The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866

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.