Half a Century Part 26

"Why not?"

"Why, you're not old enough!"

"I am twice as old as you are!

"No, you 're not; and another thing, you're not big enough!" He raised his head, surveyed me leisurely and contemptuously, his dark silky moustache went up against his handsome nose as he sank back and said slowly:

"Why, you-'re-not-much-bigger-'an-a-bean!"

"Still, I am large enough to take care of you and send you back to your regiment if you are reasonable: but no one can do anything for you if you fly into a rage in this way!"

"Yes! and you know that, and you put me in a rage going after them other fellows. You know I've got the best right to you. I claimed you soon as you come in the door, and called you afore you got half down the ward.

You said you'd take care of me and now you don't do it. The surgeon give me to you too. You know I can't live if you don't save me, and you don't care if I die!"

I was penitent and conciliatory, and promised to be good, when he said doggedly:

"Yes! and I'll call you Mary!"

"Very well, Mary is a good name--it was my mother's, and I shall no doubt come to like it."

"I guess it is a good name! It was my mother's name too, and any woman might be glad to be called Mary. But I never did see a woman 'at had any sense!"

He soon growled himself to sleep, and from that time I called him "Ursa Major;" but he only slept about half an hour, when a nurse in great fright summoned me. They had lifted him and he had fainted.

I helped to put him back into bed, and bathed him until consciousness returned, when he grasped my wrist with a vice-like hold and groaned.

"Oh G.o.d! Oh mother! Is this death?"

I heard no more of Miss Mary, or nice girls; but G.o.d and mother and death were often on his lips.

To the great surprise of every one I quelled the inflammation and fever, banished the swelling, and got him into good condition, when the foot was amputated and shown to me. The ankle joint was ground into small pieces, and these were mingled with bits of leather and woolen sock. No wonder the inflammation had been frightful; but it was some time after that before I knew the foot might have been saved by making a sufficient opening from the outside, withdrawing the loose irritating matter, and keeping an opening through which nature could have disposed of her waste. I do not know if surgery have yet discovered this plain, common-sense rule, but tens of thousands of men have died, and tens of thousands of others have lost limbs because it was not known and acted upon. All those men who died of gun-shot flesh wounds were victims to surgical stupidity.

I nursed the cross man until he went about on crutches, and his faith in me was equal in perfection to his form, for he always held that I could "stop this pain" if I would, and rated me soundly if I was "off in ward Ten" when he wanted me. One day he scolded worse than usual, and soon after an Irishman said, in an aside:

"Schure mum, an' ye mustn't be afther blamin' de rist av us fur that fellow's impidence. Schure, an' there's some av us that 'ud kick him out av the ward, if we could, for the way he talks to ye afther all that you have done for 'im an' fur all av us."

"Why! why! How can you feel so? What difference is it to me how he talks? It does him good to scold, and what is the use of a man having a mother if he cannot scold her when he is in pain? I wish you would all scold me! It would do you ever so much good. You quite break my heart with your patience. Do, please be as cross as bears, all of you, whenever you feel like it, and I will get you well in half the time."

"Schure mum, an' n.o.body iver saw the likes of ye!"

A man was brought from a field hospital, and laid in our ward, and one evening his stump was giving him great pain, when the cross man advised him to send for me, and exclaimed:

"There's mother, now; send for her."

"Oh!" groaned the sufferer, "what can she do?"

"I don't know what she can do; an' she don't know what she can do; but just you send for her! She'll come, and go to fussin' an' hummin' about just like an old b.u.mble-bee, an' furst thing you know you won't know nothin', for the pain'll be gone an' you'll be asleep."

CHAPTER LVI.

DROP MY ALIAS.

The second or third day of my hospital work, Mrs. g.a.y.l.o.r.d, the Chaplain's wife, came and inquired to what order I belonged, saying that the officers of the hospital were anxious to know. I laughed, and told her I belonged exclusively to myself, and did not know of any order which would care to own me. Then she very politely inquired my name, and I told her it was Mrs. Jeremiah Snooks, when she went away, apparently doubting my statement. I had been in Campbell almost a week, when Dr.

Kelly came and said:

"Madam, I have been commissioned by the officers of this hospital to ascertain your name. None of us know how to address you, and it is very awkward either in speaking to you, or of you, not to be able to name you."

"Doctor, will not Mrs. Snooks do for a name, for all the time I shall be here?"

"No, madam, it will not do."

I was very unwilling to give my name, which was prominently before the public, on account of my Indian lecture and _Tribune_ letters, but I seemed to have at least a month's work to do in Campbell. Hospital stores were pouring in to my city address, and being sent to me at a rate which created much wonder, and the men who had given me their confidence had a right to know who I was.

So I gave my name, and must repeat it before the Doctor could realize the astounding fact; even then he took off his cap and said:

"It is not possible you are _the_ Mrs. ----, the lady who lectured in Doctor Sunderland's church!"

So I was proclaimed, with a great flourish of trumpets. For two hours my patients seemed afraid of me, and it did seem too bad to merge that giantess of the bean-pole and the press and the tall woman of the platform both in poor little insignificant me! It was like blotting out the big bear and the middle-sized bear from the old bear story, and leaving only the one poor little bear to growl over his pot of porridge.

In Ward Five was one man who had been laid on his left side, and never could be moved while he lived. His right arm suffered for lack of support, and when I knelt to give him nourishment from a spoon, and pray with him that the deliverer would soon come, he always laid that arm over my shoulders. The first time I knelt there after I was known, he said:

"Ah, you are such a great lady, and do not mind a poor soldier laying his arm over you!"

"Christ, the great Captain of our Salvation," I replied, "gathers you in his arms and pillows your head upon his bosom. Am I greater than he?

Your good right arm has fought for liberty, and it is an honor to support it, when you are no longer able."

But nothing else I could ever say to him, was so much comfort as the old cry of the sufferer by the wayside, "Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me."

Over and over again we said that prayer in concert, while he waited in agony for the only relief possible--that of death; and from our last interview I returned to the bad ward, so sad that I felt the shadow of my face fall upon every man in it. I could not drive away death's gloom; but I could work and talk, and both work and talk were needed.

I sat down between two young Irishmen, both with wounded heads, and began to bathe them, and comfort them, and said:

"If you are not better in the morning, I shall amputate both those heads; they shall not plague you in this manner another day."

Maybe my sad face made this funny, for their sense of the ridiculous was so touched that they clasped their sore heads and shrieked with laughter. Every man in the ward caught the infection, and I was called upon for explanations of the art of amputating heads, and inquiries as to Surgeon Baxter's capacity of performing the operation.

This grotesque idea proved a fruitful subject of conversation, and aided in leading sufferers away from useless sorrow, toward hope and health; and bad as the ward was we lost but two men in it.

CHAPTER LVII.

HOSPITAL DRESS.