XXVI
_MADEMOISELLE ROLAND_
During all those months of waiting, Agatha Ronald had remained in NewYork, under the advice of Marshall Pollard's friend, who was accustomedto put his counsel into the form of something like a command wheneverthat seemed to him necessary. She was urged to remain in the city, too,by all her friends who were near Baillie Pegram's prison hospital. "Staywhere you are," was the burden of all their letters. "You can do no goodhere, and you may do much harm if you attempt to come, while you willvery surely be needed where you are, if we succeed, as we hope, ineffecting Captain Pegram's escape. We shall do all that is possible toaccomplish that, but when we do he will still be a very ill man,--for ifhe is to escape at all, it must be before he sufficiently recovers tobe sent to a prison. You will be needed then to care for him somewhere,for, of course, he must not remain in this quarter of the country. Bepatient and trust us--and Sam. For that boy is a wonder of devotion andingenuity. He has just left us to return to the hospital before morning.He makes the journey on foot by night, three times a week, walkingtwenty odd miles each trip, in all sorts of weather. When weremonstrated with him to-night--for a fearful storm is raging--and toldhim he should have waited for better weather, he indignantly replied:'Den Mis' Agatha would have had to wait a whole day beyond her time fernews. No sirree. Sam's a-gwine to come on de 'pinted nights, ef it rainspitchforks an' de win' blows de ha'r offen he haid.'"
So Agatha busied herself with such concerns as were hers. She labouredhard to improve the service of her "underground railroad," and sentmedicines and surgical appliances through the lines with a frequencythat surprised the authorities at Richmond. She corresponded in adisguised way with her friends in and near Washington, offering all shecould of helpful suggestion to them and through them to Sam. It was byher command that Sam told his master, while in the hospital, just whereand how she was to be found if he should escape, and how perfectlyequipped she was to come to his assistance in such a case.
For the rest, she battled bravely with her sorrow and her anxieties,lest they unfit her for prompt and judicious action when the time foraction should come. In brief, she behaved like the devoted and heroicwoman she was.
After long months of weary waiting, her pulse was one day set boundingby the tidings that the master of Warlock had escaped from the hospital,and was in safe hands. This news was communicated by means of atelegram, which said only, "Dress goods satisfactory. Trimmingsexcellent."
Fuller news came by letter a day later, and it was far less joyous. Ittold her that the exposure, exertion, and excitement of the escape hadbrought Baillie into a condition of dangerous illness; that he layhelpless in the physician's house; that no one was permitted to see himfor fear of discovery, except Sam, who had been installed as nurse.
Other letters followed this daily for a week, each more discouragingthan the last. Finally came one from the doctor himself, in answer toAgatha's demand, in which he wrote:
"I labour under many difficulties. Captain Pegram's presence in my housemust be concealed as long as that can be accomplished. I am a bachelor,and I often receive patients for treatment here, but in this case theman's illness is the consequence of a bullet wound, and should that factbecome known, it would pretty certainly cause an inquiry; for mySouthern sentiments are well known, and in the eyes of the governmentalsecret service, I am very distinctly a 'suspect.' The consequence of allthis is that I dare not introduce a competent nurse into the house.
"Sam is willing and absolutely devoted, but of course he knows nothingof nursing. Yet nursing, and especially the tender nursing of a woman,is this patient's chief need. If he were in New York now, wherepolitical rancour is held in check by the fact that sentiment there isdivided, and where people are too busy to meddle with other people'saffairs, we could manage the matter easily. You can scarcely imagine howdifferent the conditions here are. I might easily command the servicesof any one of half a dozen or a dozen gentlewomen of Maryland whom Icould trust absolutely. But the very fact of my bringing one of themhere to nurse a stranger, would set a pack of clever detectives on thescent, and within twenty-four hours they would know the exact truth.
"You will see, my dear young lady, how perplexing a situation it is. Ihoped at first that Capt. P. might presently rally sufficiently to standthe trip to New York. I could have managed that. But he simply cannot bemoved now, or for many weeks to come. It would be murder to make theattempt."
When Agatha had read this latter, her mind was instantly made up.
"I must go to him at all hazards and all costs, and nurse him myself.But first I must think out a way, so that there may be no failure."
She sat for an hour thinking and planning. Then she got up and hurriedlyscribbled two letters. It was after nightfall, and Agatha had never yetgone into the streets by night. Her terror of that particular form ofdanger was great. But these letters must be posted at once, and by herown hand. There were no lamp-post mailing-boxes in those half-civiliseddays, and she must travel many blocks to reach the nearest post-officestation. She took up the little pistol which she had so long carried forthe purpose of defending her honour by self-destruction, if need shouldarise, examined its chambers, placed it beneath her cloak, and hurriedinto the street.
Then, as now, to the shame of what we call our civilisation, no womancould traverse the thoroughfares of a great city after dark andunattended without risk of insult or worse. Then, as now, a costlypolice force utterly ignored its duty of so vigilantly protecting thehelpless that the streets should be as safe to women as to men, by nightas well as by day.
During that little walk of a dozen city blocks through streets that thepublic adequately paid to have securely guarded, Agatha felt far more offear than she had experienced while facing the canister fire of BailliePegram's guns.
She escaped molestation more by good fortune than by any security thatpolice protection afforded or now affords to the wives and daughters ofa community that calls itself civilised, and pays princely sums everyyear for a police protection that it does not get.
One of her letters was addressed to a friend in Baltimore. It gave herthe address of Marshall Pollard's friend, the banker, and added:
"On receipt of this you are to telegraph, asking him to find and sendyou a nurse who speaks French--a Frenchwoman preferred. He will send me,in response to the demand, as Mlle. Roland,--an anagram of my own name.I shall speak nothing but French in your house, and afterward."
To Baillie's doctor she wrote:
"I think I see a way out of your difficulties. Can you not make a newdiagnosis of Captain Pegram's case--finding him ill of tuberculosis, ortyphoid, or some other wasting malady corresponding with his externalappearance, thus concealing the fact that he suffers in consequence of awound? He speaks French like a Parisian--I suppose he can even dream inthat language, as I always do--so for safety and by way of forwardingmy plan, you may regard him as a French gentleman who has fallen illduring his travels in America, and come to you for treatment. You are tobe very anxious to secure a French nurse for him, and to that end youmay write as soon as you receive this, to the gentlewoman whose addressin Baltimore is enclosed, asking her to procure such a nurse if she can.I will be that nurse, and will know no English during my stay. This planwill enable me to go to Captain Pegram's bedside without exciting theleast suspicion, and, when he is sufficiently recovered to travel, therewill be little if any trouble in arranging for his nurse to take theconvalescent to New York, and thence to Europe. Once out of the countryand well again, he can go to Nassau, and thence to a Southern port onone of the English blockade-running ships. To secure all this we mustscrupulously maintain the fiction that he is a Frenchman, and I a Frenchnurse."
Agatha's first care on the next morning was to visit the banker andinstruct him as to the part he was to play in the conspiracy, when thetelegram should come from Baltimore. That done, she plied her needlenimbly, fashioning caps, aprons and the like, such as French nurses onlywore at that time, before there were
any trained nurses other thanFrenchwomen among us. She was already wearing black gowns, of course,and when she added a jet rosary and a stiffly starched broad whitecollar to her costume, she had no need to inform anybody that she was ahospital-bred nurse from Paris.
In the little Maryland town where Baillie Pegram lay in a stupor, heradvent attracted much curious attention, especially because of thejaunty little nurse's cap she wore, and of her inability to speakEnglish. But this curiosity averted, rather than invited suspicion, asAgatha had intended and planned that it should do.
The physician's knowledge of the French language was scant, and hispronunciation was execrably bad, but he managed to greet the nurse inthat tongue on her arrival, and to say, very gallantly:
"Now my patient should surely get well. Under care of such a nurse evena dead man might be persuaded back to life."
The Master of Warlock: A Virginia War Story Page 26