Tom Burke Of "Ours", Volume II. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ was no time for sympathy; and the surgeons, with arms bare to the shoulder and bedaubed with blood, toiled away as though life no longer moved in the creeping flesh beneath the knife, and human agony spoke not aloud with every motion of their hand.

      “Place there! move forward!” said an hospital surgeon, as they carried up the litter on which Pioche lay stretched and senseless.

      “What’s this?” cried a surgeon, leaning forward, and placing his hand on the sick man’s pulse. “Ah! take him back again; it ‘s all over there!”

      “Oh, no!” cried I, in agony, “it can scarcely be; they lifted him alive from the wagon.”

      “He’s not dead, sir,” replied the surgeon, in a whisper, “but he will soon be; there’s internal bleeding going on from that wound, and a few hours, or less perhaps must close the scene.”

      “Can nothing be done? nothing?”

      “I fear not.” He opened the jacket of the wounded man as he spoke, and slitting the inner clothes asunder with a quick stroke of his scissors, disclosed a tremendous sabre-wound in the side. “That is not the worst,” said he. “Look here,” pointing to a small bluish mark of a bullet hole above it; “here lies the mischief.”

      An hospital aid whispered something at the instant in the surgeon’s ear, to which he quickly replied, “When?”

      “This instant, sir; the ligature slipped, and – ”

      “Remove him,” was the reply. “Now, sir, I have a bed for your poor fellow here; but I have little hope to give you. His pulse is stronger, otherwise the endeavor would be lost time.”

      While they carried the litter forward, I perceived that another party were lifting from a bed near a figure, over whose face the sheet was carelessly thrown. I guessed from the gestures that the form they lifted was lifeless; the heavy sumph of the body upon the ground showed it beyond a doubt. The bearers replaced the dead man by the dying body of poor Pioche; and from a vague feeling of curiosity, I stooped down and drew back the sheet from the face of the corpse. As I did so, my limbs trembled, and I leaned back almost fainting against the wall. Pale with the pallor of death, but scarcely altered from life, I beheld the dead features of Amédée Pichot, the captain whose insolence had left an unsettled quarrel between us. The man for whose coming I waited to expiate an open insult, now lay cold and lifeless at my feet. What a rush of sensations passed through my mind as I gazed on that motionless mass! and oh, what gratitude my heart gushed to think that he did not fall by my hand!

      “A brave soldier, but a quarrelsome friend,” said the surgeon, stooping down to examine the wound, with all the indifference of a man who regarded life as a mere problem. “It was a cannon-shot carried it off.” As he said this, he disclosed the mangled remains of a limb, torn from the trunk too high to permit of amputation. “Poor Amédée! it was the death he always wished for. It was a strange horror he had of falling by the hand of an adversary, rather than being carried off thus. And now for the cuirassier.”

      So saying, he turned towards the bed on which Pioche lav, still as death itself. A few minutes’ careful investigation of the case enabled him to pronounce that although the chances were many against recovery, yet it was not altogether hopeless.

      “All will depend on the care of whoever watches him,” said the surgeon. “Symptoms will arise, requiring prompt attention and a change in treatment; and this is one of those cases where a nurse is worth a hundred doctors. Who takes charge of this bed?” he called aloud.

      “Minette, Monsieur,” said a sergeant. “She has lain down to take a little rest, for she was quite worn out with fatigue.”

      “Me voici!” said a silvery voice I knew at once to be hers. And the same instant she pierced the crowd around the bed, and approached the patient. No sooner had she beheld the features of the sick man than she reeled back, and grasped the arms of the persons on either side. For a few seconds she stood, with her hands pressed upon her face, and when she withdrew them, her features were almost ghastly in their hue, while, with a great effort over her emotion, she said, in a low voice, “Can he recover?”

      “Yes, Minette!” replied the surgeon, “and will, if care avail anything. Just hear me for a moment.”

      With that he drew her to one side, and commenced to explain the treatment he proposed to adopt. As he spoke, her cloak, which up to this instant she wore, dropped from her shoulders, and she stood there in the dress of the vivandière: a short frock coat, of light blue, with a thin gold braid upon the collar and the sleeve; loose trousers of white jean, strapped beneath her boots; a silk sash of scarlet and gold entwined was fastened round her waist, and fell in a long fringe at her side; while a cap of blue cloth, with a gold band and tassel, hung by a hook at her girdle. Simple as was the dress, it displayed to perfection the symmetry of her figure and her carriage, and suited the character of her air and gesture, which, abrupt and impatient at times, was almost boyish in the wayward freedom of her action.

      The surgeon soon finished his directions, the crowd separated, and Minette alone remained by the sick man’s bed. For some minutes her cares did not permit her to look up; but when she did, a slight cry broke from her, and she sank down upon the seat at the bedside.

      “Minette, dear Minette, you are not angry with me?” said I, in a low and trembling tone. “I have not done aught to displease you, – have I so?”

      She answered not a word, but a blush of the deepest scarlet suffused her face and temples, and her bosom heaved almost convulsively.

      “To you I owe my life,” continued I, with earnestness; “nay more, I owe the kindness which made of a sick-bed a place of pleasant thoughts and happy memories. Can I, then, have offended you, while my whole heart was bursting with gratitude?”

      A paleness, more striking than the blush that preceded it, now stole over her features, but she uttered not a word. Her eyes turned from me and fell upon her own figure, and I saw the tears till up and roll slowly along her cheeks.

      “Why did you leave me, Minette?” said I, wound up by her obstinate silence beyond further endurance. “Did the few words of impatience – ”

      “No, no, no!” broke she in, “not that! not that!”

      “What then? Tell me, for Heaven’s sake, how have I earned your displeasure? Believe me, I have met with too little kindness in my way through life, not to feel poignantly the loss of a friend. What was it, I beseech you?”

      “Oh, do not ask me!” cried she, with streaming eyes; “do not, I beg of you. Enough that you know – and this I swear to you, – that no fault of yours was in question. You were always good and always kind to me, – too kind, too good, – but not even your teaching could alter the waywardness of my nature. Speak of this no more, I ask you, as the greatest favor you can bestow on me. See here,” cried she, while her lips trembled with emotion; “I have need of all my courage to be of use to him; and you will not, I am sure, render me unequal to my task.”

      “But we are friends, Minette; friends as before,” said I, taking her hand, and pressing it within mine.

      “Yes, friends!” muttered she, in a broken voice, while she turned her head from me. “Adieu! Monsieur, adieu!”

      “Adieu, then, since you wish it so, Minette! But whatever your secret reason for this change towards me, you never can alter the deep-rooted feeling of my heart, which makes me know myself your friend forever.”

      The more I thought of Minette’s conduct, the more puzzled I was. No jealousy СКАЧАТЬ