Elsworth had recovered the lost idea of a loving God and Saviour of men. What to him did it matter, all these hair-splitting dogmas and wranglings of theologians? the recovered treasure was too precious to neglect for the ornaments of the casket in which it was contained.
So he daily went about doing good. By his constant visitation of the people he was able to detect the earliest stages of the pestilence which was destroying so many; then by prompt and judicious treatment he was often successful in arresting its progress. His fame spread, and he was often called in to attend rich sufferers, from whom he refused to take any fees, as he considered himself the servant of the poor. If they chose to make him presents, as they often did, he took them with the understanding that their gifts should be devoted to charitable purposes.
He often went to Mr. MacAlister’s home, at the Vice-Consulate, close by the cathedral. The old gentleman was rather afraid of infection; but as the doctor always changed his clothing before paying visits to his friends, he took his word for it that there was no cause for alarm.
He rented at a very low rate, through the kindness of a member of the municipal council, an old monastery which had been taken by the Government on the expulsion of the monks, and was now let to a furniture dealer; and turned it into a small but serviceable hospital for cholera patients. Funds were readily provided for its support, and there was no difficulty in inducing sufferers to avail themselves of it, as was the case with the great hospitals of the place, which they dreaded to enter. They knew they would be safe in Doctor Elsworth’s hands; he wanted to try no experiments upon them, and was not (as they foolishly thought the other doctors were) in league with the Government for getting rid of them.
Mr. MacAlister’s daughters nobly came forward and helped in the nursing. They found amongst their English and American friends resident in the town abundant means for carrying on the plan, without any Spanish assistance in this branch of the work. Spanish ladies, even if available, would have been of little service. Even Spanish nuns are not very valuable as nurses, and the best Catholic charities are recruited from France. Spanish women can do the devotional part of the work, they say; but that is about all they are good for. The bringing up of a Spanish woman tends to make her ornamental merely, and surely she is of the loveliest of her sex. She spends the greater part of her day in bed, rises and adorns herself for dinner; then the tertulia, with its music and dancing winds up her waking hours, and by midnight she is again in bed. This is poor material for making sick nurses or sisters of mercy.
They had only twenty beds in Elsworth’s hospital. Their principal disinfectant was fresh air, for our surgeon was not greatly in love with carbolic acid and the other disinfecting fetishes, which are probably about as powerful for evil and powerless for good as any which the African venerates.
CHAPTER XXX.
SISTER AGNES LEAVES ST. BERNARD’S.
So all the more we need be strong
Against this false and seeming right;