Ailsa Paige Part 52

A week later a dozen Protestant women nurses arrived at Alexandria, where they were made unwelcome. Medical directors, surgeons, ward masters objected, bluntly declaring that they wouldn't endure a lot of women interfering and fussing and writing hysterical nonsense to the home newspapers.

For a while confusion reigned, intensified by the stupendous mobilisation going on all around.

A medical officer came to the Farm Hospital and angrily informed Ailsa that the staff had had enough of women in the wards; and from forty cots forty half-dead, ghastly creatures partly rose and cursed the medical gentleman till his ears burned crimson,

Ailsa, in her thin gray habit bearing the scarlet heart, stood in the middle of the ward and defied him with her credentials.

"The medical staff of the army has only to lay its case before the Secretary of War," she said, looking calmly at him, "and that is where the Sanitary Commission obtains its authority. Meanwhile our orders detail us here for duty."

"We'll see about that!" he snapped, backing away.

"So will we," said Ailsa, smiling. But that afternoon she and Letty took an ambulance and went, in great distress of mind, to see Mother Angela, Superior of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, who had arrived from Indiana ready to continue hospital duties on the Potomac if necessary.

The lovely Superieure, a lady of rare culture and ability, took Ailsa's hand in hers with a sad smile.

"Men's prejudices are hard to meet. The social structure of the world is built on them. But men's prejudices vanish when those same men fall sick. The War Department has regularised our position; it will authorise yours. You need not be afraid."

She smiled again reminiscently.

"When our Sisters of the Holy Cross first appeared in the wards, the patients themselves looked at us sullenly and askance. I heard one say: 'Why can't they take off those white-winged sun-bonnets in the wards?' And another sneered: 'Sun-bonnets! Huh! They look like busted white parasols!' But, Mrs. Paige, our white 'sun-bonnets' have already become to them the symbol they love most, after the flag. Be of good courage. Your silver-gray garb and white cuffs will mean much to our soldiers before this battle year is ended."

That evening Ailsa and Letty drove back to the Parm Hospital in their ambulance, old black Ca.s.sius managing his mules with alternate bursts of abuse and of praise. First he would beat upon his mules with a flat stick which didn't hurt, but made a loud racket; then, satisfied, he would loll in his seat singing in melodious and interminable recitative:

An' I hope to gain de prommis' lan', Yaas I do, 'Deed I do.

Lor' I hope to gain de prommis' lan', Dat I do, An' dar I'll flap ma wings an' take ma stan', Yaas I will, 'Deed I will, An' I'll tune ma harp an' jine de Shinin' Ban'

Glory, Glory, I hope to gain de prommis' lan'!

And over and over the same shouted melody, interrupted only by an outburst of reproach for his mules.

They drove back through a road which had become for miles only a great muddy lane running between military encampments, halted at every bridge and crossroads to exhibit their pa.s.ses; they pa.s.sed never-ending trains of army waggons cither stalled or rumbling slowly toward Alexandria. Everywhere were soldiers, drilling, marching, cutting wood, washing clothes, cooking, cleaning arms, mending, working on camp ditches, drains, or forts, writing letters at the edge of shelter tents, digging graves, skylarking-everywhere the earth was covered with them.

They pa.s.sed the camp for new recruits, where the poor "fresh fish" awaited orders to join regiments in the field to which they had been a.s.signed; they pa.s.sed the camp for stragglers and captured deserters; the camp for paroled prisoners; the evil-smelling convalescent camp, which, still under Surgeon General Hammond's Department, had not yet been inspected by the Sanitary Commission.

An officer, riding their way, talked with them about conditions in this camp, where, he said, the convalescents slept on the bare ground, rain or shine; where there were but three surgeons for the thousands suffering from intestinal and throat and lung troubles, dest.i.tute, squalid, unwarmed by fires, unwashed, wretched, forsaken by the government that called them to its standard.

It was the first of that sort of thing that Ailsa and Letty had seen.

After the battles in the West-particularly after the fall of Fort Donnelson-terrible rumours were current in the Army of the Potomac and in the hospitals concerning the plight of the wounded-of new regiments that had been sent into action with not a single medical officer, or, for that matter, an ounce of medicine, or of lint in its chests.

They were grisly rumours. In the neat wards of the Farm Hospital, with its freshly swept and sprinkled floors, its cots in rows, its detailed soldier nurses and the two nurses from Sainte Ursula's Sisterhood, its sick-diet department, its medical stores, its two excellent surgeons, these rumours found little credence.

And now, here in the vicinity, Ailsa's delicate nostrils shrank from the stench arising from the "Four Camps"; and she saw the emaciated forms lining the hillside, and she heard the horrible and continuous coughing.

"Do you know," she said to Letty the next morning, "I am going to write to Miss Dix and inform her of conditions in that camp."

And she did so, perfectly conscious that she was probably earning the dislike of the entire medical department. But hundreds of letters like hers had already been sent to Washington, and already the Sanitary Commission was preparing to take hold; so, when at length one morning an acknowledgment of her letter was received, no notice was taken of her offer to volunteer for service in that loathsome camp, but the same mail brought orders and credentials and transportation vouchers for herself and Letty.

Letty was still asleep, but Ailsa went up and waked her when the hour for her tour of duty approached.

"What do you think!" she said excitedly. "We are to pack up our valises and go aboard the Mary Lane to-morrow. She sails with hospital stores. What do you think of that?"

"Where are we going?" asked Letty, bewildered.

"You poor, sleepy little thing," said Ailsa, sitting down on the bed's shaky edge, "I'm sure I don't know where we're going, dear. Two Protestant nurses are coming here to superintend the removal of our sick boys-and Dr. West says they are old and ugly, and that Miss Dix won't have any more nurses who are not over thirty and who are not most unattractive to look at."

"I wonder what Miss Dix would do if she saw us," said Letty naively, and sat up in bed; rubbing her velvety eyes with the backs of her hands. Then she yawned, looked inquiringly at Ailsa, smiled, and swung her slender body out of bed.

While she was doing her hair Ailsa heard her singing to herself.

She was very happy; another letter from Dr. Benton had arrived.

Celia, who had gone to Washington three days before, to see Mr. Stanton, returned that evening with her pa.s.ses and order for transportation; and to Ailsa's astonishment and delight she found that the designated boat was the Mary Lane.

But Celia was almost too nervous and too tired to talk over the prospects.

"My dear," she said wearily, "that drive from the Chain Bridge to Alexandria has mos'ly killed me. I vow and declare there was never one moment when one wheel was not in a mud hole. All my bones ache, Honey-bud, and I'm cross with talking to so many Yankees, and-do you believe me !-that ve'y horrid Stanton creature gave orders that I was to take the oath!"

"The-oath?" asked Ailsa, amazed.

"Certainly. And I took it," she added fiercely, "becose of my husband! If it had not been fo' Curt I'd have told Mr. Stanton what I thought of his old oath!"

"What kind of an oath was it, Celia?"

Celia repeated it haughtily:

"'I do solemnly swear, in the presence of Almighty G.o.d, to faithfully support the Const.i.tution of the United States, and of the State of New York. So he'p me G.o.d.'"

"It is the oath of fealty," said Ailsa in a hushed voice.

"It was not necessa'y," said Celia coldly. "My husband is sufficient to keep me-harmless... . But I know what I feel in my heart, Honey-bud; and so does eve'y Southern woman-G.o.d help us all... . Is that little Miss Lynden going with us?"

"Letty? Yes, of course."

Celia began to undress. "She's a ve'y sweet little minx... . She is-odd, somehow... . So young-such a he'pless, cute little thing... Ailsa, in that child's eyes-or in her features somewhere, somehow, I see-I feel a-a sadness, somehow-like the gravity of expe'ience, the something that wisdom brings to the ve'y young too early. It is odd, isn't it."

"Letty is a strange, gentle little thing. I've often wondered--"

"What, Honey-bee?"

"I-don't know," said Ailsa vaguely. "It is not natural that a happy woman should be so solemnly affectionate to another. I've often thought that she must, sometime or other, have known deep unhappiness."

When Celia was ready to retire, Ailsa bade her good-night and wandered away down the stairs, Letty was still on duty; she glanced into the sick-diet kitchen as she pa.s.sed and saw the girl bending over a stew-pan.

She did not disturb her. With evening a soft melancholy had begun to settle over Ailsa. It came in the evening, now, often-a sensation not entirely sad, not unwelcome, soothing her, composing her mind for serious thought, for the sweet sadness of memory.

Always she walked, now, companioned by memories of Berkley. Wherever she moved-in the quiet of the sick wards, in the silence of the moonlight, seated by smeared windows watching the beating rain, in the dead house, on duty in the kitchen contriving broths, or stretched among her pillows, always the memories came in troops to bear her company.

They were with her now as she paced the veranda to and fro, to and fro.

She heard Letty singing happily over her stew-pan in the kitchen; the stir and breathing of the vast army was audible all around her in the darkness. Presently she looked at her watch in the moonlight, returned it to her breast.

"I'm ready, dear," she said, going to the kitchen door.