第64章

Alspaugh on a Bed of Pain.

This is the very ecstacy of love, Whose violent property foredoes itself.

And leads the will to desperate undertakings As often as any passion under Heaven That does afflict our natures.--Hamlet Endurance is made possible by reason of the element of divisibility.

Metaphysical mathematicians imagine that there is possibly a "fourth dimension," by the existence of which many hitherto inexplicable phenomena may be explained.They think that probably this fourth dimension is SUCCESSION OF TIME.

So endurance of unendurable things is explainable on the ground that but a small portion of them has to be endured in any given space of time.

It is the old fable of the clock, whose pendulum and wheels stopped one day, appalled by the discovery that they would have to move and tick over three million times a year for many wearisome years, but resumed work again when reminded that they would only have to tick ONCE each second.

So it was with Rachel Bond.

The unendurable whole of a month's or a week's experience was endurable when divided in detail and spread over the hours and days.

She was a woman--young and high-natured.

Being a woman she had a martyr-joy in affliction that comes in the guise of duty.Young, she enjoyed the usefulness and importance attached to her work in the hospital.High-natured, she felt a keen satisfaction in triumphing over daily difficulties and obstacles, even though these were mainly her own feelings.

Though months had gone by it seemed as if no amount of habituation could dull the edge of the sickening disgust which continually assailed her sense and womanly instincts.The smells were as nauseating, the sights as repulsive, the sounds of misery as saddening as the day when she first set foot inside the hospital.

From throbbing heart to dainty finger-tip, every fiber in her maidenly body was in active rebellion while she ministered to the rough and coarse men who formed the bulk of the patients, and whose afflictions she could not help knowing were too frequently the direct result of their own sins and willful disobedience of Nature's laws.

One day, when flushed and wearied with the peevish exactions of a hulking fellow whose indisposition was trifling, she said to Dr.

Denslow:

"It is distressing to find out how much unmanliness there is in apparently manly men.""Yes," answered the doctor, with his customary calm philosophy;"and it is equally gratifying to find out how much real manliness there is in some apparently unmanly men.You have been having an experience with some brawny subject?""Yes.If the fellow's spirit were equal to his bone and brawn, he would o'ertop, Julius Caesar.Instead, he whimpers like a school-girl.""That's about the way it usually goes.It may be that my views are colored by my lacking three or four inches of six feet, but Iam sometimes strongly inclined to believe that every man--big or little--is given about the same amount of will or vital power, and the bigger and more lumbering the body he has to move with it, the less he accomplishes, and the sooner it is exhausted.You have found, I have no doubt, that as a rule the broad-chested, muscular six-footers, whose lives have ever passed at hard work in the open air, groan and sigh incessantly under the burden of minor afflictions, worry every one with their querulousness, moan for their wives, mothers, or sweethearts, and the comforts of the homes they have left, and finally fret and grieve themselves into the grave, while slender, soft-muscled boys bear real distress without a murmur, and survive sickness and wounds that by all rules ought to prove fatal.""There is certainly a good deal in that; but what irritates me now is a display of querulous tyranny.""Well, you know what Dr.Johnson says: 'That a sick man is a scoundrel.' There is a basis of truth in that apparent cruelty.

It is true that 'scoundrel' is rather a harsh term to apply to a man whose moral obliquities have not received the official stamp in open court by a jury of his peers.The man whose imprudences and self-indulgences have made his liver slothful, his stomach rebellious, and wrecked his constitution in other ways, may--probably does--become an exasperating little tyrant, full of all manner of petty selfishness, which saps the comfort of others, as acid vapors corrode metals, but does that make him a 'scoundrel?' Opinions vary.His much enduring feminine relatives would probably resent such a query with tearful indignation, while unprejudiced outsiders would probably reply calmly in the affirmative.""What is the medical man's view?" asked Rachel, much amused by this cool scrutiny of what people are too often inclined to regard as among the "inscrutable providences.""I don't speak in anything for the profession at large, but my own private judgement is that any man is a scoundrel who robs others of anything that is of value to them, and he is none the less so when he makes his aches and pains, mostly incurred by his gluttony, passions or laziness, the means of plundering others of the comforts and pleasures which are their due."Going into the wards one morning, Rachel found that Lieutenant Jacob Alspaugh had been brought in, suffering from what the Surgeon pronounced to be "febrile symptoms of a mild type, from which he will no doubt recover in a few days, with rest, quiet and proper food.

It is possibly worth while to note the coincidence that these symptoms developed with unexpected suddenness in the midst of earnest preparations by the Army of the Cumberland, for a terrible grapple at Perryville with the Rebel Army of the Tennessee.

Alspaugh recognized Rachel at once, much to her embarrassment, for her pride winced at playing the role of nurse before an acquaintance, especially when that acquaintance was her father's hired-man, whom she knew too well to esteem highly.