Chapter XXXI: Poor Elfie’s Honeymoon

Can this be death? Then what is life, or death?
“Speak!” But he spoke not. “Wake!” But still he slept:
But yesterday and who had mightier breath?
A thousand warriors by his word were kept
In awe. He said, as the centurian saith—
“Go,” and he goeth; “Come,” and he steppeth forth.
The trump and bugle till he spake were dumb,
And now naught left him but the muffled drum.—BYRON.

The next morning it was Elfie who was all impatience to get off to the hospitals. On nearly all former occasions when Elfie was to be her companion in her rounds among the sick and wounded soldiers, Erminie had been very much “tried” by her friend’s dilatory habits. But this morning Elfie was dressed and had the carriage at the door long before Erminie had got through her domestic duties of the forenoon. And so Elfie spent the time in walking impatiently up and down the hall, until at length Erminie made her appearance in bonnet and shawl.

“You will go to the hospital first?” inquired Elfie, anxiously, thinking and speaking as if the hospital in which Albert Goldsborough lay were the only one in the city.

“Yes, dear; for your sake I will go to ‘the’ hospital first. After which we will visit the others. But, Elfie, dear, excuse me if I repeat my warning of yesterday. Be as kind as you please; but take care not to compromise yourself.”

“Now, Erminie, when did I ever take care of myself, in any way? You might as well ask a fish to fly. I cannot say to my heart, ‘thus far—no farther.’ I never could. Besides, Erminie, his livid, agonized face has haunted me all the night through. Don’t say any more to me, please. I don’t want to lose my self-possession again this morning. I don’t want to go to the hospital with red eyes,” said Elfie.

“Well, my dear, I will say no more—but this: Since you cannot take care of yourself, I pray Heaven to take care of you,” said Miss Rosenthal.

They entered the carriage and were rapidly driven to the hospital.

Arrived there, they found all signs of yesterday’s horrors effaced. The wounded had been all properly cared for, and the halls, stairs and lobbies had been washed.

Erminie had her usual short interview with the surgeon in charge, and then passed up, accompanied by Elfie, to the wards on the second floor. Elfie went at once to the ward in which Albert Goldsborough had been placed. She passed hastily between the two long lines of little beds, until she came to the end, when she stopped and uttered a half-suppressed cry.

Albert Goldsborough’s bed was empty.

She turned her wild dilated eyes, full of the question her lips could not utter, towards the Union soldier who occupied the next bed.

“Yes, poor fellow!” said the soldier, “they’ve taken him to the operating room.”

“‘The operating room!’” gasped Elfie, with suspended breath.

“Yes, Miss.”

“But—why have they taken him there?” she found power at last to ask.

“To amputate his leg, poor fellow!”

“‘To amputate his leg!’” exclaimed Elfie, again echoing the soldier’s words.

“Yes, Miss, it was the only way of saving his life, it seems. This morning when the assistant surgeon looked at his wound, he sent immediately for the surgeon in charge, and they both examined it together and decided that the leg must be taken off at once, if the man’s life was to be saved.

Elfie, unable to stand, sank pale and trembling down upon Albert Goldsborough’s empty bed, and sitting there, with clasped hands and strained eyes, waited for the soldier’s farther words.

“The poor fellow objected very much; said that his leg had ceased to give any pain at all; that it was quite easy; and, except for weakness, he never felt better in his life; he had had the best night’s rest he had ever enjoyed; his leg hadn’t troubled him once; and he had waked up this morning quite refreshed though rather feeble.”

“Then why did they persist in the operation?” cried Elfie.

“To save his life, Miss, as they explained to him. His freedom from pain was, under the circumstances, the worst possible symptom. Mortification had commenced in the wound and was rapidly extending upward, and it became necessary to amputate the limb without delay.”

“And then he consented?” wept Elfie.

“Yes, Miss.”

“How long was that ago?”

“They removed him about ten minutes before you entered the ward, Miss.”

“So they are even now at their dreadful work! They have him even now stretched upon the ghastly operating board, and are torturing his nerves and flesh with knife and saw!” shuddered Elfie. “Oh, Albert! oh, my love, my love, if I could bear it for you!”

And the loyal Union girl, who had discarded and defied her rebel lover in the days of his pride and his power, and who had believed her own words when she told him that the one burning aspiration of her heart was to see him hanged for his treason, now burst into a convulsion of sobs, and wept over his sufferings the sorest tears she had ever shed in her life.

“Don’t distress yourself so much, Miss. He will not feel it. He will know nothing after he is stretched upon the operating board until it is all over. They are going to give him chloroform,” said the young soldier, trying to comfort the weeping woman.

Elfie struggled to regain her self-command. She recollected with compunction that the hospital ward was not the place to indulge in the exhibition of strong emotions.

“Listen, Miss,” said the soldier boy—“I know he will not feel it. See, Miss—I had my leg taken off two weeks ago, and I never felt it; and just look how well I’m getting over it.”

There was an instantaneous sympathy in all the words and looks and actions of the impulsive girl.

“You had your leg taken off! And you are so quiet and patient and cheerful under it all! Oh, my poor boy, I didn’t know it! I didn’t, indeed, my poor child, or I wouldn’t have been so indifferent to you!” she said, speaking to this young soldier, near her own age, as if he had been her son, or her little brother; and kneeling down by his bed to bring her compassionate face closer to his own.

“It is nothing near so bad as you seem to think, Miss. Bless you! see how many have lost both legs, or both arms, or one of each. And see how many have lost their lives! I consider myself one of the lucky ones, Miss. Only I don’t dare to write and tell mother yet. I don’t know that I shall ever tell her. What would be the use? I think I shall wait and not go home until I get the bran new patent leg Uncle Sam is going to give me; and then I shall walk in on mother, in a new pair of boots, and she will never know what is in them, or that one of my limbs has gone to the grave before me.”

“Are you your mother’s only son?” inquired Elfie, still kneeling by the bed.

“Oh, no, Miss,” answered the boy, smiling; “and neither is she a widow. Mother has a husband and seven sons in the war. I am only her youngest. But, bless you, Miss, she loves us all as if each was her only one.”

“But if her husband and all her sons are in the war, who is at home with her?” inquired Elfie, not, however, forgetting the man on the table in the operating room, even while feeling much interest in the new object of her sympathy.

“Our sister is at home with mother. And I really do believe,” added the boy, smiling archly, “that nothing but their crinoline keeps them out of the army!”

“Nothing but our crinoline, if that is to stand for our sex, keeps thousands of us out of the army!” said Elfie.

At that moment the door at this end of the ward opened, and a little bustle ensued.

Elfie arose from her position, and held her breath in awe.

Through the door a small procession like a funeral train entered the ward.

Four men bore between them a bier on which was spread a narrow mattress, with the motionless form of a man extended at full length on it, and covered with a white sheet, and altogether looking like a dead body.

Behind the bier walked the assistant surgeon.

This procession was simply that of the hospital nurses bringing in the mutilated man, still in the deep swoon of chloroform, and under the personal direction of the doctor.

But as they approached, Elfie turned deadly pale and faint, and gasped forth the inquiry:

“Is he gone? Oh, is he gone? Has he died under that dreadful operation?”

“Oh, no, Miss,” said the young soldier, kindly; “he is only unconscious. They will recover him as soon as they get him on the cot again.”

Elfie caught her breath and clasped her hands, and struggled for composure.

The soldier nurses lifted the mattress, with its nearly lifeless burden, and laid it on the cot, and then turned down the sheet, and revealed the face of Albert Goldsborough, livid, but quiet, like the faces of those who have recently fallen asleep in death.

Elfie, holding her hands upon her heart, drew near, and took courage to ask the assistant surgeon:

“Doctor, oh, Doctor, how did he bear the operation? Will he survive it? Oh, will he?”

The surgeon turned, and seeing the anxious and pleading face, guessed at once that the inquirer was “something” to the sufferer, and answered perhaps more kindly than truly:

“Yes, Miss, we hope he will do well. You are a friend or relative of this man?”

“Dear me, Doctor, if you were not a very recent arrival here, you would know me as well as you know the dispensary. I have been in the habit of coming here daily, with little intermission, for the last three years,” said Elfie, rather impatiently evading the doctor’s question.

“I have been here only for the last fortnight,” he replied.

“Oh, I was away during that time. But I was here yesterday with Miss Rosenthal, and I brought you her message to come to this very patient.”

“Oh, yes, I remember. But now my dear young lady,” said the surgeon, who had not once taken his finger from the pulse of the man on the cot, since he had been laid there, “now my patient shows signs of recovery, and he must positively see no one near him but his physician and nurse. I must beg you to retire.”

“But, Doctor, I—I am his friend,” said Elfie, at length driven to this confession.

“If you were his mother or his sister, his wife or his sweetheart, I could not let you see him, or rather, I could not let him see you, when he wakes,” said the surgeon, firmly, though kindly.

“Yes, Elfie, dear, you must let me take you away. Any sudden shock might be fatal to him when he wakes,” said Erminie, who had come unperceived to her side.

Elfie turned away, with difficulty restraining her sobs. She paused a moment by the side of her new acquaintance on the next cot.

“Good-bye, young soldier,” she said. “I shall see you again to-morrow. And I hope we shall know you better. You are one of the heroes of this war. And I feel sure that your past courage in the field equalled your present fortitude in the hospital.”

The boy blushed and smiled to hear such warm praises from such pretty lips, and he watched Elfie as long as she remained visible in the ward.

As soon as the two girls were in the little carriage again, Elfie suddenly seized Erminie and hysterically exclaimed:

“Oh, Erminie! Oh, Erminie! You saw him! You saw how livid and sunken he looked!”

“Yes, dear, I saw him.”

“Oh, Erminie! you have been tending the sick and wounded in the hospitals for nearly four years, and you have had a great deal of experience. You know almost as much as the head surgeon himself, and a great deal more than these young under graduates, who take off a man’s limb so deftly. And you saw how he looked. Will he live? Will he live?”

“I hope and trust so, my dear,” said Miss Rosenthal gently.

“When people say they hope and trust, they always mean they don’t believe,” cried Elfie, wringing her hands.

Miss Rosenthal tried to turn the conversation.

“You forgot to keep your appointment with your little champion yesterday, Elfie.”

“I had forgotten the very existence of little Mim,” sobbed Elfie.

“Shall I tell the coachman to set you down there? It is directly on our way to the Emory Hospital.”

“No, tell him to drive me first to the nearest bookseller’s, and then to the next fruit shop. I mustn’t go empty-handed when I do go,” said Elfie, remorsefully.

Miss Rosenthal gave the proper directions, the coachman drove to the designated places, and Elfie made her purchases, and in due time was set down at the gate of little Mim’s cottage.

“Call and pick me up as you come back from the Emory, Erminie,” said Elfie, as she passed through the gate.

“Certainly,” smiled Miss Rosenthal as she entered the carriage, which immediately drove off.

Elfie was well received by the little old Misses Mim—all the better received because she had missed her appointment with them on the day before. It argued well for them they thought that she was not so over fond of Jim’s society, and perhaps she was not so over anxious to marry him after all, they said, nodding their heads together.

Little Mim himself welcomed his visitor with an effusion of gratitude. He stopped her apologies with his thanks, and accepted her books, and her fruit, and her company with delight.

Elfie sat two hours with him; but she refrained from mentioning the presence of Albert Goldsborough in the hospital. She refrained from two reasons: the fear of exciting the injured man, and the dread of hearing him abuse one who was now only the object of her compassion, her anxiety, and her affection.

It was late in the afternoon when Miss Rosenthal called in the carriage, paid little Mim a short visit, and then took Elfie home.

The next morning Elfie was all feverish impatience to get to the hospital where Goldsborough lay.

And Erminie so strongly sympathized with her in her anxiety that she despatched her domestic affairs in great haste, and was seated beside Elfie in the little carriage an hour earlier than usual.

They drove rapidly to the hospital, and while Miss Rosenthal was holding a consultation with the sister in charge of the clothing room, Elfie hurried to the second floor and entered the ward where her patient lay.

Merely bowing to the nurses in attendance, she passed swiftly up between the rows of beds, but paused suddenly beside that which sustained the wasted form of her lover, who seemed to be sleeping, or swooning; she could not tell which.

A great change had passed over the face and form of Albert Goldsborough since the day before. His face was more livid and sunken then ever; black shadows had gathered in the hollows of his eyes, and temples, and cheeks, and around his pallid lips, which, drawn tightly apart showed the dry, glistening teeth between them. His eyes were half open and half opaque like the eyes of the dying. His shrunken form beneath the closely clinging counterpane, revealed the rapid wasting of flesh and muscle that had gone on even in the last few hours.

As soon as Elfie’s eyes fell upon him she suppressed the scream that rose to her mouth, and turned in agonized inquiry to her friend on the next cot.

“Oh, what has happened since last night?” she faltered.

“I am very sorry to tell you, Miss, but for some reason or other the stump broke out bleeding in the night, and there was a very exhausting hemorrhage before it could be stopped again.”

“And—is there—great danger?” faintly inquired Elfie, sinking upon the chair that stood between the two beds.

“Well—no, Miss, we all hope not, if it doesn’t break out again,” answered the young soldier, hesitatingly.

“But—can it break out again? Is it likely do so?” anxiously inquired Elfie, now gazing in distress upon the ghastly face of her lover, and now turning appealingly to her new friend.

“Well—perhaps not, Miss,” said the young soldier, painfully suppressing the truth to avoid wounding her.

Again Elfie’s gaze was fixed upon the fallen face of her lover, who opened his eyes and recognized her with a wan smile.

“Thank you for coming, my love. I knew you would come to me. They told me, when I asked for you, that you came yesterday, but that they could not let you stay to see me. I knew that you would come again to-day, Elfie,” he said, feebly holding out his hand to her.

“Oh! Albert, dear, my heart bleeds for you,” she cried, trying to keep back her rising tears.

“You know my fate, Elfie?”

“Oh no, dear; none but the Omniscient can know that. But I feel sure, if you will only keep quiet and not let—_that_ happen again, you will get well. Come, Albert, I will not excite myself or you either. But I will not leave you again, dear. I will stay with you until—until you get well. See!” she said, drawing from her pocket the wedding ring that she had once indignantly torn from her finger, but still refrained from destroying. “See, I put on your ring—I put it on now of my own accord, willingly, gladly, so that I may stay and nurse you! See!”

“Elfie—darling! stop! mind what you are about! Do not compromise yourself! I _may_ live!” said the almost dying man, laying his feeble hand on hers.

“Heaven grant that you may! But now see!” she said, slipping the ring firmly upon her finger, and adding—“I will never leave you more, Albert, never, never.”

“Ah, my poor girl! I always knew you loved your ‘traitor,’ although you hated his treason!” exclaimed Goldsborough, feebly raising the ringed hand, and pressing it to his lips.

At that moment the surgeon, in making his rounds, came up to Goldsborough’s bed. At a short distance he was followed by Miss Rosenthal and one of the nurses in close consultation.

While the surgeon was feeling the pulse of his patient, Elfie was straining her ears to catch the words of the conversation between Miss Rosenthal and the nurse. At length, as they drew nearer, she heard the latter say:

“No, Miss, the surgeon seems to think there is no hope in the world for his life! His death is but the question of a few days or hours.”

Elfie knew that the hospital nurse was speaking of Albert Goldsborough, and though, from his appearance, she might have been prepared, and perhaps was prepared, to hear such a sentence, yet for an instant her senses reeled and she caught the back of the chair for support.

Then with an effort she recovered her self-control, and turned her eyes on the face of the assistant surgeon, who was still examining his patient, and tried to read in its expression some reversal of the nurse’s sentence.

But the surgeon’s face was quite impassible.

Presently, however, he looked up and addressed Elfie.

“Young lady, I do not wish to be discourteous,” he said, very gently, “but my patient’s condition demands the strictest quiet, and will not admit of his seeing visitors. Therefore, I must request you to retire.”

For all answer, Elfie deliberately arose and took off her gloves, mantle, and bonnet, and laid them on the empty chair. And then, while the surgeon was staring at her as if to see what she would do next, she answered firmly:

“No, doctor, I cannot leave him. I must remain with him until—until he leaves the hospital.”

“But, my dear young lady—”

“Say no more, doctor. I _will_ not leave him. My place is by his side. I am his wife.”

And so saying, she came to the side of the cot and placed her hand in that of the dying man, who closed his wan fingers over it, and raised his eyes, full of unspeakable love, to her pitying face.

In the utmost perplexity, the surgeon turned towards Miss Rosenthal for an explanation.

“Yes, doctor,” said Erminie, gravely and sweetly, “she has a right to stay with him. She is his wife.”