"O, Miss Rachel," he groaned, as she came to his cot in response to his earnest call, "I'm so glad to see you, for I'm the sickest man that ever came into this hospital.Nothin' but the best o'
care 'll carry me through, and I know you'll give it to me for the sake of old times," and Jacob's face expressed to his comrades the idea that there had been a time when his relations with her had been exceedingly tender.
Rachel's face flushed at the impudent assumption, but she overcame the temptation to make a snubbing answer, and replied quietly:
"No, Jacob, you are not so sick as you think you are." ("She calls him 'Jacob,'" audibly commented some of those near, as if this was a confirmation of Jakes insinuation.) "The Surgeons say," she continued, "that your symptoms are not at all bad, and that you'll be up again in a few days.""O, them Doctors always talk that way.They're the flintiest-hearted set I ever see in all my born days.They're always pretending that they don't believe there is nothin' the matter with a feller.Ireally believe they'd a little liefer a man'd die than not.They don't seem to take no sort of interest in savin' the soldiers that the country needs so badly."Rachel felt as if it would sweeten much hard service if she could tell Alspaugh outright her opinion that he was acting very calfishly;but other counsels prevailed, and she said encouragingly:
"You are only discouraged, Jacob--that's all.A few days rest here will restore both your health and your spirits.""No, I'm not discouraged.I'm not the kind to git down in the mouth--you know me well enough for that.I'm sick, sick I tell you--sicker'n any other man in this hospital, an' nothin' but the best o' nursin' 'll save my life for the country.O, how I wish I was at home with my mother; she'd take care o' me."Rachel could not repress a smile at the rememberance of Jake's termagant mother nad her dirty, comfortless cottage, an how her intemperance in administering such castisement as conveyed most grief to a boy's nature first drove Jake to seek refuge with her father.
"No doubt it would be very comfortable," she answered, "if you could get home to your mother; but there's no need of it, because you'll be well before you could possibly reach there.""No, I'll never be well," persisted Jake, "unless I have the best o' care; but I feel much better now, since I find you here, for I'm sure you'll take as much interest in me as a sister would."She shuddered a little at the prospect of even temporary sisterly relations to the fellow, but replied guardedly:
"Of course I'll do what I can for you, Jacob," and started to move away, but he caught her dress and whimpered:
"O, don't go, Miss Rachel; do go and leave me all alone.Stay any way till I'm fixed somehow comfortable.""I half believe the booby will have hysterics," thought Rachel, with curling lip."Is this the man they praised so for his heroism?
Does all his manhood depend upon his health? Now he hasn't the spirit of a sick kitten." Dreading a scene, however, she took her seat at the head of the cot, and gave some directions for its arrangement.
Jake's symptoms grew worse rapidly, for he bent all his crafty energies to that end.Refuge in the hospital from the unpleasant contingencies attending duty in the field was a good thing, and it became superexcellent when his condition made him the object of the care and sympathy of so fine a young lady as Miss Rachel Bond.
This he felt was something like compensation for all that he had endured for the country, and he would get as much of it as possible.
His mind busied itself in recalling and imitating the signs of suffering he had seen in others.
He breathed stretorously, groaned and sighed immoderately, and even had little fits of well-feigned delirium, in which he babbled of home and friends and the war, and such other things as had come within the limited scope of his mental horizon.
"Don't leave me, Miss Rachel--don't leave me," he said, in one of these simulated paroxysms, clutching at the same time, with a movement singularly well directed for a delirious man, one of her delicate hands in his great, coarse, and not-over-clean fingers.
Had it been the hand of a dying man, or of one in a raging fever, that imprisoned hers, Rachel would not have felt the repulsion that she did at a touch which betrayed to her only too well that the toucher's illness was counterfeited.She could hardly restrain the impulse to dash away the loathsome hand, as she would a toad that had fallen upon her, but she swiftly remembered, as she had in hundreds of other instances since she had been in the hospital, that she was no longer in her own parlor, but in a public place, with scores of eyes noting every movement, and that such an act of just disdain would probably be misunderstood, and possibly be ruinous to a belief in her genuine sympathy with the misfortunes of the sick which she had labored so heroically to build up.
She strove to release her fingers quietly, but at this Alspaugh's paroxysm became intense.He clung the tighter to her, and kneaded her fingers in a way that was almost maddening.Never in all her life had a man presumed to take such a familiarity with her.But her woman's wit did not desert her.With her disengaged hand she felt for and took out a large pin that fastened a bit of lace to her throat, with the desperate intent to give her tormentor a sly stab that would change the current of his thoughts.
But at the moment of carrying this into effect something caused her to look up, and she saw Dr.Denslow standing before her, with an amused look in his kindly, hazel eyes.
She desisted from her purpose and restored the pin to its place in obedience to a sign from him, which told her that he thoroughly understood the case, and had a more effective way of dealing with it than the thrust of a pin point.
