The hospital to which Rachel had been brought differed from the rest of the sheds in the camp by being whitewashed within and without, which made it radiate a still more unendurable heat than its duller-lustered companions. A powerful odor of chloride of lime and carbolic acid shocked her sensitive nostrils with their tales of all the repulsiveness those disinfectants were intended to destroy or hide.
Several dejected, hollow-eyed convalescents, whose uniforms hung about their wasted bodies as they would about wooden crosses, sat on benches in the scanty shade by one side of the building, and fanned themselves weakly with fans clumsily fashioned from old newspapers. They looked up as the trim, lady-like figure stepped lightly down from the ambulance, and the long-absent luster returned briefly to their sad eyes.
“That looks like home, Jim,” said one of the fever-wasted.
“That it does. Lord! she looks as fresh and sweet as the Johnny-jump-ups down by our old spring-house. I expect she's come down here to find somebody that belongs to her that's sick. Don't I wish it was me!”
“I wouldn't mind being a brother, or a cousin, or a sweetheart to her myself. That'd be better luck than to be given a sutler-shop. Just see her move! She's got a purtier gait than our thoroughbred colt.”
“IT does one's eyes good to look at her. It makes me feel better than a cart-load of the stuff that old Pillbags forces down our throats.”
“You're a-talking. She's a lady—every inch of her—genuine, simon-pure, fast colors, all-wool, a yard wide, as fine as silk, and bright a a May morning.”
“And as wholesome as Spring sunshine.”
All unconscious that her appearance was to the invalids who looked upon her like a sweet, health-giving breeze bursting through a tainted atmosphere, Rachel passed wearily along the burning walks toward the Surgeon's office, with a growing heart-sickness at the unwelcome appearance of the task she had elected for herself.
The journey had been full of irritating discomforts. Heat, dust, and soiled linen are only annoyances to a man; they are real miseries to a woman. The marvel is not that Joan of Arc dared the perils of battle, but that she endured the continued wretchedness of camp uncleanliness, to the triumphant end.