowly shook her head: "No, home. In Prieur street."
Still her words were riddles. He could not see how she had come to this.
He stood silent, not knowing how to utter his thought. At length he
opened his lips to speak, hesitated an instant, and then asked:--
"Mrs. Richling, tell me plainly, has your husband gone wrong?"
Her eyes looked up a moment, upon him, big and staring, and suddenly she
spoke:--
"O Doctor! My husband go wrong? John go wrong?" The eyelids closed down,
the head rocked slowly from side to side on the flat hospital pillow,
and the first two tears he had ever seen her shed welled from the long
lashes and slipped down her cheeks.
"My poor child!" said the Doctor, taking her hand in his. "No, no! God
forgive me! He hasn't gone wrong; he's not going wrong. You'll tell me
all about it when you're stronger."
The Doctor had her removed to one of the private rooms of the pay-ward,
and charged the Sisters to take special care of her. "Above all things,"
he murmured, with a beetling frown, "tell that thick-headed nurse not to
let her know that this is at anybody's expense. Ah, yes; and when her
husband comes, tell him to see me at my office as soon as he possibly
can."
As he was leaving the hospital gate he had an afterthought. "I might
have left a note." He paused, with his foot on the carriage-step. "I
suppose they'll tell him,"--and so he got in and drove off, looking at
his watch.
On his second visit, although he came in with a quietly inspiring
manner, he had also, secretly, the feeling of a culprit. But, midway of
the room, when the young head on the pillow turned its face toward him,
his heart rose. For the patient smiled. As he drew nearer she slid out
her feeble hand. "I'm glad I came here," she murmured.
"Yes," he replied; "this room is much better than the open ward."
"I didn't mean this room," she said. "I meant the whole hospital."
"The whole hospital!" He raised his eyebrows, as to a child.
"Ah! Doctor," she responded, her eyes kindling, though moist.
"What, my child?"
She smiled upward to his bent face.
"The poor--mustn't be ashamed of the poor, must they?"
The Doctor only stroked her brow, and presently turned and addressed his
professional inquiries to the nurse. He went away. Just outside the door
he asked the nurse:--
"Hasn't her husband been here?"
"Yes," was the reply, "but she was asleep, and he only stood there at
the door and looked in a bit. He trembled," the unintelligent woman
added, for the Doctor seemed waiting to hear more,--"he trembled all
over; and that's all he did, excepting his saying her name over to
himself like, over and over, and wiping of his eyes."
"And nobody told him anything?"
"Oh, not a word, sir!" came the eager answer.
"You didn't tell him to come and see me?"
The woman gave a start, looked dismayed, and began:--
"N-no, sir; you didn't tell"--
"Um--hum," growled the Doctor. He took out a card and wrote on it. "Now
see if you can remember to give him that."