The blood in his veins sang a song of hope. New life had come to him. He pressed the scribbled memorandum to his lips, and hurried in search of the Head of the Medical Department. Helpers were sorely needed; the services of the new volunteer were eagerly accepted. And for weeks Dunoisse wrought among the wounded in the Hospital of Scutari. No one cared to ask his name; to those he nursed he was a hand that raised and fed—a voice that spoke consolation—nothing more tangible. Nor during the weeks of toil and exertion that followed did he exchange a word with the woman who had become the one star of his lonely night. But he saw her, and that was enough. Wherever help and sympathy, skill and courage, were most needed, she was to be found unfailingly. Slight creature that she was, her strength seemed superhuman; the fire of zeal that burned in her was quenchless. She breathed her spirit into those who worked with her: they seemed to need no rest.
The most revolting cases, the most arduous duties, were hers invariably, by right, and claim, and choice. Anæsthetics were not supplied by Britannia for use in her military hospitals; surgical science was as yet in its infancy—but the presence, the voice, the touch, of Ada Merling nerved men to endure, unflinchingly, the atrocious agonies of amputation; if she stood by, there was no outcry when the sharp saw cut into the flesh, or bit through the bone.
And at the end of the long day, when Night had fallen upon the ancient city of the Byzantine Emperors, and porters, hawkers, and beggars slept, wrapped in their ragged mantles, on the grass slopes where Io rested—and only a few silent nuns on night-duty moved through the corridors of the Hospital of Scutari—a twinkling light would grow into vision at the end of those dark halls of anguish—echoing with shrieks of delirious laughter—death-rattles, and groans....
Like a Will-o’-the-Wisp of charity and mercy, a little brass lamp, carried in a woman’s hand, would move forwards—deviate to right or left, stop for a moment—then flit on again.... It is upon record how the blackened lips of the dying soldier kissed the shadow of the pure, clear profile of her who bore it, as it glided over his pillow. He buried his haggard cheek where it had been, and slept, when she had passed.
CII
When fever touched Ada Merling with his scorching wing, there was consternation among the staff, and grief among the patients of the Hospital. The attack was severe, but short; she was removed, during its continuance, to a small garden-villa adjoining the great Cemetery of Scutari.
And there, as she walked on the short, sweet grass, under the vast and ancient cypresses, Dunoisse—having been sent for—came to her; and had no words, seeing her pale and wan and wasted. She held out to him her thin, white hand, and said, with her smile of infinite sweetness:
“Now that I have leisure, I keep my promise. I do not think you need an introduction to Sister Jerome, who has nursed me so kindly and so well.”
Dunoisse exchanged a handshake and a smile with the Sister, who was a round-faced, bright-eyed little creature, with a voice sweet as a piping bullfinch’s, and the activity of a kitten or a child. To see Sister Jerome kiss a baby was to think of a blackbird pecking at a cherry.... When she dressed her patients’ cruel wounds, she joked and laughed with those who were able to enjoy chatter. But tears dropped from her bright eyes on the dressings whenever they could drop unseen.
Sister Jerome flitted up and down like a little black-and-white humble-bee between the alleys of turban-capped or flower-decked tombstones, while Dunoisse told his story to the accompaniment of the doves’ hoarse cooing in the branches overhead. And as he spoke, he sometimes looked for belief and sometimes for comprehension; and never failed to find them in Ada Merling’s eyes.