“That settles that, then,” he said grimly.
“Not quite. I would like your promise to release me if I receive a better, and more honorable, proposal.” When he did not answer, she went on. “You see? The knife cuts both ways. If you cannot be bound, neither can I, unless you intend to resort to locking me in again?”
“If you go,” he said at last, “the choice will be yours.”
It was a magnificent concession. Without the goad of anger it might never have been made, Eleanora knew. She accepted it with a quick inclination of her head before he could change his mind, and chided herself for wishing for something more.
“Are we quits now?” he inquired, coming closer.
“In a manner of speaking,” she replied, her face calmer than she felt inside.
“Then—”
He held out his hand, a command backed by a promise in his eyes. What else could she do but go into his arms? It was, in any case, where she longed to be, held tight, uncaring of pride or the future.
Pedro was no longer needed. Dr. Jones was his immediate superior, but since he had not put in an appearance for several days, there had not been an opportunity to have the orderly dismissed. Pedro was in no hurry. His duties were light and he had a fine appreciation for the señora’s efforts in the kitchen. The señora, however, did not appreciate Pedro, and she was not backward in making her displeasure known, once it became obvious that the colonel did not require his services. The best solution seemed to be to seek out the surgeon so that he might relieve both the orderly and the household at the same time.
Accordingly, later in the morning Grant returned to duty, Eleanora put together a basket containing a crock of the señora’s strengthening beef broth, several dozen small cakes, and a number of back copies of El Nicaraguense, which had been sent to Grant by the general. Commandeering Pedro as her escort, she made her way through the streets to the enfermería.
The building selected by Dr. Jones was situated near the Church of Guadalupe, a long, low structure used originally as a hospital by the nuns. It was built of handmade adobe bricks which had the melted look of age associated with the buildings dating back nearly three hundred years, to the founding of the city. It had no glass in the casements of the long windows which lined both sides, using only batten blinds to keep out the wind and rain. Inside the dim room, the floor was of hard-beaten earth, the walls were plastered a dirty brown, and the hewed beams of the ceiling were exposed. From the beams hung huge water ollas suspended in slings made of coarse traveling ropes. They lined the aisle between the double row of beds, turning slowly with their own damp weight and the warm air moving through the open blinds.
The free ventilation was necessary. Without it the smell of sickness, hot, unwashed bodies, and the death stench of gangrenous wounds would have been overpowering. But with the fresh air came blue-bottle flies, bees, moths, and spiders. The floor crawled with ants, and each leg of the steel bed frames was sitting in a pan of rusty water, full of wiggle-tails, to keep the red, stinging insects from the patients.
“Miss Villars! So you came,” Dr. Jones said, his voice cutting across the sound of buzzing flies, low voices, and the ceaseless moaning of the man he had been bending over.
“Don’t let me take you from your patient,” she said as he made his way around the end of the narrow bed and came toward her.
“It doesn’t matter. There’s not much I can do, poor lad. He needs morphia and that’s one thing I can’t give him.”
“I have a little opium — that is, Colonel Farrell does.”
“A drop in the bucket. Unless you have more than I’ve seen, it wouldn’t provide an hour’s sleep for half the cases that need it.”
“I’m sure you would be welcome to it, all the same.”
“So I imagine, but we are used to doing without. We couldn’t get the stuff at all when we first got here, now they send us a few vials a month. We save it for the most desperate cases, those going under the knife. The rest make do with rot-gut whiskey — when they can get their friends to bring it to them.”
Such an attitude was realistic under the circumstances. Still, Eleanora could not help but feel it was more than a little callous. She wondered if Dr. Jones had ever been in the place of the men who rolled on the single gray sheet and thin mattress allotted them, if he had ever had to guard an open wound against flies or try to sleep with a man muttering in delirium beside him. Perhaps he had become too familiar with such sights and sounds for them to excite his compassion.
Eleanora glanced down at the basket weighting her arm. “I brought a few things,” she said, her color rising at the pitiful inadequacy of her offering.
“I’m sure they will be most welcome.” Dr. Jones took the basket from her, directing Pedro to carry it to the kitchen.
Watching the orderly depart, she said, “Pedro has been a great help. I don’t know what I would have done without him. I’m sure you have a greater need for him here, however, than we do at the palacio since Grant has returned to the Government House.”
“Has he? I didn’t know,” the surgeon replied, inquiring into the particulars of the colonel’s convalescence and listening closely to the answers. As they talked he stood with one hand thrust into the pocket of his white coat, the other slapping a sheaf of papers against his leg. Thinking the action might stem from impatience at being kept from his duties, Eleanora finished her report and began to make her excuses.
“Before you go, Miss Villars, I have a case I wish you would look at — if you don’t mind?”
She would not have been human if she had not been susceptible to such flattery. She agreed, and it was her undoing. She was cajoled from one patient to the next, up one row and down the other. She visited the surgery, a bare room containing a narrow table and a battery of oil lamps. From there they proceeded to the isolation ward where the fever cases were kept. Looking at so much misery, staring into the eyes of men glazed with pain, and with self-disgust and embarrassment for the state in which she found them, proved more than she could bear. Before the morning was over she had organized the orderlies, and, using a combination of French, Creole Spanish culled from the Catalan dray-drivers around the French Market in New Orleans and from Grant, and also a bastardized English, had driven them to a frenzy of labor heretofore unknown. She saw to it that every slop pail under every bed was emptied and scoured, that every sheet was changed and the soiled ones boiled with lye, every mattress beaten and turned, and every man who could stand it bathed and shaved. In the process she used words she did not know she knew, and discovered the full weight of the position she held with Walker’s forces in Nicaragua. There was not a man in the infirmary who did not know who and what she was, and yet, there was not one who spoke to her with anything less than the fullest measure of respect. As she moved up and down the aisle they followed her with their eyes, and she thought they talked of her behind her back, but to her face they were unfailingly polite. And as the smell of lye soap began to replace the smell of death, they watched her progress with something akin to wonder.
In the afternoon Eleanora sent Pedro with a note to Mazie. By promising without fail to produce William Walker at their opening performance, she inveigled her friend into donating the services of the troupe. She did not know how she was to keep her part of the bargain, but she could not stand to leave the job before her half was done, and she could not see how it was to be accomplished without more help.
With the exception of John Barclay, who was out selling advance tickets, she set the actors to work washing down the walls with a solution of chloride of lime which she had found stacked in barrels in the storage room. They also added lime to the water they used to replace that in the pans in which the bedsteads were standing. The women she sent to ransack the shops of the town for the cheapest muslin curtain material they could find. Only enough for one panel per window could be had. Lacking the time to make them fancy, or the rods on which to hang them, they simply tacked these panels over the windo
ws. They were so light, blowing into the room without discouraging the insects at all, that they tacked the sides also. The open weave of the cheap muslin let the air through while keeping the flies out. A few rounds with a piece of stiffened leather attached to a stick, and the infernal, nerve-shattering buzzing, the crawling and tickling, stopped.
The señora’s beef broth provided the base for a nourishing soup for the evening meal. Using every means of persuasion and the last of her store of patience, Eleanora managed to prevent the cook from adding so much pepper it was unpalatable for the weak stomachs of sick men. She was still in the kitchen when she heard a familiar voice.
“Mazie!” the man called, obviously speaking to the actress down the length of the main ward. “I swore the yahoo who told me he saw you come in here was drunk. What in the name of Satan do you think you’re doing?”
“Imitating Miss Nightingale’s exploit in the Crimea. Don’t you read the journals? Nursing has become respectable.”
The major laughed. “That still leaves you in something of a quandary, doesn’t it?”
“You can be an ass at times, Neville,” Mazie said caustically. “What do you want?”
“No offense intended,” Major Neville Crawford said. “Where’s your sense of humor? All right, all right. I just thought I’d see how you were doing. I haven’t seen much of you lately.”
“I’ve been busy, the theater and all.”
“And good works?”
“And good works,” Mazie agreed grimly, to the sound of a cloth being viciously wrung out. She was washing down the last of the bed frames and, tired from the unaccustomed labor and the irritation of keeping the other actresses working, was in no good temper.
“Who got you into this,” the major asked. “Not Jones? He has about as much persuasive personality as a grizzly bear.”
From the level of their voices Eleanora thought Major Crawford had sauntered down the aisle. Still, the renewed moaning of a man who had been quiet for several hours told her he was disturbing the patient. She stepped through the freshly hung curtain dividing the kitchen from the ward. “I persuaded her,” she said cheerfully, “and I’m sure I can find a job for you too, if you intend to stay.”
The hint was not lost on the major. His bow of greeting was brief, his smile twisted, as he answered. “Eleanora. I might have guessed, considering the barracks-room gossip I hear of how you pulled Farrell from the jaws of death. I’m afraid I must disappoint you, though. I’m on my way to dinner at the Government House.”
“You are dining there often these days, they tell me,” Mazie said with the lift of a thin brow.
“My charm of manner,” he murmured deprecatingly.
“Take care you don’t get in the general’s bad books. He is a jealous man, and a dangerous enemy.”
“I assure you my interest at the Government House is strictly of a business nature.”
“Yes, but are you sure Niña Maria realizes it? Her vanity is colossal.”
“You take care of your affairs and let me take care of mine,” the tall, blond man told her, his smile perfectly pleasant.
Eleanora glanced from one to the other. She could sense an undercurrent of warning in their tones that she did not comprehend. The impression dissipated as Mazie turned to her. “Did you know it’s getting dark? John has called a final dress rehearsal for nine o’clock this evening. I sent the others off a half hour ago. I’ll have to hurry if I’m to get a bite to eat before we start, and I’ll wager you’d like to get back before Grant does.”
Eleanora had not realized it was so late. Whipping off the burlap bag she had fashioned into an apron, she went to tell Dr. Jones she was leaving, then joined Mazie and Major Crawford in the street outside. They walked along quickly in the gathering dusk. Eleanora, lost in her own thought, paid little attention to the other two until the major turned to her.
“Your brother was asking just yesterday if I had seen you.”
“Oh? How was he?”
“That’s just what he was wondering about you. It would be a tragedy if you let Walker’s little sortie here in Nicaragua come between the two of you.”
Eleanora smiled. “I don’t think our estrangement can be blamed on General Walker.”
“Don’t you? Maybe not. Nonetheless, Jean-Paul seems to have soured on our little general. A lot of people have.”
Seeing he was waiting for her comment, Eleanora said noncommittally, “I suppose so.”
You haven’t? It’s not as if this were the United States and we owed our loyalty to the man chosen to lead us.”
“Rivas is the president of Nicaragua,” she reminded him.
“Yes, but we all know who holds the power,” the major said, shrugging.
That was too true for denial. “The men who signed as soldier-colonists took a loyalty oath,” she said.
“That doesn’t make them Nicaraguans.”
“Doesn’t it? I’m not sure of the legality of the question, but I thought that was certainly the idea, to own land here, to build a new and richer life.”
“Central America, the new frontier? To be annexed to the United States eventually like Texas and California? Isn’t that the goal of the concept of manifest destiny? Shouldn’t our loyalty belong still to the country that will finally claim this one?”
“I somehow doubt the true citizens of Nicaragua would see it that way,” Eleanora replied, stopping just beyond the guards outside the door of the palacio and turning with a smile that included Mazie, waiting quiet, almost passive, behind him.
“Oh, well,” Neville said, taking her hand, a glint of wry amusement in his pale, blue eyes, “fidelity is a fine thing — in a woman.”
12
Grant had not returned from the Government House, had not even, according to the señora, appeared at midday for the cold collation prepared for him. It was gratifying news. Eleanora could not think he would approve of her action, and it was a relief, in her weariness, to know she need not explain it to him tonight. Despite the heat, she boiled water for a scalding hot bath. She lingered in the cramped tin tub, soaping again and again, even washing her hair in an effort to remove the smell of the hospital. In the process she washed away some of her tiredness. When she was done and Grant still had not come, she sat down at the table with her hair drying upon her shoulders, and drawing a sheet of foolscap toward her, picked up a pen. It was necessary for her to frame her request to the general for his presence at the opening night of the School for Scandal as soon as possible. What could she say?
Frowning, she tapped the pen on her chin. Phrase it as an invitation and hope he would be moved to attend? She doubted he would be influenced to accede if she simply told him she had pledged his presence, without telling him why she had done so. A full explanation would be best, but it would serve no purpose to dwell on the horrors of the conditions at the hospital. It was no different from other military infirmaries, and was, perhaps, better, since Dr. Jones was not too immured in tradition and his own importance to recognize the need for change. No, it would not do to cast a slur upon the surgeon, even by inference. To speak to General Walker in person might be the best course, but she placed no confidence in his willingness to see her on the morrow. To judge by the number of hours Grant was spending with him, he was unlikely to appreciate being disturbed for such a small matter. Sighing, she began to write.
Grant advertised his arrival in the middle of the night by splashing noisily in the cold bathwater she had left. Eleanora eyed him with sleepy annoyance. He had the alert look of a man who had dined well in stimulating company and anticipates further entertainment before retiring. Setting her lips, she pulled the sheet up over her head to shut out the orange-yellow glow of the candle.
Smelling delectably of attar-of-roses soap, he sought her there, under the sheet. “Oh, Grant,” she protested as he rolled her toward him, but diligent and tender patience required its reward, one it proved impossible not to share.
Finding Grant gone once more when
she awoke at dawn, Eleanora sent one of Luis’s guards to the Government House with her message to the general. His reply was made in person. He walked into the hospital with his quick, nervous stride while she was helping the surgeon on a morning round of the patients who needed attention to their dressings.
Dr. Jones stood long seconds in frozen immobility before he moved to greet Walker and express his not unnatural satisfaction that the general had seen fit to pay a visit to the men injured in his cause. Eleanora hesitated to put herself forward, especially when she saw the tall form of the colonel making his way down the center aisle with a half-dozen junior officers behind him. As he raked her with a frowning glance, she was made unhappily aware of his displeasure. Dropping her gaze, she went on with what she was doing.
The surgeon took his commanding officer on a slow and exhaustive circuit of the infirmary. Walker, with the thoroughness of a man on familiar professional ground, plied the doctor with innumerable questions concerning supplies, procedures, techniques, numbers of patients, types of wounds and their sites, and the rate of injured certified fit to return to their duties. By the time they were done, Dr. Jones was mopping perspiration from his brow with a sodden handkerchief, no longer certain he wanted Walker’s interest in his province. He was still holding his own, however, as they passed into the isolation ward.
“Yes, I realize we have fewer mosquitoes here than near the coast,” Dr. Jones’s voice floated back. “But that doesn’t mean there is a connection between them and yellow fever, General. We also are farther away from the miasma of the swamplands, considered to be the primary cause of infection by most modern, scientific thought on the problem—”
Deserting Walker’s entourage, Grant found Eleanora where she was tipping water into a glass from one of the ollas for a man who had lost one hand and torn the other apart when his revolver exploded on a faulty shell.
Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2 Page 64