CHAPTER LXXI.
"NOW I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP."
The Sanitary Commission soon got a supply of clothing, and sent two men to wash and dress my patients. These, with the one sweeping floors with branches, were an incalculable help and comfort; but these two did their work and passed on to other places. One of the men they had dressed grew weak, and I was at a loss to account for his symptoms, until by close questioning, I drew from him the answer,
"It is my other wound!"
These words sounded like a death-knell, but I insisted on seeing the other wound, and found four bullet holes under his new clothes. From the one wound, for which I had been caring, he might easily recover; but with four more so distributed that he must lie on one, and no surgeon to make trap doors, no bed—there was no hope. He was so bright, so good, so intelligent, so courageous, it was hard to give him up. Ah, if I had him in Campbell, with Dr. Kelly to use the knife! How my heart clung to him!
He lay near the center of the room, with his head close to a column; and one night as I knelt giving him drink, and arranging his knapsack and brick pillow, making the most of his two blankets, and thinking of his mother at home, I was suddenly impressed by the beauty and grandeur of his face;—his broad, white brow shaded by bushy, chestnut hair, half curling; the delicate oval of his cheeks; the large, expressive grey eyes; the straight nose and firm chin and lips!—he could not have been more than twenty-two, almost six feet high, with a frame full of vigor. How many such men were there in this land? How many could we afford to sacrifice in order to preserve a country for the use of cowards and traitors, and other inferior types of the race?
The feeble light of my candle threw this picture into strong relief against the surrounding gloom, and it was harder than ever to give him up, but this must be done; and I wanted to extract from that bitter cup one drop of sweetness for his mother; so I said to him:
"Now, George, do you think you can sleep?" He said he could, and I added:
"Will you pray before you sleep?" He said he would.
"Do you always pray before going to sleep?" He nodded, and I continued:
"Let us pray together, to-night, just the little prayer your mother taught you first."
He clasped his hands, and together we repeated "Now I lay me down to sleep," to the end; when I said:
"Do you mean that, George? Do you mean to ask God to keep your soul, for
Christ's sake, while you are here; and, for His sake, to take it to
Himself when you go hence, whenever that may be?"
The tears were running over his cheeks, and he said, solemnly:
"I do."
"Then it is all well with you, and you can rest in Him who giveth his beloved sleep."
There was no time for long prayers, and I must go to another sufferer.
A kind, strong man, from the Michigan Aid Society, came and worked two days among my men, and said:
"If I only had them in a tent, on the ground; but this floor is dreadful!"
Up stairs were some wounds I must dress, while a corpse lay close beside one of the men, so that I must kneel touching it, while I worked. It lay twelve hours before I could get it taken to its shallow, coffinless grave; and while I knelt there, the man whose wound I was dressing, said:
"Never mind; we'll make you up a good purse for this!"
He had no sooner spoken than a murmur of contemptuous disapproval came from the other men, and one said:
"A purse for her! She's got more money than all of us, I bet!"
Another called out: "No, we won't! Won't do anything of the kind!
We're your boys; ain't we, mother? You're not working for money!"
"Why," persisted the generous man, "we made up a purse of eighty dollars for a woman t' other time I was hurt, and she hadn't done half as much for us!"
"Eighty dollars!" called out the man who thought me rich; "eighty dollars for her! why I tell you she could give every one of us eighty dollars, and would not miss it!"
Another said:
"She isn't one of the sort that are 'round after purses!"
Why any of them should have thought me rich I cannot imagine except for the respect with which officers treated me. To veil the iron hand I held over my nurses, I made a jest of my authority, pinned a bit of bandage on my shoulder, and played commander-in-chief. Officers and guards would salute when we passed, as an innocent joke, but the men came to regard me as a person of rank.
Citizens of Fredericksburg, who at first insulted me on the street, as they did other Yankee nurses, heard that I was a person of great influence, and began to solicit my good offices on behalf of friends arrested by order of Secretary Stanton, and held as hostages, for our sixty wounded who were made prisoners while trying to pass through the city, before we took possession.
So I was decked in plumes of fictitious greatness, and might have played princess in disguise if I had had time; but I had only two deaths in the old theater—this man up stairs, and the man without clothes, who lay alone in that back room, and after the amputation of his thigh, had no covering until government gave him one of Virginia clay.