Part 25 (1/2)

”She is delirious; it is the fever. Typhus, I should think, in its worst form,” he said. ”She must have prompt care.”

”She must, indeed,” replied the stranger. ”The noise, the hot sun, all are making her worse.”

”And you do not know her name?”

”No; she has muttered over several names, but I could not tell which was hers.”

”Nor her home, of course?”

”No; I found her in the street as I have told you.”

”It is strange. She seems like an American. It is a pity to send her to the hospital, but I can do no better.”

”You will send her there!” exclaimed the stranger, joyfully, ”The policeman talked of the Tombs.”

”No, no, she is no person for that, I am certain,” exclaimed the Commissioner. ”I only wish we had the power of doing more than can be expected at Bellevue; but certainly she shall go to no worse place than that.”

”Oh, thank you!” said the stranger, gratefully.

”I will write out an order, with a few lines to the resident physician at Bellevue. Nothing more can be done, I am afraid.”

”Oh, that is a great deal--everything, in fact--of course she will have proper attention in an inst.i.tution where you have control.”

The Commissioner looked grave, but did not answer that over the Bellevue Hospital his power was merely a name--that he could grant supplies and give directions, but had no real authority over subordinates appointed by the Common Council, and could not, for the most flagrant misconduct, discharge the lowest man about the department of which he was the bonded and responsible head. Shackled in his actions and even in his speech, this truly efficient and good man would pledge himself to nothing, so he merely said:

”Will you, sir--you who have done so much--conduct this poor woman yourself to Bellevue? The van will go up soon, but she does not seem of the usual cla.s.s.”

”I will go with her, of course,” replied the stranger, resuming his seat in the carriage with benevolent alacrity, while the Commissioner returned to his office and hastily wrote a letter to the resident physician, beseeching him to bestow especial care on the unknown patient who seemed so ill, and so completely alone in the world.

CHAPTER XIV.

BELLEVUE AND A NEW INMATE.

A gloomy home for one like this; So pure, so gentle and so fair,-- Must her sweet life, in weariness, Go out for lack of human care?

The carriage which bore Mrs. Chester paused before the gates at Bellevue. The gloomy and prison-like buildings loomed in heavy and sombre ma.s.ses before the stranger, as he leaned from the carriage to deliver his order to the gatekeeper. The Hospital, with its walls of dark stone blackened by age, its sombre wings sweeping out from the main building and lowering above the ma.s.sive walls, struck him with a feeling of gloom. It seemed like a prison that he was entering.

The Hospitals were drear to him, and the dull, heavy atmosphere seemed full of contagion. He looked at the poor creature thus unconsciously brought there, perhaps to die, and his heart swelled with compa.s.sion.

The gate swung open, and down a paved causeway leading to the water, bounded on one side by a high stone wall, and on the other by a bakery and various workshops belonging to the inst.i.tutions, the carriage was driven. The wharf in which this causeway terminated, was full of lounging inmates; some were attempting to fish in the turbid water; others leaning half asleep against the wall, and some were grouped together, not in conversation, but basking lazily in the suns.h.i.+ne.

Before it reached this wharf the carriage turned and was driven through an iron-studded gate, into an open and paved court that ran along the front of the main Alms House. The hospitals were some distance back of this building, but here the sick and dying must be brought first, for their names were to be registered in the Alms House books before they could be permitted to die in peace.

As the carriage drove in, up came the swarm of idlers from the wharf, dragging themselves heavily along, laughing stupidly at the ponderous gambols and grimaces of a huge idiot boy, who, on seeing a new arrival, rolled rather than walked up from the water with his hand extended, crying out--money--money. It was all the language the poor creature possessed. He had learned to beg, and that was knowledge enough for him. In everything else he was the merest animal that crawled the earth. Yet, the other paupers followed him as they would have chased a dog or tame animal of any kind, whose gambols broke the monotony of their idleness.

Up came this idiot boy to the carriage, leering in upon its inmates, and rolling from side to side, with his hand out, mumbling that one word over and over between his heavy lips: and up came the gang of paupers, gazing in also with stupid curiosity.

It was well for Jane Chester that she could neither see nor hear all this--that the fever had grown strong enough to shut out all the real world to her heated senses! As it was, the sight of these miserable objects did create some new and more harrowing pain. She began to murmur of the torment to which she had been consigned--of the strange, heavy fiends so unwieldy and coa.r.s.e that had taken her in charge.

Every event of that fearful day was absolutely thrusting her a step nearer to the grave.