“Yes, ma’am; the doctor says he’s not worse, only they take it different. You see, poor Tom here, frets all the time, and don’t give himself no chance; but that fellow over there’ll worry through yet, if pluck can do it.”
This was afterwards confirmed by the surgeon himself. He assured me that Robinson’s wound had appeared quite as dangerous—indeed, at one time, even more so; but his quiet, placid disposition aided his recovery immensely; while the terribly nervous temperament, and high state of nervous irritability of poor Darlington, were equally against him.
“I’m glad enough he’s sleeping,” added Richards, “for he’s been here for three days, and this is the first time, night or day, that I’ve caught him with his eyes shut; lots of anodyne, too, the doctors give him. It’s worry, worry, worry from morning to night about his sister; he wants so to see her, and says if she were only here, she could come near his bed and it wouldn’t hurt him.”
“Where does she live? Why don’t they send for her? he can’t live.”
“Away off in Michigan; and he won’t even have her told that he’s sick; he says wait till he’s better, and then he’ll write; but he won’t have her frightened. If he could only forget her for a little while, it’s my notion he’d do better; but I tell him none of the boys here make half the fuss after their wives that he does after his sister. Poor boy! he’s just twenty-one since he came in here, and I rather guess they must have thought a sight of him at home,—at least, he does of them,—too much for his own good, that’s certain; this terrible fretting after home, when they’re sick, does the boys a lot of harm.”
Knowing that Richards’ one talent was garrulity, I left him and went to our room, thinking that perhaps we might prepare something to tempt poor Darlington’s appetite; for the surgeon told us it was vital to keep up his strength, and yet he could scarcely be persuaded to touch anything which had been brought him.
As I well knew, from the state they described him to be in, that the sight of a stranger could not be agreeable to him, we sent everything we made for him through Richards, who constituted himself his body-guard from the moment of his entering the hospital, and a most faithful and untiring nurse he proved. Never again can I say that garrulity is his only talent; he developed then and there a gift for nursing for which those who best loved Darlington can never be too grateful. Days passed on, and I soon found that (as I had supposed) what the men termed “crossness,” was but the sad querulousness produced by suffering, and the state of which I have spoken.
While Robinson evidently gained,—though his attacks of pain were still marked by his own peculiar whistling, which we constantly heard in the ladies’ room, and always knew how to interpret,—Darlington was as evidently losing; and all hopes of amputation were necessarily abandoned. I could feel nothing but the most intense pity for him, and longing to comfort him; but it seemed impossible. M. said to me one day, “It certainly seems best, from what we see and hear of Darlington, to send, not take, his nourishment to him; and yet, perhaps our presence might be more welcome; but I hesitate, because the sight of any one coming near him seems to throw him into such a nervous state.”
“Yes,” said I, “any one but Richards; doesn’t it seem a strange fancy?”