Sister Martha; or, a romance of the Franco-Prussian war

Front matter

In 1 Vol. Demy 8vo. Price 12s. (with Portrait). RECOLLECTIONS OP THE PUBLIC CAEEEE AND PRIVATE LIFE OP THE LATE JOHN ADOLPHUS, The Eminent Barrister and Historian, WITH EXTEACT8 FEOM HIS DIAEIE8 By his daughter, MRS. HENDERSON. " A lively, readable book." — Examiner. "Lovers of gossip will peruse it with satisfaction." — Athenæum. "Plethoric of racy anecdote and witty sayings." — Liverpool Albion . " Full of racy humour and amusing chit-chat." — Bell's Messenger. " Few people will fail to be entertained by it." — Bury Post. " Adolphus had a ready wit. Many pleasant recollections are scattered throughout these pages." — Saturday Review. In 2 Vols. Price 21s. (Second Edition.) THE MASKED MAN. By FRANK TROLLOPE. "Jackson, the Irish man-servant — old Wilson, the housekeeper — and the pert, faithful, little Cockney factotum at the cottage, are life like sketches, the truth of which we acknowledge with the greatest pleasure, inasmuch as we believe that the true reason of much of the outory against the character of domestic servants is to be found in the management, indifference, and selfishness of the persons who employ them." — Athenæum.

By many degrees the best novel we have met with in the present season." — Bell's Messenger. " It will be read with avidity." — Liverpool Albion. " It is not alone equal to any novels that have emanated from the pens of the clever family of the Trollopes, but is far superior to the great bulk of fictious that have inundated the libraries of late. The character of Theodore Hook is so true to nature and to himself, that we can scarcely realise the fact that the racy humour, the brilliant witticisms and clever sayings, were not his own instead of Mr. Trollope's." — Brighton Examiner. — Railways, postages— in a word, all the numerous facilities ofthe age — have almost annihilated distance, and, as a natural result, caused an individual trade between country customers and London establishments. Those who do not visit town, so as to select and purchase directly, send for patterns from which they can give their orders.

But as all apparent advantages on the one hand have more or less their corresponding drawbacks, so this system is not without its bane. Pushing tradesmen make a market by offering goods at lower rates than they can possibly be sold at to realise a fair profit. The bait traps the unreflective, and the result is that the receipts en masse are not equal to the tempting samples. There is no newinven tion in this ; it has been practised in wholesale merchandise and by candidates for contracts, as the proverb hath it, since there were hills and valleys. But we grieve to add it is sometimes resorted to by those whom one would credit for more integrity. Ladies, therefore, need exercise caution, and place confidence only in houses of old established fame, for rapidly-made businesses are not generally reli able.

Chapter I

" Will he survive the operation ? Can he last out through the night, and open his eyes to victory of the fatherland ?" " Look at his watch, Martha." " Three o'clock. I see the faint streaks of light in the East." These words were softly spoken in a house on the left bank of tbe blue Moselle, in the neighbourhood of Metz — one of those abodes which attracts the eye of the stranger, and engrosses the attention of the straggler, be he Frenchman or German, friend or foe, by a flag, red-crossed on a white ground, hung out and fluttering from its height in the early autumn breeze, indicating that the house over which it waves is turned into a hospital for B the reception of wounded soldiers — soldiers, French or German, wounded on the battle field. The lacerated and agonized inmates of this hospital — and such as this — are ten derly tended and nursed by the highest ladies of the place as well as the most humble and well-trained Sister of Charity, who come from afar on a mission of mercy.

The speakers were two of the Sisters of Charity, who flitted noiselessly from one sufferer to another, carefully attending to the wants of each, and neglecting none entrusted to their watchful care. They all seemed perfectly tranquil and collected, yet full of energy and life, but evidently, from the nature and urgency of the work they were doing, killing themselves by inches in sacrificing themselves to their brothers in their suffering and sorrow. One spirit was rising up in these ministering angels, of pity pervading their labour of love, and cheering them to sustain themselves and their poor patients. In their words and deeds and manner they carried a Christian courage and noble bravery mingled with tenderness, such as a mother or sister might feel for a son or a brother. There was a deathless and hallowed tranquillity on their half-concealed countenances, which spoke of that inner peace and love and joy which neither Time nor its torments can destroy.

Everywhere throughout the building, from their sombre, uniform dress, quiet and gentle movements, and a certain similarity in that placid expres sion so peculiar to the pure who see God — so much alike in person and figure too, that you might take them to be a multiplication of one and the same person. Among these, however, there were two sisters who communicated with each other in whispers, sitting close to each other, and look ing wistfully towards the bed of a wounded officer. " It is a terrible thing," says the elder of the sisters, " for men who were made in the image of God to be piercing each other with swords, or tearing one another, and leaving his brother to welter in his blood in the burn ing sun, or at the best only patched up and mended, or pruned of his arms or legs." While the sisters were anxiously deploring the absence of a surgeon to examine the wounds of the officer, who lay helplessly sinking from loss of blood, which was now trickling through the sheets, the elder sister cried — " Quick, quick, Martha ; seek for the doctor."

In a few hasty words Martha told her errand to the first surgeon she could find. To give an idea of the difficulty and danger B of Martha's mission it is necessary to give a brief outline, of the battle field of Vionville and its surroundings. The 11th Regiment of Prussians, deployed in front of the wood, having marched up the road from Gorze to Metz ; whilst the 35th Regiment, the fighting 40th, advanced through the wood, to the left. The French batteries immediately opened with shells, and, in a few moments the woods, which covered the advance of the Prussian troops, seemed to be in a perfect hurricane of bursting shells, inflicting fearful loss upon the advancing Prussians. Scarcely had the right battalion ofthe 11th emerged, and deployed, when the French opened fire at 700 yards, and terribly effective was the discharge — so much so that they lost the Colonel and five other officers, besides a considerable number of men.

They then retired into the wood, until the whole line could advance together. Whenever the Prussian advance appeared, the French troops opened a fearful fire ; the assailants falling literally in heaps. For full an hour both armies fought from a distance of fifty paces. The first line of the French troops gradually retired, and three regiments of the Garde Imperiale stood the brunt of the Prussian advance almost alone for the moment, at least, in their glory. Here the Prussian line was strengthened, and, at twenty or thirty paces, the fire was something fearful ; but the Garde had to give way, and fall back to the village of Rezonville. The action had now lasted some six hours; the dead, the dying and the wounded encumbered the field in every direction ; while the blazing rays of a burning August sun fell in cruel torture upon the feverish and unprotected wounded.

Up to nine at night the Frencli guns rolled forth their sullen roar, until night shrouded the scene of carnage in darkness. As Martha passed over the living and the dead, looking for a surgeon, the moon, which for some time had veiled her face from the horrible sight, rose over the field of blood, and the stars looked down on the dismal scene. The plain re-echoed the groans of the quivering wounded — so piteous and wailing that they seemed to cry from the ground for vengeance. In an area of one-and-a-half square miles, not less than ten thousand men have been left dead or wounded on the fearful field of the 16th of August. Here she fell in with a surgeon. At night, as they made the best of their way back, every house was a hospital ; yet the streets were lined with wounded — the gutters were running with blood, and the gore was ancle deep ; every step brought the surgeon and the Sister to some new object of horror.

They went on quickly in silence. A few minutes' walking, or rather wading, brought them to the house of the wounded stranger, and both entered beneath the red crossed flag on the white ground. A low, clear, sweet voice soon sum moned the surgeon to the bedside of the wounded officer now writhing with pain. While the doctor, in soft, low accents, is earnestly making inquiries about the poor patient, who is in need of his aid — while he listens with his ear on the soldier's breast, and examines the nature and the depth of his wounds ; we may, without profanation, glance beneath the veil which is partially thrown aside, at the pale, sad face of Sister Martha, who is narrowly watching the countenance of the surgeon, whom she has brought to dress the wounds, or, it may be, to amputate a limb or extract a ball.

Not very tall — not strikingly beautiful — not in her first fresh bloom. There were the traces of loveliness, but they were tinged with sadness. Her youth in years, and her age in sorrow, struggled in her features, each for mastery ; her sombre, simple habit was in keeping with her whole demeanour, and cast of countenance. The Sister of Mercy, in spite of many disadvantages, was a woman whom it was impossible to look at without a feeling of reverential curiosity, and even religious interest. Few persons, under less appalling circumstances, at first sight of her, could have resisted the desire to learn who she was, and something of her history, and few who could observe how she differed from the elder ladies who ministered to the suffering soldiers, would have been satisfied with the answer to their inquiries — " She is a Sister of Mercy ;" and none, perhaps not even the most patient aud practised of observers, could have read more in her features and general appearance, than that she must have passed through the ordeal of some great suffering, at some earlier period of her life.

Much in her subdued, but rather restless manner, and more still in such glimpses of her countenance, as her head dress revealed, said but too plainly and too sadly — " I am not what I was. I am not my former self. I am the wreck of something that it was pleasant to look upon — a wreck that, physically and materially, can never be repaired ; that must drift on through the waves of this troublesome world, unpitied and unknown, unless I am rescued from my former self, and the miseries growing out of the past, — unless I am saved by a holier and a stronger power than my own." This was something of the story you might read in Sister Martha's face, so far as her face was unveiled — a story that told of some dreadful ordeal through which this rather aged-looking young woman had passed, but it said little on which one could rely.

No two readers of that story would, per haps, have agreed as to the precise nature and severity of the suffering this sad Sister had undergone. It was not easy to say at a look whether it was pain of the mind, or pain of the body, or pain of both, that left even this vague history on her face. Her cheeks had lost their native bloom ; the healthy, natural colour had faded from her delicate and flexible lips. To a practised observer, her eyes were downcast and pensive, and spoke of the sorrow that worketh death; — not the serene and hallowed sadness of the religious life. Her light auburn hair, where it straggled from its enclosure, seemed thick and stunted, and contradicted in a startling manner the femi nine beauty which her face asserted. What ever might be her years, there still lived in her eyes that bright clear glow which is never seen in the eyes of the old, or even the middle-aged.

In repose her countenance was rather vacant than religiously tranquil. When she spoke, or moved a muscle, the eyes seemed ready to flash into a conscious expres sion that she was still of this world, to which she was not, like the elder sisters, en tirely dead. It might be that she could find no better refuge from sorrow than in active duties undertaken for the love of God, under the direction of more mature and more con firmed Sisters, who were now nursing and tending the wounded soldiers. She might have felt by experience that time, to which such healing efficacy is ascribed, had, after all, but a negative virtue to wear out her woe, and close her secret wounds, whatever they were. Indeed, there are griefs that Time himself only makes deeper. At best, unaided, Time can never efface from our memory and our hearts the deathless sorrows that are only known to God and to ourselves.

Who is there among us that has been stricken by some terrible calamity, or cruelly deceived or be trayed by him or her, in whom one of us has trusted, that has found true healing and com fort — in time or even change. Occupation, useful and religious employment, household duties, or urgent demands on our attention — the necessities of our condition are the reme- B dies to banish our great troubles, and carry us forward into future sunshine, even when we cannot recal a bright glimpse of the past. Time has but little claim to great victories over grief. Of all occupations, there is none, per haps, more consoling to us — especially when we are mourning for the lost loved — than tending the sick and the wounded, or watch ing by the dead. Such appeared to be the object, at least in the first instance, of the young Sister Martha, as she was called ; for she was but a novice, and by no means at home in hospitals.

Sisters of Charity were there from Brussels, from Hungary, and various parts of Germany, all staid, reverend-looking women, varying little in religious costumes, and as has been observed, all looking so much like one another, that of the whole family it is not easy at first sight to distinguish any one from the rest ; but there was that in Martha that said "This is not my decided vocation." And even in the group of English Sisters, she might as easily be dis tinguished from the rest as an Anglican nun may in the streets of London be distinguished from a Roman Catholic. Besides, she was shocked and disturbed at the horrors around her. The long rows of beds bordering on other rows were unpleasantly filled with bodies more dead than alive — here might be seen a bandaged head, trying to raise itself from the pillow, with wandering feverish glances, in search of a nurse — there, a pair of sad, lus terless eyes, met your gaze with a stony, senseless indifference.

Here a peaceful, resigned face, on which Hope, as on a battle-field, had conquered Fear, and settled down into quiet patience — there, one whose twitching lips and quivering motion told but too plainly of pain that was hard to bear. Which ever way the messenger of mercy turned, there was the voice of lamen tation greeting her ear, and sights of tortured, mangled mortality meeting her eyes ; and melancholy is her walk through the wards. Among the pious sisters, who, in their devotion to their wounded brothers, were offering up every faculty of their being at the feet of the Redeemer, there were titled ladies deli cately brought up, and accustomed to affluence and ease, serving as nurses. Under their gentle and holy influence, the rough soldier, in his agony, is subdued to quietness and patience, which his own sex could not inspire.

He softens under the woman's nature. He yields to the woman, because she is a woman. There were pious ladies of various creeds, from different countries, healing the wounds inflicted by the jealousy of two great rival nations — without partiality. Here was the good Samaritan pouring the oil and wine of consolation into the wounds and into the hearts of suffering strangers — doing good, not to friends only, but to soldiers of the enemy. The gentle, kind-hearted ladies came, and saw the strong man brought down, bruised, shattered, and broken. They conquered their nature, ministering to his most loathsome necessities, such as cleansing his putrid, festering wounds. In his weak ness and in his misery the soft accents of the holy sister is soothing to the ear, well nigh stunned by the din of battle.

Her tender treatment of the man's gaping wounds and frightful gashes soften his heart, however hardened, into patient obedience and peace. In the nursing mothers bending over him he sees the dear messengers of God. His courage revives, and he thanks God, and lies down passive under His most mighty hand.

Chapter II

Even the fieriest of the disabled warriors, now fevered with pain, prostrate, smashed and afflicted, were humanized. Nay, touched to the heart, beneath the sweet influence of their truest sisters in the dread moment of desolation and pain. Who is there among these wretched wrecks of what they had been but a few hours earlier, be he Frenchman or Prussian, who does not hear in the soothing voice of some loving sister of charity, while she is assuaging his sufferings, smoothing his pillow, or chafing his feet — if indeed they are not torn from him by the new war instruments of torture— the mysterious echo of his mother's almost for gotten accents, reminding him that he is not, even in the depth of his misery, forsaken. Does not the gentle, heaven-sent nurse, kneeling by the sick soldier's bed, and bend ing pitifully over his loathsome, raw wounds, recal the fond remembrance of a sister, — a sister it may be, too sinfully refined to stoop to such a revolting office in the house of the maimed, the marred, and the mutilated.

However this may really be, the officer on whom the surgeon was in immediate attend ance looked wistfully, and often restlessly from one sister to another, and from one group of German men and women to another who bore on their arms the white flag with the red cross — at once the badge of their order and the sign of their mission — their devotion to the sick. Unfixed and wandering was the officer's eye till it involuntarily rested on Sister Martha, as she waited on an elder and more practised sister in her preparations for some operation which the doctor seemed in haste to perform. The novice sister stood for an instant speechless and overcome on that momentous night of the 16th of August, before the other and more experienced nurses whom she willingly obeyed. Her hand trembled while she held the candle so near the patient that the surgeon could see to probe into the ragged wound.

The agitation of her manner took away from the outward habitual tranquillity and beautiful self control which she was ex pected to possess. The instant she brought her head and hand so close to the sufferer that she discerned his features, and touched the hand that she was desired to raise up from its hanging position she started back suddenly, with an expression of surprise, rather than alarm. There was, however, certainly, in the wounded man's countenance nothing to warrant unpleasant emotions thus out wardly evinced. His handsome, manly face it is true, was pale, deadly pale from loss of blood, but still placid and composed. Tears came trickling down, his manly cheeks, but their fountain might have been bodily weak ness, or he might have wept for other's woe. While the surgeon was extracting the bullet from the poor fellow's left side, assisted by one of the senior sisters alone, in spite of all his efforts, the blood spouted out from the house of life.

The bullet had lodged near the region of the heart, and no sooner was it drawn than the crimson stream gushed out frightfully, bringing on the faint fulness of mortal sickness, till death beckoned him to the rude grave of his slain comrades. Throughout that livelong awful night, the good nurses were seen flitting noiselessly from one couch to another, actively busied in their compassionate vocation amid sights and sounds enough to send thrills of horror through the stoutest heart. Of the ghastly objects in the house, ofthe wounded and the dying, only the most prominent were visible in the dim light — the white sheeted couches here and there, and figures gliding between them ; all other objects were merged in the general obscurity.. Through the windows and doors opened to admit the pure fresh air of the morning, not yet tainted by the stench of the battlefield — after the sultry closeness of the August night — there boomed, at intervals, even in the early dawn, the distant roaring of the cannon.

All outward noises were hushed except this real or imagined thunder breathing murder from afar. Inside the rooms, the only audible sounds were the slow painful breathing of the wounded and the dying on their pal lets, stained with gore, — sobs and groans, shrieks, prayers, and I fear, oaths, raising themselves amid mortal misery, fearfully and distinctly, even above the monotonous mutterings from the field of blood. The feebleness of fatal sickness was now iu the voice of the wounded man, but his accents, while he made a desperate effort to speak, sounded firm and resolute, though low, and only heard by her to whom he whispered something that was heavy at his heart; his tones were decided and strong, contrasted with the shrinking hesitation of Martha's words in reply. The strong nature of the brave officer, and the weakness of the timid, startled sister, came out, even in their short interchange of last words by the couch of the dying officer.

The incessant demand on the care and ministrations of the religious ladies, with whom, as an attendant, Martha was as sociated, carried them out of her reach to new cases of distress, so that all which they could make out of the mysterious sympathy evinced between the officer and Sister Martha, certainly, was not a mutual recognition. The officer, with difficulty, pointed to his coat at the foot of the bed, and when Martha brought it to his hand, he cast his eye to his breast pocket, from which she took a packet of papers and a little book, or tablet, which is given to privates as well as officers, I believe, descriptive of each to whom it is given, as a clue to the friend of the wounded or the slain. The breeze outside now strengthen ing with the slow advance of the morning, and wafting the sweet fragrance of wild flowers joyously into the sick room, seemed for a moment to bring strength to the sinking patient, while it removed the con ventual head-dress from Martha for a moment, and displayed her hair.

She looked up and saw signs of convulsions coming over the handsome face of the officer. At first she heard nothing but panting, quick drawn breaths — then a few disjoined words — broken and confused were the words that now dropped from the pale lips of the soldier. His voice failed, and he struggled to recover it. " Close, close, come closer to me — find my brother, and give this packet to him." Then raising his voice as the last effort of nature, he cried " My — ," the only word that reached any other ears on earth, but those of Martha. The lips that so labor iously opened to let it out, parted to close no more. Martha was beside herself, sprang towards the real seasoned Sisters who could bear anything, called for help, then rushed back like a wild thing to the bed-side, snatched up the papers entrusted to her care, and hid them in her bosom.

Time was no more to the officer. The last moment had passed, and the next brought eternit}'. The light of this life had vanished before the presence of death. He is beyond the reach of shells and shots. His spirit before the God of battles and the Prince of peace. The doctor, accompanied by the Sisters of Mercy, or of Elizabeth, as the Germans call them, followed by junior Sisters or atten dants, returned to the dear officer now be yond earthly skill. The religious women were praying, but no voice was heard. The doctor was silent and thoughtful. Hurrying as a mere matter of business to the bedside of him on whom he had so recently operated, he saw at half a glance that his attendance on such a subject could not avail. He spoke quietly to the Sisters on other cases in this temporary hospital.

Martha still stood motionless and stupefied by the bedside. The Sister who took the greatest responsibility on her, approaching to close the eyes of her dead, started at the sight of poor Martha's face, and turned to the surgeon. " I fear this poor young creature," she said, with pity in her tones and looks, " had better leave the room, at least for a time, and take the fresh air of the morning." "Certainly," answered the doctor; "she is only in the way here, so unreasonably and horridly shocked and terrified is she at one single death." " What can she do among so many — and much worse, too ?" asked the sisters. " Quite my way of thinking. It is best by all means that she should at once go out and have a ramble among the hills for a little time, at least," and at the same time the con siderate doctor touched Martha on the arm, he said, soothingly, " Let me persuade you to leave this close atmosphere, and breathe the fresh air of the hills."

He placed a hard biscuit in her hand, which mechanically closed on it, took her gently away, and left her outside. " What a strange woman !" said the doctor, as he returned to his loathsome surgery, ad dressing the real, tried nurses. " She is none of your sterling stuff," added the surgeon. " I distrusted her nerve. She talks to nobody but herself," he said, " and this is a bad sign, at least in my opinion ; but you Ladies of Charity know best. Where did you pick her up, or how did you fall in with her ? She may have much future good in her, and I think she has ; but the material is, at present, raw and unseasoned." " We were so deeply impressed by her manner and appearance, the penances which she has, we know, endured, the testimony of her protectors and spiritual masters and pas tors in a Protestant reformatory or peniten tiary to the north of London, that we were only too glad to avail ourselves of her assist ance.

Above all things she sought active employment. I thought," said the senior sister, " to train her, and eventually find ad mission for her to our sisterhood. Our only difficulty has been to keep her from the heat and rage of the battle field. Yesterday, nothing but her vow of obedience could keep her within bounds." " The horrid results of that day," observed the surgeon, " are written on my memory in blood. The smoke and clouds of dust had scarcely cleared, last night, and unveiled the horrors of the deserted battle field, when, in the discharge of my duty, and in search more particularly of an officer of my acquaintance who rushed to the front of the fight, even within a few yards of the French, charging the enemy at the point of the bayonet, I observed Sisters of Mercy, mastering their nature, amid the carnage.

In the dusk of the evening, beneath their feet and at every step, were armed men, writhing and wriggling along the blood-stained grass — some lying dead, or still as death — others struggling hideously, practising ghastly gymnastics, revoltingly grotesque. Here and there might be seen some poor fellows with more life in them, spasmodically jumping up from the ground, as if electrified, then tumbling down again like winged birds brought down from their flight in a sort of death dance, trying frantically to make off from the slaughter. Piles of maimed and mutilated humanity met the eye in all directions, while fresh victims were shed on the heaps of the dying and the dead. Extricating themselves from the heav ing mound might be seen men desperately staggering up to their feet, and rushing on as if in pursuit.