"Never mind, mine is here all in hard chink!" said the elder nurse, striking her bosom. "Here will be enough, with what the doctor allows for the patients, to give us one glorious night. Just help me lift the woman into bed, then slide round to the consumption wards; or, what's better, whisper a word to the orderly, and ask him to come; we'll make the old shanty shake again before midnight."
The young woman, after appeasing her disappointment by casting the lock of hair upon the floor, and grinding it fiercely beneath her heavy shoe, became somewhat consoled. But she sullenly expressed a determination to find her share of the drink, if she were obliged to rob every patient in the ward.
After this conference the nurses returned to the ward. One took off Mrs. Chester's outer garments, while the other proceeded to arrange the empty cot. In the same cot, the same sheets, and on the very pillow from which the dead had just been removed, they laid the helpless woman. Upon her fair hands and face still rested the dust that had been gathering upon her from the street. But under our benignant Common Council, the largest hospital in America contained no bath for its patients, though the Croton water gushed everywhere around the building. There was a shower bath for punishment of the penitentiary women, but for the suffering—-not even that.
They laid her down, therefore, unrefreshed in that death couch; and there she remained moaning like the rest, lifting her sweet voice louder and louder in her excitement; for the noise, the atmosphere and the horrid sights everywhere in the room drove her wild. She flung up her hands and laughed as the nurses passed to and fro before her bed. She called them angels—those two besotted creatures—and besought them with wild, sweet energy to cherish and care for Chester while she was so far away. These women promised her cajolingly, patting her head with their bloated hands, which, in her madness, she would gather to her bosom or kiss eagerly with her hot lips.
The ordinary course of her disease might not have arrived so early to the fierce virulence that it had now obtained; but the day had been one of fearful turmoil, even for a healthy person, and this fever, in a single hour, grows fierce and strong upon such causes. Fuel for a death-fire had been heaped up in that one miserable day. Now the poor creature began to rave—her child, her husband, and little Mary. She shrieked for them louder and louder, that her voice might rise above the wild, strong cries that swelled as she thought in defiance of her feebleness.
CHAPTER XVI.
JANE CHESTER AND HER LITTLE NURSES.
As the starbeams come earthward, and smile on the night,
Awaking the blossoms that drooped in the day,
And kindling their hearts with a dewy delight,
They came to the couch where the sufferer lay.
All at once, in the very height and fury of her delirium, Mrs. Chester fell back upon the pillow smiling; the hot tears rolled from her eyes, and her shaking hand was outstretched. She knew them—for one minute, that woman's heart grew stronger than her frenzied brain, She knew those two little girls who crept hand in hand to her couch, holding back their tears, and striving to look cheerful; though each smile that they forced broke away in a quiver upon their lips, and the very effort to be calm made their grief more visible.
"Children—my children!" whispered the poor woman, softly, for, after they came in, she never once lifted her voice as she had done, "come, I will make room—the bed is cool and broad—better, so much better than that in which they shook and jostled me—come, my little tired birds—here is pillow enough for us all; when he comes home again it will please him to see us here, so comfortable. Ah, here come my angels; sit close, little ones, till they sweep by. You cannot see their wings now—they are furled close under those comical dresses, but that is because we are not good enough to look upon them. Some day, when he comes, my angels will throw off those blue clothes, and then their wings will unfurl and scatter soft, sweet air all over us. You shall see them then, so beautiful—fringed and starred and spotted with gold and purple and bright green—with sunshine melting through, and the scent of violets dropping around—hush, girls, don't cry, you shall have a good sight at my angels then—see, see, I am beckoning them here. Now, hold your breath and wait; hush!"