Her Hesitant Heart (6 page)

They were both looking at him now, as though waiting for a reply to a question he had not heard, so busy was he in admiring Mrs. Hopkins. “Beg pardon?” he inquired.

Private Benedict asked again, “Sir, may I walk Mrs. Hopkins back to her quarters? I’d hate to keep you from work.”

Hell, no
, he thought. He took a few deep breaths, surprised at his resistance to a kind offer. “Actually, I had hoped to quick march Mrs. Hopkins to my hospital and introduce her to the redoubtable Nick Martin.” Joe paused, hoping Susanna Hopkins would see his interest. He was not a man to encroach; blame his Virginian upbringing. “Mrs. Hopkins, it’s your choice.”

Please choose me
, he pleaded silently, yearning for her approval like a schoolboy.

He realized he was holding his breath until Mrs. Hopkins replied. “Private, I trust we will have plenty of occasions to discuss both your pupils and mine.”

Private Benedict sketched a charming bow to her. “We will.”

“Good day, Private. We’ll speak again soon. Major, shall we go?”

When he was a boy, living on his father’s plantation, Joe Randolph had had a one-eyed dog. Brutus
belied his name, being most tame and possessed of a self-effacing nature, at least until the post rider happened by.

Brutus became a different dog then, considering it his duty to give chase. The post rider always managed to escape Brutus’s retribution, until one day when the energized dog latched on to the horse’s tail.

The horse stopped, looked around at this source of discomfort, and did nothing. Joe remembered watching, eyes wide, as Brutus sank to the road and also did nothing. Once he had caught the post rider’s horse, he had no idea what to do with it.

Joseph Randolph, grown now but possibly no wiser, had no idea what to do with Mrs. Hopkins. He had never supposed she would abandon a conversation with a fellow educationist. But here she was, probably with nothing on her mind beyond avoiding her cousin’s house for another hour. That thought channeled him toward his best efforts to relieve at least some of her anxiety. He couldn’t call it a smooth recovery, but Mrs. Hopkins probably knew better than to expect miracles from men.

“Yes, I promised you Nick Martin and I suppose you are wondering why,” he said, as they left the warehouse.

“True. I can control a classroom,” she assured him. She ducked her head against the wind that roared down the parade ground, and staggered with the force of it.

He steadied her automatically. “Some ladies in
the regiment sew lead shot into their hems, to keep the wind from, well, doing what it does to skirts,” he told her.

“I’ll remember that.”

As they walked toward the hospital, the bugler in front of the guardhouse played recall from fatigue, or tried to play it, considering that the wind grabbed the notes and hurtled them toward Omaha as soon as he blew them.

“Soldiers have been known to commit suicide from too much wind,” he commented, then could have smacked himself.
Do I not remember a single bit of idle chatter?
he asked himself.

“One can scarcely blame them,” Mrs. Hopkins said. “Now, sir, Nick Martin.”

“Let us call him a deterrent,” Joe said as they struggled toward the hospital. “Some of your scholars have been running wild for years. They will not take kindly to a classroom. Sit Nick in the back row and you will have a most efficient monitor.”

“Has he nothing better to do?”

“Probably not. None of us know much about him,” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the wind.

“He’s not a soldier?”

“I don’t really know. No garrison has declared him missing.” Joe chuckled. “Of course, there are company captains who would wish some of their worst miscreants to go missing.”

She gave him a long look. “You are being inscrutable, Major Randolph.”

“It’s all I can be. Nick showed up one hot August, rail-thin and full of lice. The adjutant brought him to me, and I cleaned him up.” He took a chance and put his arm around her as the wind strengthened. “He informed me that he was Saint Paul. Nick, not the adjutant.”

Joe smiled as her jaw dropped. “I would never lie to you, Mrs. Hopkins. I have no idea what his real name is.”

“Then why …”

“… is he Nick Martin? Jim O’Leary named him after the worst malcontent in his regiment during the Civil War.” Joe shrugged. “It seemed as good a name as any. Nick answers to it when he feels like it, or to Saint Paul.”

“He’s harmless?”

“Completely,” Joe assured her.

Mrs. Hopkins hurried along beside him, holding her dress down with both hands. In a few more minutes, they were in his hospital.

Joe looked around with pleasure. The building was only two years old, and had replaced a disgraceful structure that may have caused more illness than it ever cured. He probably sounded like his long-dead mother when he ushered her inside, apologizing for the odor of ether and carbolic.

“Hospitals are supposed to smell this way,” Mrs. Hopkins said, cutting through his commentary, a practical woman.

He laughed, which brought Nick Martin into the hall. Joe knew Nick generally lurked there, waiting
for him to return so he could help him off with his overcoat, but he had surprised Mrs. Hopkins, who stepped back.

Trying to look at Nick Martin through her eyes—or the Apostle Paul, depending on his moods—Joe could understand her fright. Nick seemed to think long hair was a requirement, and he was taller than most mortals.

The only way to find out whether Nick was an apostle was to ask, but that seemed a little crass. “Nick, this is Mrs. Susanna Hopkins,” Joe said, when she had recovered.

“The Lord bless and keep you, Mrs. Hopkins. I know He has preserved me on my many missionary journeys,” Nick said.

“Saint Paul, he has certainly saved you from shipwrecks,” Mrs. Hopkins replied. She held out her hand and Nick shook it.

“I hear that Major Randolph plans for you to sit in my classroom and keep order,” she told the tall man.

“As long as it doesn’t interfere with those missionary journeys,” Nick told her. He nodded to Joe. “I must return to my duties. The church at Corinth is particularly fractious.” He left them in the hallway.

“My goodness,” Susanna said. “What duties does Saint Paul perform in your hospital? I mean, when he’s not helping Corinthians. Does he write letters? One would think Paul was good at that.”

You are a wit
, Joe thought appreciatively. “He
just sits there in the ward. No one seems to mind, or perhaps they’re too cowed to object. At any rate, I have an orderly hospital.”

He watched her lively face, wondering what she was really making of his madman.

“I hope his missionary duties are few this school term,” she said, as he opened the door to his office. “If he can’t read or write, I can probably teach him. That will make Romans through Hebrews easier to compose someday, don’t you think?”

Joe laughed out loud. “Generations of earnest Christians will applaud you! The rest of us, not so much.”

The door opened immediately and Nick brought in two cups of coffee. “Thank you, Saint Paul,” she told him. The door closed again.

Joe took a sip, satisfied. “Nick makes the best coffee.” He leaned back in his swivel chair. “I don’t know what creates people like Nick Martin. I think he was a teamster who suffered hard usage of one sort or other, and found a better world in madness.” He thought of her own ill usage. “I imagine it is a safe place.”

“Where does he live?”

“Here. I have a storeroom with space for a cot in the alcove. He eats with my hospital steward. You may have noticed the small house beside the hospital.”
He eats better than I do
, Joe wanted to add, but he was not a man to play a sympathy card.

“You’re a kind man.”

“I couldn’t send him to an asylum.”

Mrs. Hopkins sipped her coffee, breathing deeply of the government issue beans that Nick turned into something wonderful. Joe cleared his throat, and she looked at him, her expression sweet in a way that charmed him.

“If you should find the time, I could use your help here, reading to my patients, or writing letters for them. Young men so far from home find comfort in ladies.”
Heaven knows I do
, he thought.

“Show me your ward,” she said.

She surprised him. He had asked other garrison ladies to do what he was asking her, but his efforts usually involved much cajoling. No one had asked to see the ward.

“Come along,” he said, opening the door quickly, before she changed her mind. “It’s only a twelve-bed ward.”

“And when women and children are ill?” Mrs. Hopkins asked, going with no hesitation through the door he held open.

“I treat them in their homes.” He gestured into the room, which had six metal cots on either side. “I also have an examination room in my quarters, where ambulatory civilians come.”

“And here?” she asked, looking around with interest.

“There is another examination room, but no operating bay. Anything needful in that realm I also do in the exam room. Mrs. Hopkins, meet my hospital steward, Sergeant Theodore Brown.
He’s a better post surgeon than I am, or Captain Hartsuff.”

Brown looked up from a chart he was examining. “You, sir, will have people believing that, except I do not think Mrs. Hopkins is gullible.”

“Nor do I,” Joe replied, after a glance at her.

She held out her hand to his steward, who took it, and even favored her with a courtly little bow, which impressed Joe. After exchanging a pleasantry or two with his number-one man, she walked the length of the room, obviously unfazed by the broken jaw in bed six, the result of a horse barn misunderstanding, or the burn victim from the bake house, who looked with real terror on the steward.

To Joe’s further surprise, Mrs. Hopkins sat down beside the latter patient and took his unburned hand with no hesitation. She looked back at Joe. “There is a hospital in Shippensburg,” she told him. “I did this a lot last year, while my eye healed.”

She turned her attention to the private in the bed, speaking low to him while the hospital steward sat down with his tweezers and bowl on the man’s other side. Joe nodded to Sergeant Brown and wheeled over a hospital screen.

“Do you need me, Sergeant?” he asked.

“No, sir.” His steward glanced at Mrs. Hopkins, no more nonplussed than he was, which appeared to be not at all. “I’ll send her back to your office when we’re done.”

Well, well
, Joe thought, as he looked at charts.
People continually surprise me
. He worked his way out of the ward and back into his office for another half hour of paperwork until the sun sank lower, the retreat gun sounded and his steward finished.

“Here she is, sir,” Brown said when he ushered in Mrs. Hopkins. “Our patient decided to be brave for the lady. You’ll come back?”

“I will. I can read to them.”

With a salute less casual than normal, the steward left.

“Mrs. Hopkins, you amaze me,” Joe said frankly.

She surprised him again. “Most people just want to have someone touch them kindly.”

He thought about that during their quiet walk to Officers Row. When she slowed down as they approached the Reeveses’ quarters, he slowed down, too. He couldn’t overlook her small sigh as she went up the steps, and the unconscious way she squared her shoulders.

“Good night, Mrs. Hopkins. I kept you away too long and worked you too hard today.”

“I didn’t mind,” she told him, her voice soft.

He walked to his own quarters. There were notes tacked to the little board he had nailed next to his front door. He removed them, reading them after he’d carried the lamp to his kitchen. He didn’t bother to heat the stew, because he didn’t care. He
spread the messages in front of him and mentally planned tomorrow.

He held the note from Sergeant Rattigan in his hand for a long time. “It’s Maeve,” was all it said, but he needed nothing more.
Another baby begun?
he asked himself.
That makes number seven since I’ve been here. Wouldn’t we all be pleased if one of them lived to term? I’m coming, Maeve, for whatever good I will do
.

S
usanna tried to trick herself into believing that the evening stretching before her would be easier this night. Maybe it was. Her cousin-in-law tried a little harder to be company, instead of hiding behind a months-old newspaper.

She carried on a decent patter about her day and mentioned Nick Martin, which made the captain pull a face and mutter something about “sending him to the federal insane asylum.” She exhausted all topics soon, almost wishing for Emily to hurry downstairs and save her from her cousin-in-law. Major Randolph saved her, as he had been saving her since Cheyenne, even though he wasn’t present this time.

“Cousin, I know this is none of my business….
”
she began, then watched with something close to unholy glee as his interest picked up. What had Major Randolph told her about the U.S. Army containing
more gossips per square foot than any other organization he knew of?

Appeal to his masculine pride, Susanna
, she advised herself. “I know so little about the army, and you know so much,” she began. “Someone told me that Major Randolph wouldn’t be going on the midwinter campaign because of some general or other. Why not?”

She could tell by the way Dan’s eyes lit up that she had hit on a topic guaranteed to please. “It’s a bit of a scandal,” he began, not even trying to feign some reluctance at proceeding. Major Randolph was right about gossip, but this was at his expense, and she felt a momentary pang.

“It happened during the Battle of South Mountain in 1862,” Reese began, tucking away his old newspaper. “More properly, it was during a skirmish at Boonsboro Gap, in a forward aid station when a Union soldier and a rebel soldier were brought in.” He clucked his tongue. “Major Randolph took one look at the Union man and knew he didn’t have a chance—head half blown off, or something. He turned his attention to saving the Confederate, when Crook—he was a colonel then, in an Ohio division—came into the aid station, took a look and went bat-shit crazy.”

No wonder Stanley has such a colorful vocabulary
, Susanna thought. “Surely the major tried to explain …”

“And Crook didn’t hear one damn word of it.” Reese leaned closer, as though the room was full
of Rebel sympathizers. “Some say Crook tried to yank the major out of that tent, but Joe Randolph held him off with a scalpel and backed Crook into a corner.” He shrugged. “That’s when the Union soldier died.”

“Surely it was obvious …” Susanna tried again.

“Nothing’s obvious in the heat of battle. When the Union secured South Mountain, Crook pulled enough strings to have Randolph sent to Florida among the saw grass and alligators. Maybe he hoped Joe would die of malaria.”

“That’s so unfair. Had he no friends?”

“Precious few. Joe is from Virginia, remember? Well, General George Thomas—he was also a Virginian—did manage to retrieve him from Florida. Joe served with Pap Thomas and the Army of the Cumberland until the war ended.”

“Thank goodness for General Thomas.”

“Too bad he isn’t still alive. Joe was supposed to serve with General Thomas in the Department of the Pacific, but the general died on his way to San Francisco in 1870. The Medical Department reassigned Joe here to the Department of the Platte, which Crook heads now. Talk about bad luck. Crook’s going to lead this winter expedition, so Joe will get left behind with hemorrhoids and the clap.”

“It must be humiliating to be passed over like that,” she said.

“I’ve wondered why Joe doesn’t just leave the army. He could practice anywhere.”

“Maybe he just doesn’t care,” Susanna said.

Let this be a cautionary tale
, she told herself, as she went to the upstairs window in the hall that overlooked the parade ground.
You mustn’t quit caring
.

She finally retired to her blanket-partitioned bedroom, wondering how a well-educated man could tolerate such scorn heaped on him. She was drifting to sleep when she realized that for the first time in more than a year, her son wasn’t square in the middle of her thoughts.
I am not alone in misfortune
, she thought.

Nick Martin was waiting for her on the porch of Old Bedlam the next morning. Wrapped in an army blanket, he was covered in a light skiff of snow.

“Nick, tell me you haven’t been here all night!”

He stood up and shook himself like a Saint Bernard emerging from a snowbank. “No. The major was all night at Sergeant Rattigan’s house, and I went there first.” He shook his head. “Maeve Rattigan needs a miracle, and so I have informed my superior.”

“The Lord God Almighty?” Susanna asked.

“The very one,” he replied. “Major Randolph says she tries and tries to have babies and they never make it.”

Poor woman
, Susanna thought. “Is Major Randolph as tired as you?”

“More. When someone dies, no matter how
small, he just paces and paces in his office.” Nick folded his blanket. “What can I do for you, my child?”

“Let’s see what’s inside, and then I’ll tell you.”

She looked around in surprise at the dirty space that was rapidly becoming a classroom. Without the heavy drapes, sunlight poured in and warmed the place, even without a fire lit in the newly swept fireplace. The desks were clean and someone had polished them. There was even a blackboard now, and a pile of books by the door.

“Looks like the miracle happened right here, Nick,” she said.

The windows were dusty again, probably from the work of the chimney sweep, so she sent Nick up the ladder to wash them once more. She admired a handsome bookcase near her desk. “Where did this …”

Nick looked down from his lofty height. She almost expected him to raise his hand in a blessing. “I
have
seen one like that in the major’s quarters,” he said, then turned his attention to the window. “The Lord provides.”

“My goodness, I wonder when he found the time,” she murmured.

“Ye of little faith,” Nick scolded, but gently.

She started sweeping, but stopped when Katie O’Leary arrived with a globe.

“Hi, Nick,” Katie said cheerfully. “I am continually amazed what lurks in dark corners at old forts.” She set the globe on top of the providential
bookcase. “Not you, Nick! It happens that the quartermaster clerk is from County Mayo, where Jim was born, so he found me a globe.” She laughed. “Life in the army depends on who you know, even though the other officers’ wives think I don’t know anyone!”

“You’re giving my pupils the world, Katie,” she teased.

“Mrs. Hopkins—may I call you Susanna?—you are a hopeless romantic!”

“Of course you may call me Susanna, and I am an educator,
not
a romantic.”

“I don’t know about that.” Katie took off her overcoat. “What will you have me do?”

Just keep reminding me how truly lucky I am to be at Fort Laramie
, Susanna thought. She noticed the note on the books. “‘Since I head the advisory committee this year, I am also over the post library. Use what suits you. J,’” she read out loud, then looked at Katie. “Major Randolph takes a serious interest in his post duties.”

“You can think that,” Katie said, all complaisance. “I think he is interested in you.”

Susanna felt her face flame. “Surely not,” she murmured. “Now I will change the subject. Watch me! You, madam, may dust the books while I sweep and mop.”

Katie sat on one of the stools, took a cloth Susanna handed her, and started through the pile, sneezing at the dust. Susanna stopped sweeping and leaned on the broom. “My cousin-in-law told
me such a story about Major Randolph last night. Does General Crook truly mean to snub him by keeping him here during that winter campaign?”

“I’m certain he does,” Katie replied. “It’s what the general has been doing for years.” She put down the dust cloth. “For my part, I am glad enough. I’d rather Major Randolph delivered this next O’Leary, and he can’t do that in the Powder River country.” She sighed. “The general has been plaguing Major Randolph’s life since he took over the Department of the Platte.”

“It’s so unfair,” Susanna said, attacking the dusty floor with more vigor. “Does Major Randolph just not
care
anymore?”

Katie was silent for a long moment, returning her attention to the old books. “Do you know what happened to his wife? It was so terrible I hate to think about it.”

Susanna nodded. She started sweeping slowly.

“I think if he could have crawled into the coffin with her, he would have,” Katie told her, after a glance at Nick on his ladder. She crossed herself quickly, and then was silent again. The whoosh of the broom was the only sound in the room. “I noticed something yesterday. He’s not wearing his wedding ring. I don’t know when he stopped doing that, but I noticed yesterday.” She gave Susanna a shy look. “You don’t wear yours. I suppose it’s difficult.”

I pawned mine
, Susanna thought.
The engagement ring got me to Chicago, and the wedding
ring got me almost here
. “Rings need to be tucked away, eventually,” she said, resisting a strong urge to tell the truth to Katie O’Leary.

The work was done by noon, or mess call, which Susanna recognized. Even though she assured him she was capable, Nick threw the mop water outside the front porch for her and returned the mop and pail to the hall closet. “Do you go back to the hospital steward’s house for noon?” she asked gently, when he just stood there, a puzzled look on his face.

“I do, I do, indeed.” He executed a courtly bow that made Susanna smile. “Thank you for reminding me. God will bless you.”

“You’re kind to him,” Katie said as they both stood on the porch of Old Bedlam and watched him walk away. “He’s a lost soul, and hardly anyone treats him kindly. Sometimes children are mean.”

“I know what that feels like,” she said simply. Katie could take that however she chose; it didn’t matter to Susanna.

As she looked across the parade ground, Susanna watched Major Randolph walk by the new guardhouse construction, his head down, his hands behind his back. She pointed him out to Katie, who was buttoning the only three buttons on her coat that closed over her pregnant belly.

“I don’t think things went well at Sergeant Rattigan’s house,” Susanna whispered, even though he was too far away to hear her.

“The Rattigans? Oh, no!” Katie said in genuine
distress. “You haven’t met her yet, but Maeve Rattigan gets in the family way every few months, and just as regularly loses her baby.” She looked down at her own swollen body, evidence of fertility that the sergeant’s wife couldn’t match. “I’d go to her, but I fear I would only make her more sad.”

“Perhaps I could go,” Susanna offered.

Major Randolph was closer now. She thought he was headed to his quarters, but he veered toward Old Bedlam. He looked up and squared his shoulders in a gesture that went right to Susanna’s heart.

“It must be so hard to do what he does,” she whispered. “I couldn’t.”

They waited for him on the porch of Old Bedlam. The parade ground was busy now with soldiers heading to the mess halls behind their particular barracks, but the post surgeon hardly seemed aware of them.
You have no one to go home to and talk out the misery you see every day
, Susanna thought.
What a shame
.

He didn’t have to say anything when he got to the porch, because Katie was in tears. Without a word, he took out a handkerchief, wiped her eyes, then put the handkerchief over her nose. “Blow, sweetheart,” he told her.

He looked at Susanna. “I had a note tacked to my door last night, and I’ve been in the Rattigans’ quarters since then. I wish I knew how to help her, but …” He shook his head.

“Is there anything I can do?” Susanna asked.

“Are you finished here?”

She nodded.

“You wouldn’t mind visiting a sergeant’s wife over on Suds Row? Emily would probably be aghast.”

“I’m going to overlook that question,” she said, more crisply than she intended, but at least it brought a momentary smile to his face. “What would you have me do?”

He thought a moment. “I’ll get a book from my quarters. I’ll introduce you, but would you stay there this afternoon and read to her? She might listen, she might just doze. She’ll know someone cares, and that’s all I care about.”

He left the porch with a quicker step than he’d arrived, and hurried to his quarters. “What’s Mrs. Rattigan like?” Susanna asked Katie.

“Quiet. Calm. She worships the ground Sergeant Rattigan treads on.” Katie shook her head. “All they want is a baby. It seems so simple.”

The post surgeon was in no hurry to return to Old Bedlam, apparently. When Katie started rubbing her arms to warm them, Susanna told her to go home. Katie left with no argument, walking carefully down the icy steps. Before she reached her quarters, her husband joined her. Susanna sighed to see them continue arm in arm, her head close to his shoulder.

When she began to wonder if the post surgeon had forgotten her, he hurried from his quarters and up Officers Row again, a book and package in his hand.

The package was a cheese sandwich. “I eat a lot of these. This one’s for you.”

She smiled her thanks and sat down to eat it. He pulled a half-eaten sandwich from inside his overcoat and peeled back the waxed paper. “It wasn’t so appealing last night,” he told her as he chewed and swallowed. “I knew it could wait.”

“You should eat better,” she admonished, wishing for water to wash down the dry bread. The man was no cook.

“I should do a lot of things better.” He said it mildly enough, but she heard the regret in his voice. “Poor Mrs. Rattigan. She just can’t carry a child to term, and I have no idea why.” He sighed. “She looks at me so patiently, and I feel more inadequate than a first-year medical student. Give me a festering wound any day.”

He waited until she finished. “Tonight, after supper, if you wish, I’ll take you around to meet your pupils.”

She nodded. “I’d like that.”

He held out a book. “Up you get, Mrs. Hopkins. Here’s your text for this afternoon.”

She took it. “I have heard this is quite good.”

“I bought it in Cheyenne. Mark Twain always makes me smile. I doubt it will have the same effect on a lady who is sad, but we shall see.”