by P. G. Nagle
She folded the letter around the locket, then set it aside and drew another page toward her. She had many more remembrances in her haversack—letters, locks of hair, scraps of ribbon, buttons. Tiny treasures, sent with love from out of the dark despair in that stone church. She heaped them on a corner of the cracker box, and began to work her way through them.
“What is all of that?” Damon asked, coming in and taking off his coat.
Emma told him. Damon’s brows drew together. When she had told the Grays of her adventures in Centreville, she had not emphasized the despair of wounded men in the church, but the pitiful little pile of remembrances gave mute testimony.
“These might be the last messages their families will receive,” Emma said, touching a lock of sandy hair. Some of them certainly were, she knew.
Damon gazed at them and a swallow moved his throat. “Can I help?” he said quietly.
Emma glanced at the pile, knowing her own memories of the words that went with the keepsakes were fleeting. “You could get some more writing paper from the sutler,” she said. “I don’t think I have enough.”
“I will,” he said, shrugging into his coat again.
He went out without another word. Emma listened to his receding footsteps, a soft smile on her lips. After a moment she dipped her pen and began to write again.
The defeated Union army began trying to pull itself together, without much success. Dread of an attack by the Confederates overshadowed them, though it diminished as the summer days wore on with no attack forthcoming.
Drill, when it was conducted at all, was done in a half-hearted manner. Every day many of the men were missing—gone into Washington to seek distraction in the taverns and brothels. The capital was filled with disillusioned, demoralized soldiers, and their officers were no better; like as not the man shouting orders had brandy fumes on his breath.
Emma sought a different form of reassurance at the prayer meetings still held in the camps. They were larger and more frequent these days, with many new faces of soldiers searching for a way to understand what had happened.
In the face of the army’s widespread demoralization, President Lincoln gave command to General George McClellan, who at once began to bring order and discipline out of the chaos that had followed the first great battle of the war. McClellan insisted that camps be kept orderly and clean, and that the soldiers must drill for hours every day. There were grumblings at first, but they subsided as the army realized that McClellan’s strictures were intended to improve their effectiveness. Hope and a sense of pride began to grow again among the ranks.
McClellan initiated a series of Grand Reviews to reassure the citizens of Washington that their city would indeed be defended. They served as well to remind the men that they were soldiers, and had a sober duty. Gradually the morale of the army that had been so heartbroken after Bull Run rose. Under their new commander’s guidance, the raw volunteers began to hone themselves into a fine military machine.
Emma returned to hospital duty and was assigned to a general hospital in Georgetown, where she cared now for wounded as well as the sick. There were many, many of both—five hundred beds in the Georgetown hospital, and every one of them filled. Measles, dysentery, and typhoid raged among the troops, and still the surgeons continued their grim work, amputating ruined limbs and extracting musket balls and shrapnel from festering wounds.
The patients suffered nightmares and delirium as well, many of them reliving the terrors of the battlefield, and Emma heard their tortured ravings with a grieving heart. She did what she could to ease them, and to reassure those less sorely afflicted who had also to witness these piteous sights.
Summer passed and autumn came, bringing a blaze of color to the trees around Washington. The capital was again filled with martial activity, but there was an earnestness to it now that had been unknown before Bull Run. The frequent reviews reminded everyone, soldier and civilian alike, that the business they were about was serious. General McClellan tolerated no laxity.
In October, Emma returned to duty at the Second’s regimental hospital. From brick walls to tents was a change, and Emma felt concern for the patients living in such tenuous shelter, though she herself had no better. She and the other hospital staff worked diligently to improve the conditions in the hospital tents. They dug trenches to divert the runoff from the powerful rainstorms that assailed the camp. They planted evergreens, pitched awnings to provide shade, and in general did all they could to benefit the patients in their care.
One evening while on night watch, Emma sat reading from the Bible to a soldier who had taken a ball in the shoulder while on picket duty. After a time she noticed a private standing nearby, listening. Emma recognized his face, though she could not recall his name. He was in another company of the Second, she thought.
She finished the passage she was reading and checked on her patient, who had fallen asleep under the combined effects of her voice and a generous dose of whiskey. Quietly Emma closed her book and stood, edging her way to the aisle between the rows of beds. The private stepped back to make room for her with a friendly smile.
He had dark hair and earnest dark eyes, and he followed her down the aisle. When they reached the front of the tent, he quietly spoke.
“You have a fine voice.”
“Thank you.”
“And that is a handsome Bible.”
Emma smiled. “I used to sell them. Bibles, and other books.”
“I love books,” the soldier said, returning her smile. “They are the best solace, and that one the best of them all,” he said, gesturing to her Bible.
Emma glanced down the length of the tent to assure herself that no one needed her attention. All was quiet, so she stepped out of the tent, inviting the soldier to join her beneath the awning. The night was calm, disturbed only by the sound of crickets and an occasional voice in the camp below.
“Are you here to visit a friend?” Emma asked.
The private glanced back at the hospital tent. “Yes, Mitchell, but he is sleeping. I came too late.”
“I will tell him you were here, if you wish.”
“Please do. My name is Robbins. Jerome Robbins.”
“Frank Thompson.”
Emma held out her hand, and Robbins shook it, smiling. His grip was firm, but without the test of strength she so often encountered.
“It’s good of you to come and visit,” she said. “It does them so much good to know they are remembered.”
“It’s the least I can do. Poor Mitchell. He thought the arm would heal.”
“The surgeons did everything they could to save it.”
Robbins nodded. “I heard.”
“Don’t worry, he will recover. He bore it well, and his spirits are good.” Emma smiled. “That makes all the difference.”
“It must be hard for you, seeing them suffer every day.”
Emma shrugged. “They are wonderfully patient, most of them. And they respond well to a friendly face, so I try always to be cheerful.”
“A noble calling.”
His smile was approving, and warmed Emma’s heart. She glanced at her Bible, tucked beneath her arm.
“I view it as a ministry, of sorts. I thought once of becoming a missionary. Now God’s work is given to me, here at home.”
“Does not the chaplain minister to them?”
“He does. Mr. Brown is here every day, he spends many hours comforting the sick. But for some—” she glanced up at Robbins, hoping he would understand. “—for some, it is better coming from an equal than from the chaplain.”
Robbins nodded. “They are fortunate to have you here, then, offering both the comfort of the Lord’s word and the sympathy of an equal in their time of darkness.”
“I can do no less. The simplest things can make a difference. Reading to them, or writing a letter. So many of them are homesick, and when they come here they are separated even from their friends in camp.”
Robbins shifted his stance and gl
anced at the tent once more. “I will come again, then. Tell Mitchell when he wakes that I will come tomorrow to see him.”
“Thank you. I will tell him.”
They stood gazing at each other for a moment. Emma was smiling, and Robbins smiled back slightly, then offered his hand.
“Well, good night. I’m glad to have met you,” he said.
Emma shook his hand. “And I you. Good night.”
She watched him stride away toward the camp, thinking it was pleasant to meet a soldier who appreciated God’s word and who was aware of the suffering in the hospitals. Most avoided the hospitals if at all possible. Those who did come to visit their friends were the exception.
When Robbins disappeared from view she went back into the tent and walked its length, checking on each patient. She paused beside the bed where Mitchell lay, the stump of his amputated arm swathed in bandages. He slept the deep and silent sleep of exhaustion. Emma stood gazing at him, smiling softly.
“You are lucky,” she whispered, though she knew he did not hear. “You have a caring friend.”
Washington, D.C., 1883
A caring friend. How ingenuous.” Jamie’s voice dripped irony.
“Yes, a caring friend,” Emma retorted. “I would not expect you to understand such pure and simple feelings.”
Spots of red flared high on Jamie’s cheeks, and his blue eyes flashed. Emma was pleased with this reaction, though she took care to let nothing show in her face.
She should end this, she knew. It was inappropriate to discuss the past at such length, and in what was becoming such personal detail, before Mr. Glass.
It was Jamie who persisted, however, and Emma was not about to yield her ground. She had come here to petition Congressman Cutcheon, and would not leave without seeing him.
“So that is how it began,” Jamie said. “In the hospital.”
“That is how our friendship began, yes,” Emma replied, “and you know how it ended. What did you say to him, the day you left?”
Jamie glanced at Mr. Glass, who had sat down at his desk with an air of resignation. Emma saw the glint of interest in the secretary’s eye, though he feigned indifference.
“He didn’t tell you?” Jamie said.
“No, though I wrote to him and asked him to.”
Jamie leaned against the front of the secretary’s desk, folding his arms. “I think you can guess.”
Emma felt a chill in her soul. “You told him all?”
A cold smile. “All. I had an hour to pass before the train arrived. I thought it well spent.”
“You had no right.”
Jamie laughed aloud. “Right? Was there anything right in it at all?”
“You thought so once,” Emma said, her voice tight with anger, “or so you made me believe.”
For a moment a look of longing, almost of hunger, crossed Jamie’s face. Emma’s heart lurched in response, a giddy, sickening sensation she had not felt since those days in the army. Fear combined with hope, and a tingling anticipation. She had not thought she would ever feel that way again.
Jamie turned his head away, scowling. “I thought he should know.”
“Thought he should be disillusioned, you mean,” Emma said. “You did it for spite. Pure spite!”
“I thought,” Jamie said slowly, “that he should know the true nature of his friend.”
Emma’s anger flared. “Jerome knew my nature better than you ever will! Do you know why? Because we were alike, he and I. We cared about the same things.”
“Not all the same things.”
“The things that mattered most, we agreed upon.”
Jamie’s face went white, now. “Thank you,” he said in a voice edged with ice. “Now I know exactly where I stand.”
“By your own choice,” Emma said, gripping her hands in her lap to keep them from trembling. “It was your doing, remember.”
He did not answer, but looked away again. Emma saw a swallow move his throat. Suddenly she laughed. How ridiculous, that they should rip at each other so, now that it was long over and past.
“I wish sometimes that I could go back to that time,” she said wistfully. At a sharp glance from Jamie she added, “to that time when I served in the hospital. My hours were occupied with the work of God’s mercy, and my soul was clean.”
“As clean as it could be, living a daily lie.”
“The lie gave me freedom to be of service. It harmed no one.”
Jamie looked at her wryly. “No?”
“No,” Emma said firmly. “I argued that point with myself constantly, you may believe. I was careful to let it harm no one. That is why I had no close friends, why I kept a distance. If I were discovered, I wanted no one to be accused of colluding with me. I kept to myself.”
“Until Jerome,” Jamie said.
“Yes.” Emma nodded. “Until Jerome.”
Alexandria, Virginia, 1861
Near dawn, when Emma’s shift was ending, she made her rounds one last time and found Private Mitchell drowsing awake. She helped him sit up to drink some water.
“A friend of yours was here last night,” she said softly. “Jerome Robbins.”
Mitchell’s face brightened, then fell. “And I missed him?”
“You were sleeping. He said he would visit again.”
Mitchell smiled. “He’s a good one.”
“Did you know him in Michigan?”
“Not until I joined up. He’s a thinking man, likes to debate about politics and such. I think he was in college, before the war.”
“And left his studies to volunteer?”
“Well, he’s very intent on abolition,” Mitchell said, glancing up at her. “Don’t raise the subject, or he’ll talk you into the ground on it.”
Emma smiled. “I’ll remember.”
She saw Mitchell comfortably settled, finished her rounds, and greeted her counterpart, the male nurse coming in to take the next shift. Yawning, she made her way to her tent, where she found Damon snoring gustily, an empty whiskey bottle lying beside his boots. She crawled under her blanket and soon dropped asleep.
That evening when Emma reported to night duty again, Jerome Robbins was there. She saw him the moment she entered the hospital tent, and though his face was turned away she knew him by his dark curling hair and straight shoulders. He was sitting beside Mitchell’s bed, leaning toward his friend, talking quietly.
Emma went about her duties, and when she passed near, Robbins glanced up with a smile. She smiled back, but did not pause to converse. Private Mitchell needed his friend’s attention far more than she.
She went her rounds, read a letter from home to one wounded man, gave a dose of medicine to another who was feverish, and brought her Bible to read again to Private Wills, who wanted every night to hear her as he went to sleep. As she read she became conscious of Robbins’ gaze on her, though he still sat with his friend. Their voices had fallen quiet, now. Her own was the only voice in the tent.
“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
She read on, aware of Robbins listening, aware that the other men nearby listened, too. It comforted them, and she was glad to be the source of that comfort.
She reached a verse that her mouth refused to voice.
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
Never, answered her heart.
She looked at Wills, who was breathing deeply in peaceful slumber. Closing her Bible, she stood and walked out, taking care not to look toward Robbins, for she did not want him to think her over-anxious though she hoped to converse with him again.
Troubled in her heart, she laid her Bible down on the cot that was provided for the nurses’ use. Seldom did its words fail to bring her comfort, but that one verse she could not embrace.
She began her rounds once more, assuring herself that each
patient was comfortably settled for the night. When she reached the far end of the tent and turned, she saw that Robbins was gone.
The disappointment that smote her surprised her, and worried her a little. She had no cause to expect Robbins to stay, after all. His friend Mitchell was sleeping, she saw as she came to his bed. She passed onward, glancing at each patient, and when she reached the front of the tent she stepped outside.
He was there, waiting beneath the awning. With a smile that lit his face even in the dim light glowing through the tent’s walls, Robbins greeted her.
“Good evening,” Emma returned, smiling back. “Thank you for coming to visit. I can see Mitchell’s spirits are already improved.”
“I am happy to do what I can for him. Poor fellow, he doesn’t talk of it, but he’s very blue about the arm.”
“He’ll recover in time. I saw that you brought him a newspaper.”
“Yes, I thought it might interest him.”
Emma smiled, remembering Mitchell’s caution about raising political issues with Robbins. “He told me you are intent on the subject of abolition.”
Robbins drew himself up, and his face went serious. “I believe it is the duty of every Christian to oppose slavery.”
“I agree. No man should be treated as chattel, no matter his color.”
Interest sparked in Robbins’s eye. “You support abolition?”
“With all my heart. Slavery is plainly against God’s law.”
“It is a sin!” Robbins’s face lit with passion. “Both a personal sin, and a blot on the honor of our nation!”
Emma nodded. “And the great tragedy of it is that this war is necessary for its removal.”
“Yet so many soldiers care nothing about it. Mitchell will not even discuss abolition, he says he volunteered for the Union, not for the sake of the negroes.”
“They are afraid, some of them,” Emma said. “You can see it in their eyes when they turn away.”
“Afraid that they will have to treat the negroes as equals? As men?”
“Or afraid that the negroes will take jobs from white men, and bread from the mouths of their families,” Emma said quietly.